Hermes Conference Recap, Day 2

March 28, 2014, 5:58 pm

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Ah, beautiful Charlottesville, Virginia. Beloved town of Thomas Jefferson, one of the great Founding Fathers of the United States of America, and home of my alma mater, the University of Virginia, where I spent several years in academic, emotional, and spiritual upheaval and chaos which had a significant impact on my life today. It’s also where an amazing conference is being held on my patron god, titled Tracking Hermes/Mercury, put on by the Department of Classics at the University of Virginia. If you’re not here, you’re missing out; there are 21 presentations being made over three days talking about the role of Hermes-Mercury in many of his forms in myth, religion, magic, and daily life throughout the antique to late classical periods of European history. I’m more than pleased to be here, and it’s an amazing group with equally amazing speakers from around the world presenting here on this awesome topic. Besides the fact that I get to roam around my old stomping grounds again and do a bit of exploration that I couldn’t or wouldn’t do when I was younger, I get to study and learn more about my own patron from some of the brightest and sharpest (though sometimes oddly-accented) experts in the field of classics. While I’m here, I may as well write up some of my notes and things to think on that I’m picking up at this little conference.

Today was the second day of three, a full day of presentations: Jenny Strauss Clay (Virginia), Deborah Boedeker (Brown), Erin Moodie (Williams), Sandra Blakely (Emory), Joseph Farrell (Penn), Micah Myers (Kenyon), Stephen Harrison (Oxford), and Shane Black (Colorado). Below are some of the talking points and thoughts from their discussions.

Hermes is known for his mastery of seducing and seductive rhetoric, lies, craftiness, improvising, penetrating all sorts of barriers, being nosy, being greedy, and being preoccupied with food. The same can also be said of Odysseus in Homeric literature; the two share many traits in common.
What’s unusual about Hermes is that there’s very little theophanic epiphany between and Odysseus (like on Ciprogedyrce’s island). Usually, when a god is revealed to a mortal, there’s a good amount of freaking out on the part of the human, strange omens, or some sort of amazing transformation. The relationship between Odysseus and Hermes, on the other hand, is casual, almost like Odysseus expects to see Hermes when a stranger appears to him. On Hermes’ part, this shows him to be kind and philanthropic towards Odysseus, though it’s on the down-low between them. The two definitely share a special bond.
An example of this that links the two tighter are when Odysseus visits the Phaeacians, unseen by all until he suddenly appears clutched to Queen Arete’s knees while they pour out their libations to Hermes. Everyone became dumb-struck, marveling at the sudden appearance of this stranger in awe-struck silence (and remember from yesterday that, when silence occurs in a conversation, they say that Hermes has come in). It’d be common, after all, in the old mythic ages for gods to feast with mankind.
It’s a little odd for Hermes to appear out of nowhere on Circe’s island so readily to Odysseus, especially when he complains of traveling afar to places with no delicious sacrifices for him. That Circe says that Hermes told her (or, rather, repeatedly told her) to expect Odysseus suggests that Hermes hangs around Circe’s island for…well, you tell me, dear reader. Hermes’ lasciviousness is nothing secret.
The bond between Hermes and Odysseus may go back to Odysseus’ grandfather, who honored Hermes with many sacrifices and great gifts, and whom Hermes celebrated by giving him Hermes’ craftiness and ingenuity. This apparently was hereditary, given Odysseus’ knack for the same. However, it’s also suggested that Odysseus’ grandfather was son to Hermes, which would make Odysseus both progeny and prodigy of Hermes. Ties between the two are strong, even so far as for Circe to use the epithet “polytropos” (many-turning) to describe Odysseus, when this epithet is only ever used in other literature to describe Hermes.
Hermes and Odysseus may be immune to Circe’s magic, but they’re certainly not immune to her other charms. Hermes may very well have been sleeping with Circe before Odysseus came along, and Odysseus just about becomes her sex slave instead of a porcinified one. Odysseus has to be reminded later that he needs to set out once more on the seas to get home, after all.
That Athena is tutelary goddess to Odysseus is nothing new, but there may be evidence to suggest that Athena was added in later on to Homeric literature to help clean up Odysseus’ image. It may be that Odysseus only had such a relationship to Hermes, but it’s also likely that the two were there from the beginning together. Athena uses Hermes’ winged sandals in book I of the Odyssey, after all, and appears as a figure sharing many similarities to Hermes later on when Odysseus lands on Ithaca’s shores. Unlike Hermes, however, Athena openly shows her affection for Odysseus, helping him in battles and everything.
Still, even Athena remains distinct from Hermes. When Odysseus lands on Ithaca’s shores, Athena takes on the image of a young man with many mercurial looks and traits, hoping that Odysseus would spill his heart to her; yet, ever crafty, Odysseus engages in a game of deceitful cat-and-mouse with disguised Athena, both of them using “winged words”.
Speaking of “winged words” and banter, it can be said that Hermes is god of not just of eloquence but also of banter and cajoling. One of the more famous styles of meter used in poetry is the iamb, and it can be said that Hermes is the patron god of this style of poetry. Yes, it is metrically defined as an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one (da-DUM da-DUM, etc.), but definitions broader than this go back to Aristotle, saying that the iambic meter is used by poets “of a less exalted nature [who] represented the actions of inferior men, at first writing satire…for these the iambic meter was fittingly introduced and that is why it is still called iambic, because it was the meter in which they lampooned (iambizon) each other” (Poetics, 1448b.31). Even from Hermes’ Homeric Hymn do we see this working well for the god, because even as soon as he made the lyre he started singing out “sweet random snatches, even as youths bandy taunts at festivals”, which Apollo notes as the music and song like that “at young men’s revels”.
This is furthered by the use of the Greek word kertomon to describe Hermes, literally “heart-cutting” and translated as “impertinent” or “mischievous”, but also perhaps meaning obscene, scurrilous, and generally thumbing one’s nose at pretension. Hermes was no stranger to being rude or breaking taboo, such as him telling Leto (mother of Apollo and Artemis) to sod off when she challenges him in battle during the Theomachy in the Iliad (when Zeus ordained the gods to fight as they will!), or when Hermes jokes about sleeping with Aphrodite no matter the cost.
Of course, it isn’t just being rude to others that was appropriate in iambic poetry, but being rude generally. Iambic poets love using bodily functions, and Hermes’ Homeric Hymn is likely the only one where farts are mentioned. Hipponax, my new bestest and favoritest poet ever, made good use of this, writing dick jokes into his poems: “after awaiting at his side the white-robed day, you will make obeisance to the Hermes of the Phlyesians” (where nobody knows where Phlyesia was, but people now think it means masturbation, which pairs well with Hermes’ oft-seen phallic nature), or how “Blessed Hermes, you who know how to awake the sleeper” (i.e. morning wood or curing impotence).
Hipponax was a native of Asia Minor, and frequently made use of Lydian (a native language there) in his Greek poetry. This would be improper, technically speaking, to use streettalk mixed in with invocations to the gods, often to lampoon or satirize others, such as calling Zeus the “sultan” (Lydian palmun) of the gods as gold is the “sultan” of silver (that’s not a very kind metaphor). To use such a low register is basically rapping at someone on a street corner compared to higher, more artful poetry.
Not much of Hipponax’ poetry survives, but what does is fucking hilarious. There’s something about someone getting into a fight and shitting on the golden wand of Hermes in fright (not kidding, this was actually discussed in the talk), and another poem where there’s some sort of random sexual encounter in a filthy privy where an old woman (the presenter paused here and said “how do I say this in polite company”) performs some sort of magic rite involving hitting genitals with branches, anal penetration, and dung beetles. What I’m basically saying here is that iambic poetry is not the classiest of styles, so it’s totes proper for Hermes’ purview.
Of course, poetry isn’t the only thing Hermes would have a claim in, and it’s quite reasonable that one might claim Hermes to also be the god of comedic theater. Yes, Dionysus is the god of theater, but Hermes-Mercury as a character (and, thus, actual presence) in comedic plays shows a huge familiarity with comedy and theatership generally. Tragedies, of course, are taken very seriously and are where gods appear most often, but comedies are another thing entirely. It was often seen as disrespectful for the gods to appear in comedies with very few exceptions, and many of the characters in comedies engage in metatheatrical behavior: breaking the fourth wall, direct address of the audience, awareness of being an actor in a play, references to theater in general or self-reference to one’s own parts. Actors of low-class people (slaves, cooks, old men, parasites, etc.) engaged in the most metatheatrical activities on stage, and Hermes (when he appears) engages in some of the most direct and common acts of all.
Hermes himself notes in, say, Plautus’ Amphitryon that the gods aren’t fit to appear in comedies; after all, one shouldn’t be laughing at the antics of divinity. Tragedies were fitting for the gods, after all, but comedies should star only humans. That Hermes willingly takes part in comedies suggests, again, his closeness to humanity and his philanthropic nature, not to mention his divine nature of being trickster and deceiver.
By adopting metatheatrical methods in comedies, Hermes willingly takes on roles of the low class who often get the better of the high class roles, since, say, as a slave in a comedy, “it is proper for me to be wicked, clever, and now astute…with wickedness” (Plautus, “Amphitryon”). These, of course, are not just qualities of the role Mercury plays (both as an actor of the play and role of himself to be played in disguise), but are qualities of Mercury himself. This is self-referential on several levels, especially since it could be argued that Hermes himself is the slave to the gods, subservient while remaining deceptively crafty. He’s the runt of the Olympian litter, effectively low-class, and the servant of the other gods. His role in comedies, then, is an extension of his role on Olympus.
This isn’t to mention, of course, that many of the roles in comedies used iambic meter, and as we already know, iambic meter is quite a mercurial meter to use, especially for laughs and satire. Not to mention penises everywhere; male roles in theater had a phallus on their costumes to clearly mark them as men, not unlike the phallus on the statues of herms.
Dionysus, of course, is the only other god in plays to directly address the audience in metatheatrical behavior, but then, Dionysus and Hermes are tightly connected in many ways (either with Hermes bringing Dionysus up or Hermes being Dionysus’ son, depending on the myth, and further Hermes’ role in the Anthesteria festival). Dionysus may be a god of theater, but Hermes can definitely assume god of comedic theater since he’s so intimate with it.
Even going beyond metatheater, Hermes is the god who evokes laughter with song; he does this to Zeus with his stories and lies, and even gets Apollo to laugh with his lyre and lyrics. Another reason to give Hermes patronage over acts that make others laugh, like comedic theater.
While Hermes is god of many things, Hermes is odd because it’s hard to find temples actually dedicated to Hermes. Despite his importance as a god in so many things, he’s often denied the cult status or attributions that many other gods have. A notable exception to this is the mystery cult of Hermes based on Samothrace, an island in the north Aegean on the frontiers of what might be considered proper Greek society. The only resource notable from Samothrace were onions and a black flaky stone, so they depended almost wholly on maritime transport and commerce for their livelihoods. Because the economic impact of sailing and ships was paramount to Samothracians, a cult rose up to honor one particular god to preserve Samothracian sailors (and, really, all sailors who were initiated into the cult). This cult was dedicated to none other than Hermes, though it’s one of the few cults in the Mediterranean dedicated to the god. And, further, unlike other cults that promised a blessed afterlife, this cult promised only safety at sea.
Although it’s not entirely clear how, exactly, Hermes came to be worshiped so importantly on Samothrace, there’s much evidence to link Samothracian Hermes to Kyllenic Hermes (referencing Mount Kyllene, where Hermes was born according to his Homeric Hymn). Samothrace had a thing for archaic flavors of worship, and incorporated even Mycenaean-looking architecture, sacred stones and megaliths, and old wooden statues of the gods; they link these explicitly with the cult of Hermes at Kyllene, though there’s quite a bit of distance between Western Arcadia and Samothrace.
There were many gods of the sea and sailors, of course, besides the obvious Poseidon. The Dioskouroi, or the divine twins Castor and Polydeukes (Pollux), were often seen to watch over sailors, though there is evidence that worship of the Dioskouroi coincided with that of Samothracian Hermes in many instances. Similarly, this was also combined with the ever-popular Priapus; they all shared phallic or ithyphallic representations, and not only served to help turn away evil but purify and guide people to salvation and safe harbors.
Just as herms were set at crossroads to guide travelers, many monuments to Priapus and Hermes were set up on harbors to watch over harbors and indicate safe landings for ships. The apotropaic purposes of these statues became more functional than they might otherwise have been; in this sense, this syncretic Hermes became a god of the harbor.
Supposedly, Samothrace was the first place the Greeks learned to make ithyphallic representations of Hermes, given Samothrace’s knack for holding onto ancient and archaic styles of worship, and this spread to the rest of Greece by way of the herms.
Fishermen on Samothrace, too, prayed to Hermes for prosperity in their business, though this may not always be for direct aid. For instance, in the Theogony (specifically the Hymn to Hekate), should one pray to Hekate, both she and Hermes will ensure “a good catch”; however, other inscriptions dedicate fishermen’s tools to Hermes with the hopes that “when I’m too old to use these, please help me” (preserve my livelihood even when I can no longer do my job).
The nearby city of Ainos was dedicated almost entirely to Hermes, being the port for land routes in Thrace to mingle with the river routes of the Hebrus river and the sea routes of the Aegean; it was an exceptionally wealthy country where Hermes had so much sway. There’s a particular representation of Hermes as a wooden statue set on a throne overlooking the sea, said to be made and designed by Epeios, the maker of the Trojan Horse. This image was supposedly found in the sea by fishermen who wanted to burn it for wood, but it couldn’t be hacked apart by axes; it was divined to be a form of Hermes, and so was given worship. A similar story is given to Methymna, where the statue was definitely Hermes and definitely not Greek (interesting!).
Although the Methymnian Hermes may not have been ultimately Greek in origin, some things about Hermes aren’t very Greek to begin with. For example, Hermes’ love live is considerably lacking compared to the adventures and misadventures of the other Greek gods, especially those of his father Zeus and brother Apollo. Sure, Hermes has a reputation for helping one elope or be secretive in love, or for ribald lovemaking, but Hermes has almost negligible love affairs in myth, particularly when compared to the other males of his Olympian family.
In fact, not only does Hermes lack the notable exploits of his godly peers, but he’s almost completely sublimated any lust or sexual desire he would have. He has the capacity for it, sure, as he sings of the affairs and exploits of the gods in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes once he makes the lyre (likely in iambic meter, of course). However, after this, despite being aroused, he hungers for meat, literally “lusting” for it, though this phrase is only applied to lions in other Homeric literature and only humorously here means little more than a physical hunger. His sexual appetite is sublimated into his actual physical hunger.
Hermes is the child of Maia and Zeus, who met in secret at night while Hera slept; this was done in complete secrecy. Hermes inherited his secretiveness, stealthiness, and secrecy from his parents as a result of this. Zeus later picks up on this and uses Hermes’ secrecy to facilitate his own affairs (e.g. re-abduction of Io from Argos).
The only other expressions of love or lust Hermes shows in his hymn is his bromance (the erudite scholar actually used this word) with Apollo, with whom he promises to love forever, even watched over and officiated by Zeus. To be fair, the language used is of a deep friendship, but really hints at something more than that. Still, if it’s anything gay, it’s homosocial rather than homosexual, since there’s nothing to suggest the two gods got it on. (This brings to my mind the astronomical image of the planet Mercury closely following the Sun, in the tightest orbit of all the planets.)
Instead of having sex with Apollo (which, I think, would be fucking hot) Hermes in his Homeric Hymn gives Apollo another source of joy: the lyre. The music and tool of the lyre is described, essentially, as a girlfriend with a beautiful voice. In this instance, the lyre is almost like a hetaira, a courtesan or classy whore that the two share like fratboys.
Apollo and Hermes may be good friends by the end of Hermes’ Homeric Hymn, but that certainly wasn’t always the case; Apollo is really bad at dealing with young gods. A highly similar case exists, right down to many of the details, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses when Ovid describes the interaction between Cupid and Apollo. With Apollo and Cupid, Cupid wants to take up archery, which Apollo scoffs at (since, obvi, archery was his domain); Cupid makes Apollo pay for his hubris by falling in love with the anti-love Daphne, who turns into the laurel tree, which Apollo then takes (almost as a gift from Cupid) as his beloved symbol. This is very close to the Homeric Hymn of Hermes, where Hermes steals Apollo’s cattle and threatens worse, but they make up by Hermes giving Apollo the lyre. While Cupid wants honor among the gods, Hermes wants specific dominion, but in either case Apollo gets what he loves (Daphne in tree form or friendship through music). The episode between Cupid and Apollo is also similar to the theft of Apollo’s bow and arrows by Hermes (yes!) in the Iliad, and both Ovid and Homer share very similar terminology in these episodes. Another similarity can be drawn between the stories of Cupid/Eros, and that of Mercury/Hermes. Eros is the child of Aphrodite and, in some sources, Hermes, much as their other child Hermaphroditus. There may be other parallels between the two that can argue that Hermaphroditus is Eros, and vice versa, though this might be a stretch.
Anyway, considering Hermes’ almost neverending role in helping Zeus with the god-father’s sexual escapades, it’s plain that Hermes is essentially the wingman of the gods. Hermes almost never gets involved with sex, but is almost always needed by or asked for help from the other gods. Hermes is the god who sets up or prevents affairs, which makes sense, since as a god of guides and guide of men and gods, his job is to lead someone to somewhere or to someone.
In this sense, Hermes is often approached by Aphrodite or in conjunction to prayers with her. In Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, even Venus herself says that she never tries to do anything without her brother Mercury’s help. Partially, of course, this is flattery so Mercury would help out Venus; but even then, since Hermes-Mercury is the god of flattery, banter, and persuasion, it makes sense that Hermes would have to be involved in getting people together. Even Horace calls on Mercury in the Odes with Venus together to get into the house of Glycera, not only to bring them together physically but also to help Horace actually get into her house (despite the blocking-man who’s guarding Glycera). It’s also why Aphrodite, when she’s fallen in love with Anchises of Troy, she says she was a virgin of Artemis abducted by Hermes; while nearly every other god would abduct a girl to rape her, Hermes would only ever lead the girl to someone who should know her (in either or both senses of the word).
Hermes, then, is necessary as a wingman either in act (helping the gods or men get together with someone) or in symbol (as our own eloquence to get someone to get with us). This latter part makes good sense, since classical authors often wrote of love needing to be tempered by reason, or saying that it’s better for couples in love to get things accomplished through persuasion rather than fighting.
Another reason why Hermes may not have many offspring is, from the few he’s had, they don’t tend to turn out alright. One offspring of his was Pan, the goat-footed child that freaked out his mother, and another was Hermaphroditus, a child that was effeminate from birth and doubly so after merged with the nymph Salmacis. The Greeks basically viewed either one as deformed or defective in some way, that his DNA somehow didn’t produce the best offspring; given Hermes’ lack of war conquests and manly stature, maybe it was seen that having a child of Hermes wasn’t that great generally.
A notable exception to this is the Homeric hero Eudoros, said to be a child of Hermes to account for his mentally and physically speedy nature, though this may only be a later addition to merely account for it. Even then, Eudoros was the offspring of Hermes and the woman Polymele, and Hermes didn’t abduct her like most other gods may have, but instead sneaked into her room at night (taking a cue from his parents’ own congress).
Besides this, Hermes does have a few other sexual escapades here and there, as hinted at before with Circe, but also with Krokus (in a near replay of the Apollo/Hyacinthus myth), Brimo (likely Hekate), Persephone herself, and a few nymphs on the way to the underworld. Hermes apparently has a thing for ladies and men of death or the dying.
In a sense, Hermes’ lack of sexuality becomes a type of alternative sexuality; not necessarily asexual, but certainly different from the conventional sexualities known and validated by other myths and in classical Greek culture. He does his own thing on his own terms; when it comes to the relationships of others, he acts as the go-between of two people, bringing them together but staying out of anything that results.
Going a bit further in my own thoughts, the fact that Hermes stays out of relationships may be a hint at why he has next to no cults or mystery religions of his own. Hermes brings people and gods together but stays out of what happens, after all. Hermes, although an Olympian, is certainly not among the important ones, but he’s still a vital god to work with and crucial in day-to-day living. Hermes has no temple, because he’s in every temple; he has no rites, because he’s in all rites; he has no expertise, because he’s an expert in everything. Hermes is the go-between that leads us on in anything and everything; he is the road between destinations, but is not the destinations themselves. He only leads us along the roads, but the road is where we spend most of our lives and times. The presence of Hermes is required by man to work with any god, and is required to communicate to man from the gods.
Of course, this may not always be easy to explain. Apparently, the presence of Hermes in book IV of the Aeneid is something of a problem for classicists, I guess because it’s so difficult to explain why Vergil wrote him into the story so as to get Aeneas out of Carthage after he falls in love with Dido at the cunning works of his mother Venus. Essentially, the divine intervention here is abrupt and disrupts the flow of the story, but then that’s just it: at this stage in the story, the Aeneid isn’t going anywhere. If Hermes never intervened to get Aeneas out of Carthage, Aeneas would never’ve left, which would otherwise put the Aeneid to an abrupt end, which would be far worse than an abrupt entry of a god to move the story along.
While many classicists link Aeneid IV (Mercury getting Aeneas’ ass in gear out of Carthage) with Odyssey V (Hermes telling Kalypso to free Odysseus), the differences here outweigh the similarities. Odysseus was kept trapped by Kalypso, but Aeneas was happily and willingly staying with Dido even though he could leave at any time. In either case, sure, fate had to be done, but the whole intent and tone is different. Rather, it’s more instructive to look at the similarities with the last book of the Iliad, where Hermes is sent to Priam to lead him safely to Achilles to retrieve the body of Hector. There, Hermes honors Priam for putting himself in danger to do what’s right, and so speaks respectfully as a devoted or loving son to Priam. In the Aeneid, however, Mercury shames Aeneas for disregarding what’s right to do, speaking angrily as an impatient father. In this light, Priam is an exemplar of good fatherhood, while Aeneas is being an exceptionally bad father to his own son. In either case, however, they both exist to make sure the story doesn’t end.
Vergil is odd in that he never actually mentions Mercury by name, and even then only mentions Mercury three times through the entire Aeneid. In book I, he mentions Mercury as “son of Maia” who comes from the heavens to the earth and landing on the shores of Libya; this emphasizes his celestial-terrestrial nature (son of ouranic Zeus and chthonic Maia) and liminal nature (going between the worlds and manifesting in liminal, threshold places of boundaries). The other two times Vergil mentions Mercury is in book IV, starting with a description of Mercury’s staff, which is given all the usual attributes (guidance, leading people to sleep and wakefulness, etc.) but importantly adding a new power: that of death. This is distinct from his role as psychopomp, leading the souls of those who have already died; this new power of the wand is a power of making people to die.
Essentially, Vergil uses Mercury to resolve the problem of narrative stagnation. Aeneas is stuck in Carthage, but happily so and would remain there for the rest of his days if he could. Vergil may have written himself into a corner, and so used Mercury to open the rest of the story up so it could keep going. Mercury/Hermes here has the ability to keep things going and to give things closure, and he does this moreover as herald and messenger of the gods. And, as god of transitions, Mercury enables Aeneas to move from impiety to piety once more.
Later authors have used Mercury/Hermes in a similar role to resolve narrative stagnation, such as Boccaccio in La Teseida and Chaucer in the Knight’s Tale (essentially the same story, where someone has to die in a fight in order for the story to be resolved but nobody dies until the gods make it so), as well as by Dante in the Inferno, canto 9, when he stands before the Gates of Dis with Vergil. Vergil, for the first time, fails as a guide and can’t open the gates, and without progress the Inferno would end with them all caught in hell. Happily, another guide “from heaven” with the appearance of a messenger and a wand uses the wand to open the gates, enabling the story to continue. That this guide is Hermes/Mercury is more than likely, appearing from one world into another at a liminal place and using a wand to open ways and make things continue; Dante may have used this to “disprove” the idea that Vergil himself was a magician (since he was powerless here).
In a broader light, then, Hermes is not only the god of roads but also of road-opening.

