Showing all posts tagged planetary magic

In scholarship, witchcraft

Working the Sorcery of Solomon: Using My First Pentacles

Author Satyr MagosPosted on Leave a comment

Those of you taking Sara Mastros’ pentacles course may have noticed that my last post did not actually make it to the end of lesson three. I had not, yet, put to use any of the pentacles I had inscribed in by book. Those experiences were weird and interesting enough to deserve a post of their own.

Jupiter Pentacles

My very first pentacles, as it turned out, were made outside the framework of this class. Over the summer, Mastros offered a workshop on using the Hexagram of Ab Ehyeh (second pentacle of Jupiter) for financial gain. I had inscribed but not yet deployed my first Lunar talismans, and decided not to jump ahead to teach my book the Jovial talisman before the class, so I printed the pentacle to inscribe over… which was where I made my first mistake.

I printed the pentacle on the wrong paper. Rather than just roll with it, I reprinted it on the cardstock I had wanted to use … and then I got all up in my head about proper care and disposal about the Hebrew god-names, and decided to punt the problem by consecrating both of them, each to a different professional goal: a particular sales goal, difficult but achievable; and a particular number of Patreon supporters. Both by the end of November.

They didn’t work.

Sales through the end of the summer and were good, but not what I was hoping for in October, and straight tanked in November. I have been delighted to welcome several new patrons, but did not meet my goal. (Writing that sentence, knowing y’all will read it, feels a little weird. Sorry about that.)

It’s possible that they did help. That these two pentacles, along with my other prosperity and financial magic, are what pulled me up out of the pit that was the first half of this year’s sales. But even if so, that’s not a resounding success.

But I didn’t know how those first pentacles would turn out, yet, when I finally sat down to put my first book-pentacles to use.

Preparing and Planning

Sara Mastros strongly suggests The Lunar Lock and Key (the first Lunar pentacle, per Mathers) as a student’s first pentacle, specifically to use it to journey to the underworld. Up to this point, I really had planned to stick as close to the lesson plan as I could. But I couldn’t figure out what would be the … best, most useful, most interesting way for me to employ the pentacle, an unfamiliar magical technology, to go to the underworld, something I am well accustomed to doing on my own.

It’s … a stupid thing to get caught up on. But get caught I did. I stewed on that problem for probably a whole month. Finally, the solution came to me: I would ask the Third Pentacle of the Moon, The Witch’s Teacher.

The Witch’s Teacher

The Witch’s Teacher (the third Lunar pentacle per Mathers) is a more conventional pentacle than the Lunar Lock and Key: round, with clear internal geometry, if with a slightly more obscure versicle. Inscribing it in my Book, as I described previously, went smoothly. Employing it was even more straightforward: I invoked Solomon and wound up the Book according to Mastros’ techniques. I told various powers – Solomon, the Book, the Great Seal, and the pentacle, itself – what I wanted, invoking each in turn, explaining my situation . I asked to be instructed in a vision in circle, in a dream tonight, and/or in visions and revelations later. Anointed a candle with holy oil, then lit it.

I was hit immediately with clairsentient knowledge: the Lunar Lock and key will serve as a guide, showing me where and how to go; it will lead me beyond the brass gates that I have seen in previous visionary trances; it will serve as a passport and a badge of authority; that using the Lunar Lock and Key to journey to the underworld is, itself, a rite of passage.

I thanked the spirits, wound down the book, and began planning my next adventure.

The Lunar Lock and Key

I put the Lunar Lock and Key to use around the middle of October.

Despite – or, more accurately, because of – my familiarity with less structured underworld journeys, I was careful to maintain the ritual and protocols I have developed in my pentacles work so far. I bathed and changed into my ritual whites before the start of the planetary hour. I sat down to meditate with my Book before winding up the ritual proper.

I struggled to stay focused, at first. I did not feel as strong a connection to Solomon as usual during initial invocation. I still didn’t get name or presence from Great Seal, but it definitely opened up and powered up. I didn’t get a strong sense of resonance while invoking the pentacle (further evidence for my theory that I am somehow not tuning in to the right frequency to properly perceive the pentacles), but visualizing using the angel names as the key and “tickling” the lock open (Mastros’ word; those of you who’ve tried your hands at lockpicks might find that metaphor more relatable) did produce a gate through which I was able to move.

I descended through the void, bypassing all my usual routes and landmarks, until I came to a great wall winding through a red desert, and a brazen gate which looked a lot like those that I’ve seen in previous visionary experiences. A glowing blue figure that answered to the name Shioel was waiting for me and led me to a postern gate where we met the spirit of my Book.

Inside the gate was, briefly, a vision of fiery red desert that gave way to a vision of poppy fields and a yellow brick road leading to the Emerald City. Yes, that Emerald City. Sort of. I flew there with Shioel a the spirit of my Book, and we entered the city by a side gate.

Inside the Emerald City was initially a void. Then there was a vision of a throne, which Shioel said was what I expected to see. The vision of the throne exploaded into a vision of light, followed by a series of visions more weird and personal than I care to share at this stage of internet culture enshittification.

At the end of my visionary journey, Shioel told me to return at the dark of the moon and I returned to my body.

The next dark moon turned out to be Samhain. Winding up for and then having to cancel our usual Samhain campout was exhausting and demoralizing, and I almost spent the night stoned in front of the TV. Somehow, though, I rallied enough to sit down in front of my altar to light some offerings and at least meditate for a while, and commune with my familiar spirits. Those few minutes of meditation quickly escalated into an unplanned visionary experience.

Solomon appeared to me, and the spirit of my Book. They admonished me not to use my Solomonic materia for anything but the Solomonic work (I had lit some of the incense as “the best I’ve got” right then), and then cajoled me to conjure up the Lunar Lock and Key and make my planned descent to the underworld.

