keeping score – Page 4 – Journey Through The Obsidian Dream

Icepick Initiation into Hermetics

Satyr Magos14/11/2012

I have just completed three consecutive weeks of daily planetary conjurations, two of those weeks overlapping with the two phases of Rufus Opus’ Seven Sphere in Seven Days challenge. The results included several visions of the Planetary realms and a ridiculous boost in personal power, and culminated in the ability evoke planetary forces at will … and my first magic-induced migraine since I recovered from my blown a gasket eight years ago. Ultimately, it seems to have served as an initiatory culmination of last year’s ceremonial study.

When Rufus Opus made his challenge, I was already on my third day of planetary rituals prompted by my spirit-allies. Although that first Jupiter conjuration was relativity weak, things escalated quickly. I could see the group current flowing across the sky as I did my work, and I bathed in it. I caught glimpses of the Planetary Realms of the Sun, Mars and Mercury—powers I had not touched so successfully or so formally, if at all. I received ritual instructions from Saturn, and built on my relationship with the powers of the Moon.

The group took a break between Phases I and II of the work, but I continued in between: making my first foray into the Planetary realm of Venus and receiving further instructions on how to perform my conjurations even better—most significantly an upgrade for my Circle of Art and Triangle of Conjuration.

When Phase II began, I was rewarded with a powerful Solar initiatory experience—less than apotheosis, but more than dismemberment. Then the tone changed radically. Although I was able to make contact with each of the Planetary powers in turn, the effects felt anticlimactic after the visionary drama of the week before. I could certainly still feel each planet’s influence—in fact, I could feel it continuing to build throughout the day, particularly as the First Hour of Day passed from the Eastern time zone into Centeral, and as the Third Hour of Night came around. It was at this point that I found the discussion group on facebook to be particularly helpful, as others were able to point out technical differences between Phase I and II that I had not been able to perceive, and to confirm that I was not alone in this particular manifestation of effects They also reminded me that, within the Hermetic frame, the planetary powers are not so much places or forces (as I usually concieve them) but refracted lights emanating from God. RO, in particular, suggested that I take some time to look inward at the changes going on within my sphere; doing so revealed that, by Thursday evening, I had tapped into far more planetary power than I had realized.

Saturday, though, I went over the cliff. My final ritual left me filled with black light and white light. I bumped up against the edge of something, the limit of Saturn, and when I came back to my body full of that bi-colored light, I saw a six-winged figure looming over the current. Things have been quiet on the board and in those corners of the blogosphere since the project finished, and I think that whatever I caught a glimpse of (Iophiel?) might have borked some brains that got a better look.

As usual, I had performed my rites at the First Hour. Within a few hours, my head started to hurt. I thought it was psychic feedback from lunch on campus: things were a little strange over the weekend in the wake of a tragic accident involving several students. Come the Eighth Hour, though, the pain had escalated to the point where I could no longer function well enough to run the errands necessary for my birthday party. Fortunately, Aradia—in town for the party—was driving and able to get me home, where I promptly collapsed into bed with a full-blown migraine headache.

Ninety minutes later, I felt up to taking some painkillers, and was finally coherent enough to put two and two together: the psychic weather—no matter how nasty a college campus can be—was not enough to lay me out like that. It was Saturn that had pushed me over the edge from “magicially manic” to “magical migraine”. Looking to my aura, I concluded that it was too densely packed: I separated out the planetary power—not wanting to ground it altogether—and pushed it out to the edges. That felt better, so I pushed the edges out further. The further I pushed, the better I felt. When my aura was bigger than campus and the surrounding college-owned student ghetto, the pain was finally manageable. It finally disappeared about the time I pushed out to the city limits. That sort of “coverage” is unsustainable, of course, but the pain did not return as my aura deflated over the course of the evening.

