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In witchcraft

Seeking the Natal Genius I–Or, Satyr’s First Evocation

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Last night, during the Hour of the Moon, I performed my first spirit evocation using something like the Triangle of the Art.  I have made contact with spirits before, of course, using shamanic techniques and Wiccan invocations and even a bit of mask-work.  But if my experience as a jeweler has taught me nothing else, it is that studying someone else’s techniques is an excellent way to refine your own.  Thus, the Triangle of the Art.

I have by now studied a half-dozen forms of evocation: the Goetia, Donald Michael Kraig, Trimethius, the Stele of Jeu, and others whose names I either don’t know or can’t remember off the top of my head.  Combining techniques developed by various modern magicians and shared at the Queen of Pentacles with my own artistic talents and gnosis, I produced my Triangle.

For my first such evocation, I chose to contact my Natal Genius as described by Agrippa—or, more accurately, as described by Rufus Opus and Frater Acher, augmented by my thus-far-infantile examination of Agrippa and Frater Acher’s generously free-for-download spreadsheet calculator.  It seemed like both a natural starting point for experiments in Triangle evocation—a spirit not just friendly to me, but actively interested in my advancement, and likely to be particularly amiable to such contact—and a natural outgrowth of my work with the Stele of Jeu.  As to the timing, I chose to operate on the Night and Hour of the Moon because I am a witch at heart.  And, as a witch, my first allegiance will always be to the Moon.

I sketched out my Triangle of Art last Thursday evening, when I was struck by sudden inspiration.  I re-calculated the name of my natal genius (I had forgotten to round up the degrees), and developed a seal and a preliminary pronunciation.  Following the lead of my Muse, I elaborated on the utilitarian format of the Triangle until I had something that looked more like a grimoire-based design: my genius’ name written in Hebrew inside the Triangle, my statement of intent spiraling clockwise around it in English, and the names DIONISUS, RHEA, and AGATHOS DAIMON written in Greek along the inner edge of an outer circle.  (I’ll post pictures once I have the chance to scan it and edit out the most intimate details.)

I did some preliminary divination, sought the approval and aid of my patrons and guides, bribed the one who thought it might not be a good idea (the consensus was overwhelming … I’m not sure why my Kouros disapproved), and cast my circle.  Taking up my pens and pencils, I inked and colored the Triangle I had constructed in advance, and finally placed my obsidian sphere within the Triangle as a focus.  I chanted the name of my Natal Genius 76 times using the counting beads I strung at the beginning of spring break.  When I was done, I poured a libation of mead and sat back and waited with my sketchbook in my lap.

There had been a build up of power as I chanted, but at first nothing happened.  After a while I took a hit of absinthe to facilitate the visionary process, and when that didn’t work I started to get worried.  After a while, though, impressions started coming to me: I started by drawing the seal of my Natal Genius on the page, and a rough skeleton of a humanoid figure.  The impressions I got became more and more clear as I worked and started adding copies of the seal around the page.  Soon, the spirit was able to correct me on the pronunciation of its name, and the image grew even more clear.  Finally, it was able to instruct me in the proper construction of its seal, and the image came together along with a list of associations.

The figure that appeared to me was a little on the feminine side of androgyny, with six eyes in an otherwise featureless face, arms that doubled at the elbow, ephemeral wings, and a serpent for a tail.  It told me it’s nature was of the sign of Scorpio, of the planet Saturn, of elemental Earth, and of the number XVII.

Then the Hour of the Moon—the time frame I had built into the statement of intent—was over, and the spirit was gone.

I was too exhausted to perform the Lunar journey I had also intended for the evening.  I was also too wired to get to sleep for several hours afterward.

Despite this success, I think that I need to curtail some of the experiments I had planned for the near future.  I’ve made so many Otherworld contacts in the last six months that I think the best thing to do is to focus on developing those relationships.  I don’t want to loose the momentum I’ve got going, but I also don’t want to miss opportunities for learning and spirit-relationships because I’m moving too quickly.

In witchcraft

Further Explorations in Planetary Magicks: a Prelude

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Though I only posted about it yesterday, I actually finished out my Abramelin Oil last Wednesday.  After doing so, I finally sat back down to re-evaluate the High Witchcraft system I had been working with when I started it.  The experience was kind of interesting: Penczak’s system looks even more like a watered-down version of the Golden Dawn than it did when I first realized how little of the Western Ceremonial Tradition the GD actually represented; past Yesod (where Penczak introduces the Circulation of the Body of Light and Abramelin Oil), the exercises become increasingly useless outside the GD framework; and, of course, Penczak mentions the existence of the Goetia but cautions against actually using it, and never delves into spirit evocation—a practice which, from where I sit at least, seems fundamental to the Western Ceremonial Tradition as a whole.  Finally, the book culminates with the Bornless Ritual: the Crowley/GD version of the Stele of Jeu rite I have already begun performing with some success.