In the end, I gave in. I called up the pentacle in my mind, invoked the names as best as I could remember them, and opened the portal. With the Book closed on the altar, instead of open before me, it is perhaps unsurprising that this second journey was more like my other underworld journeys than the first descent with the Lunar Lock and Key had been.

I descended first into light and the void, then ascended to the sphere of the Moon, where the spirit of my Book underwent a Lunar initiation much like those that I have been through in my Seven Spheres workings. Then we descended, again, and returned to the Emerald City for another round of visionary experiences weirder than I am prepared to share publicly, including some that were so weird I couldn’t even find words to record them in my most private journal.

Preparing for the Next Stage

For a wide variety of reasons, I’ve fallen off the work since November. I could point to the US presidential election, or to my father’s illness and death, or to my annual Christmas Depression, or any number of things, and that would all be true … but they are more true about why this write-up too me so long. What really broke my ritual streak was the Fall Back shift from Daylight Savings to Standard time: the Third Hour of Night now coincides with my dinner time, making it incredibly difficult for me to fit planetary timing into my regular life, even as a full time artist and magician. This fallow period, though, is by no means an end of my work in Mastros’ course and with the Solomonic pentacles.

I have already learned so much. About the grimoire tradition. About the legendary King Solomon. About the Hebrew language. About making magic books (this is my … third? Fourth?). About bringing my lifetime of witchcraft to ceremonial magic, and incorporating ceremonial paradigms into my witchcraft. I’ve had insights about how to improve my Picatrix talismans. I suspect that I will learn things that will lead me to make pentacle-like talismans using channeled imagery and versicles from extra-Biblical texts (specifically but not exclusively Homeric and Orphic texts).

Having now deviated from my post-per-lesson format, I think it’s fair to warn you that I’ll be deviating further. I am not going to hand-hold you through the whole of Sara Mastros’ pentacles course. That would be rude to her and boring for me and not actually that helpful or interesting to you.

Instead, going forward, I’ll be sharing my most interesting results from my classwork, and from the experiments that classwork inspires.

So I’m going to end this post again recommending that you buy Sara Mastros’ book, The Sorcery of Solomon: A Guide to the 44 Planetary Pentacles of the Magician King, and that you take her class if you can. (Her main site is down for maintenance at the time of this writing, so that second link might be dead by the time you read this. If so, let me know?)

In scholarship, witchcraft

Working the Sorcery of Solomon: Teaching the Book

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Working the third lesson of the pentacles course turned into a bit of a slog for me. I think that making the transition from preparing the book to scribing the first pentacles would have been a challenge under any circumstances, but August, and the first weeks of September, were incredibly busy for me on the Sorcerer’s Workbench side of things, and that left me as a bit of a mess.

The third lesson of the class and third chapter of the book are, of course, focused on the pentacles of the Moon. Mastros talks about it at length in the course, and makes her point in the book as well, but on the off chance you, my reader, haven’t been sold on the class, yet, it’s worth a sentence or two here. The Lesser Key of Solomon presents the pentacles in descending Chaldean order, Saturn through the Moon. In fact, most grimoires present planetary subjects in descending order. Mastros reverses this order for three reasons: working up, Moon to Saturn, makes more sense to a modern practitioner than the reverse; the Moon and Mercury include pentacles that teach you magic; and she just likes it better that way. As it happens, I agree with her on all three points.

The third lesson is also where we lay the final layer of the foundation before we begin the true work of the course: teaching pentacles to the book before we begin putting them to use.

Teaching the book is an interesting conceit. I am not just inscribing the pentacles in the book in a way that demonstrates and shores up my understanding of the magical seals; I am teaching them to the book so that the book and the book-spirit can study and internalize them, and then aid Solomon (and the pentacles, themselves) in teaching me their proper use. For all its baroque circularity, it does (for me at least) render the oft-advocated practice of transcribing a grimoire in one’s own hand from “ordeal” into “practical sense”.

Preparing and Planning

Following on July’s adventures, and being swamped in the workshop, I did not prepare or plan for this lesson as meticulously as I did the first two.

Following some omens and oracles from August, I wound up for this next phase of the pentacles by starting another course of Seven Spheres initiations. It had been a while since I’d done that, and I was feeling incredibly low energy, and I was hoping that it would help me. Unfortunately, I apparently read the omens wrong … or something, because I only made it through three spheres before the Sun told me to sit down, slow down, and to not exacerbate my burnout like that. I … had to be told more than once.

To prepare to formally inscribe and consecrate the seals into the book, I re-watched the third lesson video and re-read the passages in the book on each of the pentacles. I figured out my best pronunciations of the names of god, and what meanings I was going to lean on. As I penciled in the seals, the afternoon before inking and consecrating them, I made notes on the facing page, including the name and use of the pentacle, the Hebrew and English spelling of each name, and meanings of each name that I would use. I wrote out the full text of the spell that I would perform, including my Blade, Book, and Candle framing ritual and the invocation of Solomon. Mastros, like many teachers, strongly advocates speaking from the heart; I feel like I do my best work from a script, even if it’s my own.

Inscribing My First Seals

I have, so far, inscribed and consecrated three seals/pentacles in my book. I have penciled in two more, but missed the appropriate planetary hours on the days I intended to ink and consecrate them. (The transition from daylight savings time back to standard usually fucks up  my sleep schedule; this year it’s just thrown off my afternoon meditation and evening rites.)

As I mentioned in the last post, I’m just not feeling the volume of energy that Mastros describes in her lessons, or that I expected to feel from such a famous magical technique. Although I have had repeated and powerful contact experiences with both King Solomon, himself, and the spirit of my book of pentacles, the experience of inscribing the pentacles in the books has continued to be anticlimactic.