The final Saturn ritual brought with it a sense of finality. Whatever it is that my spirit friends wanted me to get out of daily planetary rites … I’ve gotten. I can now channel planetary power at will, just as I can elemental power, though I’m still struggling with the personal consequences of hot-and-cold-running-Venus (just as a for instance), and half a week later, I’m still struggling to maintain my aura at a reasonable level. There have been no new migraines, but my energy level has been up and down like an EKG and requires too-frequent “maintenance”.

Clearly I had some unfinished business with the planetary powers that I began working with during the ceremonial experiment. That’s been fixed: I have now received my first initiation in the seven Planetary Powers, complete with dissolution, crippling agony, and even some ἱερῳ ἀναμιγνομενος. And I’ve also just been handed a brutal reminder of what happens when I let my magical practice get too high-octane.

So I’m taking a short hiatus from magic: doing just enough to keep from setting off the cold-turkey migraine. My Dark Moon rites have so far been minimal. I’m going to get back into more “pure” Chaos Magic pretty soon here, but I am definitely not fucking around with any more Hermetics until Mercury goes direct again.

But, before I fall further down the NaNoWriMo rabbit hole for a few days, I want to thank Rufus Opus and everyone in the Seven Spheres In Seven Days working group for the opportunity and the camaraderie. It was a mad ride, y’all, and I’m glad I didn’t do it alone. I know that I would have gotten even more out of it if I could afford RO’s Gates Rites (and I am not for a moment questioning that the years of practice that went into developing those rituals is worth $12 a pop: I just don’t have the scratch), or if I were capable of believing in the Ptolmaic/Hermetic cosmology as the Truth, not just aTruth. In the end, though, I got enough: initiated into Hermetics with a Solar immolation and Saturnian icepick to the brainpan.

SEMPER LVX

φως ἀθανατος

Τιερεσιας Σατυρος ὁ Μαγος

In witchcraft

Project Null: What Am I Doing Again?

Satyr Magos04/11/2012

Much like the ceremonial experiment, I started Project Null thinking that I knew what it was I would be studying, and turning out to me more than a little bit wrong. There are certain key techniques of Chaos Magick: fewer and, in some cases, easier to define than those of traditional Western ceremonialism. As the Ptolmaic, enspirited paradigm centers and frames the Hermetic magician’s practice, so, too, do certain beliefs and attitudes make up the base and superstructure of the Chaos Magickian. So early in my studies, I am no more qualified to pontificate on the latter than the former. Still, I think I have reached a point where I might make a few observations. What follows below are just that: my observations and half-researched opinions, and if any of the self-identified Chaos Magicians who read this blog take my statements amiss, I apologize in advance and ask that they correct me.

Most central to Chaos Magic as I have studied it so far are one tenant and one strategy: first, the belief there is no fundamental truth, and the corollary that belief itself is a tool; and a dedication to experimentation in search of measurable results.

“Nothing is true, everything is permitted.” I see this mantra everywhere in the Chaos theory I study, and it is here that Chaos Magick’s roots in the 1980s and 90s are most evident. There is wisdom in it, but also hubris: a fool’s absolutist misinterpretation of cognitive relativism and and postmodern thought. I like the newer version better: “Everything is true, everything is permitted.” The variation seems less open to materialistic nihilism, a trait I have observed in many of the Chaotes and former CM practitioners I have known in the physical world.

Much more valuable, and arguably even more iconic of the CM paradigm, is the second point. Experimentation is hardly unique to Chaos Magick, but—to the best of my ability to determine—Chaos Magick is unique in the way in which pseudo-scientific experimentation and the incorporation of scientific theory to achieve reliable, demonstrable results is central to its self-identity. And it is this point which I find most appealing about the paradigm.

After these things, what Chaos Magick seems to be best known for is sigils, which seems to be the central technique of the Chaote as spirit evocation is to grimoire ceremonial magic.

I had a plan when all this madness started. I knew what books I was going to read and had a pretty solid idea of what experiments I was going to perform. Things have already gone a bit off the rails, though. The results of my previous experiments weren’t done moving through the pipeline—a fact clearly demonstrated by the various spiritwork and visionary experiences that have devoured my last couple weeks.