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Hermes Conference Recap, Day 3

March 29, 2014, 6:57 pm

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Today was the last day of three, a full day of presentations: Alan Shapiro (Johns Hopkins), Hélène Collard (Liège), Athanassios Vergados (Heidelberg), Ljuba Merlina Bortolani (Heidelberg), Thomas Biggs (Yale), Duncan MacRae (Cincinnati), Jenny Wallensten (Swedish Institute at Athens), Stéphanie Paul (Liège), and Carolyn Laferriere (Yale). Below are some of the talking points and thoughts from their discussions.

Just as a neat note that was made in passing, this conference could conceivably have a birth date back in 1998 when discussion among the professors of the department of classics first started. That’d be about 16 years, or 4 times 4, and 4 is the sacred number of Hermes. Cute.
Hermes is among the most commonly-featured god in Greek art, and he’s not limited to any one aspect or situation where he’s featured. However, as might also be expected of Hermes, he’s usually not the protagonist or central feature in the art, usually playing accessory roles (again, the whole “involved but detached from everything” schtick, in keeping with the rest of his nature and exploits). This contrasts with his mother, the mountain nymph Maia, who appears in such art only very rarely, and even then almost always in connection with her son. The two are usually shown in a sort of deep paternal/filial relationship, emphasizing Hermes’ son-ness (presenting him as beardless even in old Greek art, when even then he’s often given a beard).
The presence of livestock in depictions of Maia and Hermes (often sheep, but also includes goats and lions) recalls Hermes’ mastery over the animal kingdom and animal husbandry. The depiction of livestock here may suggest that this is something that not only comes from Apollo’s blessing of Hermes in his Homeric Hymn, but also in part due to Maia herself as a mountain nymph, a kind of sub-class of earth goddess. After all, being the nymph in one of the highest mountains in pastoral Arcadia, it’d make sense she’d have some rule over the animals in her lands as well.
Going off the connections between Hermes and Heracles from before, there’s mention of an Attic celebration of Maia in a list of other of Heracles’ family members by a particular clan in Sunion (if I heard correctly). That Maia appears here, at least in name, is unusual, since she got next to no cult in this part of Greece, and to be tied in here with Heracles is unusual. Hermes is often seen accompanying Heracles to Olympus or just chilling with him generally, so they might be bros if not brothers.
When Maia is represented in art, it’s almost always in rememberance and honor of the birth of her son. On the other hand, whenever Hermes appears in art, it’s usually for his minor role he plays in others’ stories. Rarely is he depicted in his own adventures or exploits beyond that of his birth (which is a small group on its own). When he appears with Apollo, which is common, Apollo is playing the lyre while Hermes is playing the pipes, sometimes to contrast rustic music with refinement, sometimes to act as a chorus of friendship in a performance.
Rather than picturing Hermes directly, it’s far more common for vases to depict herms, the apotropaic pillars put at liminal places. Herms likely began in Attica in the 6th century BC, and from there spread across Greece (though the practice of piling stones at crossroads preceded this and anticipated proper herms), and is attributed to the artist Hipparchos. They were rectangular/had four sides, usually with an erect phallus on the front and a bust of a bearded man, though in much later periods had busts of heroes or even women. The rectangularity of the herms is sacred to Hermes, whose holy number is 4, and given that he can see in the four directions from a herm, especially at crossroads.
Greek vase art presented herms in a variety of situations, usually to mark a place of holiness or a sanctuary; these were possibly common in art due to their easily-drawn and easily-identifiable nature. The rectangularity of the herms suggested stability and unshakeableness, an important thing in the body of a divine being.
Common depictions of them show them present before sacrifices being made at altars, or being approached in worship closely (being touched, embraced, whispered to, even grasped by the phallus). This is strange in graphical depictions of statues of the divine, since art never shows physical contact with a statue besides herms, even though literature is replete with this (e.g. a supplicant grabbing the legs of a statue). This suggests that the herm was used as a messenger to the god, directly supplicated or approached in a way that other divine works weren’t. Hermes, ever the lowest of the celestial gods and closest and friendliest to mankind, would appreciate this, directly working with his supplicants and working with them or relaying their prayers to the proper gods. Thus, herms could be taken as a divine image of Hermes or as a bridge between mankind and the gods, just as Hermes is herald and messenger between the gods and men.
Then again, it could be that a difference in medium is necessitated by a difference in focus. Literature and drama, say, require emphasis on devotion or meaning, while drawn art might have different foci. Thus, it may be that herms themselves were never physically approached like other statues, or that all statues were approached, but from the evidence we have, it may be that herms are a special case among statues, and records of people physically touching other statues are a special case among worship.
Herms in art are commonly depicted with garlands, necklaces, flowers, fruit, and the like, and a good number of them support caduceuses on their own. Herms were associated with Hermes outright, so it’s unusual for a reduplication of symbols to be present in art, unless it’s to emphasize the herm’s Hermaic nature. Even then, this suggests that the herm wasn’t always associated with Hermes, depending on its presence and appearance, so it can’t be taken wholly for granted that the presence of a herm suggests the presence of Hermes. Still, the fact that herms are associated primarily with Hermes suggests that cult and sacrifices were made to Hermes often and everywhere; it may be that he had little need of formal temples, since the presence of a herm was his temple.
Herms were especially decorated with plants, and even more than that with figs. According to several papyri (Oxyrhynchus 7 and 17), the fig is a sacred fruit to Hermes. Not only is it the first fruit offered in sacrifice, but it’s among his most favorite and favored fruits, as evidenced by excerpts from drama and proverbs. The fig also links Hermes to Dionysus, since its leaves are used in Dionysus’ garlands. It’s an exceptionally sweet fruit of the Greeks, and is considered the “sister of honey”, and when eaten makes one’s words sweeter than honey just as Nestor, the famed mentor and talker of the Homeric epics.
A joke, however, can be considered when expanding this outside of Greece. A particular ritual to Thoth, the Egyptian god most syncretized with Hermes, involves eating honeyed figs (mingling honey and figs both, and both are considered Hermaic due to their sweetness in speech and the mouth) while exclaiming “truth is sweet”. Bear in mind, however, that Hermes is anything but truthful, being the prince of lies and deceivers and thieves.
For as similar as Hermes and Thoth might be, there are limits to their similarities. This can be seen quite readily if one inspects some of the hymns to Hermes present in the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM V.400, VII.668). These particular hymns open up a ritual for dream divination, which makes sense for invoking Hermes since he’s the god who sends sleep and dreams and wakefulness to mankind, as well as sending messages from the gods to mankind generally. However, the language of these hymns bears a lot of incongruities in the Greek mindset that more properly describe Thoth. In this case, the magical hymns to Hermes present a less Greek method of interacting with the gods than an Egyptian one.
These hymns call upon Hermes by name, but describe him as being “ruler of the cosmos”, “in the heart”, “circle of Selene”, “founder of the words of speech”, “who obey justice”, and the like. None of these are particularly Hermaic in any sense; Hermes is the eternal divine servant of the rest of the gods and is hardly ruler of anything, much less the whole cosmos; Hermes has no particular associations with the heart, much less being “in the heart”; he’s certainly not associated with the Moon, but with his own planet of Mercury; though he’s the god of communication and rhetoric, he can hardly be said to be the inventor of it; and he’s certainly not an obeyer of justice and laws, being more apt to bend them or break them outright. Rather, these are all of Thoth’s attributes: he’s the creator of the Ogdoad, the principle deities of Hermopolis, and thus the creator of the world; as the guiding god of intelligence, he abides “in the heart”, considered the seat of the mind and soul by the Egyptians; he’s a lunar god; he invented speech and writing, and uses magical words and knowledge of true names; and he’s a god of justice.
Still, the hymns do present commonalities between Thoth and Hermes: the two are both gods that travel the underworld, with Hermes as psychopomp and Thoth as companion of Ra as the sun-god traveled through the underworld every night. The hymns present the god Hermes as “spherical and square”, referring to the Thothian lunar orb and Hermaic herm, and to the emerging neo-Platonic idea of the gods abiding as pure planetary essences in the spheres of heaven. Both are gods of divination, though Thoth is more directly related to this since (as a lunar god which is used to make calendars), he’s the god of the passage of time, and therefore of the duration of the lives of mankind, and therefore of fate, and therefore of prophecy.
Yet other things with the magical hymns are distinctly Greek in nature; they describe “wearing a mantle, with winged sandals”, and the like, though these are distinctly not Thothian qualities. Still, the essentially Egyptian nature of some of these texts leads us to think that explicitly Greek language and description only borrow the iconography of the Greek gods, rather than their essence.
The rough time of writing of the PGM texts, in the 1st to 5th centuries, closely follows the beginning of Hermeticism; although “Hermes Trismegistus” does not appear in the PGM, there are references of a “thrice great Hermes” here and there. Certain lines in these Hermes-Thoth prayers have some Hermetic or Gnostic elements to them; “spherical and square”, for instance, can be interpreted as a kind of Alpha and Omega of the Egyptians; “who hold the wind’s reins” references pneuma, the spirit and breath of life itself, and therefore the capacity to use and obtain the Logos within the body and soul of the human. “Ruler of the cosmos” (kosmokratōr) is a fairly Hermetic term, and “in the heart” can not only represent the seat of the soul in Egyptian thought but also the divine spark of Life within life.
Some of these notes on the PGM text discussed here brought to my mind parallels of the Headless Rite, or the Stele of Ieu in PGM V. There, you have the Headless One (Akephalos), whose name is “Heart Girt with a Serpent”, who “commands all things by the power of [his] voice”, who is “lord, king, master, helper”, “whom the winds fear” (and thus controls), “whose mouth is utterly aflame” (a common Egyptian thing). Thoth is said to be the “lord of sky, earth, water, and mountains”, an Egyptian phrase to symbolize the whole world; the entreaty of power from the Headless Rite asks for Akephalos to subject all spirits “whether heavenly or aetherial” (sky), “upon the earth or under the earth” (earth and mountain), and “in the water or on dry land” (water, earth). The addition of “of whirling air and rushing fire” are later additions added by Crowley in his Lemegeton version of the ritual, but since the entirety of the world was encapsulated in this charge of power in the Headless Rite, I see no reason why it should be augmented so in practice. These types of things are common throughout the PGM, so I’ll need to really go back and do a more thorough inspection of the texts there and see what I can find.
Moving from Egypt to Rome, there was a bit on Mercury in Roman maritime culture. A variant of the Aeneas myth, related by Naevius, says that, as Aeneas was fleeing Troy (or Carthage, it’s unclear and I couldn’t catch the reference), he sailed out on a ship built by Mercury. Mercury isn’t often known as a shipwright, but he is connected to the maritime Romans who used the sea to conquer most of the easily-accessible parts of the Mediterranean, though fighting on land was their primary strength. Like the Samothracians from before, Mercury was related to maritime works only so far as offering safe travels with good results; that Mercury built Aeneas’ ship says that his journey would ultimately be safe (ish) and result in fabulous wealth: the eventual creation of the Roman Empire. Besides, trade will always follow war, and after the Punic Wars that had a lasting impact on Roman minds, trade over sea was significantly increased in importance. There’s some similarities, too, between Aeneas and his Trojans and Jason and his Argonauts, too, another possible source for part of the Aeneid myth.
Speaking of Roman Mercury, let’s stop by in Pompeii, where the remarkably well-preserved town gives us many insights into the paintings and lifestyles of day-to-day citizens. Going down roads in Pompeii, one would pass dozens to hundreds of images of Mercury, most commonly outside storefronts, and sometimes before gambling dens or bathhouses. The ubiquitous of Mercury here would make sense, but how he came to be is a little unusual. The usual Hellenic signs are there: winged sandals and cap, caduceus, and the like. Roman Mercury, however, was often seen carrying a moneybag, and nearly always was presented in motion, such as running towards the doorway of a shop (something that the shopowner would hope their prospective customers would identify with, running into their shops with their wallets).
It would seem like Mercury started appearing on shops due to his role as a god of commerce, but it could be equally as likely that he became a god of commerce because he started appearing on storefronts. It’s like a meme on the Internet; it keeps replicating itself and picks up more uses and stability in a culture. Likewise, Pompeii, being a commerce-based port town, would be getting lots of imports from countries where Hermes was already known; Hermes would be imported as Mercury, who kept appearing on storefronts, and became a symbol of merchantry because of that, not the other way around. In other words, people recognized Mercury as a god of commerce because his presence in areas of commerce developed it over time in its own cultural milieu.
This is not unlike paintings of Jesus Christ. Some people, upon seeing an image of Jesus, will say that “it looks exactly like him”, despite never having seen Jesus in life nor having any textual or archaeological representation of Jesus. Yet, we all know what Jesus looks like because pictures of him were developed almost memetically in our culture for so long. Likewise, Mercury’s role as a god of commerce could easily have been developed over a period of time in the Roman mind due to his constant connections with commerce.
This makes me want to point out that, for all their similarities, Hermes and Mercury are not the same god. Hermes is a native Greek god, while the Romans never had an original god to compare with Hermes, only later borrowing him explicitly as “god of the merchants” (merx, merchant, deus mercum, god of merchants, Mercurius). The tasks and purview of Mercury, inasmuch as they overlap with those of Hermes, present a tightening or refocusing of Hermes’ responsibilities into a distinctly materialistic and mercantile area. Mercury had some other roles here and there, of course, but the two are only similar gods in how they turned out, though they’re certainly much closer to each other than Hermes is with Thoth. This kept getting more and more muddled over time, however, to the point where Hermes and Mercury are essentially synonyms; the Romans of the late classical period certainly saw them that way.
One of the biggest things we have evidence for in Hermes worship are dedications: votive offerings, such as statues or plaques, made in Hermes’ honor. There are a good amount of them, and many describe for what they were given. Despite Hermes’ obvious commercial, pastoral, and heraldic functions, a vast majority of votive offerings were given to Hermes by wrestlers and gymnasts, only secondarily for magistral or priestly functions (and that’s a very far away second). Though Hermes quite naturally becomes the god of geeks in our modern day, he’s also the god of the gymnasium and contests (a fact I’m still, er, wrestling with myself). After all, the monthly and yearly Hermaia were dates for contests of physical and combative skill, especially for young men (over whom Hermes also rules, being the divine equivalent of one himself). When it comes to dedicatory offerings, it would seem like the winners of contests would get a trophy and give another trophy to Hermes in return for his patronage and aid. Only a tiny minority (like less than 5%) of offerings in this manner are for purposes other than wrestling or magistral activities; trade, despite Hermes’ huge role, simply doesn’t show up very often in votive offerings.
It may be that the types of offerings made may depend on the type of work done, or the type of relationship held between devotee and god. For instance, pastors and shepherds may have given skins of animals in dedication to Hermes, or knuckle-bone dice, which had no need or chance to be engraved. Of the engraved dedications we have of votive offerings, the vast majority (like 80~90%) are given by men, and another 5~10% are of unknown gender. Just as profession may dictate what offerings might be appropriate, it’s also likely that one’s gender has a role to play, too. Women simply weren’t as involved in the same spheres of influence that men were, although there are notable exceptions to this (both in terms of the social role women played and votive offerings given by women).
Speaking of Hermes and the gymnasium, a huge amount of epithets used to describe the gods roles, especially in dedicatory inscriptions, relate to contests and wrestling. One such epithet was Εναγωνιος (enagōnios), “presider over contests”, from αγων (agōn), “a gathering for contests” or “struggle” (from whence later came our notions of mental suffering and anguish). This word shares the same root as agora, “a meeting place for a gathering of people”, what we’d consider a forum or marketplace, and Αγωραιος (Agōraios), “of the agora”, is another epithet for Hermes. The god has many more epithets related to these, such as “of the weights” (in the sense of balancing scales for selling and buying), “of the grain-importers”, “chariot driver”, and the like; where people are gathered, Hermes is, too.
One example of this are in votive engraved plaques in mountain caves where nymphs were said to dwell; travelers would take pilgrimages to these caves and honor the nymphs there. These places were often at or near the peaks of mountains in the wild, a fitting place for Pan, leader and companion of the nymphs generally. Hermes, however, frequently appears in such plaques especially on Kos. Generally, the idea is that he’s leading the nymphs out to greet the humans who have traveled there, but it’s also due to his paternal relationship with Pan, his son. Pan and Hermes are tight; Pan’s Homeric Hymn is the only one where the name of the recipient of the hymn is not in the first line, and is here replaced by “the dear child of Hermes” (giving Hermes’ name importance, and not Pan’s).
Hermes really does love Pan, and Pan Hermes. That said, Hermes knows from his own self that Pan is a trickster and often up to no good, and in many votive plaques, Hermes stands between the nymphs and the ithyphallic Pan almost like he’s protecting the nymphs from Pan’s rowdiness. Similarly, herms present in the countryside are perfect to protect one from the more violent and wild side of Pan; Hermes has eyes not only in the back of his head but facing the four directions (rectangular, remember?), perfect for keeping an eye on his rowdy son.

