The image of the Sun according to Baphomet is a serpent with the head of a woman, or of a lion, or with a beard, wearing a crown. To her left is a crescent moon; to the right is a shining star. Over her head is the sun; in metal, a citrine.
These images came to me in a vision some weeks ago: sitting quietly at my altar on a Sunday morning, making my usual offerings of fire, frankincense and myrrh, and strong black coffee. Being the first such visions I’ve had in over a year, I was … hesitant to share them. I feared, more than usual, that they were hubris or delusion. They are, after all, somewhat derivative: clearly an elaboration on the iconic image of Chnoubis.
In the weeks following the vision, though, I received further elaboration on the images. They became clearer in my mind, and as I contemplated them, I felt like I was reminded of a certain solar invocation from the Greek Magical Papyri. When I finally sat down to draw them, they came through to the page with a clarity that confirmed I had something substantial.
The moon was waxing, and (though the image did not specifically call for astrological timing) the sun was in Aries, and I decided to strike while the iron was hot. I made another copy of the image – the woman-headed snake, for myself – this time on watercolor paper (my current favorite basis for hand-drawn text and image magic), and inked it in black and gold, and set it aside for the next Tuesday morning (the Solar second hour of the day of Mars being an ideal time for me, personally, to invoke the Sun in Aries).
I did my usual daily ritual in the dawn hour, then showered and donned my ritual garb. I set the image upright on my altar with a candle and brazier, and gathered a vial of Helios oil made by one of my friends during our trance-possession experiments.
When we crossed over into the Hour of the Sun, I performed my usual frame ritual, then sat down to contemplate the image and perform the ritual.
I consecrated the image using PGM XXXVI 211-30 (Betz, p. 274):
Rejoice with me, you who are set over the east wind and the world, for whom all gods serve as bodyguard at your good hour and on your good day you who are the Good Daimon of the world, the crown of the inhabited world, you who rise from the abyss, you who each day rise a young man and set an old man HARPENKNOUPHI BRINTANTENOPHRI BRISSKYLMAS AROUR ZORBOROBA MESINTRIPHI NIPTOUMI KHMOUMMAOPHI I beg you, Lord, do not allow me to be overthrown, to be plotted against, to receive dangerous drugs, to go into exile, to fall upon hard times. Rather, I ask to obtain and receive from you life, health, reputation, wealth, influence, strength, success, charm, favor with all men and all women, victory over all men and all women. Yes, Lord, ABLANATHANALBA AKRAMMAKHAMARI PEPHNA PHOZA PHNEBENNOUNI NAAKHTHIP OUNORBA Accomplish the matter which I want, by means of your power.
I repeated the incantation four times. The first time, I put incense on the charcoal and anointed myself with oil: hands, feet, and head. The second time, I suffumigated the image in the frankincense smoke. The third time I anointed the image with oil: first the sun, then the frame, then the moon, then the star, then the serpent, starting at the tip of her tail and working up to her face. The fourth time, I anointed both the image and myself with oil, again, and called upon the Sun to empower me and the image as the spell describes.
I completed the ritual by sitting and contemplating the image and basking in the power I had conjured. I was immediately filled with a strong sense of calm and vitality, and my partner reported that my energy felt improved. My Chnoubis signet, which had been sitting on a nearby table with my other jewelry but not specifically involved, felt particularly tingly when i put it on, after.
The PGM spell includes no timing; it just says “face the sun”. Based on my results so far, and my personal relationship with Solar powers, the ideal timing for me has been a Solar hour of Day on the day of the Sun, Mars, or Saturn. Because this, like Chnoubis, is obviously a Solar-cthonic image, I imagine people with a different relationship with the Sun than I have will get solid results from a Solar Hour of Night.
I think that I will want to repeat the rite for a few Sundays and see what manifests before calling it an unqualified success, but I am sufficiently pleased with the initial results to share the images and the ritual for you all to experiment with. My only complaint, so far, is that this spell-image combination does seem to exacerbate my tendency to overwork, and I have to be even more disciplined about clocking out at night and taking days off.
High resolution versions of these images can be found at my Patreon, where you will also find all my work before anyone else gets to see it, as well as things that I hold back from more public forums and all my other arts. If you like my work, but don’t like Patreon for whatever valid reason, you can also support me on ko-fi.
