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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 scholarship, witchcraft

Working Sorcery of Solomon: Opening Gambits

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

At the beginning of May, I acquired Sara Mastros’ book Sorcery of Solomon: A Guide to the 44 Planetary Pentacles of the Magician King. Shortly thereafter, I signed up for the “companion” course (scare quotes because the book grew out of the course, not the other way around, and contains a great deal of information that couldn’t be fit into the book) and began accumulating the materials for the work.

The book and the course are not, in fact, the same: the Venn diagram of the information and techniques they contain is near circular, but not quite. Broadly speaking, the class just has more: more background, more details, more exemplars, plus (obviously) direct student-teacher interaction and all the benefits of working with a group. But, because there is only one of me and I am not quite crazy enough to double up all the work (some of which literally can’t be done twice and the rest of which would result in two books of pentacles, which … might be of use as a long-term thing, but which would be absurd to do I am working them simultaneously), I will treat them as if they were, in fact, one and the same. 

For reference, the format of the class goes like this: Mastros hosts monthly online meetings where she goes over each of the lessons. The first lesson is history and context and making contact with the spirit of Solomon. The second builds on the first and culminates in the construction of your own personal book of pentacles, from which you will make and empower the pentacles you that will actually use. Seven lessons follow, each focusing on the pentacles attributed a particular planet, starting with the Moon and going up the line to Saturn. Then the class culminates in two lessons synthesizing and building on what you’ve learned in the first nine. Then the cycle repeats. When you join the class, you’re given access to the recorded meetings and their slideshows/notes; the expectation is that you’ll work the back catalog at your own pace, attending classes and discussion groups as they come. Students are also strongly encouraged to find a study / accountability buddy in the class to help keep each other on track with the year-long course, and to keep each other honest and on the rails. The book is structured similarly, but not identically.

I joined in May of 2024, just in time to miss Lesson Nine – Saturn. The next cycle will start in September or (more likely) October, depending on how some things shake for Mastros here in meatspace.

Unlike my Hekataeon series, I don’t intend to break this series into dual posts, with one focusing on the material requirements and one on my experiences. This is because Mastros’ class and book are both better organized and more clearly written than the Hekataeon, and do not require that degree of third-party roadmapping. (Sorry Jack.)

Gathering Materials

I have had to take my time gathering all the materials. Between poverty, having my car out of commission for almost three weeks, and trying to source things locally and used as much as possible, it’s been almost six weeks to gather everything I need to wind up this work. I was actually a bit stressed about that for the first couple of weeks, afraid that I’d embarrass myself in front of the class because I wasn’t ready to jump into everything head first.

Finding a book was more challenge than it should have been: I had a particular style of sketchbook that I wanted but wasn’t able to find in my local art stores at a price that I was willing and able to pay. I was able to find something close enough, though, and that I think I’ll be pleased with. It’s not as large as Mastros’ exemplar – only 8.5×11, not 11×14 – but I think that will be large enough for everything that I’m likely to actually do  with this book. I was able to find a tasseled white scarf at a local thrift store, and I had some leftover blue cord from another project that turned out to be the  exactly correct size to bind the book.

As a professional artist, I have a variety of compasses, protractors, and straightedges to choose from. I was going to use this project as an excuse to buy a better compass, but have not yet found one to my taste in my budget. I have, for the moment, set a protractor and straight edge aside to live with the book. My quest for a swank compass will continue.

Finding an icon was both more and less complicated. As a small business owner (and, honestly, as someone who just hasn’t kept up with the times), I actually own a decent color printer. So, rather than purchasing an icon from an Etsy dealer or Orthodox supply store, I found an image, printed it, myself, and cannibalized one of the many thriftstore picture frames I picked up while thinking I was going to sell prints of my photography. I now keep the framed icon with my veiled and bound Book.

oil painting of king solomon in gold and blue robes and a gold and red headdress. He faces left and holds a narrow staff in his right hand.

I chose this particular image of Solomon because I thought he looked handsome and majestic in it, the magician king at the height of his power. I also deliberately chose an image in the public domain: https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.76152.html

Then I turned to sourcing materia for the oil and incense. Most of the ingredients are things I either had on hand or needed to restock, anyway, though some of it was a little pricey: the ceylon cinnamon and the cannabis, specifically. I was prepared to start with just frankincense instead of the full Solomonic incense, but things ended up coming together for me to blend and consecrate both oil and incense at the Full Moon / Summer Solstice combination.

The recipes for the oil and incense (which are available in the free-first-lesson-powerpoint [insert link here]) are given in parts rather than specific units. I can see the advantages of that, but also it’s given me a bit of an autistic fit. Ultimately, I chose to measure out the oil and associated materia by weight, and the incense by volume.

Regarding the oil, that may have been the wrong decision. Either I mis-measured something, or botched my math somewhere, because I my initial results came out as absolute used-coffee-grounds sludge. Getting a consistency that I liked ended up tripling the oil, and creating a supply that will probably last me a lifetime even if I’m extra generous with my friends.

