A while ago I had the opportunity to hit a series of elections that included a Saturn election one day and a Venus election the next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Saturn election went great. I had visions of spirits the night before, intense pre-verberations and insomnia. I just finished up the talismans the other day, and they are On Point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Venus election was a bust. No problem with the election, as far as I can tell, but I was so caught up in other kinds of preparation that I was twenty minutes late turning on my electromelt. I should have just quit then, but I really wanted to hit that election . So I hoped and I prayed and I proceeded as if success was possible. I set up the altar. I burned the incense. I chanted the invocations. I could feel the potent and eager Venusian spirits gathered around me to fill the metal, and I tried, I really tried, to get the metal hot enough to pour and hit that election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I fucking failed. By the time the metal was finally ready to pour, Venus had crossed the midheaven. Technically Venus was still within orb, and I know that others have had success within those parameters, but … I knew immediately that I hadn’t, at least not that time. Strangely, and possibly of note to other magicians, the spirits hung about in my studio until I poured the metal, even though they did not apparently go into the talismans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My initial concern was that I’d made curse talismans. So I did extensive divination. I got a bunch of weird mixed messaging, but the gist seemed to be that they weren’t cursed … I just had to decide what to do with them. The only clear and good option was 10 Disks for slagging them, and that was a monetary concern. Also good, but significantly less clear, was the Ace of Cups for “do something else” … except every “something else” I proposed after that initial reading was just as muddy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eventually, I just used them as photographic exemplars and kept them as well-consecrated materia for the next Venus election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In retrospect, the talismans may not have been cursed, but the failed electional ritual definitely did a number on me. I fell into a depression that didn’t really lift until I had melted the failed talismans down (with appropriate thanks and apologies) and cast them into the next cohort of Venus talismans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That batch of talismans is now fermenting happily on my altar. I have their names and sigils and will be writing them up for sale soon … once I’m done processing the cohort that came after (that will almost certainly be done by the time this post goes live).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m still not entirely sure what was going on with that divination, or with the depression. I don’t know if it would have gotten better faster if I’d melted the miscast talismans down sooner, of if I had done some more elaborate propitiation ritual. Or maybe I had just pushed myself too hard that week and would have crashed, after, even if the ritual had been a shining success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But I want to share this story for the benefit of other astromages, so if you all experience something similar, they know you’re not alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A while ago I had the opportunity to hit a series of elections that included a Saturn election one day and a Venus election the next. The Saturn election went great. I had visions of spirits the night before, intense pre-verberations and insomnia. I just finished up the talismans the other day, and they are … Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[371,140,201,372,288],"class_list":["post-5445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-witchcraft","tag-image-of-venus","tag-learn-from-my-fail","tag-picatrix","tag-picatrix-talisman","tag-venus"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-1pP","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5446,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5445\/revisions\/5446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}