The more experienced magicians and ceremonialists who read this blog are laughing right now: “Of course I’m going to be disappointed by Christopher Penczak’s overview of High Magick: he makes his living writing 100-level fluffy-bunny bullshit by the ton.”  To which I can only reply, yes, but the tech in the last three books was solid once you ran it through the fluffy bullshit filter.  And I had to start somewhere, or I wouldn’t have even known what questions to ask to get me as far as I have. 

And, despite all my bitching, there are still aspects to the book which will remain useful to me: the altar constructions and the visionary journeys to the sephiroth/planitary realms.

As you all can tell from the tag—or, as you would be able to tell, if I had finished to re-tagging all my posts when I moved from blogger—I like building and rebuilding my altar.  I find myself wishing that I’d thought to photojournal my altar pace from my earliest practice.  I’ve had some good ones over the years.  And maintaining a separate, second altar for individual magical operations and experiments has made it much easier to keep my primary, increasingly devotional, altar from getting too cluttered.

The visionary journeys fit my style.  I am, after all, a shamanic witch—these ceremonial studies are doing wonders for my toolkit, and have introduced me to all sorts of fascinating areas of study and badass awesome people, but they’ll never be my primary focus.  And I’ll be much more comfortable conjuring spirits after I’ve gone and visited their places of power.  And following the Sephiroth up the Qabalistic/GD Tree of Life gives me an order of operations.

I have already completed (in terms of this project) my study of Malkuth/Earth.  As of last night I have begun my journeywork related to Yesod/the Moon.  If that goes as smoothly as it has begun, in the next week or two I’ll move on to Hod/Mercury.  And so on.

In the mean time, I will continue to escalate my practical magic practice.  Currently on the drawing board are that appeal to justice I mentioned, improving my Mercurial talisman that’s been helping me with my Greek, a Lunar talisman to help me maintain a regular sleep schedule and remember my dreams, and a Saturn talisman to help me manage my time better.

And somewhere along the line, I’m going to get over my strange idea that it’s somehow cheating, win the Favor of Kings and learn to fight dirty.

In witchcraft

My First Exorcism

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I performed my first exorcism at the age of twenty.  I was still living with my parents.  My best friend, Aurvandil, and his lover were living in a strange, half-underground two-but-really-one bedroom apartment in the biggest apartment complex of our hometown.  They had a ghost.

They lived with the ghost fairly amiably for most of the year.  He’d slam the cabinets closed if they left them open, slam the sliding shower door open if they left it closed, and a few other things I can’t now recall.  He was easy to appease, and Aurvandil was (and is) a superstitious sort, so he let it be … until things went awry.

We never figured out what set the ghost off.  Aurvandil was sitting in his easy chair watching television, his lover was laying on the couch with her book.  He kept his “water pipe” by the chair, invisible from most angles, beside an end table where the ash tray and the TV remote lived.  Out of nowhere there’s a loud, glassy, CRACK, and the smell of bong water fills the room.  The ash tray has moved itself from the center of the end table to the center of the bong, which is now laying shattered in a pool of resinated water.

I was the only witch he knew.  Of course he called me.

I brought over my Tarot deck, cast a circle, burned some mugwort, and asked the ghost what was wrong.  It didn’t answer so much as give me the finger.  The ghost was mad, it wouldn’t say why, and it was pretty hostile.

I got scared.  Aurvandil got scared.  So I recast the circle, and pushed it to the edges of the house.  I pushed the ghost out with the circle, and anchored the circle to the walls.

No more banging shower door.  No more slamming cabinets.  No more exploding paraphernalia.

Aurvandil did tell me that he could sometimes hear knocking on the walls … coming from the underground side in the office-sized second bedroom.

We were young and dumb, and if I had it to do over I’d do it differently … but that’s beside the point.  We were both very pleased with the results at the time.  Looking back, though, I wonder what I might have done differently.  I know things now that I didn’t know then, but I think if I’d approached the problem differently, there might have been a more peaceable resolution.

In witchcraft

Wedding Under An Arch

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

A week ago today I officiated my first wedding:  uniting two friends in Chicago under Illinois’ new civil union law. 