And with that, I bring my writeups to a close. I intended to go to the after-conference dinner with the presenters and other attendees, but it was starting to rain pretty bad and was only going to get worse, so I figured it’d be better to leave sooner rather than later. Two hours later, and I was home, making offerings to Hermes in thanks for a safe, highly informative, and exceedingly excellent time in Charlottesville. The conference has given me so much more knowledge to work with, and has put me in contact with so many amazing experts who really know their shit. Athanassios Vergados, for instance, has recently published his A Commentary on the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, described as “magisterial” and “the definitive word for our time” on the highly important hymn that was brought up time and time again throughout the conference (and I want it SO BAD); Ljuba Bortolani’s research on the PGM and its various cultural connections is something I’m going to be perusing thoroughly later (she also has fantastic taste in jewelry and rolls her own cigarettes, my heroine). Hopefully, the compilation of papers will result in a single volume on Hermes from UVa; if so, you can bet your ass I’ll be talking about it and hawking it to anyone who has ears to listen.

More importantly, despite the brief durations of the talks, the conference really helped open my eyes to a lot of the things that I’ve missed out so far with Hermes or that I’ve only glossed over. The points I brought up, though not indicative of the entire conference, are definitely the ones that stuck out strongest to me, and will help guide me in my future work with Hermes. I’ve already got some research and ritual planning in my mind involving him, such as mapping out his many epithets as they can apply to, say, Qabbalah and the other planets or gods, and writing up a literature-backed Hermaic road-opening ritual. I hope my paltry writeups, which don’t do the presenters nor the presented justice in the least, have helped dispense at least a little of the material to you, dear reader.

And now, to close all this out, I’ll honor Hermes one last way tonight with the shorter Homeric Hymn to Hermes:

I sing of Cyllenian Hermes,
the Slayer of Argos,
lord of Cyllene and Arcadia rich in flocks,
luck-bringing messenger of the deathless gods.

He was born of Maia,
the daughter of Atlas,
when she had made with Zeus,
a shy goddess she.

Ever she avoided the throng of the blessed gods and lived in a shadowy cave,
and there the Son of Cronos used to lie with the rich-tressed nymph at dead of night,
while white-armed Hera lay bound in sweet sleep:
and neither deathless god nor mortal man knew it.

And so hail to you, Son of Zeus and Maia;
with you I have begun:
now I will turn to another song!
Hail, Hermes, giver of grace, guide, and giver of good things!

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Search Term Shoot Back, March 2014

March 31, 2014, 8:50 am

≫ Next: Hail, Saint Isidore of Seville!

≪ Previous: Hermes Conference Recap, Day 3

I get a lot of hits on my blog from across the realm of the Internet, many of which are from links on Facebook, Twitter, or RSS readers. To you guys who follow me: thank you! You give me many happies. However, I also get a huge number of new visitors daily to my blog from people who search around the Internet for various search terms. As part of a monthly project, here are some short replies to some of the search terms people have used to arrive here at the Digital Ambler. This focuses on some search terms that caught my eye during the month of March 2014. This month was particularly awesome with two things in mind: for one, the recent Hermes/Mercury conference, for which the writeups are as complete as I can make them without putting up voice recordings; for two, I crossed the big threshold of 200,000 hits this month! Thank you all so much, dear readers, for ~~serving my plans for world domination~~ sticking with me and all my antics and adventures.

“symbol with dot for north node : symbol without dot-?” — I’m not aware of any symbol for the North Node, also known as the Head of the Dragon or Caput Draconis, that involves a dot. Rather, the symbol for the North Node looks much like the symbol for the sign of Leo (♌) but with both “tails” curved into loops (☊). Similarly, the South Node, a.k.a. Tail of the Dragon or Cauda Draconis, is the same symbol but reversed (☋). There are the related geomantic figures for these signs, too, but there’s no such thing as a geomantic figure “without dot[s]“. So, I’m really not sure what the querent here is trying to look for, but it’s certainly not one of these astrological/astronomical symbols.

“ben franklin potato advocate” — …this is true, he was in fact an advocate and lover of potatoes, and potatoes weren’t really popular in the early history of the United States until he started hawking them. They also make fantastic liquors with them, which is another thing Mr. Franklin would approve of.

“a prayer for charing crystal and mirror” — Being that crystals are usually made of non-combustible minerals, and mirrors are made from non-combustible class and metal, I find it difficult to char these things with fire. It’s possible to crack them apart or shatter them with heat, or get them dirty from soot, but charing isn’t something that can be done. Charging, however, can be more easily done by praying intentfully, calling on the powers you prefer to enter into or deign to consecrate, bless, and charge it for a particular end. There’s no one particular prayer for this, so just say what you want and do it forcefully.

“clear blue digital pregnancy test book symbol” — Er…I understand that the Digital Ambler talks about symbols and books rather often, but this is an unfortunate confluence of search terms that yielded a result most inappropriate for the query. Still, Yahoo! Answers has something better for you. Admittedly, I’m not one to ask about pregnancy tests, since I’m neither female nor predisposed or inclined to children.

“what do six candles represent on altar” — Depends on the candles and the altar. Catholic altars are often seen having six candles, though this is a custom that came about only a few hundred years ago; before that, they were reserved only for high holy rituals, with two candles being common for a low Mass or none at all on the altar. Beyond that, whatever associations go with the number 6, I suppose, indicate the purpose. Some people use six candles for a solar ritual. There’s really no way to answer this question; it’s like “what does the sound does the mean”, where it depends on the specific sound and in what language. Try again, querent.

“need to summon good ghost or spirit free pliz” — Yes, it can be absolutely free! But I won’t do it for you, because that’s like having someone trying to eat for you. You need to do the work yourself, buddy. There are so many resources, on this blog and on many other sites like those on the right hand side of my blog, that are available for free that will get you a running start. Don’t be lazy, and don’t try to outsource your own spiritual work. Our “*-as-a-service” world is not great for individual development. And even if you absolutely need to have someone else do the work for you, why would you expect it to be done as a free service? Lawyers get paid for their expertise, as do doctors and therapists. After putting in all the time, effort, money, and resources into their studies and Work, it’s only fair to recompense a magician for their services to you. You can’t get something for nothing, you know.

“words to summon a demon” — Behold, I have here a most secret conjuration preserved from the ancestors of my ancestors, which I will reveal to you to know now, that you may summon the demons of magnificent and terrible power:

Yo, NN., get your flaming ass over here! I’m serious, I’m for real, I’m dead serious! Quit your shit and come on! Y’all’re gonna piss me off if you don’t show your lazy ass before me, and I don’t want any of your crazy shit tryna scare me. If you don’t show up right here right now, I’m pressin’ charges on your ass and my lawyer is gonna sue you to a hell deeper than you ever been to before. Do you know who I am? I’m motherfucking NN., and I own this shit and I own you. Now come on, I’m not just forcing you for shits and giggles here. In fact, let me give you something to hold you over for a bit. But, really, come on. I need you here; don’t lemme down, now. <cough> …forever and ever, world without end. Amen.

After this, snap four times in the form of a cross, roll your neck, and put a 7-11 taquito in a fire and pour out a Four Loko as an offering to the demon.

“geomantic gods of earth”, “geomantic gods”, etc. — Geomancy isn’t a religion, nor is it even a major part of spiritual practices; it’s just a form of divination, and arose in an Islamic culture and propagated through other Abrahamic cultures and traditions before finally arriving to our libraries in our modern pluralistic world. In that sense, I suppose the god of geomancy would be God, as in that of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and about whom many geomancers of the past (Robert Fludd, Agrippa, al-Zanati, etc.) have written as the ultimate source and original cause of enabling us to use this divinatory method. As far as angels go, we might claim that Gabriel is important to geomancy, being as he is the angel of messengers and heralds generally as well as the one who mythically gave the knowledge of geomancy to (depending on the myth) Adam, Hermes Trismegistus, Enoch, or Idris. Hermes Trismegistus, in his form as the thrice-great Thoth-Hermes, might be considered from this as a god of geomancy, inasmuch as he’s god of any and all occult sciences, divinatory methods, astrology, conjuration, worship, sacrifice, fate, time, language, and the like. Beyond that, if you’re looking at things with a more neopagan mindset, any deity of the earth (and especially of the desert sands) or of “low” divination (as opposed to prophetic divination or astrology) would be fitting, but that’s very tradition-specific and vague.

“can i activate seals of solomon by praying and lighting candles only” — Actually, that’s really about it, though you’d need to swap candles for incense. The Key of Solomon describes how to go about consecrating the pentacles (book I, chapter 8), where you go into a ritual chamber and pray several psalms and a certain prayer over the pentacles. The ritual says you need to have incense burning and to have a special circle drawn on to contain the censer for incense. After that, you suffumigate the talismans in the incense and you’re done. I’d have a candle burning, anyway, and incense is something I find necessary in rituals, but that’s really just about it. The heavy lifting of consecrating the pentacles comes from their construction and proper inscription of the right names and signs in the right places; what comes afterward is just a blessing, and even then, that almost seems to be a minor point to me. Most Solomonic magic, anyway, takes the forms of prayers and invocations, so you’re already basically there.

“how to invoke angels on saturn” — I’d assume the same processes we use on Earth would work reasonably well on Saturn, as well, though there is the issue of figuring out planetary days and hours on the planet. More important would be the issues of actually getting to Saturn and, once there, figuring out a place to land on a planet that has no solid surface; those are questions that beyond my expertise to answer.

“geomanctic symbols + younger futhark”, “futhark + geomantic symbols”, etc. — Apparently there’s some interest in linking together the geomantic figures with the runes of the futhark (elder, younger, Anglo-Saxon futhorc, whatever). I don’t really see a need or a purpose for this besides the ever-dominating Western penchant for completion and connection; there’s no 1-to-1 mapping between the 16 figures and 24 runes of the elder futhark, though there might be such a connection with the 16 runes of the younger futhark, but as far as I’m aware the younger futhark are nearly never used in divination. Geomancy and runic divination, further, come from radically different traditions, cultures, and time periods, and really have little in common (unless you want to use a very late interpretation of runic divination to be assigned to the planets and signs of astrology). Just because two sets of symbols have the same count doesn’t mean there are clean mappings or relationships between them; I might claim that certain types of African diasporic religions have 12 gods, but just because there are also 12 Olympian gods in Hellenic paganism doesn’t mean that they’re the same or that there are clean connections between the two. (I realize that this kinda leads me to thumb my nose at people like Agrippa, Crowley, and Skinner who are known for their correspondence tables, but I can’t be the only one who thinks that one can take these things only so far without them breaking down miserably.)

“how do you manifest with orgone energy” — You manifest things, and then orgone energy exists. One doesn’t really manifest anything with orgone energy except…I guess, more orgone energy. It’s like using the qi/chi/ki in the body to make food appear; it can be effected by means of the body to go out and buy or harvest supplies that can then be processed into food, but qi/chi/ki cannot itself make food. Likewise, orgone energy doesn’t itself manifest desires; it’s the animating force behind other systems that enables them to work so as to manifest a desire or will. You can use orgone energy to maintain health and activity, which you can then direct to manifest, but you can’t be so direct with orgone energy alone. However, you can use orgone energy (being, as it is, an ambient resource of magical power) in other magical rituals to focus and charge talismans (like my Mercury election experiment), intents, desires, and the like; again, however, this isn’t using orgone directly as much as it is empowering other things to work directly.

“sigil to sigil symbol to symbol magic to magic planetary to planetary occult to occult astrology to astrology” — You’re so thorough! I’m sure you found exactly what you needed.

“the finger ring of solomon” — There’s lots of information known about the ring of Solomon on the internet, largely due to resources like the Lemegeton and John Dee’s Enochiana works (cf. the PELE ring). Still, the way this query was phrased leads me to believe that the good King Solomon may have other types of rings he may have used. In that case, I want dibs on the design for and production of the cockring of Solomon.

“summon spirits without ritual” — This is a moot point; summoning is a ritual. It’s like saying “eating food without nutrition” or “sleeping without closing eyes”. Of course, my idea of ritual is pretty far-reaching, but then, there’s no reason for it to not be so broad.

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Hail, Saint Isidore of Seville!

April 4, 2014, 7:16 am

≫ Next: Chaplet of Saint Cyprian of Antioch

≪ Previous: Search Term Shoot Back, March 2014

Although a lot of my practice in recent weeks has been focusing on working with saints, usually the holy archangels or the good Saint Cyprian of Antioch, there’s another saint that I want to bring up today on this blessed Friday. First, it’s the monthly Hermaia, being the fourth day of the lunar month, so it’s fitting that this day coincides with the feast day of the Catholic saint, Isidore of Seville, whose feast day is April 4. He’s not one of the more popular saints, but he’s definitely important to me and my work. Given that he wrote what is basically the first encyclopedia, he’s usually associated with mass stores of knowledge and data, which is why he’s given patronage over students generally and anything dealing with computers: IT technicians, programmers, software engineers, computer users, computers themselves, and the Internet. (Yes, the Internet.)