Like the Great Seal before them, I penciled each pentacle in during the afternoon before I planned to properly inscribe and consecrate it. I chanted the versicle as I inscribed it, and the names of god as I inscribed them, and again as I anointed them all with holy oil. But, like the Great Seal before them, as I inscribed each pentacle in the book, chanting the versicle and names of god, I never felt them “come alive” like Mastros describes. There was just a moment when they were clearly done, and it was time for me to bring the ritual to a close.

The Lunar Lock and Key was the first and hardest of three that I have inscribed so far. The square, instead of circular, geometry, and the uprights that have always struck me as castle pennants, made energetically building the seal difficult and counterintuitive. This was one place where I found Mastros’ instructions to be frustratingly unclear; what seemed to make sense while she was talking/on the page did not make sense in the moment. With that said, it was not so difficult that I couldn’t figure it out, and I’m not at all sure how I would explain the process to someone better than she did.

The Wing of El was, surprisingly, the easiest, though the Witches’ teacher was only marginally more difficult. The geometry is simpler, and their … assembly is more intuitive. Having inscribed these seals, I am much more confident in my ability to proceed further.

Moving at the glacial pace I have through the third lesson, though, I’ve had a lot of time to think, reflect, discuss, and divine about these experiences. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

I continue to have intense contact experiences with Solomon and the book-spirit (who really needs a cute nickname, at this point), even when the pentacle-consecration part of the work.

The book-spirit and the Great Seal feel stronger every time I work with the book.

When I put the pentacles to use (next post), they fucking worked.

So, where does that leave me?

Now, I know (and I think I mentioned before) that part of the problem is that I seem to have lost a lot of energy sensitivity over the last few years. It might be a side effect / natural consequence of taking my magical practice from a place of woven energy and spirit journeys and sigil magic to a more conventional place of spirit conjuration and candle magic and consecrating talismans. It might also be a side effect of the trauma of having been driven out of my community, or the pandemic world. It also might be that I have not yet learned to tune in to the particular frequency of energy (in, like, a radio dial sense not a “high vibes only” sense) at which the pentacles operate.

I think, also, that the layering is a factor. I study the pentacles. I imagine inscribing them in the book. I pencil them in outside of ritual, so that I can get the art part right without worrying about the magic part. At the ordained time, I awaken my temple and invoke Solomon and Sheba and all my other patrons and familiars, I wind up the Great Seal, and finally I ink and consecrate the pentacle in the book. Then I close it all back up and let it ferment. And then, every single day, I make offerings – candles and incense and libations – at the altar where the book lives, feeding it again. Each phase of that work layers in more power. So the energy and effort that at least some of my peers are putting in just in that one planetary hour, I’m spreading out over days or weeks or even months.

And then, possibly the biggest factor, we come back to that middle-ish sentence: “I awaken my temple and invoke Solomon and Sheba and all my other patrons and familiars…” I’m not in this alone. I’ve brought my decades of witchcraft with me. I, personally, am providing at most a tenth of the power going into the pentacles to awaken them. Which is good, because I don’t have the fucking juice that I once did. But I have made friends, and this is part of what I come to them for. It’s the nature of this whole shebang that I can’t see what they’re doing behind the curtain.

Preparing for the Next Stages

The point of studying Solomonic pentacles is not, in fact, to make a magic book, or even to make contact with the spirit of Solomon, Magician-King. The point of studying Solomonic pentacles is to fucking use them. Which is where we run into my biggest obstacle as a student of magic in general and as a Chaote in particular: I am actually not super creative when it comes to applying magical means to specific ends.

Sara Mastros suggests that her students start with the Lunar Lock and Key, using it to journey to the underworld. It may seem stupid, but as a moderately proficient underworld journeyer, I was not really certain how to use the Lock&Key to do what I could do empty handed. But, after weeks and weeks of hemming and hawing, I figured out how to answer that question.

Which is where I’ll take up the next post in a few weeks.

If you enjoy these posts and would like to read the read the next one before everyone else, please back my patreon campaign.

In witchcraft

Working Sorcery of Solomon: Making My Book of Pentacles

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

The first phase of this work – the first chapter of the book; the first lesson of the course – was to gather art supplies, buy or make incense and holy oil, and to make contact with the spirit of Solomon the Magician King. The second phase – the second chapter of the book; the second lesson of the course – was to consecrate and awaken the book that will serve as an ally in the work, and then to inscribe in that book the Great Seal of Solomon that will empower the book and the pentacles that I will begin inscribing in phase three.

This second phase was not as photogenic as the first. Well, I suppose it could have been, if I’d begged, bribed, or bullied Kraken into photographing me in ritual – and now that I say that aloud, so to speak, I may do just that some time later – but so far I’ve followed Mastros’ implied taboo of not showing the book, itself, on camera. She’s shown other pentacles she’s made, and I think maybe once shown the cover of one of her books in the class, but not the open pages.

Making and awaking the book played to my strengths in ways that making and consecrating the materia (while not difficult) did not, and making contact with Solomon did not. I’ve made magic books before, and done well at it. I’ve created/recruited familiar spirits before, to the point where you could fairly describe it as one of my specialties. But I tried to approach the work with an open heart and a beginner’s mind. Overall, I’m really pleased with how everything has come together, so far.

Preparing and Planning

After weeks of gathering materials, and then the physically and magically intense work of making the magical materia that I would use when I truly began the work, I was able to take the weeks of the waning moon off to rest and plan. That, I think, will be the shape of things as I continue this work over the coming year; it has certainly been my experience for the past month, as well.

Waiting for the moon to wane back to New, when I could resume the magical work, I also had time to plan my approach for the next phase, and make a couple decisions that I hadn’t quite made: choosing watchwords for the work, a sort of Solomonic motto to guide my steps and serve as a touchstone, and choosing a name for the book. Each of those decisions were their own unique challenge.