I have practiced magic for nearly three decades. I have been pouring out daily libations and burning offerings for my small, eccentric pantheon and my spirit court for four and a half years, now. I have been writing publicly about my rites and the experiences they have engendered since 2010. I am, at this point, a professional mystic as much as an artist of any stripe. I should be elated that when I sit in silence before my altar, sometimes I have visions.
But the thing that I have always feared most in life – more than pain, more than death, more than humiliation and betrayal – is being locked away in an asylum. (People keep telling me that’s a thing that doesn’t happen anymore. Somehow, that doesn’t help.) And so every vision I have, every divine epiphany, every moment of clairsentience, is followed immediately by fear and doubt.
Is it so strange that, after years of prayers and offerings – to say nothing of more vigorous invocations – the gods or their messengers might appear to me? Is it less mad to claim I was comforted by a messenger of Aphrodite than the goddess, herself? Why do those epiphanies seem more suspect than the spirit journeys that I used to write about regularly? Why are they harder to talk about than the visions of the cosmos I have been granted?
Some of it, I think, is the changing world. It’s a more hostile place, now, than when I started this blog. Some of it is just that I’m older, now, and more deeply wounded.
Grifters and con artists abound. I know, now, as I did not, ten and fifteen years ago, that many of the people claiming to be mystics and magicians and visionaries are liars and thieves. I know, now, how sincere seekers can be subjugated by cult leaders and other abusers.
Worse, I have seen magicians that I admired, whose work I have benefited from, whose work has become foundational to my own, crawl up their own asses to die. I have seen good teachers fall prey to prosperity gospels and other unjust theologies. I have seen others turn to fascism and white supremacy. I have seen friends and colleagues lose confidence in their works, doubt their insights, and retreat into mundane diversions and, ultimately, disappear from the public sphere. I have seen peers become convinced that the salvation of the world is their responsibility, alone; that the taboos and strictures the spirit world has applied to them must be obeyed by all. I have seen countless members of my community fall victim to conspiracy theories and taken in by cults. Any of them could have been me. It could still be me.
How do you discern between gnosis and hubris and delusion? How do you know which visions to share, and which are for you alone? More pointedly, how do I discern? How do I know?
I know, at least, that I am reporting my visions in good faith. I am not trying to start a cult, or grift anyone out of their life savings. All I want is to share what I’ve seen and done with my peers, to encourage them to share their own works and visions, that we can all benefit. (And, sure, sell some jewelry and some novels, but on the basis of their artistic merits not my spiritual authority.) But all anyone else has is my word.
I also know, as much as I seem to overshare, how very much I hold back. I have had experiences that made me doubt whether “reality” is even a thing that exists. I have had experiences that leave me shaking in fear that I have devoted the last thirty years to wallowing in my own madness, that I should be locked up for my own good and for the good of society.
I have seen and done things that cannot be explained by anything I’ve read, that fly in the face of the conclusions I’ve drawn from my other experiences. I have done things that people more experienced and respected than I am assure everyone are impossible. Conversely, things that should have worked didn’t. Magic works in practice, not in theory.
Some days, some years, I can sit comfortably with those dissonances.
Some days, some years, I can’t.
How much of what I have seen is real? How much is the product of madness, of drugs, of cruel trickster spirits and mortal charlatans? How much of what I’ve said is true? How much is the best approximation I can manage, an artist’s sincere attempt to convey the ineffable? How much is the rambling of a madman?
If I don’t know, how can you?
—–
I began writing this in September of 2023, after a particularly intense visionary experience in a season of intense visionary experiences, possibly the high point of my magical and mystical career to date. No more than a month later, I was plummeting into one of the deepest depressions that I can remember, lasting well into 2024.
I finished writing this in April of 2025, on the far side of that depression, following a wildly different series of visionary experiences. These more recent visions have been, on the one hand, much less intense than anything from the summer and fall of ’23; on the other hand, they have been significantly more actionable.
The question of “did i just imagine all of this” has haunted me from the very beginning, even as a teenage dabbler in the 1990s. Although there are days, weeks, even months where it weighs less heavily than others, I suspect that question will haunt me forever. As uncomfortable as that often is, I don’t know that it’s a wholly bad thing. Self-doubt can cripple us, yes, but it can also keep us honest.
The questions of what to share, and how, and when, will dog my steps for as long as I am participating in public Paganism. That won’t be forever: some day I’ll die or retire. In the meantime, though, I would rather grapple with these issues semi-publicly rather than present myself as some sort of infallible expert.