The incense, however, turned out fantastic. It was my first time making incense lumps rather than just powder, but other than hating how the sticky honey felt on my hands (autism things), it came together almost exactly as planned. That “almost” is the fact that I chose the size of my “parts” poorly, and ended up with another lifetime supply when that wasn’t really called for.

For those planning to take the course themselves, my advise is this: when choosing your base measurement, think about what’s going to look like fully assembled.

Hacking the Current

I began, as I said, by reading the book. Once I had access to the archived class videos, I immediately binged them, as well. Inevitably, especially on my first pass, not every lesson got my undivided attention. But, each lesson begins with a prayer and a chant invoking Solomon as patron of the work. So, once I’d acquired the sketchbook, veil, and cord, and once I’d chosen and framed my Solomon icon, I made it my habit to sit down with my book and icon, light incense and a candle, and join the chant.

After a few rounds of that – one day, in particular, when I made it through three lessons in a day, each with its own new round of offerings – I could feel the energetic current of the class. I almost want to say that joining asynchronously, as I did, made it easier to feel the current at large, because I could pause the video, light my offerings, and then unpause and focus on the chanting.

Having found the current, I reached out and … joined it, adding my own voice to the chanting, and drawing power from the chanting down into my icon and book.

I did something similar, way back in the day (2014), when I was joining Seven Spheres in Seven Days experiments that preceded the Seven Spheres book.

Courting Solomon and the Mighty Dead

Regular readers may recall that I am deeply uncomfortable with ancestor work of any kind. I am only marginally less uncomfortable with saints and the Mighty Dead. But one of the reasons I took this class was to push my own boundaries, so here we are.

I began courting Solomon as a patron in the work as I described above, making offerings at the beginning of each (recorded) class. I also began including Solomon (and the nascent spirit of the Book, awaiting consecration and awakening) in my morning rituals, which revolve offering incense, a candle, and a cup of coffee to all the gods, powers, patrons, allies, friends, familiar spirits, and anyone else who lives on the altars of my house, in the pages of my sacred books, or comes when I call and aids me in my work.

That bore fruit more quickly than I anticipated. I made direct contact with the spirit of Solomon in the first week of June. He seemed a little confused at where he’d manifested, but also curious, which … same, bruh. In subsequent contact, in which I asked him if there were any particular stipulations that I needed to observe as I approached this work, I have been told: A) Not to contact him on the Sabbath except for Saturnian work; and, B) to approach the work with an open heart.

Obviously, I will continue to develop that relationship. Swift success has saved me from the need of making another infuriating attempt at dream incubation (Mastros’ recommended method for spirit communication when they don’t just show up for morning coffee), but not from some of the specific conversations needed before beginning the work.

I have not yet begun courting the Solomonic lineage of teachers, translators, and preservers. This isn’t a major part of the work, but it is something that Mastros recommends, at least at the beginning. I am, as is probably well know to all at this point, deeply uncomfortable with ancestor work, and for whatever reason approaching the lineage as a whole is psychologically more difficult for me than approaching Solomon, himself.

On the Treatment of Holy Names

The study and creation of Solomonic pentacles brings a new logistical problem to my practice: the disposal of pages on which Hebrew holy names have been written. My usual witchcraft, chaos magick, and neo-hellenistic practices have no particular taboos about written names; some white middle-class fuckery about preserving books, sure, but that’s not quite the same. My general practice is to burn failed experiments, expired materials, and even the remains of successful magic whose need has run its course.

The Hebrew religious, magical, and literary traditions from which the pentacles come, however, have some very strict rules about the creation, use, and destruction of such names – specifically (assuming I’m understanding correctly), any page on which such a name is written becomes a person, and must be mourned and buried accordingly. Synagogues, I have learned, have special repositories for such things. It’s not exactly my theology, but I can wrap my head around the need to see my Book and any consecrated and activated pentacles I have made consigned to such an end. I can come up with ways to make that work.

But I’m having a little more trouble trying to decide what to do with practice pages and dry runs. After reviewing that section in the course material (video Lesson Two: Planets and Craft), I believe that I will collect my practice pages carefully and burn them ceremonially at Samhain, and use that sacred ash to make sacred salt and/or ink. But I think I’m also going to talk to other folks in my class and see what compromises and solutions they’ve come up with.

Preparing For the Next Stage

With the above work done, I am ready to move on to the next phase: consecrating the book as a magical companion and familiar, and inscribing the Great Seal of Solomon from which all the subsequent seals will draw (at least a portion of) their power.

I’ve started assembling all the instructions from the book and videos into a coherent-to-me ritual. My study buddy and I have planned out the dates we intend to consecrate our books, and empower our Great Seals. Mostly, we’re waiting on the waxing moon.

I’m excited to take the next steps in this new (to me) magical adventure.