The watchwords were a challenge because I already have … multiple magical names and magical mottos, and am leery of accumulating too many more. After considering a handful – the Delphic maxim “Gnothi Seauton” among them (along with a rabbit-hole search into whether or not that epsilon belongs there [it appears to vary with dialect]) – and then being reminded that Mastros specifically suggests words attributed to Solomon, I chose a phrase from the apocryphal book Wisdom of Solomon: “Honor Wisdom that She may reign forevermore.”

I similarly struggled to choose a name for the book. Divination noped out my first choice, which was more a bad Latin title than a name. In the end, I named my book after a saint and a goddess, which I will not print here for (I hope) obvious reasons.

Finally, although I had made successful contact with Solomon on several occasions, I wanted to sit down and have a … relatively formal conversation with him before I called on him to help me consecrate the book. I don’t really do meals with the dead, it’s not my thing, but I did sit down, call him up, pour us each a couple fine whiskeys and smoke a bowl with him in order to hammer out some details about the work going forward.

It was a good conversation. I got confirmation on the go-ahead to invoke him as a part of the work, to don his crown and mantle. I also got some fun and interesting bits; more personal rules and taboos, like his admonition not to contact him on Saturdays except as part of Saturnian work with the book.

I was told to make, essentially, a saint’s candle with his image on it. And that I would need to make one for Sheba, as well, so I might as well get on that. And that there would be a third such candle by the end of the work, but I couldn’t guess who it was. He also, when I asked permission to make a ring, I was told that would be for later, “as a sign of mastery”. So I guess I’ll do some divination when I’ve entered all the seals into my book.

He also, as I did some yes/no coin divination at the end of the session to confirm that I had heard and understood everything correctly, made abundantly clear that he was going to play word games with me for his own amusement, and that I should phrase my questions more carefully in the future. I’m not particularly looking forward to that, but … Solomonic work is fundamentally Mercurial in many ways.

I started the ritual with at the beginning of Third Hour of Night (Hour of Mercury on the Day of Mercury). Without checking the clock until I was done, I finished my ritual with just four minutes left in the hour.

Consecrating the Book and Tools

Over the course of the week following that session with Solomon, I prepared the book by sitting and meditating with it in the afternoon, trying to fill both it and myself with the power I was going to need to raise for the consecration. I drew out practice pages to map out my lettering.

I penciled in the pages Tuesday and Wednesday the 9th and 10th. Interestingly, during that last afternoon day & hour of Mercury I, felt rather like I could have inked the first pages and named the book aloud right then and called it good. Despite that feeling, I went ahead with plan as written.

There was a storm rolling in as I wound up to do the ritual, so I set out a bowl to collect rainwater to use in the consecration of the cord. The storm didn’t quite hit in time to fill my bowl, but I got enough rainwater to be magically active, which was all I really needed. As the bowl was filling, and as I waited for the appointed hour, I bathed and purified myself and dressed in whites.

I started my ritual, casting my circle and awakening my temple with the Bell, Book, and Blade framing ritual that I talked about so much last year, just a few minutes before the Hour of Mercury, maximizing my time in the Hour for the work of consecration.

I consecrated my book, pen, scarf, and rope in that order. I was originally going to name the book at the same time I consecrated it, but I decided at the last possible moment to shuffle the naming to the end, because that’s what felt right at the time.

Called upon Solomon, Sheba, Baphomet, and all my gods for blessings both before and during the work. I inked the frontispiece and title page, then named the book before those assembled powers.

The book absolutely came to life in my hands, and I took my time bonding with the book, talking to it about my plans for the work and how excited I was to get started.

And then, feeling it was time, I wrapped and bound the book in its consecrated cloth and cord, thanked the various powers I had invoked, and brought the ritual to a close. Though it felt longer before I checked my clock, and everything felt right and proper in the moment, it turned out that the ritual, itself, had only taken about 30 minutes.

Though it all felt good and effective in the moment, I didn’t get the magical fireworks I was hoping for. I felt very little of the rush of power that I’m accustomed to feeling during such rituals, and I had no significant dreams that night or since.

Encountering the Great Seal

The week between consecrating the book and the great seal kind of got away from me. I did spend time practicing drawing the seal, making sure I had the geometry down before I even attempted to pencil it in to the pages of the book, but between my road trip to southern Missouri for a photoshoot, and the various obligations of life and work, I did not spend the time with my book that I should have. Nor

Monday and Tuesday got away from me, so I ended up finalizing my ritual outline just before dinner Wednesday night

Spent the nine o’clock hour cleaning my house and the ritual room … partly because Thursday is trash day in my neighborhood, and partly because that just felt like the right vibe for the last hour before winding up for ritual.

As the week before, jumped into the shower at 10 o’clock and donned whites and familiar rosary and started pre-ritual 10 minutes ahead of the Mercury hour.

I began with my full Bell Book and Blade frame ritual. I invoked Baphomet and lit his candle. I invoked Solomon and Sheba and lit their candles.

Inked seal and names. My Hebrew calligraphy is super shaky, but it did at least turn out pretty. The geometric details of the seal turned out just a little shaky, too, but it all came together well enough, in the end.

The energy work was a little easier than I was afraid it would be, even though the voltage wasn’t quite what I used to be able to pull. Chanting the holy names, they didn’t do any of what I thought they would based on Mastros’ descriptions, more like my experiences with relatively tame barbarous words/names from the PGM. I did not get any weird hallucinations with the geometry (I got more out of some of my practice pieces, actually).

The seal definitely came alive. I asked if it has a name – it does, but it won’t tell me what it is, just yet. Nevertheless, I slathered it in holy oil and whispered sweet nothings to it, as instructed. I poured energy into the seal, into the book, as much as I could, from myself and the candles.

