Showing all posts tagged talking to spirits

In witchcraft

Working the Hekataeon: A Cacaphony of Gods

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

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.

In witchcraft

Working the Hekataeon: Book One: The Call

Author Satyr MagosPosted on 2 Comments

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.

In art, scholarship, witchcraft

Triangles of the Art: An Idiosyncratic Journey

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you want to get my posts a week before everyone else, to see the magical experiments that I don’t share with the public, to get first dibs on my elected talismans and fine art jewelry, or just want to support my work, you can do so through patreon. If you’d like to make a one-time donation, or don’t want to deal with all the non-occult content I post on patreon, I also have a ko-fi.

In witchcraft

Beltane Oracle (or, Satyr’s First Prophesy)

Author Satyr MagosPosted on
high contrast image of the coals below the beltane fire, with a burning log that looks remarkably like a face

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.

In art, sorcerer's workbench, witchcraft

Devotional Image of Persephone

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

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.

In art, witchcraft

First Vision of the Sabbat Fires

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

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.

In witchcraft

Visions of the Serpent-faced God

Author Satyr MagosPosted on 2 Comments

The first time I performed the ritual – PGM XII. 153-60, Spell for a divine revelation – it was a part of Jack Grayle’s PGM course, Fifty Rites in Fifty Nights, back in 2020. It’s a short ritual, near perfectly complete, with little suggested framing or preparation.

I bathed, dusted my hands and hair with cinnamon. I sat, terrified, but summoned the courage to begin. I intoned the name IAO three times, growing in size and confidence as I did so. I called out the great name, stumbling over the Vocces Magicae. The serpent-faced god appeared.

I asked them, “How do i thrive as an artist in these times?”

They came upon me from behind. Held me. Came in through my left eye, then my right. I began to cry. The god moved in to my mouth.

I said. “I am to look, to feel, to speak. Have i understood you?”

“Yes,” the serpent faced god told me.

I thanked them, made the offering of serpent skin.

And they departed.

It was one of the most intense visionary experiences of my life.

I have performed the ritual a number of times since. For a while, it was fully incorporated into my dark moon rites. With each invocation, the vision of the serpent-faced god grew more and more feminine. I was told that the ouroboros image which has so long fascinated me, which I have tattooed on my flesh, was her image.

In 2020, visions I received revolved around the theme of “see, feel, and speak”. I don’t know how well I succeeded at following that imperative, but I did my best.

In 2021 a new theme arose: a vision of a thunderstorm storm in the desert, of long road west and a mesa rising out of the plain. I took this fairly literally: that I needed to fuck off into the desert, a physical and spiritual retreat.

For Samhain 2022,I was finally able to make that pilgrimage. My partner and I and our ritual crew took a road trip to Black Mesa, Oklahoma, where we spent four nights under the clearest, darkest skies that I have ever seen. (I have been a few places that boasted skies as dark or darker, but every time I brought storms west with me, and could not see the sky.) The Milky Way flowed directly over our heads. The Great Bear hovered on the western horizon each night, and Jupiter rose in the east.

I performed my ritual at dusk of the last night, offering wine and incense. The vision that came to me was faint but clear. I could see the serpent-faced god in all her glory. She was potent and ancient and primordial, of the earth and all that lies below it. Her message was clear, too: the time has come for me to resume my underworld journeys, because that is where I will find her. And I am to seek out a serpent priestess, whatever that means, and to make one if I cannot find one.

I thanked her for the vision, and for her patience – it took me more than a year to find her in the desert – and then I returned to my revelry.

This trip healed something in me that was broken. I slept better than any of my companions every night. Back in the world, I am more rested than any or all of them. I feel better than I have in years.

Hail to the serpent faced god. I hope that I can hear what she has to teach. I hope, too, that it is wisdom that I can share.

In art, witchcraft

Vision of Lucifer

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I first heard the Luciferian call something like ten years ago, now. It came, perhaps oddly, the same year that I began conjuring archangels as a part of the Ceremonial Experiment. I was still, in a very real sense, new to working with gods of any kind, and god-like powers at that scale. And I was still the product of my youth in the tail end of the Satanic Panic: I had spend the first five, maybe ten, of my practice trying to convince onlookers that we were not Satanists, that most witches don’t even believe in the Devil. So, though the metaphorical phone kept ringing, I refused to answer.

The call kept coming. Little signs. Songs. Visions. And I kept putting it off. Putting him off.