Saint Isidore of Seville was born in 560 CE in southeastern Spain to a family of Roman and Visigothic ancestry, high up in society and related to Visigothic royalty. Well-educated, Isidore became bishop at around 40 years of age, and incorporated both Roman, Visigothic, and Hispanic cultures into his see, and helped to conquer several sects of heretical Christians as well as tame barbarism in the general peoples. In addition to helping culture his own people, he also pronounced anathema against any ecclesiastic who would molest monasteries or, notably, children (something both the modern Church and modern paganism should heed, especially given recent news). Happily (or perhaps boringly), St. Isidore died on his own after serving 32 years as archbishop of Seville, unmartyred or killed.

Among his most notable works is that of the Etymologiae, or “Origins”, an encyclopedia that collected all that classical education had to offer at the close of the late classical and antique periods. To say that this was a lot of information was an understatement; the Etymologiae had sections on grammar and language, mathematics, medicine, law, angelology and theology, animals, physics, geography, metallurgy, agriculture, tools, domestic matters, and many more. The work encompassed twenty books in all, each dedicated to a specific topic. One especially notable exemplar of this work is the Codex Gigas, the world’s largest medieval manuscript, consisting of 620 36″×20″ pages, consisting of the Vulgate Bible, several books of history, the entirety of the Etymologiae, several medical works, magical information, and many other sections. One legend has it that a monk, sentenced to death by being walled up alive, wrote the entire book with the aid of the Devil in a single night; as gratitude, the author drew a large illustration of the Devil in the book, hence the name of the codex.

Saint Isidore, as many other saints do, has many attributes associated with him, but his two most important ones are bees and books. Bees, as well as swarms of bees and beehives, have always been seen as a symbol of industriousness and labor, as well as community, cooperation, and connection between individuals for a greater purpose. Books, of course, as well as pens are notable for St. Isidore, given his prodigious writing projects. It’s clear to those with a basic grasp of symbolism what St. Isidore stands for: work, study, networking, and getting things done, especially when it comes to matters of intellect, education, and mental power. Fittingly, St. Isidore is good for all types of students and academics, from graduate researchers to grade school pupils.

But it’s his connection to one of the first encyclopedias that he’s given patronage over computers and the Internet. As I mentioned way, way, way, way long ago in my XaTuring days, I don’t believe computers are forever, nor will we have the economic or fuel resources to maintain things like this forever; server farms, after all, take an extraordinary amount of energy, and without someone “thinking of something to fix it”, it’s an amazing aspect of our current age that we can maintain these types of connections and networks. By allowing people to chat instantly from all over the world, to storing and processing more data in a single short night than humanity was able to collect in a thousand years, to creating massive troves of porn and warez for us to enjoy. If nothing else, the Internet is the modern human beehive and collaborative supercollective, and it’s more than fair to say that many inventions and scientific research would not be possible without this type of connection and network.

Besides, there’s another more snarky reason why St. Isidore might be patron over the Internet. As many of my readers realized, a few days past was April Fools Day, or as I like to call it, “Trust Nothing and Trust Nobody Day”. Virtually anything on the Internet that day is wrong, but then, most stuff on the Internet is wrong anyway, being passed mimetically from mouth to mouth or keyboard to keyboard, like that meme that goes around this time every year now claiming that the holiday Easter comes from the ancient goddess Ishtar (which is completely wrong). Likewise, for all his studies and scholarship, St. Isidore was limited in only what he could find out, which leads to studies such as that of spontaneous generation. For instance, he claims that “many creatures go through a natural change and by decay pass into different forms, as bees by the decaying flesh of calves, as beetles from horses, locusts from mules, scorpions from crabs”. Obviously not true, but then, that’s information for you. Just as the Internet can be a neverending repository of all information, wrong and right, so too is the work of Isidore of Seville, but it can’t be faulted against him. For all his incorrect facts, he helped spur further research and study to correct what was wrong, just as people on the Internet do all the time.

One modern prayer to Saint Isidore in his patronage over the Internet might be worth considering, especially for those who browse comments on forums, YouTube, and the like:

Almighty and eternal God, who has created us in Thy image, and hast bidden us to seek after all that is good, true, and beautiful, especially in the divine person of thy only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, grant, we beseech Thee, that through the intercession of Saint Isidore, bishop and doctor, during our journeys through the Internet we will direct our hands and eyes only to that which is pleasing to Thee and treat with charity and patience all those souls whom we encounter. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.

A more traditional prayer attributed to Saint Isidore of Seville goes like this:

Here we are before thee, O Holy Ghost.
We feel the burden of our infirmities, but we are united all together in Thy name:
come to us, help us, enter into our hearts:
teach us what we should do, the path to follow,
do for us what Thou askest us to do.
Be the only one to propose and guide our decisions,
because only Thou, with the Father and the Son,
hast a name that is glorious and holy.
Do not allow us to offend justice,
Thou, who lovest order and peace,
Let not ignorance lead us astray,
Let not human sympathy bias us,
Do not let people or office influence us.
Keep us intimately close to Thee with the gift of Thy Grace,
so that we may be only one thing with Thee,
and nothing may separate us from the Truth.
Gathered in Thy Holy Name, may we be good and firm,
so that all we do may be in one accord with Thee,
awaiting that the faithful fulfillment of our duty
may lead us to the eternal good. Amen.

So, dear readers, if you’ve been having problems with studying for spring midterms or finals, whether you need extra help in getting your computer right, or whether you want an extra pair of eyes watching out for you to make sure you don’t share something on Facebook that’s cute and mind-numbingly stupid, you might want to light a candle and offer a class of water to this good saint today.

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Chaplet of Saint Cyprian of Antioch

April 5, 2014, 9:15 am

≫ Next: New Ebook! “The Book of Saint Cyprian”

≪ Previous: Hail, Saint Isidore of Seville!

My recent prayer work has definitely gotten a boost lately. It’s always refreshing to get back on the ball, so to speak, after several weeks of having things go wonky or with other life events interfering in my Work and study, and (even though I’m guilty of procrastinating as often as not on this) prayer is one of the things I really enjoy. Sometimes I get a good spiritual buzz out of it, sometimes I engage with conversation and communion with the spirits, and sometimes I do it for the sake of contemplation or introspection. Regardless, prayer forms a good foundation for my spiritual work. Generally, my prayers don’t take that long to do, which may not be a great thing. Admittedly, I should probably slow down with my prayers and perform them in a more contemplative, slow manner, but it’s easy to just fall into the habit of falling into the right “feel” of the prayer and letting the words of the prayer carry me on from there. Prayer should be more than just words, after all.

Something I’ve found helpful for me to slow down and focus more on the prayers individually are repeating them, especially with the use of prayer beads. I’ve been using them for years, often in the form of 108-bead malas (usually made of sandalwood or rosewood) for Buddhist mantras and, more recently, personal mantras or names using my 108-bead labradorite mala. Not too long ago, the good Michael Seb Lux helped me out with sharing a gnostic Marian rosary, since a rosary is also a style of repeated prayer using prayer beads. Since then, I’ve explored other styles of prayer beads, one of which is the chaplet used in Western Christian, especially Catholic, traditions. The word “chaplet” can refer to either the actual prayer beads themselves or the prayers to be done using the beads, and in either case help those who use them for prayer and devotion. There’s no set form to chaplets generally speaking besides the use of beads and repeated prayers, and not all chaplets have official status or recognition, though a good number do.

One of the most common chaplets is the generic “niner” chaplet, which consists of a medallion of a saint or holy image, followed by nine beads (either evenly spaced or spaced into three groups of three beads), sometimes followed by a crucifix. One begins by holding the saint medallion and invoking the saint (e.g. “Saint NN., pray for us”); on each set of three beads, one says a Pater Noster, a Gloria Patri, and an Ave Maria; on the crucifix, one says the or some other personal prayer. Sometimes these niner chaplets are done as part of novenas or as a novena, repeated for nine days. It’s simple and generic, and generally useful for pretty much any saint or holy figure. As with all chaplets, praying a simple niner chaplet in the name of some saint can further one’s devotion, relationship, and intercession with them, which is no bad thing, especially if you plan to call upon them for help or in ritual.

However, many saints have their own special chaplets designed especially for them, with a certain number of beads in a particular order or arrangement, some with a crucifix, some not. Often, there are customary colors for each of the saints, such as red and gold for Saint Michael the Archangel, red and white for Saint Philomena, and so forth. In this sense, the rosary itself is essentially a specialized chaplet celebrating the Mysteries, and is particularly associated with Mary. There are many types of specialized chaplets, some devoted to a particular saint or to a particular event, and unlike novenas or other well-known prayers, many chaplets are unofficial and used primarily in personal devotions but are kept in a fixed way according to custom and tradition. I personally use the chaplet of Saint Michael the Archangel and the chaplet of Saint Gabriel the Archangel once a week (Sundays for Michael and Mondays for Gabriel) which I’ve found to not only improve my relationships with the angels themselves but also substantially reinforces any magic done with them when used in a ritual.

To that end, I was wondering whether there might be a chaplet associated with my newest spiritual ally and teacher, Saint Cyprian of Antioch. I didn’t have very many hopes of this, since Saint Cyprian isn’t that well-known of a saint except by folk traditions, and he’s often confused with the similarly-named but as poorly-known Saint Cyprian of Carthage. Even then, though, Saint Cyprian of Carthage didn’t have his own chaplet, so my options were limited. I didn’t feel like using a simple niner chaplet for Saint Cyprian was good enough for me or for him, so I decided to design and write up my own Chaplet of Saint Cyprian of Antioch.

This chaplet consists of a medal of Saint Cyprian of Antioch, followed by three beads, attached to a ring of 27 beads separated into three groups of enneads (a set of 9 beads) with three separator beads. The medal and three initial beads are attached to one of the separator beads. The beads should be colored according to the preferences of Saint Cyprian of Antioch: dark red, purple, indigo, black, and white. I suggest black and purple beads, given his associations with some African Diasporic gods like Babalu Aye. Alternatively, you might consider the first ennead to consist of black beads, the second to consist of purple beads, and the third to consist of white beads. When using precious or fancy beads, I find that onyx, jet, or black tourmaline; amethyst or garnet; and howlite, white agate, or bone work very nicely; for wood, ebony, rosewood, and white oak would be excellent. Since Saint Cyprian of Antioch medals are hard to come across, a crucifix can work instead, calling on the power of Christ through the intercession of Saint Cyprian of Antioch; a simply named “Saint Cyprian” medal (usually of the image of Saint Cyprian of Carthage) can suffice, since the two saints are often confused enough to merge the two. If these can’t be found, a black-and-white evil eye charm or large skull bead can work instead. Be creative and work with what you’ve got.

Since the number 9 is sacred to Saint Cyprian, I figured it was appropriate to have the sets of beads have nine each. Each of the three enneads represents one of the three persons of the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), as well as the three stages of Saint Cyprian’s life (initiate, magus, and saint). The medal and the first three beads form the introduction, praying an act of contrition (though I’m waffling between using this and the Confiteor instead) followed by two prayers to Saint Cyprian, one Orthodox and one Catholic. The chaplet generally consists of the formula “Saint Cyprian of Antioch, …, pray for us”, each prayer followed by a Gloria Patri, with the middle of the prayer containing a short description of an event from the life of Saint Cyprian, and the beads separating the enneads indicating one to pray the Pater Noster. The descriptions of Saint Cyprian are combined from a history from the Orthodox tradition as well as a prayer of Jason Miller to the good Saint Cyprian.

Introduction
1. Medal: Saint Cyprian of Antioch, pray for us, now and at the hour of our death.
2. First Bead: O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you, and I detest all my sins because they offend you, my God, who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of your grace, to confess my sins, to do good, avoid evil, and to amend my life. Amen.
3. Second Bead: Saint Cyprian of Antioch, you were converted from the art of sorcery, O divinely wise one, to the knowledge of God, and were manifested to the world as a most wise physician, granting healing to those who honor you, O Cyprian together with Justina. With her, then, entreat the Master, the Lover of mankind, that He may save our souls. Amen.
4. Third Bead: Saint Cyprian of Antioch, who by Divine Grace was converted to the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, you who possessed the highest secrets of magic, build now a refuge for me against my enemies and their evil deeds. For the merit that you obtained before God, Creator of Heaven and Earth, cancel out evil spells, products of hate, the spells that hardened hearts have cast or will come to cast against my person and against my home. With the permission of God Almighty answer my prayer and come to my assistance, for the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
First Separator: Pater Noster, &c.
First Ennead: Cyprian the Initiate
1. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, born in Carthage to pagan parents, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
2. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, dedicated to the god Apollo as a child, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
3. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, taught sorcery in Olympos, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
4. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, taught illusion in Argos, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
5. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, taught witchcraft in Tauropolis, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
6. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, taught necromancy in Sparta, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
7. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, taught enchantment in Memphis, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
8. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, taught astrology in Chaldaea, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
9. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, master of all the occult arts, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
Second Separator: Pater Noster, &c.
Second Ennead: Cyprian the Magus
1. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, magus residing in Antioch, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
2. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, approached by Aglaias to seduce Justina, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
3. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, unleashing demons of lust upon Justina, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
4. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, unleashing demons of deception upon Justina, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
5. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, unleashing the Devil himself upon Justina, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
6. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, wringing disaster on Antioch against Justina, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
7. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, casting deadly illness upon Justina, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
8. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, all magic defeated by the prayers of Justina, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
9. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, seeing Truth and rebuking the Devil and his snares, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
Third Separator: Pater Noster, &c.
Third Ennead: Cyprian the Saint
1. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, burning his books in sacrifice to God, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
2. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, confessing repentantly for his sins before all Antioch, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
3. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, baptized in the name of the Blessed Trinity, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
4. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, made priest within a year by his zeal for holiness, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
5. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, made bishop to lead all to divine virtue, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
6. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, condemned to death by the Romans, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
7. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, beheaded and departed into Heaven, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
8. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, entering into the communion of the holy saints, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.
9. Saint Cyprian of Antioch, preserving us from all evil arts and acts, pray for us. Gloria Patri, &c.

Once completed, the chaplet may be concluded with any personal prayers to Saint Cyprian of Antioch or with something more general, such as the Creed of the Faith. The chaplet may be prayed at any time, but is especially fitting on Saint Cyprian’s feast day (September 26 in the Western tradition, October 2 in the Orthodox tradition) or on Saturdays, the day of the week associated with Saint Cyprian, and generally at nighttime, especially midnight. Saying the chaplet for nine consecutive days can be sufficient for a novena to Saint Cyprian, though there already exists a novena (available mostly in Spanish, but I’ve got my own translation in line for a future ebook). The chaplet pays to be prayed slowly and carefully, as any prayer might; by doing it slowly, the chaplet should take about 10 minutes to perform.

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New Ebook! “The Book of Saint Cyprian”

April 8, 2014, 8:49 am

≫ Next: Geomancy Hangout on April 26!

≪ Previous: Chaplet of Saint Cyprian of Antioch

If synchronicity actually is a thing, it takes a prodigious level of thickheadedness to miss omens and portents that signify something important. Not that long ago, I was in a botanica with my boyfriend, and in the case where they had several books on magic, the orishas, aspects of ATRs and ifá and the like, I found a particular book that caught my eye. It had the Hierophant card on the front from the Thoth deck, which seemed out of place in the botanica I was in; looking at the title of the book, I noticed that it was a small grimoire attributed to none other than Saint Cyprian of Antioch, the patron saint of magicians and sorcerers I keep harping on about. Since I’ve only ever heard about such a book being attributed to Saint Cyprian in Spanish, I decided to snatch it up that moment. I did say at the beginning of the year that I wanted to work with him, after all, so if something like this was basically being handed to me, I may as well take it up.

The book was in Spanish, but it was fairly easy to read, given my background in Latin and not a little help from Google Translate and a good Spanish dictionary. The book was also small, however, and seemed incomplete in some ways. Looking around online, I found an even larger and more comprehensive book under the name “El Libro de San Cipriano”, which had nearly all (but not the entirety of) the smaller Cyprian book I had found, as well as a good few sections on Solomonic magic incorporating the Key of Solomon and the Grimorium Verum. Many of the spells, prayers, and rituals the book describes seemed interesting to me, so I decided to translate the sections that seemed most worthwhile, i.e. the ones not directly lifted from other grimoire texts. And, having finished my translation, I decided to go ahead and put it into an ebook format and sell it on my Etsy page.

Yes, dear reader, you too can now read the Book of Saint Cyprian in English for only US$10! I’ve never found an English translation before, though one may exist somewhere. Coming in at 83 pages, this translation goes over the talismans and amulets, prayers and orations, and many spells that have circulated through the Spanish-speaking world for at least a century now, all attributed to the good Saint Cyprian of Antioch. Included in this text, too, is a special novena dedicated to Saint Cyprian and Saint Justina, which is claimed to have the following effects:

No one will cause you evil through magical or cabalistic objects, nor through enchantments; all your difficulties will be overcome and your enemies unarmed; your spirit will be made tranquil and will soar to the highest heights where it will be freed from its material body, enjoy heavenly delights, and spread its influence over all events and matters. You will achieve such things as you desire at the novena’s end if you run true with these prayers to the Supreme Creator.

Because this grimoire overlaps significantly with other texts such as the Key of Solomon, the Arbatel, the Heptameron of Pietro d’Abano, and the Grimorium Verum, I’ve also provided an appendix that compares the Libro de San Cipriano to these texts and figure out where in the grimoire tradition this Spanish text falls, as well as how they differ in the details. As I’m just now getting to read Jake Stratton-Kent’s marvelous Testament of Saint Cyprian the Mage, this little translation should help immensely in understanding more of the background around the renaissance the renown of this saint is currently undergoing.