I wound down the ritual when I started losing focus: closing the seal; closing the book; thanking the various assembled powers with a final round of offerings. Without having looked at the clock, I finished the wrap-up 4 minutes into the next planetary hour.

I did not feel as wrecked after the ritual as I was afraid I would; I attribute that to the help I got from my spirit court.

Bonding With My Book

I didn’t do as good a job as I would have liked bonding with my book in the week between naming consecrating, awakening, and naming my book and consecrating the Great Seal, so I made an extra special point of spending time with her in the weeks after the Great Seal. In the last month, I’ve managed to (re)cultivate a halfway regular meditation practice, and I have called on the book to join me in my meditations. She’s shown up a handful of times, now, which has been super cool.

In the book-spirit’s most dramatic appearance, the Great Seal was visible above and behind her, a little like the disk-shaped auras of medieval saints’ icons. It felt both like a separate entity and a part of her, which … makes complete sense.

Preparing for the Next Stage

In both rituals, I was surprised by a lack of “fireworks” strong sensations of energy and movement, apparitions, or various knock-on effects. I’ve done enough magic over the years to know that effective magic can be anticlimactic, but this was … more than that. Honestly, I think that one of the lingering effects of my current stage of burnout and this winter’s awful depression is an intensely decreased capacity to sense magical energy. The meditation practice I mentioned above is helping, a little, but … well, I think I’ve got a long road to walk as far as that goes.

The homework for the class, after all the reading and magic, ends with tracking the moon to prepare for the weeks of Lunar magic to come. That’s easy. I’m already doing that. My crew’s Full and New Moon rituals aren’t Lunar-themed (this last week’s was a group invocation of the Serpent-Faced God, PGM XII 153-60), but we’ve been having them with clockwork regularity for … eight years, now? Nine? I know when the moon is waxing or waning, if not necessarily what sign it’s in.

As you may have heard me brag/complain, already, t’s been a busy month. (I hear it’s been a wild month for a lot of people.) So as I finish this write-up on the day of the New Moon, I’m also trying to fortify myself to start the work of Lesson Three: The Moon, tomorrow. I need to make some logistical decisions: how I’m going to map the first pentacle onto the page; when, having taught the pentacle to the book, I’m going to make time to use it. And also, what I’m going to use it for? No pentacle has only one use, and I already have too many unused magical objects. I’m also considering taking myself through another round of the Seven Spheres work (though I may decide to wait for the Full moon and do the waning cycle

I’m excited to be moving into the meat of the class. The foundational work was both fun and fascinating. I’m looking forward to my first encounter with a pentacle and its names and energies. I’m looking forward to being able, when that first book-pentacle has had a chance to ferment, to making a usable pentacle and seeing how the Lunar Lock and Key (Lunar Pentacle No. 1, which Mastros suggests as the first entry) works.

I’ll be back in three to five weeks to tell you how it went! In the meantime, thank you, as always, for your support, and I hope your own magical experiments are going as well as mine.

In art, witchcraft

Image of Venus According to Picatrix

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

“The image of Venus, according to the opinion of the wise Picatrix, is the shape of a woman holding up an apple in her right hand and, in her left, a comb similar to a tablet with these characters written on it: ΟΛΟΙΟΛ. This is her shape.”

Picatrix Book II Chapter 4 Paragraph 27, Trans. Attrell & Porreca (2019)

Drawn and shared with plenty of time for you to prepare before Venus enters Taurus on 4/20.

Use this image as the face of your paper talismans by whatever method you prefer, or to accompany a petition by writing what you want across the face of the image. Hold on to the image for however long feels appropriate, and dispose of it in a similar manner.

In art, witchcraft

Image of the Sun According to Mercurius

Author Satyr MagosPosted on
Image of the Sun According to Mercurius

“The image of the Sun, according to the opinion of Mercurius, is the shape of a man standing on his feet as though wanting to salute those around him, and he is holding in his left hand a round shield; beneath his feet he has the image of a dragon.”

Picatrix Book II Chapter 4 Paragraph 23, Trans. Attrell & Porreca (2019)

Drawn and shared a little later than I’d hoped, but with a little luck you should be able to use this image to catch at least one of this Sol in Aries season’s elections.

Use this image as the face of your paper talismans by whatever method you prefer, or to accompany a petition by writing what you want across the face of the image. Hold on to the image for however long feels appropriate, and dispose of it in a similar manner.

In art, witchcraft

Image of Cancer II

Author Satyr MagosPosted on
a woman in jewels and robes sits on a serpent throne
Image of Cancer II

“The second decan of Cancer is a girl seated on a snake throne, having a beautiful waist. Her body, adorned with jewels, is beautiful, and her garments are of a pale hue. She abounds with politeness and affection.” – Yavana Jataka, Chapter 3 Paragraph 12 (an Indian astrological manual, translator unknown)

Another astrological image from October of 2023 that never made it to the public blog.

I originally drew this image for an election sometime in 2022. It took a while to redo it for public consumption, and then (again) to actually share it publically. There are bits of the linework that I am no longer satisfied with, but I’m trying to err on the side of finishing and sharing things rather than tweaking them obsessively.

Feel free to download and print this image for your own rituals, and to share it with attribution, but please do not use it for any commercial purpose.

In art, witchcraft

Image of Mercury According to Appolonius

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

“The image of Mercury, according to the opinion of the wise Apollonius, is the shape of a bearded youth holding a dart in his right hand. This is his shape.” Picatrix Book II, Chapter 10, Paragraph 31. (trans. Attrell and Porecca, 2019)

I shared this image with my Patreon supporters back in October, but never publicly due to illness (physical and mental) and exhaustion. I’m still working on perfecting my digital illustrations: finding a balance in between speed and perfection, mastering line weight and movement. It’s really nothing like the pen and pencil work that I’ve done for most of my life.