I am an artist, not an authority.
All things wax and wane. My madness and my magic are no exceptions. Lately, rather than the rise and the fall, I’ve been thinking on the turning points; the apex and the nadir. My practice and I, I think, are on the rise right now. That will not last forever. What was it about the autumn of 2023 that led me to crash out so hard? What was it about the last year that has made staying in the work despite that fall so much easier than some falls before?
I still have my doubts, my fears, my wounds. And yet, I persist. And, for the foreseeable future, I will continue to do so.
If I were writing a different article/essay/blog post/whatever, this would be the part where I tell you how you, too, can recover from depression and burnout; how you can overcome and confront your fears; how you can defeat the Dweller on the Threshold. I have no such wisdom in me, today. I know only that I have stumbled and carried on. You have, too, at some point. We will both do so again.
Finally, though the through line may not be clear to everyone, this post is very much of a piece with this one from last May.
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.
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.
There are seven gods who receive daily offerings in my house. (Though I only speak of six with any regularity, there is also the Serpent Faced God of PGM XII 153-60.) As I have said before, I have no impulse toward exclusive worship – not henotheism, not monotheism, not even monism – so I had no notion of suspending those offerings when I sat down to resume the work of the Hekataeon. But it had been my intention to devote my active attention to Hekate alone. The gods, it seemed, had other plans.
In retrospect, this should not have come as a surprise.
Over the last two years, in particular, there have been times when my morning rituals have evoked intense visionary experiences. The visions that resulted in the triptych images of Baphomet, and the vision of Lucifer as the Dweller on the Threshold, were the most significant that I ever felt comfortable relating publicly. They were not, by any means, the most intense. I could feel the hands of the gods upon me, see their faces before my eyes, smell their headdy, uncanny musk.
But it seemed that I never had more than two or three visions of one god before other gods began appearing, as well. Already struggling to deal with the implications of the first visions, the addition of other powers to that mix was inevitably more than I could handle. I retreated from the experiences, and all the gods fell silent.
My friends who were raised with more religion than I was laugh at me when I wonder aloud if having been raised in a different environment would have better prepared me for these experiences. But I think they underestimate how alienated my upbringing was from divinity. In the same way I was raised vaguely aware that queer people existed, but with a strong implication that they were all far away and that I would never meet one, I was raised in a place where religion was just a social control mechanism, where people of strong convictions and intense experiences were alien and threatening. As a child, they were snake-handlers and madmen on television; as a teen, they were still that, and they were also Pat Robertson and the 700 Club: people who wanted me dead for being effeminate, for playing D&D, and for dabbling in witchcraft.
My earliest epiphanies were always of singular divinities, always months apart. They were also largely spontaneous: the presence of a god intruding on what had been intended to be some other sort of mystical experience. One of the earliest such was Rhea/Kybele appearing to demand I bring my then-friend Pasiphae to her. (I still wonder, sometimes, if that contact ever happened, or if Pasiphae’s commitment to a faceless generic Goddess was impenetrable to the real divine.)
Now, working my way through the first and then the second nine days of the Hekataeon, I am once more blessed/plagued by a cacophony of divinity. Baphomet shows me new faces every two or three days, revealing how the trinity/triptych aspects I have been shown unfold into seven (and nine) planetary epiphanies. Their Lunar aspect has much in common with the White Lady, and Saturnian Baphomet shares much with The Man in Black. Their Solar manifestation is Akephelos (Headless), and caries the Light of Creation, Phanes, like Eros. I have glimpsed their Martial aspect, bull-headed, armed and armored, which I so far call Korebantes, and that bull-headed vision gave way to another: a starry, mystical, Neptunian which I have (for lack of a better name so far) dubbed Asterion.
Aphrodite has blessed the photoshoot I did in her honor. Eros and Lucifer and Dionysos all loom large at their altars. My familiar spirits have begun speaking again on the regular, giving me practical advice for how to achieve my goals.
On days three and four and five and six of The Call, this was … unsettling. Distracting. Dissonant.
But, speaking with my compatriots at our regular New Moon Esbat, as we had all concluded our first round of The Call, those with more experience than I with the gods assured me that this was common. So, too, have a handful of people around the internet when I spoke of this problem. “Problem.”