Chaos Magick is results magic, first and foremost, and my experiments in Chaos Magick have turned into an engine for synthesizing the ongoing results from the ceremonial experiment into my larger personal practice. I thought about ignoring those results in favor of the original plan, but only for a moment. That dumb shit would blow up in my face so fast it would actually be be funny, and it would fly in the face of the spirit of Chaos Magick besides.

Chaos Magick is results magic, and by all the gods: I’m getting damn results. I’m hearing spirits more clearly, and they’re damn sure hearing me. I’m seeing auras again AND suffering less from the effects of psychic weather. I’m having legit gnostic experiences—one after another, each more brain-borking than the last—which is … well, short of my ongoing relationships with Aradia and Sannafrid, pretty much the most awesome thing to happen to me. Ever.

Here’s to magic, y’all. Here’s to breaking ourselves, breaking the world, and putting it all back together so that it’s more interesting than it was before.

Here’s to forging ahead even when it’s terrifying.

Here’s to Chaos.

In witchcraft

Project Null is Going Off The Rails

Satyr Magos14/10/2012

It’s amazing how productive you can be while not sticking to the plan. My formal daily practice has basically fallen apart in the last weeks, even as my various experiments have increased in breadth and depth.

I have been re-re-reading Liber Lux and am working on several write-ups therefrom. I have almost finished Jason Miller’s Sorcerer’s Secrets and am in the process of incorporating some of his excellent suggestions into my practice. Mr. Miller might be slightly annoyed to see him work included in my Chaos experiment—that’s not how he self-identifies—but, really, where is the line between innovative syncretism and Chaos Magick?

Meditation and Dreaming

As I mentioned above, my formal meditation and dream work have basically fallen apart.

Although I have not sat down to meditate deliberately in over a week, I have actually spent hours in trance. Sitting outside in the cold one day, waiting for a friend, as a trance settled lazily over me for nearly thirty minutes. I spent five hours at the loom the following day, not even half of which I can remember. These meditations certainly don’t qualify as the concentrations Peter Carroll (and many other occultists like him) prescribe, but I refuse to concede that they don’t count. I actually have a whole rant about this planned for the near future.

While my sleep schedule has been restored to the point where I no longer drug myself with chamomile and valerian at 10 o’clock every night, my ability to recall my dreams in the morning is spotty at best. This is something I have always struggled with, and will probably continue to struggle with for years to come. Most of my dreams, though—what little I can recall of them—have been clearly mundane: fragmentary remains of my bout with super-hero obsession a couple weeks ago, and my increasing state of holy-fuck-i-need-someone-to-sit-on-my-face.

Shielding

My shielding experiments continue, and I’m fine-tuning a protection talisman. At the suggestion of Chirotus Infinitum in the comments to my last shielding post, I attempted to use the image of a ladybug as shield. The visceral experience was indescribable. And it brought back a series of shape-shifting experiments from my high-school days that I’m in the middle of writing up, and will probably share after I have finished my write-up of Peter Carroll’s chapters on Evocation and Invocation, because they’re highly relevant.

Manifesting My Desires.

While none of last week’s sigils have quite manifested, my experience so far says to wait two weeks before getting antsy. Also, those are socially complex endeavors, and while I haven’t actually found any new lovers, yet, the value of my social capital (to abuse a metaphor) seems to be rising.

I have another batch, this time aimed just at boosting my social situation, in the works to fire off this afternoon.

In the mean time, I have also been tinkering with my Web of Influence, again: drifting into a trance to tend the threads and make certain that things are moving down the pipeline (to deploy a cliché). Interestingly, though I had not yet consciously begun to incorporate my Web of Influence into my sigil work, I could see my manifesting sigils on the web as glittering lights.