Please feel free to print this image out to use in your personal rites, but don’t reshare without attribution or use for any commercial purpose.

In art, scholarship, witchcraft

Triangles of the Art: An Idiosyncratic Journey

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Discussing tools and techniques in the Hermetic House of Life discord server this month, I’ve been reminded of how much of my work these days – especially the public-facing stuff – is rooted in the art of Drawing Spirits Into Crystals (DSIC). In discussing various elements of my practice, I have discovered that I did not leave as clear a trail in my blog as I had thought. Perhaps I was – for once – “Keeping Silent”. Or perhaps what seemed relevant at the time just isn’t what I want to share in retrospect. Either way, now seems as good a time as any to look back on my journey.

The first books I turned to in my study of the Western ceremonial tradition – these were the days of the great Ceremonial Experiment, as I called it – were guided first by Christoper Penczak and then by Donald Michael Craig. Although I have previously praised Penczak’s Temple of Witchcraft series, when he came to volume 4, Temple of High Magic, he dropped the fucking ball. And, to the chagrin of many in the community, I found DM Craig’s Modern Magic to be equally useless. So I turned to the internet. And on some random ass demonolator’s website, I found clear instructions for a barebones summoning circle.

The design I produced therefrom was simple: a triangle in a circle. The sigil of the spirit to be summoned went in the middle. Around the triangle (and, in my case, around the circle) went the statement of intent in clear script. And, falling back on my eclectic neo-Pagan witchcraft background and some vague notions of what a magic circle should look like, I wrote the names of four elementally-aligned gods, and seals and sigils associated with the moon … because that felt right.

For that first conjuration, I summoned my natal genius. I calculated her name using Agrippa’s formula via Frater Acher’s spreadsheet. (Reverend Erik of Arnemancy fame now hosts a widget that is much easier to use.) I derived her sigil using the Rosy Cross. And I wrote out my statement of intent to know her. My records of the ritual, back in 2012 or so, are unfortunately even more vague than my memories, but I got what I needed out of the ritual: confirmation of the name and sigil, a vision of the spirit, and some notes as to her nature. (You can read my original blog post about it here.) I wasn’t entirely satisfied (though, in retrospect, it went great), so I tried again, to similarly frustrating (but in retrospect phenomenal) results. Dissatisfied as I was, it was some months later before I followed the experiment through and attempted to contact my “evil demon” using that same circle, only this time under the auspices of Solar powers.

Shortly after these experiments, I consecrated my first astrological talisman using an election, ritual, and image provided by Christopher Warnock on his yahoo group, as he was in the habit of doing in those days. My notes don’t say what if any triangle I used for that conjuration, or for the Venus and Sun elections that I remember hitting that spring and summer, but I know that I had been exposed to more conventional circles by the time I began the Spirits of Spirits experiments, and used a synthesis of the two (I know that Aradia and I also conjured the spirits of wormwood and Jack Daniels, but right now I can only find a write up for the initial cannabis experiment.

The idea behind the above synthesis was a cosmogram: planetary powers in the outer circle, elemental powers within. I had not yet twigged to the fact that the four angel names were sanitized replacements for demon names from older grimoires, rulers of the four quarters of the world. Based on my background in eclectic Wicca, I thought they were elementally aligned, and placed gods I was comfortable with instead of angels in those quarters: Iris for air, Hephaistos for fire, Dionysos for water, and Rhea for earth. Though my logic was flawed, it worked well enough at the time.

My notes don’t specifically say, but I think that I was still using that circle when Rufus Opus was running his Seven Spheres in Seven Days events in October/November of 2012. Looking back at my notes, it’s no wonder the planetary magic took over my life the way it did. The call was strong. At the end of my first seven days, the powers of Saturn taught me how to better hijack the current of the project, even though I didn’t have access to the full Gates Rites. At the end of my second round of daily conjurations, the powers of Saturn taught me the triangle of conjuration that became the basis for my planetary work going forward. (And at the end of my third consecutive week of planetary conjurations, I fell flat on my face.)

In the center goes my crystal ball, and/or the glyph of any particular spirit I may be calling under the auspices of those greater planetary powers.

I have been using this double-triangle to ever-increasingly potent effect for just short of ten years now. I have transcribed it into my personal grimoire, once for each planetary section, where it sits beside the relevant lamen and Orphic hymn. Unfortunately, the pages don’t quite sit flat enough to use it as intended, so often what I end up doing is standing the book up and setting the candles and brazier in front of the triangle, but I’ve found that always works just as well, and is almost as aesthetically pleasing. Sometimes corner 5 gets a brazier with incense instead of a candle. And, as you can see, a couple other small details morphed over time.

In the years since, I’ve also developed another variation on the traditional circle, mostly for the purposes of art, but which I have used a few times to good effect, and which I would recommend as an option for someone looking for somethign mostly traditional but a little more glam. The out ring is still the Agrippan planetary characters, which I think are just neat, but the angel and god names in the outer ring have been replaced by seals of the four archangels. I use this circle in my official Mundus Occultus branding, so it is absolutely not available for commercial use, but if you want to print it out and call a spirit into it, that’s what it’s here for. Just shoot me an email to tell me how it works out for you.

Writing this post has taken me weeks longer than I originally anticipated, in part because I had to re-read as many of my old notes as I could find, and partly because I had to re-scan and re-censor several of the above images, and mostly because the last six weeks have been just absolutely bonkers.

I’m glad I finally got through it, though. Looking back over that wild year’s work, thinking on how it has shapped my current work, has been pretty educational. In retrospect, I could have asked for a lot more help during those early conjuration experiments. My excuse is that no one I felt comfortable asking for help had fucked with this kind of work, as far as I knew, but also in retrospect, there were absolutely people who could have at least pointed me in clearer directions. Also, somehow, in my memory, many of these events had shifted from late 2012 to early 2014. Why do I remember the conjuration-induced migraine as happening the week of my college graduation?