To say that I officiated perhaps overstates my significance in the ritual.  It was very much their show.  The vows were deeply personal, drawing on traditional American structures with influences from their long-standing Celtic and Druidic practices as well as the Germanic / Troth deities they have been working with more recently.  Large swaths of the ritual were so personal that they were not even included in the script I was given.  There was even another “officiant”, invoking the Lady of Asgard and a few others of the Aesir.  My task was largely one of providing structure, of invoking certain gods – chiefly the Handmaidens of Frigga – and to provide my official seal as a ULC Minister.

I took it upon myself to open the archway under which the vows would be sworn, to cast (and banish) the circle in which the rite was taking place.  I took it upon myself to be the photographer before and after the ceremony (turning the duty over to another while I worked).  I have never worked with the gods of my blood-ancestors before – favoring deities of the cultures with which I more closely identify – and doing these things helped keep me grounded and open for the experience.

My key invocation, drawn from Raven Kaldera’s Weddings and Handfasting Rituals, went as follows:

In the name of Vara, may this couple take on this geas in full heart.

In the name of Syn, may they keep their boundaries strong.

In the name of Lofn, may they reach always for reconciliation.

In the name of Gna, we proclaim this promise to all.

In the name of Gerjon, may they be an example.

In the name of Eir, may they tend each other’s wounds.

In the name of Snotra, may they learn to work together.

In the name of Sjofn, may their affection be strong.

In the name of Huldra, may wealth flow through their hands.

In the name of Hlin, may their love survive even death.

In the name of Fulla, dear sister of Frigga, may they have always abundance.

The invocation struck me like lightening, running from the top of my head and into the earth.  I lost track of things for a moment.  I was wearing a newly-forged copper bracelet, the mate to my copper serpent-ring, which will henceforth be used only for channeling rituals.  The handmaidens were most certainly in attendance.

A few moments later, I was called upon to invoke the State of Illinois.  They, too, arrived as called:

IMG_3936Why yes, that is a police car on the left.  The lady on the right is laughing because they arrived precisely when I called for them … well, that and because the newlyweds were absolutely adorable.

Aside from everything else – my pleasure at being invited to the event in the first place; the honor of being asked to officiate; the fear and thrill of invoking new gods; my pride at performing the rite so well – this wedding re-confirmed what I have been coming to believe over the course of the last year or two.  I will probably never find a group with whom I can work and worship forever – I am too radical, too queer, too eclectic.  But I can serve and participate in the pagan community as a whole by helping perform rites with and for others who are likewise isolated.  Some of the rites I will be called upon to share will be, like this one, carefully orchestrated; others, like the blot and the vision quest at Beltane, will be spontaneous.  Regardless, this is the work I have been called to do.

Also, the fact that my first wedding was the civil union of two bisexuals, one of whom is mind-borkingly genderqueer?  Totally appropriate.

Thank you, Squirrel and Gingko.  Congratulations.  I was honored to be there.

In hedonism, witchcraft

A Darker Shade of Beltane

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

This past weekend was Beltane.  Aradia and I celebrated out at Camp Gaea with all the madness that usually entails, and a little bit extra besides.  Last year, Beltane (along with Heartland Pagan Festival, 28 days later) coincided with a Full Moon.  This year the Moon was Dark, and the differences were … interesting.

Beyond the sacred/ritual nature of the entire weekend,Aradia and I participated in four distinct rituals:  the public ritual, a ritual toast, an underworld journey, and our ultimate ritual with Pasiphae and Aidan.  Each was stylistically and thematically distinct.  Half of them were purgative.  By the end of the weekend, each of us – myself, Aradia, Pasiphae, and Aidan – had injured ourselves in some way.

The first ritual was the public one on Saturday night.  More than two dozen people gathered in the Old Way ritual space – several entire families were present, and at least a half-dozen children.  Aradia and I were there early, of course, and volunteered to light the torches.  In the process, we also cast the first layer of the circle.  (We’ve gotten very good at that.)  The ritual itself was done in two parts.  In the first part, the children raised energy by running in circles, then channeled that energy into a chalice full of seeds to be planted on a newly rebuilt berm and led out of the circle to do so.  The second part of the ritual was for the grownups.  We talked a little about our passions and art, then raised energy by singing tones.  I wish I’d brought my drum.  Then, without a closing of any kind, we were sent out in the world to “do something” with that energy – the ritual leader warned us, though, that she wouldn’t be held responsible for any consequences of that action. 

Why, yes, I did go promptly drop that lust-bomb on the unsuspecting Cauldron.  Did you even have to ask?   Dionysos and Pan are very good friends, and it is for very good reason I have been more than once accused of serving the latter. I also charged my thyrsos with it and saved a lot of it for later use.