I don’t remember exactly when I changed my mind and decided to answer the call. I think it was a craft night with the coven. I was making a mask and it … went in a direction. And I figured that was as good a place to start as any. And I recommitted to the work in Beltane of 2019, when I made a star talisman in Luciferian colors during another Lunar Shenanigans craft extravaganza. I put those tokens on a shelf in the spare room where I kept my personal altar, but it didn’t really go any further than that.

The work really only started in the fall of 2020, when the daily offerings to my familiar spirits escalated into daily offerings for the gods who shared the space of my altar room. From there it was slow escalations.

The visions began early this year, when I quit my day job to pursue art and magic full time. I was going around the altars, each day asking one of the gods in that room to initiate me into their mysteries. And I had put Lucifer off for so long that, at first, he refused. Since then, though, he has begun revealing aspects of himself to me.

Whether or not you believe that the being I am calling Lucifer is the Devil at odds with That One God depends a lot on how you see him.

To me he is a Promethean figure: a bringer of light and magic, a teacher of art and mysteries. He is the Peacock Angel of the Yazidis. He is Melek Taus of the Anderson Feri tradition.

He is a Gnostic power: bringing light and wisdom to mortals, kindling and sheltering their fire against the dark of the universe and the malice of the demiurge and the archons.

He has presented himself to me as the Dweller on the Threshold: the terrifying image meant to keep the weak from the mysteries. To pass him, one needs only sufficient courage.

He has presented himself to me as the Light in the Darknesss: the light-bringer, literally.

And he has presented himself to me as transmasculine, or perhaps as an androgyne opposite and equal to the full-breasted and tumescent androgyny of Baphomet.

In this image, I have done my best to evoke all of these, and to recreate the visions of Lucifer that I have seen in my morning meditations. This is a first attempt. It will not be my last.

In witchcraft

Breaking Up With Bune

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Back in 2017, I made a prosperity sachet using the seal of Bune. It was an unorthodox procedure, combining a bit of US folk magic with modern chaos and ceremonial magic, and (of course) my own unique style. Overall, it served me well. I wrote briefly about the positive results in 2019. And as the Sorcerer’s Workbench got me through the pandemic and turned enough profit that I was able to quit my day job at the beginning of this year, the relationship was strong and solid. I was making offerings with every sale, and more offerings at certain sales goals.

Then, toward the beginning of this year, things went sideways.

Back in December, I hit a Deneb Algedi election that provided swift and powerful results. Then in February, I cast two cohorts of Jupiter talismans, and kept two pieces for myself. And after that, sales got real slow.

Initially, I thought one or both of the Jupiter talismans was to blame. The two I had kept for myself had mis-cast – cold shuts that left gaps in the images – and, though they assured me that they wanted to live and to work with me, it was still only my second time casting elected talismans for sale and I was still waist-deep in the same mental health crisis that had led me to quit my day job with only half the savings I’d wanted, and, as such, I lacked confidence in my own perceptions. Additionally, as March waxed into April, one of those talismans was being very explicitly tetchy about working with a demon.

But I had been working with Bune for five years at that point, and – as a relational rather than strictly transactional practitioner – I was not prepared to end that relationship yet. So I contacted a peer – Asphodello of Ward and Weave – to check in. His suggestion – short of severing my relationship with Bune – was to set up separate altars and specific spheres of responsibility. That worked very well in the short term: May was a *very* good month.

But June, July, and August have been real challenges. Weird bank shit. Rude custom inquiries, including two requests to rip off another artist’s work. A shocking lack of interest in my elected Venus talismans. Constant reassurances from my familiar spirits and divinations that things were in the works, but no explanation for why they weren’t manifesting.

In August, I took advantage of some oracular work my coven and I are doing (that I’ll write up some day) to get a more clear perspective on what’s going wrong. The answers I got, in three separate sessions, were “make more offerings”, “make even more offerings, and a new altar”, and “you’re doing the wrong work”.

That last answer was, of course, infuriating. I’m putting in the material work. I’m putting in the spiritual work. If I’m missing something, then what?

So, I went back to the tarot. The divination I did for myself was, of course, unclear except in retrospect. “What should I be working on, instead?” *VIII Adjustment* Contracts and consequences? Dafuq? Clarification, please? *Princess of Cups* Feelings, intuition, and mediumship?