Again, all you need to do is visit this Etsy link and click on the big green button. I’m glad to be able to offer this translation, especially since it’s done partially as an act of devotion to Saint Cyprian of Antioch, as well as furthering the knowledge of grimoires within the Internet-based occulture. And don’t forget, you can also check out my other ebooks on my Etsy page, too! I’ll start keeping a list of all the ebooks I’ve written so far on the panel to the right of the page on my website for easy access, too.

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Geomancy Hangout on April 26!

April 11, 2014, 10:46 am

≫ Next: From Planetary Hours to Zodiacal Hours

≪ Previous: New Ebook! “The Book of Saint Cyprian”

So I’ve recently started a thing on the internets where I get together with a bunch of people and voicechat about occult things. Now that I have a decent headset and webcam, this is actually a possibility for me where there was none before, so it’s pretty nifty. Last month in March was my first time organizing such an event, and it was surprisingly well-received, so I figure I’ll make it a monthly event. Whether you have a webcam or no, feel free to join in on my Google+ Hangouts! While I’ll generally introduce a topic and guide the conversation and perhaps teach a bit, it’s also a way for you to get involved and share your ideas (and believe me, there’s plenty I can learn as well from you).

The next one is scheduled for Saturday, April 26 at 4 p.m. EDT. This month, we’ll be talking about the elements of the geomantic figures, where they come from, and how to use them in divination and magic. The Facebook event for the hangout can be found here, and the original G+ event page here. If you can, say whether you’ll be going on either page; if you want to surprise me or just pop in, the actual link for the hangout chat can be found here. Hope to see you there!

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From Planetary Hours to Zodiacal Hours

April 13, 2014, 8:21 am

≫ Next: Four Chaplets of Saint Cyprian For Sale!

≪ Previous: Geomancy Hangout on April 26!

Finally, now that it’s officially spring (the Sun entered Aries back on the 20th), I’m starting a year-long project. No, it’s not the Abramelin, because I don’t need to do that at this point. Rather, it’s a series of new conjurations for me to learn more about that most mysterious of spheres, that of the fixed stars. I plan on doing conjurations of each of the angels ruling over the signs of the Zodiac this year, each angel while the Sun is in its proper zodiac sign, and learning and integrating myself more with the sphere of the fixed stars. After all, I started with the elements, then I moved onto the planets; the stars are simply the next step, as I see it. There are multiple ways one could go about this: work straight-up with Iophiel, angel ruling of the sphere of fixed stars as a whole; work with the 28 angels of the lunar mansions; or work with the 12 angels of the Zodiac signs. I plan on doing all three, but this year I want to focus on the zodiacal angels, since they’re more familiar to me.

Of course, I can’t do much ritual without getting all my ducks in a row. I plan on studying the signs first from another magical perspective, then getting my gear together and making a lamen for these particular angels, and so forth. One important ritual is timing, and timing to the zodiacal signs is…interesting. Planetary conjurations rely on planetary days and hours, which is pretty straightfoward, but I’m unsure about the signs. Astrological common sense says I should do a conjuration while the sign is rising or culminating (ascendant or midheaven), but given my work schedule, that may not always be possible. Since we use planetary days and hours to circumvent the use of proper astrological elections for the planets for ritual purposes, I wondered why we don’t have a similar system in place for the signs of the Zodiac. So I made one up.

For those who have been living under a rock, let me describe the 12 signs of the Zodiac and how they correspond to the planets. Of course, I’m working only with the seven traditional planets, so throw out what you know about Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, since they don’t come into play here. Before continuing, you should learn about what the planetary hours are, because the zodiacal hours are just an extension based off them. To describe only what’s needed about the zodiac signs at a very high level:

There are seven planets: the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Of these, the Sun and Moon are called luminaries, since they’re bright enough to light the world.
There are 12 signs in the Zodiac: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces.
The luminary planets rule over one sign each; the nonluminary planets rule over two signs each.
- The Sun rules over Leo.
- The Moon rules over Cancer.
- Mercury rules over Gemini and Virgo.
- Venus rules over Taurus and Libra.
- Mars rules over Aries and Scorpio.
- Jupiter rules over Pisces and Sagittarius.
- Saturn rules over Aquarius and Capricorn.
Each sign has one of the four elements, so there are three Fire signs, three Air signs, three Water signs, and three Earth signs.
- Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius are all Fiery.
- Taurus, Virgo, and Capricorn are all Earthy.
- Gemini, Libra, and Aquarius are all Airy.
- Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces are all Watery.
Each sign is either masculine or feminine, so there are six Masculine signs and six Feminine signs. Masculine signs are either Fiery or Airy, and Feminine signs are either Watery or Earthy.
- Aries, Gemini, Leo, Libra, Sagittarius, and Aquarius are all Masculine.
- Taurus, Cancer, Virgo, Scorpio, Capricorn, and Pisces are all Feminine.

Got it? Good.

All we do to develop the zodiacal hours is we replace the planet ruling over an hour with its corresponding zodiacal sign. So, any hours of the Sun become hours of Leo, and any hours of the Moon become hours of Cancer. So far, so good, but what about the other planets that rule two signs each? For that, we look at whether a given hour is diurnal (daytime, between sunrise and sunset) or nocturnal (nighttime, between sunset and sunrise). If an hour is diurnal, we use the masculine sign; if nocturnal, the feminine sign. So, a diurnal hour of Mars becomes an hour of Aries, while a nocturnal hour of Mars becomes an hour of Scorpio.

It’s really that simple. So, a complete table of zodiacal hours for each day of the week would look like this:

Hour	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
1	Leo	Cancer	Aries	Gemini	Sagittarius	Libra	Aquarius
2	Libra	Aquarius	Leo	Cancer	Aries	Gemini	Sagittarius
3	Gemini	Sagittarius	Libra	Aquarius	Leo	Cancer	Aries
4	Cancer	Aries	Gemini	Sagittarius	Libra	Aquarius	Leo
5	Aquarius	Leo	Cancer	Aries	Gemini	Sagittarius	Libra
6	Sagittarius	Libra	Aquarius	Leo	Cancer	Aries	Gemini
7	Aries	Gemini	Sagittarius	Libra	Aquarius	Leo	Cancer
8	Leo	Cancer	Aries	Gemini	Sagittarius	Libra	Aquarius
9	Libra	Aquarius	Leo	Cancer	Aries	Gemini	Sagittarius
10	Gemini	Sagittarius	Libra	Aquarius	Leo	Cancer	Aries
11	Cancer	Aries	Gemini	Sagittarius	Libra	Aquarius	Leo
12	Aquarius	Leo	Cancer	Aries	Gemini	Sagittarius	Libra
13	Pisces	Taurus	Capricorn	Leo	Cancer	Scorpio	Virgo
14	Scorpio	Virgo	Pisces	Taurus	Capricorn	Leo	Cancer
15	Leo	Cancer	Scorpio	Virgo	Pisces	Taurus	Capricorn
16	Taurus	Capricorn	Leo	Cancer	Scorpio	Virgo	Pisces
17	Virgo	Pisces	Taurus	Capricorn	Leo	Cancer	Scorpio
18	Cancer	Scorpio	Virgo	Pisces	Taurus	Capricorn	Leo
19	Capricorn	Leo	Cancer	Scorpio	Virgo	Pisces	Taurus
20	Pisces	Taurus	Capricorn	Leo	Cancer	Scorpio	Virgo
21	Scorpio	Virgo	Pisces	Taurus	Capricorn	Leo	Cancer
22	Leo	Cancer	Scorpio	Virgo	Pisces	Taurus	Capricorn
23	Taurus	Capricorn	Leo	Cancer	Scorpio	Virgo	Pisces
24	Virgo	Pisces	Taurus	Capricorn	Leo	Cancer	Scorpio

So, how would I go about using them? Simple enough: for a ritual invoking Aries, I’d do the ritual in an Aries hour, or a diurnal Mars hour. Of course, there’s some leeway with this; Mars hours are generally good, as are those of the Sun (the Sun is exalted in Aries, after all). Same goes for all the other planets. It’s a simple thing, really, but it’s another refinement that I might experiment with. The logic makes sense, but what really matters is whether it works. If the angel of Aries doesn’t care whether he’s evoked in daytime or nighttime, for instance, or whether he cares about planetary hours at all, then this system isn’t needed generally. Since the sphere of fixed stars is higher than those of the planets, timing may not be a crucial factor generally. Let’s find out!

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Four Chaplets of Saint Cyprian For Sale!

April 13, 2014, 1:07 pm

≫ Next: On Keeping the Occult Occulted

≪ Previous: From Planetary Hours to Zodiacal Hours

After getting the go-ahead from Saint Cyprian with my chaplet to him and the design for his prayer beads, I went ahead and made some chaplets for myself and my friends to use in working with him. This required getting a handful of Saint Cyprian of Antioch medals, which are hard to come by. I left the handful of things on his altar to cook and consecrate, and now they’re all done and ready to go. Still, even after making chaplets for myself and my friends, and after reserving some medals for some other occult purposes, I had a few extra leftover. With Saint Cyprian’s permission, I made some more chaplets and have decided to put them up for sale for those who wish to work with the good saint.

I have four Chaplets of Saint Cyprian for sale; each has a Saint Cyprian of Antioch (specifically of Antioch, not of Carthage) medallion with “Ruega Por Nosotros” (Spanish for “Pray For Us”) on the reverse. Each has been set on Saint Cyprian’s altar, being anointed with oil and prayed over with a novena to Saint Cyprian along with the chaplet itself for each of the nine nights; they’ve been blessed so that those who pray the chaplet to Saint Cyprian of Antioch will receive his blessings of protection from evil arts and acts, as well as receive his aid in learning the occult arts. Each chaplet is unique in design.

Saint Cyprian of Antioch Chaplet, howlite and garnet

Saint Cyprian of Antioch Chaplet, onyx and amethyst

Saint Cyprian of Antioch Chaplet, amethyst and onyx

Saint Cyprian of Antioch Chaplet, howlite and amethyst and onyx

Each of the chaplets is US$81, which includes standard shipping to anywhere in the world (i.e. free shipping). The chaplets are first-come first-serve, so if you want one of these chaplets, you should probably decide sooner rather than later; I’ll cross out each chaplet on this post as they’re bought. To help you get started with working with the good saint, I’ll email you a copy of my translation of the Book of Saint Cyprian (available on Etsy here for $10), as well. All you need to do is click on the link for each chaplet given above, which will take you to my Etsy page where they’re listed. When they’re gone, they’re gone!

Of course, you can still find plenty of other information about Saint Cyprian out there. Hadean Press has two chapbooks on Saint Cyprian, one written by ConjureMan Ali and another by Nicolaj de Mattos Frisvold; Spanish speakers can easily find and read books and blogs on Saint Cyprian (being one of the most popular Spanish grimoires in publication for god-knows-how-long). Plus, there’s also Jake Stratton-Kent’s excellent Testament of Saint Cyprian the Mage from Scarlet Imprint, if you have the extra pocket money for it (and if not, you should totally save up for it).

And yes, this is probably the last of a flurry of posts on Saint Cyprian for a while. I am doing other Work in my life, I assure you, but there’s plenty of other crafting talk to mention.

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On Keeping the Occult Occulted

April 16, 2014, 8:51 am

≫ Next: The Sash of Powers, or a Fancy New Magical Thingie

≪ Previous: Four Chaplets of Saint Cyprian For Sale!

I’m extraordinarily lucky in my occult practice that I live as a free adult in my ostensibly secular country, without the control or necessarily involvement of my family, coworkers, or even roommates. I have my own apartment where I do what I want, I have my own income that I spend how I want, I have my own schedule that I set how I want, and I have my own practice that I effect how I want, largely without the supervision or interference of outside parties. My family, though aware of and amused by my occult works, don’t have any say in what I do, nor will they disown me for living my life the way I find best. My job is independent of my occult work and I am legally protected from incurring any punishment for my activities outside the workplace, especially as they pertain to my religious and spiritual beliefs and practices. I live in a country whose laws protect me, my beliefs, and my free exercise (or lack of exercise) thereof, and where there’s a large and healthy occult interest where I can find many people to share my beliefs and discussions with openly or semi-openly. And I count myself as among the extraordinarily lucky and fortunate that my boyfriend (and many of our friends, shared and otherwise) isn’t just permissive of the occult but is an active participant in it, studying and training in his own ways for his own purposes, and who mutually aids me as I aid him in our spiritual lives and growth.

Not everyone can be so lucky, however. Many who want to study and practice magic, the occult, or religious lifestyles often cannot do so nearly as openly, if at all, given their living situations. Sometimes it’s because their culture won’t permit it, finding occult studies and practices harmful or dangerous, and punishing those who engage in the occult with imprisonment, torture, or death. Sometimes it’s because of their resources, where they simply can’t afford the space, tools, or supplies that many magicians use (and the temple’s worth of ceremonial regalia my type of magic is known for). Sometimes it’s because they live with others in close quarters and don’t wish to disturb them or rouse their ire at engaging with this stuff, either out of respect for their housemates or out of fear of their reactions. Many reasons abound for this, but I’d wager that the fear of religious persecution and oppression is a big one. I mean, look at how religions like Santeria and Palo Mayombe developed under the slave trade in the Caribbean from their ancestral African forms; depending on the culture, occult and spiritual practices might be blended and merged with those of the slavers and colonialists, or they might be hidden away and kept furtive and secretive when the colonialists punish them.

And this is why magic, spirituality, spirit-working, and the like is called the occult. The occult is called the “occult” because it’s literally a hidden, secretive, and unrevealed thing to most of the world. It’s, quite literally, an esoteric study and practice, and though many magicians and occultists (including myself, obviously) have no qualms about talking about it in public, it’s ultimately an intensely personal and internal practice that cannot and can never be shared with others on a fundamental level; each person must develop themselves in their own way according to their own personality and internal self. Whether it’s out of fear of persecution or merely misunderstanding, many occult topics simply can’t be shared or revealed to the public. The fourth power of the Sphinx, “to keep silent”, is a development of this; by keeping silent about one’s work, not only will you prevent the world from fucking it up or fucking you up, but you’ll also keep the mysteries a mystery in the classical and original sense. The occult truly thrives when it’s done privately, personally, and internally, and practicing it in such a manner will give the practitioner a true power that otherwise they might lack.

I was recently emailed by a young man nearing the age of majority who was living with his atheist parents yet wanted to study and practice magic in a way that wouldn’t disturb them or arouse their suspicions. He couldn’t set up any kind of altar, nor can he perform any kind of advanced ritual; the most he’s been able to do are little amulets and charms and some invocation. He wanted my thoughts and advice on how he might further his spiritual practice in this situation. I can completely sympathize with him, too; when I first moved up to the DC metro region four years ago, I was living with my then-ex-boyfriend who wasn’t very spiritual, and though my spiritual work was just starting then, I didn’t want to do much when he was around, much less intoning arcane words of power or making holy water on Wednesdays when we both might be working at home and he needed the kitchen. Still, I was able to at least start my spiritual practice regardless of his presence, and though it truly blossomed out after he left and I had the apartment to myself for a few months (and got over any apprehension about practicing magic with a future housemate), it was those initial months of practicing in a private and internal way that helped me the most.

First, never forget that no matter what the external world controls in your life, it can only ever control the external things in your life. The people around you, the resources available to you, the places you find yourself in, and the like all only ever affect the external well-being and state of your life, like your body’s health, the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the parties you go to or are made to go to, and so forth. None of these things, however, are you, and none of these things can truly affect your internal self. No matter what happens to you, you are the only one who can ever decide how you react to them and act based on them. To draw a comparison with aikido, no matter where someone grabs you or attacks you on your body, they can never get your one-point, or center of balance; you can give them your center of balance and let them pin you to the ground, or you can maintain it and move them around no matter how they grab onto you. It’s the same with the mind and the spirit; no matter what someone tells you to think or how to act, you are the only one who can determine what you think or how you act. Once you’ve established this primacy and independence of mind from the world, you’ve unrepentantly and irrevocably opened the door to a new way of life, your own way of life. With that done, everything else is just details.

So what are these details in terms of a spiritual and magical practice? It’s the simple basics of stuff, really, that I keep harping on about when it comes to magical practice. The most important resources you need for this are privacy and time, which you likely if you have the capacity to email me or read my blog from a first-world country. If you have your own bedroom where you sleep at night, or if you have a bit of regular free time in an empty park or office room, you have all you absolutely need to engage in the occult. If you live with others and if you have the time and privacy (and maybe the occasional excuse or cover-up) for masturbating or playing video games, you have the time and privacy for the occult. If you absolutely don’t have the capacity for privacy even for sleep (and this is surprisingly common), ask those around you to give you a bit of privacy or seek it on your own; abandoned parks or buildings, empty rooms not your own, even the bathroom will work. And, no matter how much you might argue, you will always have the time you need to do the occult. It may not be as much time as you think you need, but if your life is so busy and jam-packed that you truly have no time for the occult, then you need to reconsider what it is you’re doing so you can make time for the occult.

With privacy and time, what can you do? Plenty, especially if nobody’s going to peek in after you’re done or if you have the ability to leave things as they are after you’re finished. Even if you can’t, though, there are four big things that you can do: meditate, pray, energy work, trance work, and visualization practice. I won’t talk about any of these here, because you can find plenty of resources across the Internet and in books about these practices, but suffice to say that any and all of these things, which don’t depend on any physical tools except your own body and breath, are necessary and fundamental to occult practice. Hell, even if you can dedicate 20 minutes a day every day for private prayer and meditation, you’ve already got 75% of magical practice down right there. I cannot understate the importance of these few disciplines; everything else in magic, the occult, spirituality, and religion is based off these things.