I’m also glad to finally have this done because it’s reaffirmed my dedication to my chief point of advice for those looking to start or escalate their magical practice: go forth, fuck around, and find out. The information I needed to do these things more traditionally was hidden behind the paywalls of the few people teaching classes on the subject, and the even more insurmountable barrier of 19th century translations so terrible that even as an in-the-weeds Classical Studies student, I couldn’t fucking hack it. But now, people who know more than I did then but less than they’d like to know before they start can look at this and say, “fuck it, if that lunatic can have results that good with that bullshit, anything I do will work great!”.

So make the tools you want to make. Sing the songs you want to sing. Call the spirits down from the heavens and up from the depths of hell. Do it all with style and audacity. Go forth. Fuck around. Find out.

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 art, witchcraft

The Sorcerer’s Workbench Picatrix Image Talisman Casting and Consecration Process

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I haven’t spoken publicly my talisman construction & consecration process in detail before now for a variety of reasons, most of which are just abusing the thesaurus to avoid admitting to my insecurities. Most of the others in my field are professional astrologers, or work very closely with one. Many teach classes or write books on magic. I’ve taught some workshops, and I had a short stint in local Pagan leadership – if you don’t already know it, that’s a story for another time – but all my magical writing is here on this blog. But someone asked for details in a forum where I had posted a link to my most recently elected and consecrated talismans, and I’m not here to be mysterious about my process. Answering a couple questions over there quickly led to a longer-form answer here. 

There are, obviously, two parallel and interacting parts of my process: the jewelry and the sorcery.

On the jewelry side, the core of my process is lost wax casting. I was raised in a casting studio, and that’s even though I’m only just now getting a real handle on wax carving, that’s always been my go-to process for design and production. I suspect that someone with a background in, say, hand engraving, or etching, would find that applying sorcery to those techniques would serve them better than learning to cast just for the sake of talisman making.

<blockquote class="tiktok-embed" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@satyrmagos/video/7138499729222241582" data-video-id="7138499729222241582" style="max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px;" > <section> <a target="_blank" title="@satyrmagos" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@satyrmagos?refer=embed">@satyrmagos</a> <p>i am the Sorcerer&#39;s Workbench.  i make talismanic, devotional, and art jewelry in silver, shibuichi, brass, and bronze</p> <a target="_blank" title="♬ original sound - iluvart - ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-iluvart-6882633195850844929?refer=embed">♬ original sound - iluvart - ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ</a> </section> </blockquote> <script async src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js"></script>

On the sorcery side, I am an autistic eclectic witch who has made a special interest of the grimoire tradition, but whose every ritual is informed by their previous decades of spiritual work. I am not a purist in anything. Moreover, I am unconvinced that most talisman recipes can be performed as-written: the jewelry part will always take much, much longer than the astrological window available, even without the ritual part. All my pieces are the result of years of art and magical training, both formal and informal, and more years of trial and error.

The jewelry and the sorcery come together, before I even begin thinking about a specific election, with the magical nature of my studio. Every day I consecrate my home, including the studio below my altar room, as a temple for the gods I worship and the magical work I do, and make offerings to those gods and my familiar spirits. Every time I descend to my studio, I light a candle and incense as offerings to the gods and powers that aid me in my work, the planets that I call, and the spirits who dwell there waiting for good homes.

The process of making a consecrated talisman begins with finding a viable election. I get mine from a few sources, but mostly from Nina Gryphon’s monthly election newsletter. After vetting the election to make certain that it’s as valid in Kansas City, MO, as it is in Los Angeles, CA, I then sit down with my tarot cards and divine whether any given election is suitable for: a) a personal petition; b) a personal paper talisman; c) metal talismans for myself and my coven; or, d) metal talismans for customers. I don’t always understand why a particular election might not be a good candidate for me and my customers, but this is spiritual work as well as material and we do divination for a reason.

Having determined that an election is suitable for metal talismans, I make up the waxes and invest them the day before the election, timed so that they’ll be ready to cast when the time comes. Once the flask is in the kiln, I rearrange my workspace into an altar where I will perform the consecration. I only do one flask per election, because getting the metal up to flow temperature takes too long to pour and have it really still be at the peak of the electional window.

A little more than an hour before the election, I turn on the electric crucible that melts the metal, and I begin my preparatory rituals. I shower, and I purify myself with cinnamon. I make offerings for my familiar spirits, my personal gods, and the gods and spirits of the workshop, who will all work together to bring the best possible spirits into the talismans. I consecrate all the maeteria, specifically both the incense I will be offering and the metal that will become the talismans. Some of the details vary from ritual to ritual, depending on when the election is relative to my daily purifications and offerings and the instructions provided to me by my familiar spirits, but those variations are minutiae.

About fifteen to twenty minutes before the election (depending on the kind of metal and the weight), I start melting the metal and begin suffumigating the studio and invoking the spirits. I alternate between the Orphic hymn to the relevant planet and the appropriate Picatrix invocation. The timing, here, is honestly the hardest part: if left too long, the metal will boil and the final cast will be pourus; if not left long enough, it won’t flow and there will be cold shuts.

In the minutes before the election’s peak, when the metal is at temperature, i suffumigate the flask of molten metal, pour into the waiting flask, then suffumigate the cooling flask – this is the point at which I can feel the spirits enter the talismans. I time this process so that I make my final Picatrix invocation before or as I pour, and then my final hymn after. I am, of course, always trying to complete my consecration at the precise minute of the election, when the relevant planets are precisely conjunct the ascendant or midheaven. But I also know for a fact that modern timekeeping was invented for trains, and ancient astrologers must necessarily have been working with wider and wooblier windows of time.