So, even as I find the experience unsettling, I am reassured. As alien as this experience is to my upbringing and my expectations, it appears to be … typical. (As hurtful as that word is to us mystics and madmen.)
And so, as uncomfortable as it is, and as hard as it makes things from one day to the next, I am going to try to sit with that discomfort. To try to find the symphony in the cacophony.
After all, am I not a mystic? Am I not here for gnosis of the gods and the cosmos? Did I not tell Hekate, herself, that I am here to see where the road will take me? Did I not seek out each of these gods, too, even as I have sought out Hekate? Did I not seek out some of them – Dionysos, Baphomet – even before her?
This is the work. This is what I have come here to do. I have taken the names that I have taken. Each day I repeat them, both assertion and demand: I am [That Seer of Antiquity], I am [The Satyr Who Is a Magician], I am [The Sacred Companion]. I will live up to those ambitions. I will live up to those expectations.
When the gods speak, I will strive to listen.
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.
Aradia and I began our work with the Hekataeon early in 2019. My notes, unfortunately, do not say exactly when. We made quick work of The Call, but then botched the timing for making our iynxes and had to wait for the next waxing moon. I know, in retrospect, that I was already falling apart at that point, and so it is little surprise that my memory of those months is … vague.
What I remember most clearly from those first days is a sense of dis-ease at the notion of pledging myself to a single god. I rejected monotheism thirty years ago. For all that I love Dionysos above all other gods, henotheism has never been on the table. I expected to be rejected outright, and was surprised when Aradia and I were both given immediate signs to perform the devotion ritual and construct our iynxes.
I remember that I was absolutely confident in my ability to construct the strapholos with nothing more than a poorly exposed photograph and a childhood memory for guidance. I remember being extremely frustrated that the result, however pretty, neither spun nor buzzed the way I expected. I remember that the tiny jelly jar I chose to incubate my iynx in was much, much harder to break than I anticipated. I remember struggling to name the spirit, and to remember the name I had given it (I was even worse at journaling then than I am, now.) I remember feeling, from very early on, that I had failed at that portion of the work. I put the iynx in a drawer and never used it.
In the years since then, many of our friends have acquired their own copies of the Hekataeon. Some began the work and faltered. Others made it to the end of The Call and stopped there. One or two made it as far as we had, and faltered at the same place: the beginning of The Book of the Red Blade, searching for a horse skull or reasonable substitute.
At the beginning of this June, when the Moon was right and when we had managed to carve out space in our schedules, we began (re)working the book as a group – each of us alone in our own temples, but together in spirit. Aradia, Alvianna, and I put together the materials lists and links to the recommended readings that grew into my first post in the To Work the Hekataeon series.
As before, Aradia and I took turns leading the ritual: starting the fires, leading the chants, reading the guided meditations and the recommended readings aloud. Because she still works a day job, I took point on most of the logistical preparations: designing and building the altar, making changes one night to the next to accommodate what had and hadn’t worked quite right, and what needed to change to follow the evolving ritual.
This time, though, I found the work to be a struggle … but not in the ways that I might have anticipated, if I had anticipated any trouble at all.
My ritual practices have grown a lot since I first attempted this work. I have a daily devotional practice which includes Hekate, who has her own altar – the largest of any one god in our house. We didn’t need to make a pre-ritual shopping trip: our basic stores covered everything we needed and more. I am a full time artist and witch, now: setting time aside for the ritual was no challenge whatsoever. My spirit-sight, and my ability to hear spirits and gods, has improved exponentially. I could sense Hekate there every night. I could feel the spirits of my stones awaken, grow, and change as we re-consecrated them on the seventh night, and when we put them to use on the eighth (and ninth, but that’s coming in a bit).
I understand, now, as I didn’t then, how to ancient (and modern but with different trauma than me) polytheists saw no dissonance or contradiction in addressing each god as the greatest, ultimate, and supreme creator and savior. I understand now, on a level that I didn’t then, how initiation into multiple mysteries is no infidelity. The comparison is irreverent, but it works the same as “every cat is best cat”. Or, to be irreverent in a different way, the way you engage in certain activities with one lover does not preclude in engaging in other activities with another lover.
On the fourth night, though, my religious trauma kicked in hard. I don’t know what it was about that rite, in particular, that brought it on. For that matter, I don’t know why it didn’t come up sooner. Something about the text for that night took me back to the place I was in my early teens: angry that powers out there existed, demanding our love and devotion, but offering so little protection in return. The conscious dissonance wasn’t there the next nights, but I also didn’t sleep right again until after the New Moon had come and the rites had been completed.