Besides that, what else can you do? Study! Read and absorb as much as you can and whatever you care to. Nobody (with the exception of the NSA and especially nosy parents) is going to be looking at your browsing history on your computer, tablet, or smartphone, and you can always clear the cache and history when you’re done (and if you ever grew up using a family computer as an adolescent male at nighttime when everyone else was asleep, this should be second nature to you). If you don’t want people to see your library, get an e-reader and download copies of texts. We live in a time when an unimaginable wealth of occult and spiritual lore and information is freely and instantly available to ourselves at the speed of thought; by all means, use it! Study correspondence tables, sacred geometry, the history and development of religious sects, the seals and sigils of spirits, and the like. Practice drawing out the Tree of Life with a compass and straightedge, and learn how to write in Hebrew and Greek and the magical variants of their writing systems. Keep a private journal where you note important connections you make, dreams you have, odd happenstance circumstances, how deep your last meditation was, important prayers you have a fancy for, and the like. Just because you aren’t able to have a blog with oh-so-many devoted readers and shelves upon shelves of magical texts and tools doesn’t mean you can’t keep your own record, notes, and doodles that an untrained eye would think is no more than a student exploring simple art or playful ciphers.

Anything else? With altars and offerings, you may not be able to erect a permanent shrine to a particular deity, nor might you be able to set up a permanent altar with an array of magical tools synced up in a particular way. You might not be able to light candles or incense and leave them burning for long periods of time. You might not be able to make offerings of wine, water, or food. All of this is entirely okay, and aren’t strictly necessary. If you absolutely need a working space, clear off a small side table or a reasonably-sized area on the floor. Pack up your tools when you’re done, and be simple and minimal with your tools if you even need them at all: use a paper printout of a Table of Practice or draw one out on a whiteboard or chalkboard, use a sharpened pencil or a single matchstick (or even your index finger!) as your wand, use a pocketknife as a ritual blade, use a shotglass as a chalice, use a cup of water as a scrying medium, use a colorful bandanna as an altar cloth. Leave offerings out only for as long as you have privacy and time, and dispose of them in the trash, the drain, the compost, or out the window when you’re done. Use electric candles, scented candles, an oil diffuser, or a wax melter instead of traditional candles or incense. Or, rather, don’t do any of this at all, and keep everything internal and personal in an astral temple with visualization and minor trancework.

The only thing that you’re really impeded from in tough circumstances are prolonged and involved ritual, such as a multi-day consecration of a talisman or a full Solomonic evocation of a spirit. Admittedly, these can be difficult, especially when you need a material embodiment of something to act as a vessel for power. What can you do? Be subtle and minimal, as always! When consecrating a talisman, do the major work in the astral first to build up the power being as elaborate as you want or can, then transfer that power from the astral into a simple object down here: a wooden plank, a wax mold, a cheap ring, whatever. When doing evocation or conjuration, do it in the astral, and meet up with your spiritual allies and friends there frequently to keep tabs on what you send them out to do down here in the material world. In fact, the majority of the stuff you can do in a physical temple you can do as well in an astral one, and building up your own astral space is an important aspect of much of modern magic and spirituality.

I won’t lie to you: having the physical space, time, privacy, and resources to engage in the occult is an awesome thing, and it does help immensely to have all this stuff, and I look forward to the day when the dude who emailed me can move out on his own and explore his own spirituality as thoroughly as he desires. That said, it’s by no means necessary for the practice and study of the occult. Humanity has always been able to practice the occult and spirituality in even the most dire of circumstances, with the harshest conditions, under penalty of death and worse; this shit is our birthright, and the spirits of the cosmos want us to engage with them and with the cosmos in whatever way is most appropriate and suitable for us. To that end, they’ll be more than glad and ready to help us in whatever way we can, and they’ll try to communicate with us in whatever way we are able to. Whether we use the spiritual equivalent of a next-gen cellphone with the clearest call quality ever or a tin-can phone across the cul-de-sac, the spirits will respond; whether we use the Golden Dawn-style or John Dee’s style of pronouncing Enochian, the Enochian angels will still catch our drift; the connection may not be as clear or as easy to understand, but the connection will still be there. So long as you make the effort to work the magic you want and need to work, you’ll be rewarded for your efforts.

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The Sash of Powers, or a Fancy New Magical Thingie

April 19, 2014, 10:00 am

≫ Next: Seven Archangels…but which?

≪ Previous: On Keeping the Occult Occulted

So, beading and jewelry making has been a recent hobby of mine ever since my good friends in some ATRs got me hooked on them. The use of colored seed beads and semiprecious (or precious!) stone beads really opens up a lot of avenues for occult crafting and designing. After all, my carcanets aren’t too bad an innovation, reducing the need for drawing intricate pentacles and expanding on the powerful uses and correspondences of color to various forces. Still, although having beaded necklaces to represent the forces is nice, I decided one night to make something fancy, something grand, something awesome with these supplies I have on hand. To that end, I ended up making a large beading project, what I fancifully call the Cingula Potestatum, or the Sash of Powers:

It’s a pretty long thing, worn as a sash over one shoulder and down the opposite hip, measuring about 6′ 6″ in length total, which is a surprisingly good fit for someone my height. I could, of course, wrap it three times around my neck and wear it as an exceptionally elaborate necklace, but having a sash in ceremonial work is surprisingly comforting and empowering. Basically, the sash represents all the powers I work with: the celestial, supercelestial, subcelestial, elemental, abstract, and divine powers of the cosmos, world, and universe. After all, other magicians use the lionskin belt from Golden Dawn-style Solomonic work for much the same purpose, and finding ways to jazz up my white ceremonial robe and indicating the powers I call upon is always something I enjoy and support.

The design for the sash can be broken down into seven major sets representing different levels of manifestation or cosmic power in the Hermetic paradigm I work within, each set being separated by a particular kind of bead; the major sets use gold/blue tiger’s eye (solar/lunar or light/dark), the zodiac signs use labradorite, the planets use onyx, the elements use bone, the banners use quartz, and the geomantic figures use dark agate. I also threw on some skull and eye beads at the end with a crucifix to mark this as an instrument and sign of life, death, wisdom, protection, and holiness; a pentacle of Solomon, or the grand hexagram of Solomon, would work equally well.

Sash of Powers, Crucifix/Prime Mover/Fixed Stars Closeup

Sash of Powers, Banners/Geomantic Figures Closeup

The Prime Mover (white, clear, 10 pairs)
The Fixed Stars (silver, grey, 12 pairs)
The Zodiac Signs
1. Aries (white, red, 6 pairs)
2. Taurus (emerald, green, 6 pairs)
3. Gemini (bright orange, orange, 6 pairs)
4. Cancer (ruby, purple, 6 pairs)
5. Leo (gold, yellow, 6 pairs)
6. Virgo (black, orange, 6 pairs)
7. Libra (white, green, 6 pairs)
8. Scorpio (black, red, 6 pairs)
9. Sagittarius (gold, blue, 6 pairs)
10. Capricorn (ruby, black, 6 pairs)
11. Aquarius (bright orange, black, 6 pairs)
12. Pisces (emerald, blue, 6 pairs)
The Seven Planets
1. Saturn (black, maroon, 3 pairs)
2. Jupiter (blue, purple, 4 pairs)
3. Mars (red, orange, 5 pairs)
4. Sun (yellow, pink, 6 pairs)
5. Venus (green, orange, 7 pairs)
6. Mercury (orange, purple, 8 pairs)
7. Moon (purple, blue, 9 pairs)
The Four Elements
1. Fire (red, green, 4 pairs)
2. Air (yellow, purple, 8 pairs)
3. Water (blue, orange, 20 pairs)
4. Earth (black, white, 6 pairs)
The Creator: The Twelve Banners of the Tetragrammaton (white forIod, yellow for Heh, red for Vav, black for final Heh in groups of 4 as needed)
1. IHVH
2. IHHV
3. IVHH
4. HVHI
5. VHIH
6. HHIV
7. VHIH
8. VHHI
9. VIHH
10. HIHV
11. HIVH
12. HHVI
The Creation: The SixteenGeomantic Figures (white for active elements, black for passive elements in groups of 4 as needed)
1. Via
2. Cauda Draconis
3. Puer
4. Fortuna Minor
5. Puella
6. Amissio
7. Carcer
8. Laetitia
9. Caput Draconis
10. Coniunctio
11. Acquisitio
12. Rubeus
13. Fortuna Maior
14. Albus
15. Tristitia
16. Populus

The color choices and number of beads might need a bit of explaining. The geomantic figures use white and black, fitting enough for their binary and abstract nature, using the order of the beads to indicate the figure (e.g. white-black-white-black is Amissio). The planetary beads use the Queen and King scale colors of their corresponding sephiroth in as many sets as corresponds to their sephiroth, so Jupiter (associated with Chesed, the fourth sephirah) gets four blue beads alternating with purple beads. The elemental beads are similar, using the flashing colors of the elements, with the numbers coming from the number of sides of their corresponding Platonic solids (fire/tetrahedron/four, air/octahedron/eight, etc.). The zodiacal beads use two sources for the colors: the first color given in each set comes from Agrippa (book I, chapter 49), though each color represents two signs; the second color comes from the Queen scale of the sign’s ruling planet. Thus, Agrippa’s color for Aries and Libra is white, and Aries is ruled by red Mars and Libra by green Venus, so Aries is white and red while Libra is white and green. I made the Agrippa colors a little brighter or flashier (using reflective red or ruby beads instead of solid red) to help differentiate the beads a bit more. The pairs of the zodiacal beads come out to 6, each pair representing 5° of that particular sign. The colors for the sphere of the Prime Mover and of the Fixed Stars as a whole come from the Queen scale of the Tree of Life, though instead of using light blue beads for Chokmah I used clear grey beads; instead of using sets of 1 and 2 for these spheres, respectively, I used 10 (1 × 10) and 12 (2 + 10) since I wanted some substance there, and also since these numbers also work well for their corresponding forces. The Twelve Banners simply used four earthy colors, representing the faces of Divinity apparent to us down here throughout creation.

Of course, no bit of ceremonial regalia is complete without an accompanying prayer, and the grander the regalia, the grander the prayer, amirite? Trying to come up with a prayer that hits all the forces that this sash represents, however, would take a lot of doing, except there’s actually something that’s already been written up that fulfills this purpose. Many of my readers will be familiar with the Circle of Art from the Lemegeton Goetia, especially the version that Crowley and Mathers produced. This Circle has, around the space where the magician stands, a series of words that are basically the correspondences of the ten sephiroth of the Tree of Life. Crowley and Mathers “explained” these names, not as a series of correspondences, but rather as a series of prayers to be said when writing out the names. In effect, the prayers consecrate the circle by connecting the circle and the magician to the sephirah being invoked through the prayers.

Since this Sash of Powers represents, in a more colorful fashion, all the same forces as the Lemegeton Circle of Art, I figured I may as well appropriate the prayers for my own purposes, adding on a bit more to invoke the corresponding angels of the forces invoked. The resulting set of prayers for the sash then becomes something like this:

God Almighty, God Omnipotent, hear my prayers and the cries of your servant N.! Almighty God, whose dwelling is in the highest heavens, the great King of Heaven and all the Powers therein, and of all the holy hosts of Angels and Archangels, hear the prayers of thy servant who puts his whole trust in You. Let the holy Angels command and assist me at this and all times. Command thy holy Angels above and below the fixed stars to assist and aid thy servant that I may command all the spirits of the air, fire, water, earth, and hell so that it may tend unto Your glory and Man’s good. God who is with us, be always present with me; strengthen me and support me both now and forever in these mine undertakings which I do as an instrument in Your hands, o God of Hosts. Great God, governor and creator of all the planets and the hosts of heaven, command them by Your almighty power to be now present and assist me, your poor servant, both now and forever. Most Almighty, eternal, and ever-living Lord God, command thy seraphim to attend to me now at this time to assist me and defend me from all peril and danger. O Almighty God, be present with me both now and forever, and let Your almighty power and presence ever guard and protect me at this present time and forever. O Great God of Hosts, all-seeing God, be present with me and let thy presence be now and always present with me. Great God of Hosts, let Your almighty power defend me and protect me both now and forever. Come and expel all evil and danger from me both now and forever. O great God of all wisdom and knowledge, instruct thy poor and most humble servant by thy holy cherubim. Direct me and support me at this present time and forever.

God Almighty, God Omnipotent, hear my prayers! May your holy angels Metatron, Iophiel, Malkhidael, Asmodel, Ambriel, Muriel, Verkhiel, Hamaliel, Zuriel, Barbiel, Advakhiel, Hanael, Cambriel, Barkhiel, Tzaphqiel, Tzadqiel, Kamael, Michael, Haniel, Raphael, Gabriel, Sandalphon, Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raziel attend to the work of your servant. May the angelic choirs of the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominations, Powers, Virtues, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels attend to the work of your servant. May the seven archangels who stand before the August Throne attend to the work of your servant. May Your holiest of holy Names resound throughout all creation, and may all creation of Your divine hand be at mine own to aid me in this work.

Is the use of this sash traditional? Yes and no; there are parallels between other magical practices, such as that of the bandera of Palo Mayombe, elekes of Santeria, the lionskin belt of the Golden Dawn, the stole of Christian priests, and the like. It’s certainly its own kind of innovation, but it’s one that makes sense, especially as a kind of badge of office when presenting myself to spirits in formal ritual, or if I ever get together and form a temple with others (a laughable notion!). Still, making use of this kind of crafting is just ongoing development of the spiritual work and work I’m doing. Who knows? It may even become part of a new tradition handed down over time.

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Seven Archangels…but which?

April 22, 2014, 9:46 am

≫ Next: Zodiacal Timing Review

≪ Previous: The Sash of Powers, or a Fancy New Magical Thingie

As you might expect, dear reader, the number seven is kinda mystical. Seven planets, seven days of the week, roughly seven days for one phase of the Moon, seven orifices in the human face, seven Greek sages, seven virtues, seven vices, and so forth. It’s the fourth odd number and fourth prime number, and there are three ways to sum up lesser numbers to add to seven (6+1, 2+5, 3+4), and three and four are also important numbers in their own rights. So many attributes have been given to the number seven explaining much of its mysticality, and while I admit that much it might (read: definitely) be stretching things to fit a particular number of associations and categories, seven gives us a lot to work with without being too much.

This is especially important when it comes to working with angels, and archangels in particular. Archangels, as the name implies, are the princes of the angels, the big guys among the big guys, and by working with them we can more effectively work with their subordinate angels and other spirits, not to mention the rest of the cosmos. In Western Christianity, notably Catholicism, there is only valid and proper devotion able to be given to three archangels in particular: Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, the only three named angels in the Old and New Testaments. Of course, other varieties of Christianity, official and folk, have venerated many more angels than just these three, each with their own names and attributes.

Such groups of archangels come either in groups of four or groups of seven. Four archangels makes sense: four elements, four corners of the world, and so forth. In Western occultism, we usually consider these four to be Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel; in Arabic lore, they’re Mikhail, Jibrail, Israfil, and Izrail (with the first three being the Arabic versions of the names and the last one being Azrael, usually known as the angel of death). Four is a pretty solid number, but as noted before, seven is often more preferred for its mystical nature. Add to it, we find references to “seven archangels” in scripture, particularly in Enoch I, and since then lists of seven angels have been common throughout Western religion and occulture. However, with the exception of the “big three” angels named before, these lists often differ significantly, and it’s hard to figure out which angel has what qualities without relegating oneself to a particular book or mini-tradition.

To give several lists of seven archangels, I present the following table, which (besides Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael) is not meant to directly associate or imply an association between the other angels across traditions. The first column is taken from Agrippa’s Scale of Seven (book II, chapter 10), which he associates with the seven planets. The second column is given from the works of Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite, a Christian theologian and philosopher, and the names of which are common in many folk and Hispanic magic circles. The third columns gives name from the Christian Gnostic and Orthodox traditions, which are popular in more ecclesiastic and personal practices in the eastern part of Europe. The fourth column gives the names of the seven archangels from Enoch I, and the last gives the names attributed to the archangels from Pope Saint Gregory I “the Great” from the 6th century.

	Agrippa Planetary	Pseudo- Dionysus	Christian Gnostic	Enoch 1	Gregory the Great
1	Gabriel	Gabriel	Gabriel	Gabriel	Gabriel
2	Raphael	Raphael	Raphel	Raphael	Raphael
3	Haniel	Chamuel	Barachiel	Remiel	Simiel
4	Michael	Michael	Michael	Michael	Michael
5	Kammael	Chamuel	Uriel	Uriel	Uriel
6	Tzadqiel	Zadkiel	Sealtiel	Raguel	Orifiel
7	Tzaphqiel	Iophiel	Jehudiel	Saragael	Zachariel

There are still other lists, but I feel like the ones given here are probably the most important. That seven archangels is such a common thing across writers speaks to an older tradition, such as that of the amesha spentas in Zoroastrianism, or the Babylonian view of seeing the seven planets as gods in their own right. Other scriptural references include seven candles, seven kings, seven churches of the world, and the like throughout Revelation, suggesting that the cosmic rulership of seven parts is something that pervades much theological and occult thinking.

In my practice so far, I’ve been working with Agrippa’s planetary angels, since I was introduced to them by means of the planets themselves in Fr. RO’s Red Work courses, as well since the whole Hermetic viewpoint likes putting cosmic rulers on things in the cosmos and the Abrahamic angels work well for that kind of thing. However, I’ve been going to a number of botanicas lately, and I often find candles and statues for angels besides these seven planetary ones, notably ones to Iophiel (whom I know as either the intelligence of Jupiter or angel of the fixed stars), Chamuel, and Uriel. Add to it, through my good friend Michael Strojan, I’ve encountered yet another set of angels that include Jehudiel, Sealtiel, and Uriel.

It gets awfully confusing, I’ll admit, but I have started to work with this latter set of seven angels from the Christian tradition. Basically, the method is more-or-less devotional: assign one angel to each day of the week, and make prayers towards that angel. I got a set of statues off Amazon for these seven angels, and set them up around my primary devotional altar along with a glass of water and a candle. On their respective days, I light a candle and some incense for them, give them a new glass of water, and make prayers for them based on prayers such as novenas or chaplets for the angels, if one exists, or I just go by their general associations and make prayers for their intercession along those lines.