Once the pieces are cast, I get as much of the plaster off of them as I can before the window has closed (i strongly prefer ascending elections for this reason) and store the talismans in a planetary altar box until the next appropriate hour to clean them up as jewelry.

<blockquote class="tiktok-embed" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@satyrmagos/video/7133267092798836010" data-video-id="7133267092798836010" style="max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px;" > <section> <a target="_blank" title="@satyrmagos" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@satyrmagos?refer=embed">@satyrmagos</a> <p>the aftermath of some work for myself and my coven</p> <a target="_blank" title="♬ Howl&#39;s Moving Castle - Merry-Go-Round of Life - Vitamin String Quartet" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/Howl's-Moving-Castle-Merry-Go-Round-of-Life-6702010411413145602?refer=embed">♬ Howl&#39;s Moving Castle - Merry-Go-Round of Life - Vitamin String Quartet</a> </section> </blockquote> <script async src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js"></script>

While cleaning and polishing each piece, I get a name and sigil and specialty from it, which whoever it goes to can use to make initial contact.

When each piece is done, it goes into an envelope with a bit of the incense used to consecrate it. That envelope goes into the planetary altar box, where it lives until i find it a home.

In art, scholarship, witchcraft

Images of Starry Power

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I have practiced many kinds of magic over the decades of my magical career. Astrological images in metal are what I am (probably) best known for, at this point, because that is the most marketable combination of my artistic talents and magical aspirations. But talismans of metal and stone are not the only such combination. In the past, I have dabbled in sigil magic, and masks, and talismans made from mixed media and witchcraft, and portraits of spirits – both conjured and constructed. Most recently, I have been experimenting in talismanic images of ink and paint and paper.

My first elected talismans were paper. Back in the fall semester of 2013, as I was fighting with the registrar over what classes and credits from my associate’s degree would and would not count toward my bachelors, I combined what I had managed to learn of spirit conjuration (mostly from Rufus Opus’ blog) with a Jupiter in Pisces election and talismanic image from Christopher Warnock on his then-Yahoo mailing list. I assembled the talisman from a pair of 5×7 note cards, one bearing Warnock’s image (probably by Nigel Jackson), the other bearing seals and sigils of Jupiter, glued together with dandelions and other Jovial maeteria in between them, and suffumigated in the smoke of the same.

That talisman steamrolled over the registrar and her objections to my insignificant (in her eyes) urban community college credits. It, and the other similar talismans that I made that year – Sol, Venus, Mercury Cazimi, maybe one or two others – lasted not the weeks or months generally expected of paper talismans, but for years.

When I had my first chance at a decanic election – Sol in Aries I, back in 2020 – I went that same route. Aradia and I were taking Jack Grayle’s PGM Praxis course, and I believe that we consecrated them using a PGM solar rite. But I used the Picatrix image, and I made it available for others to use on my blog.

I got this election, in fact, who had just discovered Nina Gryphon’s monthly election newsletter, and I suddenly had enough advance notice on most elections to begin planning for them. My two-sided Venus talisman (and my personal Venusian familiar spirit) is the result of these experiments, and ultimately served as the template for the rest of my Picatrix planetary image talismans.

I returned to paper talismans toward the end of 2021, with my first fixed star election: Jupiter on Deneb Algedi. I was up to my eyeballs in burnout, and had neither time nor money to prototype and prep a metal talisman. The results were swift and phenomenal. Likewise, a Solar election early in 2022.

After years of such experiments, frankly, both my home altar and my prosperity altar were getting a little crowded. So, when the opportunity for a pair of Libra decanic talismans (Venus ascending in the first and second face of Cancer) and I wanted to do something less than a metal talisman (which I couldn’t afford to prototype, or fit onto my altar) but more than the paper talismans I had done so far, I turned to my personal grimoire.

Now, flashing back to the beforetimes, I bought myself one of those big leather-bound “journals” for my birthday in 2019. I divided it up into likely sections and started drawing planetary circles of conjuration in it, which became the centerpiece of my first few months of daily rituals. Then it quickly served as a prop in a couple photo shoots (first with Cailin, then with Vanessa). Then became a repository for my favorite pieces from Jack Grayle’s PGM course, and the object of several such rituals, including a Solar consecration aimed at increasing the effecacy of magic done with the book. Then I did a series of portraits of my familiar spirits in it.

It occurred to me to combine the theory behind conjuration circles and the practice of the spirit portraits. I selected a page, drew the image, inked the outlines and colored the scene of the image with water-color pencils, and sigilized my petition. During the window of the election, I wet and blended the watercolors, painted and detailed the figure and the seals and sigils, and consecrated it with the Picatrix Venus prayer and suffumigated it.

It went so well that I repeated it with the second face of Cancer. And then with Regulus. And now, most recently, with Aldebaran. (The images below are, obviously, not photos of the paintings in my personal grimoire. As public as my practice is, that feels like … too much. Instead, they are the practice drawings I did to perfect my design and layout, and then refined to share with my coven, in case they wanted to catch the elections, and now with you for your benefit.)

Cancer II
Regulus

The images are all still hot to the touch. Each day, after my ritual honoring my household gods and familiar spirits, I turn to one of these images and let it emanate into the world. They all seem to be always active, but whichever is currently visible seems to be most active.

It’s still very early days to speak about material results or longevity, but I think that I’ve sufficiently demonstrated that it’s a technique worth speaking about so that others can try their own experiments with it.

So, if you have a magic book that you work with – a Wiccan Book of Shadows, or a personal grimoire, something that lives in or around your altar and participates in your rites, and you want to fuck around with astrological image magic but aren’t prepared to financially commit to metal talismans, I strongly recommend experimenting with talismanic images in your personal magic book.