I struggled with the passages about finding yourself worthy in ways that I had not struggled before. What even is “worth” in a mortal sense, let alone a divine one? And, what do you mean “what do I want out of this work”? I want to know what comes from it!
I struggled with the way that, even as I sat down to do this certain work with this one god, it seemed that other gods who have had little to say to me, lately, seemed to show up in ways that they have not in weeks or months or years. I have no impulse toward hennotheism or monotheism or even monism, despite its popularity in circles I frequent, but it seemed strage that this was the time the gods chose to speak. (I will have more to say on this in a future post.)
On Night Eight (ARBITUM), I asked for permission to resume the work of the Hekataeon. I was told no. This both came as a complete surprise to me – Kraken and I had been discussing the possibility just that afternoon – and hurt my feelings more than I would have guessed had I been asked. I don’t remember exactly how I phrased the question, or the questions that followed, but the conclusion was that I was to do a ritual of penance and absolution, for which I turned to one of the sigils in the Book of White Flame: Thea Deinos. I considered doing further divination, but decided against until I had completed that penance.
At dusk on the ninth night, what would have been INVOCATIO, I began by performing the ritual same opening ritual I had done for the last eight nights: i washed my hands with lustral waters and scrubbed them with cinnamon. I burned myrrh and asperged the space. I drew the crossroads sigil and lit three candles. Then I drew the Thea Deinos sigil on my brow, my throat, and my heart. I took the pose of terror and spoke aloud to the goddess. I apologized for abandoning the work. I apologized for whatever I had done to offend her. I spoke of my frustration with the very notion of worth. I spoke of my desire to learn what lay down the path, to experience Mystery for its own sake.
When I was done, I washed my hands again. I scrubbed them with cinnamon. I went back to the rite of the ARBITUM. This time, when I asked permission to resume the work, I was given the black stone of yes. This time, I had follow-up questions prepared. Yes, I could remake my iynx. No I could not follow along with my companions who were proceeding for the first time. Emphatically no (two white stones) I should not hold back for any stragglers. Yes, I could wait for them before beginning the Book of the Red Blade, but also, yes, it would be better for me and the work if I were to go ahead on my own.
And so, when the time came, I held a funeral for my first iynx. I apologized for my failures in constructing the strapholos, and for failing to continue the work, or honor the spirit properly. I apologized to Hekate for the same, and released the spirit into her care. Maybe the funeral wasn’t necessary. I had doubts both before and during. But I had received permission and committed to the course, and for all my doubts, all that I felt as I watched over the funeral pyre was relief.
When the funeral was complete, I walked away to give the ashes time to cool. Then I came back and set up a workbench altar on which to construct my new iynx. Based on a … feeling that had been with me from when I first decided to hold a funeral for my first iynx, I included a pinch of its ashes in the making of the new, after the ashes of the sigils and before the snakeskin and feather.
Performing the funeral for my first iynx, I dubbed the spirit “child of Hekate”. In assembling the new one, it dawned on me – from the component spit – it could as reasonably be considered my child, as well. That is certainly not the relationship that I have felt with any of my other familiar spirits, but I am going to try to hold onto that thought and act accordingly as I continue the work of growing this new soul. No, I don’t know what this might mean or imply. Maybe someday I will. Maybe I wont. And maybe it’s just a delusion.
With so little ritual framework for the burial, exhumation, and re-burial of the iynx, I struggled a little to really invest myself in each stage. Burrying it, initially, felt significant. Drowning it did not. Nor, despite my best efforts to focus my attention, did hanging it. In fact, my first sense that I had performed the ritual correctly, was during my morning ritual on the final day, when I planned to complete the rite at midnight: sitting at my altar, I could feel the potential of the spirit hovering at the edge of my circle. Even so, I felt nothing from the bottle.
It was only during the final ritual, after I had named the spirit and assigned it a form, when I began to spin the strapholos that I finally felt the spirit manifest and ensoul itself in the tool. The Hekataeon tells you to wake yourself in the middle of the night and record your dreams of your iynx. I barely slept, and had no dreams to record. But that’s typical for me, and the lack of prophetic dreams is neither signal nor noise. I felt the iynx quicken in my hands. I know it lives and will serve me.