But, of course, linking the archangels to the days of the week, too, can be difficult. Apparently, there are two ways to do this: the standard way, which is common by many Eastern Christians, and another way that Mr. Strojan showed me, where it links the angels to different days based on their divine offices and attributes. I prefer to use the office-based attribution system, since it’s closer to the planetary method I’m already familiar with. I haven’t gotten any complaints from the angels themselves, either.

Day	Standard	Office
Sunday	Michael
Monday	Gabriel
Tuesday	Raphael	Uriel
Wednesday	Uriel	Raphael
Thursday	Sealtiel	Jehudiel
Friday	Jehudiel	Barachiel
Saturday	Barachiel	Sealtiel

Of course, nothing stops me from working with these angels in a more magical framework, either. I’ve noticed my rituals involving Michael of Fire or Michael of the Sun getting stronger and easier as I’ve been doing more work and offerings to the archangel Saint Michael, and ditto for Raphael of Air/Mercury and Gabriel of Water/Moon, and last I checked, devotional Christians don’t have seals yet for these archangels. It’d be an interesting project to involve these angels in magical ritual in addition to devotional practice, though Mr. Strojan has told me that in working with any of the seven archangels, you effectively work with all of them; they work together as a cohesive group.

So, what do these particular angels rule over, and what are their attributes?

Michael, “who is like God”. Often shown conquering a dragon with lance or sword. Spiritual leader to holiness, spiritual offense and defense, protection from harm and evil, courage, preservation from danger.
Gabriel, “strength of God”. Shown with horn, scroll, shield, scepter, or light. Wisdom, revelation, messages, nurturing the young, and communication.
Uriel, “light of God”. Often shown with a set of scales, flaming sword, or flame. Protection, enlightenment, illumination, and resolution of conflict.
Raphael, “medicine of God”. Shown with a crook and container of medicine, such as a gourd of salve. Healing, health, wholeness, guidance, exorcism, and guidance.
Jehudiel, “praise of God”. Shown with a sword, staff, or three-pronged whip, often crowned or holding a crown. The angel of work, labor, employment, leadership, and government, especially as it pertains to one’s True Will and the Will of God. By working, we praise God, and by praising God, we reap the power and station given to us.
Barachiel, “blessing of God”. Shown holding a white rose or white rose petals, or a basket overflowing with bread. Blessings of all kinds, luxuries, wealth, nourishment, growth, harmony, love, humor, success.
Sealtiel or Selaphiel, “prayer of God”. Shown in devotion or contemplation, sometimes with arms folded or clasped together in prayer, sometimes with a thurible or censer. Focus in devotions and prayers, concentration, steadfastness and resolution in prayers and all worshipful acts, as well as wisdom and skill in magic, exorcisms, and all divine arts.

A recent botanica trip even led me to buy a particular Siete Angeles candle with the names of the seven archangels on them. Unusual about this candle, however, was that it had both the lists from the Gnostic tradition and Pseudo-Dionysus’ writings, and linked them together! Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel were the same between the two, while Chamuel/Samuel was associated with Barachiel, Sealtiel with Zadkiel/Zafkiel, and Jehudiel with Iophiel. While it’s awesome that these angels are associated in such a way, at least at a high level, the Ps.-Dionysus angels and the Gnostic angels often have different attributes that make them highly distinct. I’ve even found weekday associations of the Ps.-Dionysus angels, but even these differ from practice to practice.

In the end, forming a practice to the seven archangels boils down to picking a particular set of seven angels, divvying up the duties of the world amongst them, assigning days of the week to them in a way that more-or-less makes sense, and working with them on their respective days. Anyone who works with the seven archangels will recognize the same seven under different names here and there, but it’s hardly incorrect or wrong to pick one set over another. Mixing angels from different groups may not be great, since that muddles the different traditions in which they work, but working out correspondences between them may be useful. For instance, by associating Jehudiel with Thursday, I also can associate Jehudiel with Jupiter and Tzadkiel in Agrippa; while I don’t consider the seven planetary angels to be the same as the seven archangels, I can see how the nobility, grace, and fatherliness of Jupiter can easily fit into Jehudiel’s practice and image. Likewise, with Barachiel on Friday, I can associate Venus and Haniel with Barachiel, and seeing how the luxuries, joys, pleasures, and goods of both work together.

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Zodiacal Timing Review

April 25, 2014, 9:30 am

≫ Next: Lunar Grammatomantic Ritual Calendar

≪ Previous: Seven Archangels…but which?

Not that long ago, I made a post about retooling planetary hours for zodiacal hours. I suggest you read over it to figure out where I’m coming from, but basically, one substitutes the planet ruling over a particular hour with a zodiac sign it rules, viz. a masculine sign if it’s a diurnal hour and a feminine sign if it’s a nocturnal hour. It’s a pretty straightforward extension of the system, I thought, and I wanted to show it off before I start putting it towards use for a year-long project I have planned: conjurations of the 12 angels of the Zodiac signs, each done while the Sun is in the appropriate sign. That way, by timing a particular conjuration to the zodiacal hour on the planetary day most closely associated with that sign, I thought I could get a better or more refined, though limited, timing to perform the conjuration. While Iophiel is the angel presiding over all the fixed stars, different subsets are known for different effects, each with their own angel, just as there are individual angels of specific fixed stars as well as the lunar mansions.

Alas, though, my system of zodiacal hours is apparently not the best way to do things. Last Tuesday at dawn, I conjured Malkhidael, the angel presiding over Ares, and learned about zodiacal conjurations generally as well as the nature of the sign of Aries as well as of the fixed stars in general. When it comes to the conjurations of zodiacal angels, however, timing to the hours isn’t that preferred. While it can be done, it’s obtuse and not the preferred way to come in contact with them. Rather, the best time to perform a zodiacal ritual for something like a conjuration, according to Malkhidael, is when the sign in question is “brightened”. When asked for an explanation of this, he clarified that a sign is “brightened” when it is either on the ascendant (rising) or on the midheaven (culminating), so about when the Sun is at heliacal rising or zenith while the Sun is in that particular sign.

This…actually makes a lot of sense, since these two points are hugely empowering when it comes to astrological elections. In fact, that’s backed up in several sources, such as Agrippa (book II, chapter 30 and 31, as well as book I, chapter 41):

…when they are in Angles, especially of the rising, or Tenth, or in houses presently succeeding, or in their delights…There is the like consideration to be had in all things concerning the fixt stars…

…Now the manner of making these kinds of Rings, is this, viz. when any Star ascends fortunately, with the fortunate aspect, or conjunction of the Moon…

The significance of these locations is widespread in astrology. Both the ascendant and midheaven are angles, with the ascendant representing the location where planets and celestial objects rise into the sky from the underworld (going from complete obscurity due to the Earth to visibility and light), and the midheaven representing the zenith and highest point of the sky (where everyone and everything can see the object). If I go with a strictly solar timing of zodiacal rituals with this, calling on a particular sign only when the Sun is in that sign, then that gives me the hours of sunrise and solar noon when we’re in that particular sign. I have a strong hunch that the same would work when the Moon is present instead of or in addition to the Sun in that particular sign, which would give me more options throughout the year. Even then, though, I could just go with the sign itself rising or culminating without regard to what’s in it, which would give me about one hour twice a day to work with that particular sign.

Ah well. The best part about working with experiential sciences like the occult is figuring out what works and what doesn’t. At least I got my answer early on in this series of workings about this particular technique, and now I have some principles to help guide my future work.

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Lunar Grammatomantic Ritual Calendar

April 28, 2014, 8:11 am

≫ Next: Search Term Shoot Back, April 2014 (and an announcement!)

≪ Previous: Zodiacal Timing Review

About a year ago, I first encountered grammatomancy, the Greek alphabet oracle, and just took it and ran with it. I do a Daily Grammatomancy on Facebook and Twitter (or, at least, mostly daily, excepting days I’m off work or am not up for it), and I’ve even written an ebook on the topic that correlates the Greek letters to the different forces of astrology, the Greek gods, the angels, and many others. Later on last year, based on my inspiration with my daily grammatomancy reading and watching a friend use the Mayan calender system for divination, I toyed around with the idea of applying the Greek alphabet oracle to a calendrical system of its own, making two variants:

Of the two, the lunisolar one is the more easily approachable and immediately recognizable as a calendar that the ancients might conceivably have used, especially when considered against the highly mathematical and rigorous solar variant. Of course, the ancient Greeks had their own calendars, with the ritual ones largely based on the cycle of the Moon, so it made sense for me to base my lunisolar grammatomantic calendar on such a system, and given that the most data we have on such calendars comes from Athens and Attic culture, I based my calendar on the Attic lunar festival calendar. The Attic calendar had several feasts and ritual days scattered throughout the month based on the myths of the gods, such as Hermes on the fourth day of the month, Apollo on the seventh, and so forth. By straightforwardly connecting the letters of the Greek alphabet in my lunisolar grammatomantic calendar to the lunar festival calendar of Attica, we get something like the following:

Day	Name	Letter	Festival
1	New Moon	Α	Noumenia
2	2nd rising	Β	Agathos Daimon
3	3rd rising	Γ	Athena
4	4th rising	Δ	Heracles, Hermes, Aphrodite, Eros
5	5th rising	Ε
6	6th rising	Ϝ	Artemis
7	7th rising	Ζ	Apollo
8	8th rising	Η	Poseidon, Theseus
9	9th rising	Θ
10	10th rising	—
11	11th	Ι
12	12th	Κ
13	13th	Λ
14	14th	Μ
15	15th	Ν
16	16th	Ξ	Full Moon
17	17th	Ο
18	18th	Π
19	19th	Ϙ
20	earlier 10th	—
21	later 10th	Ρ
22	9th waning	Σ
23	8th waning	Τ
24	7th waning	Υ
25	6th waning	Φ
26	5th waning	Χ
27	4th waning	Ψ
28	3rd waning	Ω
29	2nd waning	Ϡ	Omitted in hollow months
30	Old and New	— (Ϡ if hollow month)

Pretty simple. A civilized calendar for a more civilized age, I suppose, but it’s a little lacking for me. I mean, it clusters most observances in the first week or so of the month with little to do later, and most of the gods and heroes it includes I simply…don’t work with. I mean, my practice is going to necessarily be different than those of the classical Athenians even if I base some of my work off them, so it makes sense. I recall Sannion developing his own calendar and observance cycle based on his own practice in the vein of a new system, which I believe (though he can correct me if I’m wrong) he’s using for his Thiasos of the Starry Bull; making a ritual calendar fine-tuned to one’s own practice, I believe, is a helpful thing indeed, and a few stray comments on Twitter inspired me to take a closer look at my own calendrical observances and system. I mean, I have a ritual schedule in place, though it’s also all over the place, with daily, weekly, monthly, lunar-monthly, yearly, seasonal, and astrological observances, and honestly, it’s a mess. Add to it, my day-to-day life with offices and commuting and aikido classes takes up a significantly large chunk of my time, and it’s not always possible to follow through with the plans I set for myself at the beginning of the year based on what else I need to do and how much sleep I can get (which is, as ever, not enough).

In my ebook on grammatomancy, I linked the letters of the Greek alphabet to the various gods of Greek religion based on their stoicheic correspondences of the elements, planets, and signs. And since I also linked the letters to the days of the lunar month, it makes sense that I could link the gods to the days of the lunar month, as well. However, so that it could suffice for me as a proper lunar grammatomantic ritual calendar, I also wanted to add in things specific to my practice or modern practice, such as a day to venerate the ancestors and mighty dead, a day to celebrate other forces that aren’t specifically gods, and the like.

For any given letter and its singular stoicheic correspondence, there are usually multiple gods that correspond to it; for instance, Khi, associated with Fire, can be attributed to Rhea, Hephaistos, Hekate, or Hestia equally well. I associate each day with one god, perhaps with a closely-associated figure, such as Hermes with his son Pan, or a group of gods or spirits as a class.
Some of the days of the month are significant purely for their lunar symbolism, such as the dates of the New Moon, Dark Moon, and Full Moon. Other rituals happen on these dates, but are not specifically nor necessarily associated with the celebration of a particular god.
Days of the month that have no letters associated with them (days 10, 20, and the final day in full months) have no rituals associated with them. No letter, no stoicheia, no gods, no ritual. These are basically dedicated break days, a kind of sabbath, or they can be used to clean up offerings and rituals from the preceding decade of days or prepare for the next.
Three days of the month (days 6, 19, and 29) are given the obsolete Greek letters Digamma, Qoppa, and Sampi. These letters have no stoicheic correspondence, nor do they have any gods associated with them. Since they were pirits of light, shadow, and the starsonce used and inherited from the Phoenicians, however, while they may be effectively missing from use, they’re not forgotten. I’ve given these days to the ancestors, whom I divide into three groups: Ancestors of Kin (those related by name, family, marriage, and blood), of Faith (those of spiritual lineage, teachers, prophets, and tradition founders), and of the Great (culture heroes, saints, and other great people whose work has benefited our lives).
Although it might be expected that the seven days that have the seven vowels associated to them (days 1, 5, 8, 11, 17, 24, and 28) would be given to the gods that equate to the planets (such as Hermes for Epsilon on day 5), I normally invoke and make offerings to the planets on their corresponding days of the week (which is an unrelated cycle to this calendar). Instead, I mark these days by honoring a set of powers I call “Guardians of the Directions”, kinda like Watchtowers of Enochiana or Archangels in the LBRP, but associated with the seven directions (east, south, west, north, above, center, below). These are from my PGM explorations and daily energy work, which I’ve mentioned before, but they’re quite powerful forces in their own rights. The Guardian at the center I associate with the word of power ΜΑΛΠΑΡΤΑΛΧΩ, or “MALPARTALKHŌ”, a word I’ve received for this direction when I don’t want to use my own Agathodaimon/HGA name, though it refers to the Agathodaimon generally. These forces are closer to the earth than some of the other gods, and certainly closer than the seven planets, yet still distinct from the world itself and its own sets of spirits. Their letter correspondences come from the directions one faces when working with the powers of the seven planets, themselves associated with the seven vowels, according to a ritual from the PGM that I’ve adapted to my own uses. These seven powers, as the seven planets or seven archangels, form a synaxis, a coherent and unified group, that work together, so I figured I should recognize them and elaborate on their places in my life a little more than I do currently. Sets of gnostic aeons, the seven planets as gods in their own rights (perhaps as titans?), the seven Sages of Greece, or similar entities might similarly be worshipped on these days, but I figure that the Guardians are good for now.
Although I tried to keep the five elemental letters associated with things close to their elements, these are basically the catch-all days for groups of spirits or deities, with the exception of Psi, given to Dionysus, since Psi’s associated stoicheion is spirit, not quite an element but not quite a celestial force, either, perfect for the god as I see it.

Day	Name	Letter	Festival
1	New Moon Noumenia	Α	Erbeth
2	2nd rising	Β	Athena Nike
3	3rd rising	Γ	Aphrodite Eros
4	4th rising	Δ	Apollo Asklepios
5	5th rising	Ε	Lerthexanax
6	6th rising	Ϝ	Ancestors of Kin
7	7th rising	Ζ	Hermes Pan
8	8th rising	Η	Ablanathanalba
9	9th rising	Θ	Gaia and Oceanos Spirits of land and water
10	10th rising	—	—
11	11th	Ι	Sesengenbarpharanges
12	12th	Κ	Zeus Tykhe
13	13th	Λ	Demeter
14	14th	Μ	Hephaistos
15	15th	Ν	Ares
16	16th Full Moon	Ξ	Persephone Hades
17	17th	Ο	Damnameneus
18	18th	Π	Artemis
19	19th	Ϙ	Ancestors of Faith
20	earlier 10th	—	—
21	later 10th	Ρ	Hestia Spirits of house and home
22	9th waning	Σ	Hera
23	8th waning	Τ	Poseidon
24	7th waning	Υ	Agathodaimon
25	6th waning	Φ	Nine Muses Three Graces
26	5th waning	Χ	Hekate Three Moirai Three Erinyes
27	4th waning	Ψ	Dionysus
28	3rd waning	Ω	Akrammakhamarei
29	2nd waning	Ϡ	Ancestors of the Great (day omitted in hollow months)
30	Old and New Dark Moon	— (Ϡ if hollow month)	— (Ancestors of the Great if hollow month)

So, as a ritual calendar, that’s not too shabby. It’s busy looking, of course, and if I were to give timai (honor, worship, service, etc.) to all the gods and spirits here listed, I’d be wrecking myself with overwork and more wine poured out than I could afford. Happily for my health, that’s not the case, since I don’t give timai to all the gods. I only wanted to show what a full ritual calendar made for my practice might look like theoretically; in practice, I’d make services only for those deities and spirits I work with or involve in my life. This isn’t to say I don’t respect, say, Artemis or Ares, but I don’t involve them in my life as much as a hunter or a warrior would. Plus, if I started working with a new god in this scheme, I’d already have a day allotted for them instead of having to cram them haphazardly into my schedule, which is my current MO and not a very good one at that.

So, given this schema, I’d be doing my daily offerings to the angels and planets as usual. I’d be making offerings to the ancestors three days of the lunar month, plus the seven Guardians of the Directions; I’d also be making offerings to Hermes, Asklepios, and Dionysus as I do now, and I plan on working Aphrodite, Hestia, and Hephaistos into my routine. At a minimum, then, I’d be making these special offerings 16 days of the 29- or 30-day lunar month, which’d increase to 21 days if I also include offerings to some of the other deities I’d like to work with once in a while: Zeus, the Muses and Graces, Hekate with the Erinyes and Moirai, Persephone and Hades, and the spirits of land and water. It’d be a busy schedule, granted, but at least I’d have a good schedule to work with the gods in, and I could give them the time they need alone and separate from the others instead of being crammed in with a bunch of spirits on a Monday night after groceries when I have time.