The second ritual was the ritual toast – a blot (trigger warning for rugged masculinity and associated memes) – performed at the behest of an Asatru gentleman we met while unpacking Friday night.  The rite was simple and straightforward: each participant makes an offering to the sky and to the earth, then makes a toast; the others repeat the toast, then each offers their own toast (shared by the others) in turn. 

The Asatru gentleman offered his toast to his mother, who had recently passed, and later returned to our camp with a bewildered look on his face.  “I think that blot was the whole reason I needed to come out here,” he told us.  He had fallen off his practice and his gods were calling him back.  Though I did not particularly like him – he was the sort of person you might expect a self-identified redneck, knife-dealing, kinkster to be – I was honored to have served him in that fashion.  If I am to serve the neo-Pagan community in the ways I envision – helping with rites, putting on traditions as masks for solitaries and disconnected traditionalists, among other things – I must be prepared to answer to individuals and traditions that make me uncomfortable, so long as they do not outright violate my ethics.

The underworld journey was semi-spontaneous.  I had planned on doing one over the weekend, but when I felt called while watching the post-ritual fire and dancing in the Old Way, I also invited the nearby folks from the KU Cauldron to join me.

To my surprise, six of us wandered down to Thoth’s Grove (after nearly getting lost in Key Pass).  We started by casting the circle in near-silence, hand-to-hand.  “Visualize East,” I told them.  There was a struggle, briefly, as everyone tried to find the “same” east, but once we chose it, all the other points were synchronized.  The circle cast, I opened a portal to the underworld and introducing them all to the World Tree.  My own journey was … fruitful, but I did not find what I was looking for.  Most of the Cauldron didn’t speak of what they saw, but I was later told that they had all found the experience to be meaningful.

The fourth and final ritual was performed with our regular ritual partners, Pasiphae and Aidan, who were only able to make it out for that one night.  We had two major ritual goals we wanted to accomplish: I wanted to dedicate my Kouros figure, the male half of the goddess/god duo I have been experimenting with; and to purge ourselves of our accumulating troubles, symbolized by the too-old  and unlabled herbs from our magical pantry.  The first went well:  I felt Him awake with a sort of quiet humor.  The second went even better, evolving spontaneously into a shouted litany of “Fuck you!”s as we pounded an ounce or so of whole cloves into dust in Pasiphae’s iron cauldron/mortar.  Each of us ended up taking a second turn, and a new Beltane tradition was born.

As I mentioned at the beginning, the Dark Moon Beltane was of a somewhat different character than the Full Moon.  Besides the purgative rituals and underworld journeys, everyone in my intimate circle ended up giving flesh to Gaea.  I was bitten by a blackthorn branch I never managed to find, and reinjured my shin while hobbling about camp.  Despite her best efforts, Aradia got a vicious sunburn, numerous bugbites, and reinjured the foot she wounded while traipsing about Nashville and Chicago with me last month.  Pasiphae and Aidan were both attacked by the fire – he burned his hand, and an ember landed right under her eye.

Finally, though it didn’t play as significant a role in this years rituals as it did last year, I cannot leave out the mead.  I bottled last years a week or so ago, as you may recall.  We drank most of it over the holiday.  It was awesome.  I started another gallon for next year.  It, too, will be awesome.

Despite the unintended blood-sacrifices, I declare the festivities a resounding success.

In witchcraft

Motivations

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Penczak’s Outer Temple asks that we consider our motivations for practicing witchcraft – the magic in particular. I have been practicing magic since I was sixteen years old. I have been studying it even longer. My earliest days as a Seeker are vague, at best. But sitting down and thinking about it, I can remember my first inspiration: the spark that got the fire going.

 
 

It was Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I was ten, maybe twelve, when I first saw the Disney movie. I was still trying to find portals to Narnia in closets and odd openings in the house I grew up in. And although I understood that it was fiction … the bit with the enchanted beds seemed plausible to me. Or, it must have, because I remember clearly trying the spell to enchant my own bed. When it didn’t work, I assumed that the movie had gotten it wrong and went to read the book the movie was based on. The book didn’t actually contain the details of the spell, or any spell – it was deviously vague! – so I had to find other sources.

 
 

The rest, as they say, is history.

In hedonism, witchcraft

Twice Born

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Last year at Beltane I performed a spontaneous Dedication, knealing before a sky-god who has yet to share his name with me.

Thirteen months later, a week ago yesterday, I completed my first Initiation ritual.