Visionary Practice

I went on a pair of highly fruitful visionary journeys at the Dark and Full Moons that I still haven’t quite parsed. In the first, I re-established contact with my my chief familiar spirits and discovered, as I had discovered when I was doing some of my work with Elemental Fire, that a portal to Chaos had opened in my Inner Temple. I didn’t have the nerve to explore it the first night, but I did the second. Beyond the door was a vast void: not the swirling mass of potentiality I had assumed the Chaos current would appear to me as, but the gaping void of Χαος. I could barely sense an intelligence to it, it was so vast and alien, but it was definitely aware.

At first, there was nothing there that I could perceive, an I thought that I was walking through a black void like the astral fragment I use to access the Otherworlds. Slowly, though, the vastness of the space in which I was moving began to dawn on me. I began to perceive fling things moving through the void at almost unimaginable speed. There were countless multitudes of them, but the scale Chaos made them seem few and far between. At that point, Sue, ZG, and SKM joined me, forming a protective triangle, and helping me keep track of where I had come from for when the time came to leave.

We drifted until we came to a lone floating chunk of rock, which we landed on essentially out of my mortal, terrestrial instincts. Faster than I could think, an insect/crustacean-like creature (I never saw the whole of it), whipped around from the other side of the boulder and impaled me through the heart with a many-jointed limb. Although we were able to overpower it and reclaim the “blood” that had stuck to its talon, we took that moment to flee back to the Inner Temple.

Gods and Spirits

Since the conclusion of the ceremonial experiment and the Invocation of Baphomet, I now have ten gods and spirits living on my altar. I speak to fewer than half of them on a regular basis, and I don’t think that’s appropriate.

A few weeks ago, even the gods on my altar demanded a portion of my weekend coffee offerings. I was happy to oblige, of course: I had only not included them because they had not asked, before, and coffee is such a non-traditional offering that I didn’t wish to offend. Yesterday, I began incorporating Jason Miller’s Rite of General Offering* into the ritual, and today I will bring back fruit from the cafeteria to add to the offering.

So far, I have rarely asked the spirits I work with for much in the way of manifesting the world I desire. When I have, though, the results have been spectacular. When one friend was at risk of being evicted, I got Sue to change the landlord’s mind. When another needed a specific job, I asked Sue to make sure it happened. When I was wallowing in a crushing pit of despair last week, I dedicated an evening’s festivities to Dionysus, asking him to purge me of the negativity and obsessive behaviors in which I was engaging; I have since heard that it was the best such party in some time for everyone else there, and I have been pulling out of my emotional morass much more quickly than usual, and am now struggling against a new, but less self-destructive so far, set of obsessive behaviors.

Although I do still intent to built my home defense servitor, and ideally do so before the end of the semester, I think it best that I tend to these relationships before adding anyone or anything else to my altar.

a Change in Plans

Although it might not seem so from my previous weekly reports, my experiment in Chaos Magick has been more productive that I would have anticipated at this early stage. It has also been productive in ways I ever could have imagined, many of which are exceptionally difficult to articulate—a dilemma with which I imagine all my mage-blogging peers can identify. Some of them have come to light today, some I may never be able to talk about.

I originally conceptualized Project Null as a simple follow-up to the ceremonial experiment: a way of continuing my formal study of the Western magical tradition and of not loosing the momentum I had built up over the course of the previous year. I set the time frame for the ceremonial experiment at a year because I was originally using Penczak’s year-and-a-day system as a map. I set a year time frame for Project Null because that was how long the ceremonial experiment had lasted.

It seems, however, that Chaos Magick is even less suited for such a survey than ceremonial magic was. And I haven’t finished processing or internalizing a number of the lessons from that experiment yet. And this semester is much, much busier than I had anticipated. And Project Null is digging things up from my youth that I haven’t though of in a decade or more. And each and every one of these things deserves my full attention.

Project Null is not being cancelled. But the deadlines are. This shit is way too interesting to not let the phenomenal organic growth I’m experiencing progress at its own rate. Hopefully y’all will understand that this is a carefully considered tactical decision, not just a drunken satyr flaking out.