Clearly I wasn’t going to puzzle this out on my own. So, at last, I called my partner in. Aradia is one of the best diviners in our social circle; I should have asked her for help months ago, but I try not to abuse her time and talents.

Our first reading was a basic 10 card Celtic cross. It was lousy with court cards, and overall seemed to agree that everything was fine. The one off card was the 7 of Cups in the crown position, indicating that that was probably where my problem was. But that wasn’t actually a clear answer. Another spread indicated that I needed to change my magical approach. So we looked to the spirits on my prosperity altar: how do things stand with each of them?

The answer came with the first card in the next spread. Bune was the 7 of Cups. We named and inquired about each of the other spirits, too, but he was the only problem. Another draw indicated that it would sort itself out in time, but the solution was to sever the relationship. That left only when: immediately (6 of Disks, “that’ll work”) or when I clean my prosperity altar on Thursday (V the Hierophant, “this is the most correct way”).

So, two days later (an hour or so ago, as I write this; some days ago, as you read this), I did the deed.

Using the same conjuration that I had used to make my initial contact with Bune (found in Jason Miller’s Sorcerer’s Secrets), I called the spirit up and told him that it was time to end our relationship. I apologized for any insult I might have given, any accidental failure to fulfil my end of our contract, and for any number of possible slights. I disassembled the sachet and promised to bury it and the lamen at a crossroads, and to slag the metal seals that I had made for his altar. I made one last round of offerings – coffee, candle, incense – and it was done.

I felt him appear to hear me speak. I more than half expected protests, or promises of better behavior. I did not expect him to fade out so softly that I barely noticed.

Now, having completed the rite to release him and end our contract, I feel a very strange rush of energy. My heart is racing; I’m near tears. It’s more like a panic attack than mania or a meltdown, but it’s not any of those things.

I’m disappointed. I feel a little bit like a failure. Both are slightly silly.

My relationship with Bune was mutually profitable for five years. It fell apart when I started accumulating other financially beneficial spiritual relationships. Mostly, I’m frustrated that I didn’t realize more immediately that it was the demon who likes to be paid in public praise that was not playing well with the other spirits, not vice versa.

I feel the need to make absolutely clear that this story is not a cautionary tale about working with demons. It bears repeating that, despite my hilariously idiosyncratic methods, good guy Bune *delivered*. It might not even have been the other magic that I was doing that broke things: five years might just have been the absolute limit on the life of the mojo bag. Further divination might reveal some useful post-facto analysis. Bune might have also been happy to work with other spirits on the prosperity altar if it had occurred to me to consult him before conjuring them, instead of just piling the altar high with planetary petitions and Jupiter talismans and (more recently) Mercury talismans. But, without question, once it was over it was over. The cards were clear that there was no fixing what was broken.

And so I will end this with a note of final, formal, public praise for Bune, the 26th spirit of the Lesser Key of Solomon. For five good years, you brought me patrons and prosperity. Without you, the Sorcerer’s Workbench would not have been possible. Hail unto you, O Bune.

In witchcraft

Daily Practice, Two Years and Counting

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

In August of 2020, I joined the Deeper Down the Rabbit Hole Do Magick Challenge. The goal was 30 days of manifestation: set one or more measurable goals, and spend the month enchanting to make it happen. I set 30 intentions of varying importance and significance, sigilized them, and then launched one per day. Of the 30, I managed to get maybe 5 to appear within the month and the months following. (Gifts of red rocks and green rocks stand out in my memory, I know that there were a few others.) Objectively, the project had a very low success rate. Subjectively, the purpose of the work drifted over the course of the month, shifting from “manifest these things” to “developing and reaffirming my relationships with my familiar spirits through daily offerings”. That latter project, I think I can say as I begin working my twenty-sixth consecutive month, was a resounding success.

The ritual, at its heart, is very simple. Each morning I sit down, light a candle and a stick of incense, and share my first cup of coffee with my familiar spirits. The details have grown more elaborate, then been re-simplified, several times over the course of the last two years.

A candle in the morning escalated to a candle for each familiar spirit (the number of which has doubled in that time, owing to work with the Hekataeon and making Picatrix talismans), plus one to consecrate the altar, until I was burning eleven tealights a day and ultimately had a panic attack as I left the house one day, convinced the cats were going to set themselves and the house on fire. A tealight for each spirit was replaced by a single votive candle in a brass bowl, marked around the edge with each of their sigils. I still make candle offerings to everyone during other ceremonies, and that seems to be enough.