It was a two-part ritual, actually: the first part being an underworld journey at the New Moon in preparation for the second, at the Full Moon, where I was assisted in my rite by three close friends. The ritual included, among other things, my first fast – twenty-four hours of bread, honey, and water (and not much of it) – and the sacrifice by abstinence of all the potential debauchery that comes with the first day of the Heartland Pagan Festival.

The fasting was both easier and harder than I thought it would be. 9pm – 9pm is a relatively easy block: I don’t usually eat for almost half of that. At the same time, though, I was packing for the festival, making a midnight drive, getting barely half a night of sleep, and finally unpacking and setting up camp – a great deal of physical labor, as I’m sure my dear readers recognize. I also had to watch everyone else eat good food, drink coffee, and christen the camp site with the festival’s first joint and beers without partaking. I almost had to abstain from the communal dinner following the festival’s opening ritual, a terrible sacrifice given the importance I place on the ritual sharing of food, but fortunately there was some bread I could share. Still, by the end of the fast, I was somewhat faint and had to be careful how much I ate lest I make myself sick.

As a lifelong solitary practitioner, I had never undergone any formal training or initiation. And although the work I have done over the last two years, formalizing and re-examining my training and practice, certainly counts for something, I had little idea what to expect. Would the ritual be transformative? Would it simply be an acknowledgement of my personal progress? Would it even work given the disparate practices of the people I had assist me?

The answer, in the end, was “yes” to all of the above.

Over the course of the ritual, I came into closer contact that I had ever anticipated with the gods I serve. I lost one guide, grown impatient with my slow progress. I … acquired? Was awarded? Met? What is the correct verb here? … another guide during my descent, and made amends with a Titan whom I had accidentally slighted. I was unmade and reassembled. Twice.

When I gave healing massages over the course of the festival, I found that the energy flowed like it never had before. I managed to soothe two sunburns by laying hands. My lady Aradia said outright that my healing work is much more potent than it was the last time I worked on her, shortly after Beltane. I have never felt so powerful or so clear as I feel now, even a week after the ritual. Slipping into trance is significantly easier than it was a bare ten days ago, so I know it’s not just practice.

So today I write, re-examining the experience again, and say to you proudly: I am a witch. Slain and remade within the Circle, now twice-born.

In witchcraft

Ascending Practices

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I am living a more productive magical life now than I have since high school, when – haphazard as it was – I was practicing nearly every day. I was almost this consistent in St. Louis – the only thing that took up more of my tiny studio apartment than my altar was my writing desk – but I was by myself, and meditation and house wards only get you so far.

My friend Chirotus invited me to help him start a magical study group about eighteen months ago. The premise was that we, as experienced and competent magicians of wildly different schools of thought, could learn a great deal from each-other by starting back at the basics. We started meeting monthly, practicing aura viewings and energy awareness, elemental conjurations (one month for each element), spent a couple months on personal shielding, and are back to aura viewings. At Samhain we started celebrating the Sabbats together, and will have celebrated half the year come Beltane. We have recently started meeting twice a month.

2020 has been the year that I’ve finally started keeping comprehensive magical journals. I’m not quite up to every day or every exercise, but I’m getting there. The things this does for my clarity and recollection are astounding. Why did I think journaling was too dorky for words? Oh, right. I was 19.

Over the course of the last semester I’ve started doing yoga every week or two. If you’ve never done an hour of meditative breathing combined with moderately strenuous physical activity, allow me a moment to highly recommend it. Last year I was doing three traditional Western work-outs a week (45-65 minutes) combined with meditative breathing. I need to get back on that: never in my life had I felt better physically.

I’ve started a daily tarot practice over the last two months. I still need to write about my thirty days of Rider-Waite. I’m twenty days into the Crowley Thoth, and while it will never be my primary, I already know I’m going to need to put in a second thirty (at least) before I can move onto another deck. My most significant insight from this so far was best put by Aradia: “You think doing daily readings will change your life, but it won’t. You still have the kinds of day you’ve always had.”

Last Beltane, I performed a formal Dedication for the first time, and at Heartland Pagan Festival, I gave up the magical name I’ve been using since I was sixteen years old. I have, at last, chosen a new name, and this year at Heartland, I’ll finally undergo a rite of initiation.

My aura sight, my tarot reading, and my clairsentience are as clear as they have ever been. My energy work is almost as potent as I remember it being in high school, just before I gave myself the migraines, and it’s a hard to say that I don’t just know so much more now than I did then that I’m just judging myself on a much harsher scale: I’ve been on spiritual journeys that I could not have even imagined then.

I think these things may actually count as progress. Evolution. Maybe even ascension.