——

* – Miller, Jason. The Sorcerer’s Secrets. Pompton Plains, NJ: New Page Books (2009). pp53-5

ETA: Jason Miller reference clarified and cited properly.

In witchcraft

Ow. That Was A Wall

Satyr Magos23/09/2012

I got nothing done for Project Null this week: Tuesday through Friday were a complete wash. In a small part, that can be blamed on my frustration with the unsatisfying results of the sigil shoal I launched a couple weeks ago. Mostly, though, it was because I spent all my time and energy on my anthropology of gender class. In related news, I am now ill, but on the plus side I got a lot of great material for my Feminism as Chaos Magick essay (and narrowly avoided a tumblr fight in the process).

The Sorcerer’s Secrets finally shipped Thursday. Friday morning, the lost keys I was looking for did finally appear in a pocket of my backpack that I’m fairly sure I checked. I have found about a dollar’s worth of change on the ground. So: it seems like these things took about ten days to manifest. Perhaps I phrased my intent poorly, or chose targets that were problematic for reasons I don’t understand. Perhaps the sigil designs were somehow inadequate. Perhaps the launch technique was inadequate. Or maybe it just takes that long, even when a shorter time table is encoded in the sigil. For lack of adequate data, I’m going to assume a combination of all of the above was at fault and mark the experiment as “mixed results”

I did get my act back together yesterday morning and today: doing my meditations, making my weekend offerings, and firing a shoal of sigils each morning using a simpler charging technique: still charged from my morning rituals, I arranged the sigils on my Chaos Altar, lit a candle each for Death and Desire, held the sigils up to the sunrise, and chanted “It is my will” until I felt something shift. When each of the sigils was so charged, I lit a third candle, again chanting “It is my will” until I felt a shift. The first shoal was socially oriented: knowing who wants to fuck me, who I can trust, and that sort of thing. The second was more academic: improved comprehension, reading speed, and recall.

Because I seem to be much better at actually doing my meditation first thing in the morning, I am going to add that to my morning routine, as well as try for a second 5 minutes at night.

In scholarship, witchcraft

Failed Enchantment: No Scholarship for Satyr Magos

Satyr Magos04/09/2012

I don’t often enchant for concrete outcomes. The fact is that I have most of what I want and need. My web of influence (and social privilege) and mundane efforts keep things flowing pretty well. Most of my enchantments are aimed at bolstering that web: my planetary talismans, my safe-travel spells, and my circles of protection. Every once in a while, though, I do need something specific badly enough that I enchant for it: generally it works; this time it didn’t.

At the end of July I was invited to apply for a “scholarship” (actually a service-based work-study) program offered by my school. I cut things pretty close last year, and part of the problem was that I couldn’t get all my work-study hours, which the program would guarantee me. In addition to about a thousand extra dollars to live on each semester, it also offered a stipend for summer work. I wanted it badly.

As one is supposed to, I did a Tarot spread about the application. On the one hand the message was clear: yes, I should apply. On the other hand, the actual outcome was more ambiguous.

I put in the work on both ends. I was given two weeks from the time I received the invitation to the due date. I busted ass on application, itself, and turned it in on time. It was a damn good application essay, if I do say so myself.

Aradia and I charged a sigil and fired it off with a seven-day candle. I then sent that sigil to a few, select, close friends so that they could help charge it, too.

Then I waited. I was supposed to hear back about my application by the 6th of August. No word came. I got caught up in the process of packing, and basically let it go.

I got to Sunrise on the 14th of August. Still no word had come. So I walked up to the office and asked. The email had been sent, they told me. But, no: I had not been selected for the program. The application and the spell had failed.

There are a lot of variables here. Perhaps my application was invalidated for some technical reason I can’t know. Perhaps the sigils I designed were flawed in some way. Aradia and I raised energy for the sigils by laughter; perhaps that was not the way to go. Perhaps passing them off for a boost was a bad idea. Perhaps they somehow conflicted with other enchantments I have in place to assure my financial solvency. Perhaps my mistake was as simple as failing to encode a time frame: perhaps I will be selected for the program next year, on the basis of the same application.