A stick of incense became one for the temple and one for the spirits.

And, most recently, nine familiars on one altar have been redistributed across three altars. My core six are still on my primary personal altar, but two have moved to my prosperity altar and one to join Hekate on her growing household altar. All of them still appear around me each morning, though.

There was a period where I set aside a day of the week to commune with each spirit individually – a process complicated by the fact that there were nine of them, and four didn’t have clear planetary associations. And that was important, for a while. And then, after a bit, it wasn’t so important anymore. They had said what they needed to say, and I had learned to hear them better.

Somewhere along the line, gods got involved.

Five gods live in in the bedroom where I keep my personal altar (and, since this summer, my office desk): Baphomet, Aphrodite, Eros, Lucifer, and Dionysos. In a sense, Hekate should have a shrine here, too, but she doesn’t like it when I have sex in front of her, so she stays in the back room with the public altars. Somewhere along the line, it seemed a natural evolution to begin including them in the daily offerings. That, probably inevitably, escalated to daily communions.

Daily communion with divinity, as long-time readers might guess, has been a … complicated experience for me. I am, despite everything, still very ambivalent about the notion of worship. And yet, I pour offerings … and the gods come when I call.

Some days, they come harder than others. I have had visions so intense that they left me shaken for weeks at a time. Other days, I can barely sense their presences.

Baphomet has appeared before me in forms that I have never seen or heard discussed elsewhere. I have alluded to this, but not yet been able to produce a clear image in art, let alone articulate the experiences in prose. A tryptich. In the center something like the best-known goat-headed figure: full-breasted, fat-bellied, ithyphallic, a lush and luscious androgyne, arms marked solve et coagvla, whom I call the Red God. To my right, a pale and moon-horned woman, blindfolded or perhaps eyeless, blind gaze to the heavens, hands open and arms loose, the White Lady. To my left, a shadowy figure with the antlered head of a deer’s skull, his body muscular and his hands upraised in a twin gesture of benediction, the Black Man or perhaps the Man in Black. I pray they awaken the light of Gnosis within me, those I love, and the people of the world.

Aphrodite has appeared before me, a shining beauty whose face is too bright to see. She bids me make art in her image. Every day I pray to be loved by her, by gods and mortals, and to have the strength to know when I am.

Eros has teased and mocked me. He is both the hypercosmic Eros the Elder, Eros Phanes, and as the teasing lusting lord of the Erotes. He says that I do not yet aprehend him. I pray to him that the light of creation shine through me, and that I burn always with passion and ambition.

Lucifer appears to me as the Dweller on the Threshold. As a transman. A beautiful pale figure standing before a monstrous shadow. I pray for secret knowledge, and to be free of the chains of my oppression, and to stand tall in the face of the heavens.

Dionysos appears to me always with his leopard. He is distant but loving. I pray to him for salvation, for freedom, for ecstasy.

Some days I can hear my familiars clearly. Sometimes they are almost physical presences. Sometimes I can barely sense them at all.

Some days they are demanding. More often they are comforting and reassuring. In the early days, they had a great deal to teach me. Now, lessons in magic come rarely, and usually in response to a specific need.

Sometimes the voices of the gods drown out the voices of my familiar spirits. Sometimes they stand back so that my spirits can be better heard. Sometimes I am a conduit for their power, channeling it into my familiars and the world. Sometimes I am simply overwhelmed.

I think that the most important thing I have learned from two years of daily practice is that, for me, there is a delicate balance between continuity and novelty. For the fist months, I tweaked the ritual constantly. Sometimes this was in response to my own needs – shifting from before bed, which often almost didn’t happen, to first thing in the morning, which is a very different sort of struggle for me; or when I had to reduce the fire hazard of a dozen daily candles. Sometimes this was at the prompting of the spirits, themselves.

I am at a point, right now, where I feel like more change is needed. I don’t know what change, just that I am struggling to stay focused and not let the ritual motions become rote and meaningless. I am struggling to hear the voices of gods or spirits, even my own.

I have said before and I will say again, this is a streak. It’s the longest I’ve ever run, but at some point it will be broken. At that time, I will re-evaluate my needs, and the needs of my magical guides and gods and friends and familiars, and we will proceed from there. For now, the work continues. August 2020 to September 2022, twenty-five months and counting.