And now, with my new iynx born and ensouled within my new strapholos, I am ready to skip forward and resume the work that I abandoned in 2019: The Book of the Red Blade. My devotion to Hekate and the Hekataeon is renewed. My familiars – who now number 14, with the completion of the iynx – tell me that I am on the right path. I look forward to continuing to send you these notes from the spiritual wilderness.
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.
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.
The Lunar Shenanigans Crew – the pseudo-coven I talk about so often, which I have at last decided to give it’s proper name in public – celebrated Beltane in our usual fashion, fucking off into the woods the last weekend in April. We were only able to get out for two nights, but we made the most of them. Friday night we celebrated with two of our oldest rituals: the Fuck You Fire and the I Love You, Man, fire. Saturday afternoon, I performed a personal cord-cutting ritual, one of my compatriots led a Sumbel, and we renewed our vows as Black Goat Brides – an idiosyncratic ritual that we got from Jack Grayle after he led it at Paganicon 2018. I have led the Black Goat Bride ritual several times. This year, I asked to try my hand at playing the oracle, after. They were content to let me try.
I have, in a fairly material sense, spent the last two years preparing for the role. The Lunar Shenanigans Crew spent a year of full moons Drawing Down the Moon to give each of us a bit of experience with that oracular priestex experience and role. Those of us most moved by the rite went on to form a spin-off group devoted to perfecting our trance-possession skills. Again, that endeavor deserves its own posts, but I haven’t quite figured out what to say about it.
The ritual as written gave us no formulae for preparing the oracle, only noted that one might be available at the end of the rite. Each of us who has taken that role has done so in our own way. Having received the groups blessing to play the oracle, I spent the next few hours preparing myself in the back of my mind. I think that I imagined that it would be the voice of Dionysos that came through, but what I got, instead, was my own oracular voice.
Satyr Magos was meant to be a nom de plume, not a magical name. My true magical name, which I have not and will not put in print, is more ambitious: a great seer and teacher of the mythic past. But for all that ambition, that aspiration, satyrdom is closer to my true nature, and that came through so strongly that when the voice first bubbled up in me, in the gap between talking through the details and the beginning of the rite, I literally laughed out loud.
When the rite was done, and we had all renewed our vows, I sequestered myself to prepare for and then perform my oracular duties. Preparation was largely a matter of checking in with myself, trying to determine if the voice was, in fact, oracular, not some strange delusion. But it felt right. It felt real. And if I hadn’t spent the last two years doing the work I’d been doing, I might not have been able to tell.
I wrapped my cloak around me. I draped my sacred cloth over my head. I stared deep into my crystal ball. I lit a cigarette, and then the candles to tell the crew waiting back at the main camp to tell them that I was ready.
“Who approaches the oracle?” I asked as each one came up to me. The raspy voice fit the mood, at first. Then the tone … shifted.
“Hi, NN, how’s it goin’?”
The oracular voice I found in myself that night was not the wise and noble seer of my ambitions, consulted by kings and heroes. No. I was a chainsmoking satyr who might have spent a little too much time in Brooklyn. But it was real.
“The important thing is to act,” I told one. “Once you’re moving, you can always course-correct.”
“If you’re looking for an idea, not a place,” I told another, “what you need isn’t a map. What you need is to find a rumor.”
“There’s basically two ways to be a maenad,” I told a third, “that’s full-time and part-time. Part-time has a lot of room for life and other obligations and ambitions; full-time, not so much.”
A lot of the details have faded since the night, of course. I remember just enough to get me into trouble. But the funniest thing, the thing I wanted to share with you all other than the surprising nature of the voice, was the one through line across the querents. At some point, they all asked a question that was too broad, too vague. And I would have to tell them to be more specific.
“I ain’t the Pythia,” I told them. “Just a satyr with ambition.”
“Pythia ain’t here,” I said at one point. “She’s up north with Apollo.”
I also remember that four of my five companions got real, solid answers. Things that felt right and helpful to them. The fifth, I’m sad to say, asked questions that I could find no answers to beyond my own common sense. She got robbed and I feel really bad about that. I think that the problem was how definite and material the questions were, and how far in the future. Or maybe I just dropped the ball.
But, overall, I think that I did well. I found my oracular voice and I was able to sustain it as long as it was needed. When that voice was not at all what I expected, I was able to check in with myself and determine that it was right. Maybe in another year or two, I will be more of that more noble seer whose name I took for my own back in 2009, before I even dreamed of the blog. But, for now, the Satyr Magician has spoken with a voice of prophesy, and has done well enough.