A brief consultation with the Tarot—“Why did my spell to receive the scholarship fail?”—produced what you see below….

…. which basically comes across as pure static. Obviously, one could interpret this as “you didn’t put the work in”, but …. to the best of my ability to determine, I did. And the optimist in me wants to try to spit in as, “because something better is in the pipeline.”

Thoughts or suggestions would be very welcome.

In scholarship

The Ceremonial Experiment In Summation

Satyr Magos20/08/2012

I know that my year of studying ceremonial magic (particularly of the Golden Dawn and grimoire traditions) has been a whirlwind tour at best. How can one cover, in a year, the variations and culminations of two thousand (or more, depending on where you start counting) years of magical tradition and experimentation? At times I have felt like a child playing with forces I can barely comprehend.

Fuck: the fact of the matter is that I am such a child. We all are. I think that the best many of us—particularly those of us with families, jobs, and other “worldly” obligations—can ever dream of achieving is adolescence. Still, though, if I sit down and enumerate (as I did a bit in my previous posts on the subject) the things I’ve accomplished, it turns out that I’ve made respectable inroads.

In this final post on the subject I want to talk about the resources I accessed in order to make those inroads. It would have been impossible for me if I weren’t in college, for one: my access to top-notch internet; the moments of down time between classes that were too long to waste but too short to do any real homework; the intellectual ambiance (so radically different from the outside world) that treats spending weeks at a stretch with your nose in obscure data as healthy behavior rather than as dysfunctional. There’s also the thing about my relative economic privilege which has allowed me to amass (and hoard) my library over the last decade and a half.

Over the course of this project, in approximate chronological order (with some considerations for ease of citation [and comments]) I have read:

Du Quette, Lon Milo. Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford: Dilettante’s Guie to What You Do and Do Not Need to Know to Become a Qabalist. San Francisco: Weiser, 2001. [Gave me the courage to really dig into this project.]

–. Low Magick. Woodburry, MN: Llwellen, 2011.

Penczak, Christopher. Temple of High Witchcraft. Woodburry, MN: Llwellen, 2007. [Solid at first glance, but structurally unsound: lessons begin and end but don’t middle.]

Crowley, Aleister. Moonchild.

–. Book of Thoth. (*)

–. Book Four. (*)

Fortune, Dion. Sea Priestess.

–. Moon Magick. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1978.

Kraig, Donald Michael. Modern Magick. St. Paul, MN: Llwellyn, 1997. (*) [I see that there’s a new edition out, but it looks hardcore Llwellenized. Does anyone know if it’s been nerfed as bad as it appears, or if it’s actually still solid?)]

Turner, Robert. Trans. Arbatel of Magic

Frater Barrabbas. Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick Volume One: Foundation. Stafford England: Megalithica Books,2008 (*) [Explain to me again why people take this guy seriously?]

Agrippa, Cornelius. Three Books of Occult Philosophy. (*)

Trithemius, Johannes. The Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals. (*) [So … is he a cryptographer or a magician? Can someone more expert in these fields help me with this?]

Betz, Hans Deiter (ed.). The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation Including the Demotic Spells. (*) Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. [I wish I had the brazen gonads needed to do half the magic in this book.]

Warnock, Christopher (trans.). Picatrix. (*) [Working with excerpts provided on his web page and via the Spiritus Mundi group.]

Greer, Mary K. Women of the Golden Dawn: Priestesses and Rebels. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 1995. [Brilliant. You should read it.]

Books I didn’t make it all the way through are marked with an asterisk(*). Yes, there’s some novels on there. I apologize for those citations which are incomplete, especially to the owners of those works, I do not have the print volumes on hand for all the relevant publication data.

And, last but not least, I have been hip-deep in the blogosphere. Rufus Opus at Head for the Red and Polyphanes the Digital Ambler have provided me with a great deal of information on Hermeticism. The former operates in a decidedly Christian tradition, while the latter is somewhat more eclectic, and between the two I’ve really been able to get a better view of the mechanics behind the symbolism and ideologies. Also Aaron Leitch of Annael, who provided me a view of the (sane quarters of the) modern Golden Dawn, a recipe for Abramelin oil (and a process for extracting essential oils in general, which has been great fun), and a few other things. I should also point to Skyllaros of the Crossroads Companion, because he’s awesome and his work is more accessible to me than that of many other hermetic magicians, but I only discovered him late in the game.

Deserving of special attention and thanks is one mister Jack Faust, of Dionysian Atavism, who has helped me contextualize a lot of these ideas with his very post-modern thoughts on the subject, backed by wonderfully hard archaic sources. He also gave me a number of personal pointers over email and on G+, for which I am extremely grateful.

Thank you, all of you, for sharing your knowledge and experiences with me.

In witchcraft

My Year of Ceremonial Study: The Home Stretch

Satyr Magos09/08/2012

In retrospect, I wish that I had set more concrete goals for my year of studying ceremonial magic. I started with a particular programme, but I abandoned it about half way through as inadequate to the task it proposed. I did refine my goals a little short of half way through, but even those were not particularly specific: to begin the pursuit of a supernatural assistant, to form connections with the Planetary and Elemental Powers, to begin producing a grimoire for people of a more polytheist bent, unable to swallow the top-down, antropocentric cosmology of Ptolemy. Realizing even then that my original time frame of a year could well prove inadequate, I mused about pushing it out to eighteen months or more. As you, my clever readers, have already inferred, I have decided against extending my study for now: I am content with the Work I have accomplished in the last year.

There are quite a few projects that I haven’t found the time or clarity to write about yet, but only two goal experiments remain before I am ready to begin my year with Chaos magick. Through the Spiritus Mundi group, I have learned of a Solar Election this weekend, which will allow me to create the one talisman I had wanted to but not yet had the chance. Using that election, I will create a talisman for the Favor of Kings—like those I have created for Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury—and a Solar ring of power. And when the Dark Moon comes, I will use my shiny new Circle of the Art to conjure Baphomet and empower my Chaosphere.

In witchcraft

My Circle of the Art

Satyr Magos31/07/2012

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:

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 witchcraft

Conjuring the Natal Demon

Satyr Magos27/07/2012

I almost didn’t perform the conjuration yesterday: a series of coincidences and a side of bad planning ended with me not having the apartment to myself at any Hour of the Sun. So once I’d worked on my scholarship application until my brain was running out my ears, I decided to have a number and work on other projects in front of the boob tube.

With the Fifth Hour of Night, though, the urge to Work fell over me like a weight: I reached for my sketchbook and finished inking the Circle of Art I had designed for the conjuration of my Natal Demon, whose name I had calculated according to Agrippa (using Frater Acher’s lovely spreadsheet) and whose sigil I had drawn using that name and the Rosy Cross. I was already high, but it was the magic that really clouded my mind: despite the presence of Aradia’s atheist room mate, which barred me from employing more formal ritual, I could feel the daimon coming on even before I completed the Circle.

The names on the Circle (for those who can’t read Greek) are Helios, Phoibos, and Agathos Daimon. The glyphs are the planetary symbol and Grand Seal of the Sun, and the Seal of Och. I first conjured my Natal Genius under the auspices of the Moon, so it seemed appropriate to conjure my Natal Demon under the auspices of the Sun. My Demon’s sigil and name have, of course, been edited out, but they were drawn in the innermost circle.