A couple weeks ago, the Trance Possession Club subset of my Lunar Shenanigans Crew invoked Persephone. (If I haven’t told any stories about that, oops. But everything you need for this post is contained in that sentence and the next.) I was neither Vessel nor Trance Guide, and the Vessel (who assigns roles for their ritual) hadn’t assigned additional roles, so my only task was to be ready to ask a question of the goddess when my turn came.
I’ve simplified my life a lot since we started this project, and I have really struggled to find questions to ask the gods we call on. In a couple cases, it’s been a matter of not wanting to owe that god anything, but more often – since we’ve gotten away from Hekate – it’s just a matter of having the parts of my life generally governed by those gods largely under control. So, when the question of devotional images came to me, it felt like a real moment of genius.
I asked for two images, but only got one.
The above art is the image I received of Persephone, alone: “life and death joined … mycelium” (the lacuna there being my inability to understand the words of the oracle). I sketched this image on my phone immediately after ritual: a skull crowned in mushrooms with a flowering tree growing out of it.
This image is definitely a tier or two above my existing wax carving skill, but it’s also too three-dimensional for my usual process, so … I guess I need to learn to be a better wax carver.
The second image I asked for was of Persephone as one of the two goddesses of the Eleusinian mysteries, for those devotees looking to discover and invent new Mysteries in that tradition. To that request, she answered: “I will say only that there was a reason I was known as the Dread Queen.” Which I partially take as, “not for you.” Which is fair, as I have no dream of rediscovering/reinventing the Eleusinian mysteries, myself, just being the personal jeweler of those who do.
It’s a little interesting and embarrassing that I didn’t think to ask that question before now. After all, I’ve wanted to create 21st Century magical images of the planets since I first started fucking with astrological image magic. For some reason, though, that didn’t translate into doing the same for the various gods my crew and I invoke.
At the last Full Moon, my ritual crew and I began dabbling in Sabbatic Craft.
We’ve been floundering a little bit, since we reached the end of our year of Drawing Down the Moon. We have a handful of annual rituals that have kept us going – Dionysiac Beltane and Samhain, Her Sacred Fires, our August Ursa Major ritual – but my partner and I have struggled to fill the spaces.
At the last Moon, I pitched a handful of suggestions, one of which was visionary work. One of our members suggested a trip to the Sabbat Fires, specifically. Everyone else thought sounded good. My only objection was that I didn’t know the way. Alvianna was happy to take the lead.
The ritual Alvianna led us in had four phases: a crossroads-themed opening, idiosyncratic to her own work, with features that she had brought to other rituals we had done together; a visionary journey into and through the Wild to the bonfire where we met the Witchfather and danced with him; an ecstatic dance in our material ritual space, accompanied by feasting; and the journey back to reality.
My visionary experience was more physically intense than any I’ve had in quite some time. There were some entheogens involved, but while I do broadly advocate the use of such magical rocket fuel, the relative intensity of my experience is as much a consequence of my long lapse of practice than a statement on the relative merits of drugs versus sobriety in trance.
We each had our own experiences with the Witchfather. For my own part, I hesitate to say more than that, and thus feel doubly uncomfortable revealing what anyone else described after the circle. I know that we all made offerings of one sort or another, and that my offering was accepted graciously. I tried to find my compatriots around the fire. I could see them, distantly, but could never catch up to them.
What I will say is that, for me, it was a clear and positive of first contact. While I have been slow to start, I have had clear signs and messages over the last year both that I need to resume my visionary practice, broadly speaking, and to look into Sabbatic Craft. This, I think – particularly following the visionary preparations I did for last month’s Saturn talismans (which will get their own post soon) – certainly qualifies.
I will say, also, that my contact with the Witchfather was very, very clear. So clear, in fact, that I was compelled to create an image based on it.
The background is painted in watercolor, which is not my best medium. It’s really not intended for the degree of saturation that I always go for. But I think that, this time, I made it work. The figure of the Witchfather, himself is painted in black India ink. I have a scan that I took of the background before I painted him, and I might try to redo this digitally, where I will have second chances with the proportions of the figure. Or I may not.
What I will absolutely do is return to the Witchfather and his Sabbat fires.