When the circle was done and empowered to the best of my ability under the circumstances, I pulled the page from my sketchbook and laid it on my lapdesk. Almost immediately, the sigil appeared to me to become an eye. Grabbing my sketchbook, I drew that eye on the page and from there the image of my Natal Demon began to flow. Perhaps it was the amount of time I spent contemplating this ritual; perhaps the stars were just in better alignment; maybe I’ve actually learned something since my first conjuration experiment. Whatever: the connection was much stronger than it was when I made my first attempt to contact my Natal Genius, ZG.

During that Hour of the Sun, my Natal Demon was able to instruct me somewhat in its nature and image. It appeared to me as a narrow-faced humanoid, with an attentive expression. Its body was slender and tall, and from its back sprung two pairs of wings. Something rose from its head: I thought it a third pair of wings, but it may also have been horns or a helmet. It informed me that its nature was that of Jupiter, and of the Sun in Scorpio, and the Moon in Virgo. Perhaps most interestingly, the name of my Natal Genius was echoing through my head for most of the time I was performing the automatic drawing, leaving me uncertain whether the Genius and Demon are, in fact, separate entities or different faces of the same spirit.

When the vision began to fade, I put the Circle on the altar and made an offering of incense and a votive candle, thanking it and bidding it license to depart. In all, I would call the experiment a qualified success. I wish I had been able to stick with my original plan, but at the same time: sometimes the magic arranges to be performed the way it wants to be.

In scholarship, witchcraft

My “Year” of Ceremonial Study: The View From Month 11 of 12

Satyr Magos17/07/2012

It occurred to me this evening that the year I set aside to study the Western Ceremonial Tradition will come to an end in fewer than thirty days. I wrote the first post on my experiments a year ago yesterday.

Holy fuck.

It’s been a wild ride. What started as a vague (almost childish) intention to study “ceremonial magic” has wandered across Chaos Magick, the grimoire traditions, traditional astrology, the qabalah, the Golden Dawn, and quite a few things I don’t even know the proper names of. I’ve experimented with the Qabalistic Cross and the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. I’ve conjured my Natal Genius, and am planning to conjure my Natal Demon, as well. Although I have struggled with my maintaining my visionary practice, I’ve gone on visionary quests to the Temples of Malkuth and Yesod, striven and failed to reach Hod, and visited the Elemental Realms of Earth, Fire, and Water. I have made Planetary talismans of Jupiter, Venus, the Moon, and Mercury. I have discovered the Greek Magical Papyri and incorporated the Stele of Jeu into my Lunar devotions at both the Dark and Full moons. I have discovered the magical value of the Orphic Hymns. I As my studies progressed, they focused increasingly on Hermeticism and astrological magic, with a bit of grimoire magic on the side.

Shit has been intense. The rituals have been elaborate, effective, and exhausting. Although I’ve been fighting it, I’ve been falling into the trap of armchair magicianhood because, as much as I’ve enjoyed a lot of it, there are parts of my nature that I have to fight to do this sort of Work. And because I’ve been having so much fun getting caught up in the theory that I’ve been loosing track of the practice. Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not done with the Western Ceremonial Tradition by any stretch of the imagination. But I think that, when my year is up, I’m going to switch streams.

This coming year is going to be dedicated to Chaos Magick. Stephen Mace and AO Spare. Phil Hine and Peter Carrol. Gordon White and Jason Miller. And probably lots of authors and bloggers that I haven’t even heard of yet. Hopefully some of them ladies.

Lots of things have been pointing me toward Chaos Magick over the last year, anyway. I mean: y’all have noticed that Gordon White is just too damn cool to ignore, right? There’s been this whole post-Chaos thing that Jason Miller’s been talking about, though I think Gordon and Skyllaros have the right of that in a lot of ways. And, even if Chaos Magic really isn’t what he seems to be doing anymore, I’ve picked up a serious torch for Phil Hine. So … I’ll come back to Agrippa, the Picatrix, and the Corpus Hermeticum sooner rather than later. Hell, I’m probably going to keep working on planetary talismans and my illustrations of the Picatrix images of the planets even as I change trajectories, because they’re pretty and they make me happy.

Any recommendations?