The schema would indicate I’m focused on the Olympian gods in my worship, but that’s not entirely true; I only work with a handful of them, and their associations come from their links to the signs of the Zodiac, which I’ve associated with the “simple” consonants of the Greek alphabet (those except for Theta, Ksi, Phi, Khi, and Psi). If a particular god, deity, or spirit has some sort of connection to one of these gods, or if they fall under the same realm, I might use the Greek grammatomantic day above to work with them if I can. Also, of course, this only would be used for routine regular offerings, like what I do currently. Yearly festivals, special observances, and the like are on their own cycle; the yearly Hermaia would still be kept on the fourth day of the tenth lunar month after the summer solstice, for instance, and so that would coincide technically with that month’s Apollo/Asklepios offerings. Plus, I’d keep this system separate from the weekdays, which I use to work with the angels, saints, and other spirits that aren’t like the Greek gods or Hermetic ideas.

And, if I really wanted to get crazy with this, I could even tune this schedule into a straight 24-cycle of gods to worship all within a single day. By taking a page out from my solar grammatomantic calendar idea, we can associate each of the 24 hours (diurnal and nocturnal as unequal hours, just like with the planetary hours, starting at dawn) with one of the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet, omitting the three obsolete letters of the alphabet. Each hour could be given to one of the gods in a sequence, allowing for an intense full day of worship and rituals to honor all the gods and forces of the cosmos. So, starting with Alpha at dawn, we’d honor Erbeth, then Athena, then Aphrodite, then Apollo, and so forth until the hour just before dawn the next day with Akrammakhamarei. The ancestors wouldn’t be explicitly honored, but as they’re always with us and living through and by us, they’re already involved in every ritual, anyway. This would be an intense working, though not one I’d likely perform for a while, and is mostly just a thought to toy with at the moment.

What about you? Do you use a kind of ritual calendar to schedule or arrange observances and worship in your own practice? Do you prefer to just go to the gods as needed or as felt? Do you schedule things by the week, month, year, or at all? Share your practices in the comments!

↧

Search Term Shoot Back, April 2014 (and an announcement!)

April 30, 2014, 8:40 am

≫ Next: Search Term Shoot Back, May 2014

≪ Previous: Lunar Grammatomantic Ritual Calendar

First, a bit of an announcement: I’m going to be taking the month of May off from blogging, since I’m moving from my apartment of four years into a house with my boyfriend and a friend of ours. I just need some time to myself and away from writing the blog for a bit so I can get all my stuff packed up and moved, my new ritual schedules implemented, my new commute acclimated to, and my old place cleaned out and patched up. I’ll still do my Daily Grammatomancy on Twitter and Facebook when I can, and if you have any questions, please feel free to email me or contact me through social media, and I’ll still reply to comments on my blog. Also, I won’t be taking any craft commissions until the start of June, though you’re welcome to get a divination reading from me or get one of my ebooks off my Etsy page. I still have those St. Cyprian of Antioch chaplets for sale, too, if you want to help out with moving expenses. With that, onto the search results!

“computer generated geomancy” — If you’re looking for a place to get you geomancy figures automatically generated, you could do worse than go to random.org and use their random number generator to produce 16 binary results (0 or 1), or 4 results with a value of 0 through 15 (or 1 through 16). If you’re looking for a program that draws up geomancy charts for you, there are a handful out there; I’ve coded one myself, geomancian, which is available for free on the Yahoo! and Facebook geomancy groups, but it’s command-line only (and old). There’s Geomanticon available from Chris Warnock’s Renaissance Astrology, and I think there are a few mobile apps that do similar, but you’d have to pay for these. If I ever learn mobile programming, I’d make a new one for Android, that’s for sure. Still, no application can ever give you a proper interpretation of a full geomancy reading, though it can help you with interpreting the chart for yourself; if you want a full reading, I’m more than happy to offer them.

“do virgo males have big penises like greek god hermes” — I…really can’t speak to this. (Disclaimer: my boyfriend is a Virgo, so there’s nothing I could say here that would end well for me.) Also, save for the odd herm and a few ithyphallic representations of Hermes (more properly Mercury, especially in Roman art), Hermes isn’t portrayed with a particularly large cock. It was actually seen as a good thing for a man to have a small dick in classical times, since they were easier to keep clean and reduced the risk of vaginal/anal/oral injury, trauma, or tearing, which would’ve very easily led to infection in pre-modern times. That said, well, Hermes has shown me a few, shall we say, fulfilling things once in a while. I’ll let you get on your knees and pray for that yourself, if you like.

“how to turn holy water into wax” — I don’t think you have a proper understanding of the physics that goes on here. I mean, water and wax don’t mix, literally or metaphorically, and no ritual or physical process could achieve this short of a biblical miracle. It’d be easier to turn water into wine, but that wouldn’t turn out so great, either.

“occult symbols of death” — Good question, and not one I really know an answer to. You might use a seal for a spirit of Saturn, commonly associated with death, or of Azrael, the angel of death itself. You might find symbols associated with Santissima Muerte, too, since she literally is death. Other such symbols, such as the cap of Hades, associated with gods of death can work equally well. When trying to find symbols for concepts like this when a spirit is not necessarily called for, I tend to look for sigils made from the letters of the word itself (so a sigil for the word “death” or “θανατος“), an Egyptian hieroglyph, or an ancient Chinese bone script or seal script character which you can easily find on Chinese Etymology.

“invocation of akasha or ether” — I suggest you don’t bother. The only Western tradition that can even make good use of akasha is the Golden Dawn, since they’ve spent so much of their time augmenting classical and Renaissance Western mystery traditions with pilfered and appropriated Eastern, Vedic, Taoist, and Buddhist systems. The use of a fifth element directly in magic doesn’t really have that much of a place, as I see it; Agrippa doesn’t reference it in his Scale of Five (book II, chapter 8) where he lists “a mixed body” instead, and its description in Plato’s Timaeus has it “arranging the constellations on the whole heaven”, so it’s probably more strongly based in stellar powers than perceived emptiness. This makes sense, since we have no prayers, invocations, or workings of quintessence in the Western tradition before the Golden Dawn, but we have plenty for the gods, signs of the Zodiac, and stars. To that end, you might use the Orphic Hymn to the Stars. Alternatively, since the quintessence is the underlying substratum of the elements themselves, you might pursue your own Great Work, much as the alchemists did to find the Summum Bonum and Philosopher’s Stone, to understand and invoke ether on your own; I personally use the Hymns of Silence and invocations of pure Divinity. And if you’re a neopagan who insists there are five elements because Cunningham says so, I hope you’re up for some actual magical lifting.

“how do i attach a crystal to a wooden dowel for wand” — In my experience, use two-part epoxy. It forms one of the strongest adhesive bonds I can think of, far stronger than superglue, and it’s commonly and cheaply available at most craft or hardware stores. If you have some sort of aversion to using artificial materials in crafting, the best I can suggest is carve out a niche in the wand just big enough for the crystal to fit and hold it in place with wire or cord. Even then, it might fall out. I strongly suggest the use of some kind of suitable adhesive for this, especially if you’re a heavy duty tool user.

“the use of crystals in conjuring” — Generally, I use crystals as the scrying medium within which I see spirits and by which I communicate with them, and this is often the case by many conjurers, especially those doing Enochiana with Dee’s works or the Trithemian system I use. I also make use of a crystal on my ebony Wand of Art to help direct and focus power, if needed, but the crystal is not strictly necessary for the wand. Beyond that, use crystals how you otherwise would in other rituals if you find a need for them; otherwise, don’t bring them into the ritual at all. You don’t need a crystal for your wand, nor even for the scrying medium; a mirror, an obsidian plate, a blown-glass paperweight orb, a bowl of inky water, or a glass of clear water can all suffice as a perfectly good scrying medium, depending on your preferences; hell, depending on your second sight or conjuration skills, you may not need a scrying medium at all; with practice you’ll be able to perceive the spirit directly in the mind, or even evoke them to visible and material manifestation (which isn’t as important, I claim, as others may say it is, since it’s mostly a gimmick done for bragging rights at that point).

“when u draw a circle in a triangle,does it summon spirits? — On its own, no, otherwise every copy of Harry Potter with the Sign of the Deathly Hallows would actually be magical in more than the fantasy sense. You’re just drawing shapes at this point, and the shapes are so basic and simple as to have no direct effect on their own. However, you can summon spirits into the circle in the triangle afterward, which is the standard practice in Solomonic magic.

“is holy water used to bless the new fire?” — I mean, you could flick holy water into a fire to bless it, but the mixing of water and fire here bothers me. The better way to make holy or blessed fire is to bless the fuel you use, such as the wood or oil, in conjunction with or just by saying prayers over the fire once lit. This is common in Solomonic magic as it is in other religions, such as the fire blessing rituals of Zoroastrianism. You might also consider making fire from holy woods or herbs, such as Palo Santo, sandalwood, or similar trees, depending on your tradition. Generally speaking, fire is already one of the holiest substances we know of in the world and held in high esteem by many religions and traditions. It can be made infernal, wicked, or evil, but the same can be said for anything material or physical, while it being naturally holy and closest to holiness is something that can be said for very few things, indeed.

“people who write in theban scripts” — Generally fluffy Wiccans, nowadays, who insist on making things blatantly-yet-”seekritly” magical. The Theban script, as noted by Agrippa and Trithemius, has its origins in medieval alchemical ciphers common at the time, a simple 1-to-1 cipher for the Roman script (hence the use of a doubled U/V for a W). Theban script used to be popular for enciphering alchemical and occult texts, but now it’s used once in a while for neopagan charms or quasigothic anime character design.

“how did saint isidore react when things went wrong” — Uh…”went wrong” is a pretty vague thing here. For that matter, so is the saint; are you referring to Saint Isidore of Seville or Saint Isidore the Laborer? The former didn’t really have much go wrong in his life, and the latter had his son fall into a well and needed to be rescued, so that’s hardly an epic to recount to kings. I mean, the general Christian thing to do when things go wrong is prayer, which is probably what these guys did generally and how they also became, you know, saints.

“can we use orgonite ennrgy to cean air ?” — Short answer: no; long answer: fuck no. Orgonite energy is properly orgone, which is a meta-energy that does not directly affect the physical world. Orgonite is a lump of resin and metal shavings with other fanciful crap inside which is claimed to purify orgone from deadly orgone (DOR) to positive orgone (POR), which is crap and impossible even according to the (surprisingly versatile and workable) pseudoscience of Wilhelm Reich who developed orgone technology. All orgonite could feasibly do is collect orgone energy inside to pull things out; even according to the rules of orgone theory, it cannot purify orgone from DOR to POR, since orgone tech cannot distinguish between the two (nor do I think a distinction is even possible, having never noticed any negative effects of DOR or overly positive effects of POR). Physically speaking, there’s no mechanism for cleaning the air using a lump of congealed robot vomit, and you’d be better off putting a few fine sheets of cloth on your home HVAC air intake vent and washing it every month or so. Orgone is orgone, energy is energy; there’s no real difference between “good energy” or “bad energy” when you’re talking about orgone. You’d be better off learning energy manipulation and clearing space than using orgonite.

“greek alphabet as magical sigils” — Totally doable. People have used various forms of the Hebrew alphabet magically for centuries now, and the Hebrew letters are well-known as symbols and referrants to the paths on the kabbalistic and Kircher Tree of Life, especially as stoicheic symbols for numbers, elements, planets, and signs of the Zodiac. The Greek alphabet, sharing an ancestor with Hebrew and many of the same qualities, can be used similarly, right up to its own system of qabbalah. Just as there exist magical cipher scripts for Roman script (Theban and the Trithemian cipher) and the Hebrew script (Celestial, Malachim, Passing the River, and the Alphabet of the Magi), I know of two cipher scripts for Greek: Apollonian and a medieval Frankish cipher (from Trithemius’ Polygraphia). I’m sure others could be devised from similar principles or adapted from another magical script; alternatively, you could use archaic or variant styles of the Greek script, such as Coptic or even a variant of Phoenician.

“cockring orgone” — I…suppose this could be a thing. Orgone does have its origins in the study of the life energy produced from sexual activity, so you’d just be going to the source for this. I suppose you could make a cockring out of…hm. Maybe something made of layers of synthetic latex and natural rubber? Metal with a plastic core? I’m unsure. But more importantly, WHYYYYYYY. If I wanted to give my partner a good zap, I’d just as soon use mentholated lubricant or, better yet, Tiger Balm (protip: for the love of God never do this).

“alan shapiro puts off the fire for the usps” — G…good for him? I guess? Seeing how I’ve never used that name on this blog nor known anyone by it, I…well, let’s just say that I’m so odd, because I can’t even.

“circle filled with triangles orgonite” — My first thought was the image of the Flower of Life, a circle filled with overlapping circles which can form triangle-like shapes within, and a potent magical and religious symbol for thousands of years. And then I saw “orgonite”, and my next thought was “new age bullshit”, which is about what people use the Flower of Life nowadays for anyway. On the one hand, you’re talking about sacred geometry, and on the other, you’re talking about lumps of crap, so I’m unsure what you’re getting at here. Also, I’m starting to loathe the popularity of these orgone searches, but they’re just so ripe for making fun of.

“hermetism and homosexualit” — Hermetism isn’t a word often used, and chances are that you’re referring to “Hermeticism”, the Neoplatonic-Gnostic-ish philosophy that came about in the classical Mediterranean from a whole bunch of philosophies and religions rubbing shoulders with each other. In that sense, Hermeticism and Neoplatonism generally helped form a new concept of what was then called “Platonic love”, a love of souls more than that of bodies. Men and men, men and women, and women and women can all have Platonic love for each other, while before this movement (especially in the Renaissance) it may have been hard to communicate one’s feelings about another, especially if love was itself defined between two people of the opposite gender. Another point to consider is that “homosexuality” as a concept and identification didn’t exist until the late 1800s; labeling ourselves in this manner simply wasn’t done before then. You either never had gay sex, were having gay sex at that moment, or had gay sex at some point in the past; it was an action and not a state. Actions like this have no significant ramifications I can think of in Hermeticism, since there’s no sin to deal with or laws that say you can’t do that; it’s a very abstract yet thorough philosophy that embraces pretty much whatever and whoever you throw at it. As for the other meaning of Hermetism, which I take to be a henotheistic worship of Hermes, well, the god-dude himself likes the occasional dick, so he has no problem with it.

“the most homosexual magician on the planet” — I…honestly don’t think I’m the best candidate for this esteemed title. I mean, yeah, I’ve sucked a lot of dick, but I don’t go around drinking skinny margs, watching Glee, or wearing turtlenecks, either. I mean, I’m not particularly effeminate (though I do have my moments), nor am I stereotypically promiscuous (not like that’s a bad thing), so…yeah. Besides, the notion itself is kind of absurd; unless you’re a 6 on the Kinsey scale, I don’t think “most homosexual” is really a thing, but since I do score a 6 on that scale, I suppose I get the title? Maybe? I still claim that you’d be better off finding candidates for this title on Twitter, all of whom are good, noble, professional, upright people and magi (also I love you guys~).

“energy circle when summoning spirits how do you draw it” — You don’t draw energy circles when summoning spirits; you draw conjuration or summoning circles to conjure or summon spirits. In that case, you draw (shock of the ages!) a circle. You can add other symbols, names, or whatever to it as you want, but these are highly varied, as Ouroboros Press’ Magic Circles in the Grimoire Tradition by William Kiesel points out, but really, a circle is all you need. You can use chalk, a knife, paint, rope, or whatever to draw it out, but do draw it out, even if it’s just in the carpet with a finger. Energy circles are used in various forms of energy work with varying degrees of significance, though I’ve never needed such a thing except for shielding or putting out feelers in my local surroundings.

“ikea-rituals” — I’m not aware of any Ikea-specific rituals, but their wide array of furniture and household goods is quite amazing, much of it able to be repurposed to ritual use. I plan on getting a few more LACK side tables as a series of altars, to be sure, and some nice shelves for my temple and personal library in the near future. I assume rituals for Ikea would take on a strongly Nordic and Scandinavian flavor, but that’s not my area of expertise.

“where do i put my incense when summoning a demon” — I would put the incense somewhere between you and the conjuration space for the demon, that way you have the smoke rising up to offer a kind of veil or ethereal lens through which you can more easily perceive the demon. Where you put the conjuration space (Triangle of Art, Table of Practice, etc.), however, is another question entirely. Some grimoires offer directions you should face, or a particular direction associated with the demon or spirit, which would provide you with a good idea of directional and spatial layout.

Also, this wasn’t really a search term, but something did catch my eye. I keep track of what other sites lead people to my blog; search engines like Google and sites like Facebook are at the very top of the list, of course, but also some blogs are also notable. One crazy hilarious blog linked to my post on the divine names written on the Trithemius lamen, From the crazy blog itself, it’s about:

We are living in Biblically significant Times. Ironically it was the most persecuted man in modern history that lead me to dig deeper into the Bible and taught me more about God than any other human being on the planet. And that man is Michael Jackson. I started a blog to defend him. I ended up researching him and learned just why they were after him. They did everything they could to shut him down. In the song “Cry” he said “take over for me”, so that is what I am doing. God bless that man and his faith and strength

…alright, then. Specifically, the post referenced my blog in that those silly Jews never understood God in that God obviously only has one possible name (the one referred to as the Tetragrammaton, which even they say has two pronunciations…I think? it’s hard to read the post) and that all other names refer to demons, and that Michael is not the angel of the Sun but is a demon because it’s another Michael besides Michael Jackson. They also attempted to bind the angel Michael and God in the name of God because reasons. My good friend Michael Seb Lux, before discovering that the blog doesn’t allow comment except from certified crazy people it allows, was going to reply with this:

Actually, there are multiple names ascribed to G-d in the Hebrew Scriptures. While Yahweh is the more common one, in Exodus 3:14 G-d speaks His Name as, “Ehyeh asher ehyeh” or “I am that what I shall be”. Similarly, the use of Adonai is common as a theophoric and literally means, “Lord”. Other names used in Scripture are Yahweh Tzevaot (1 Samuel 17:45), ha’el elohe abika (Genesis 46:3), Elah Elahin (Daniel 2:47), Elohim (Exodus 32:1; Genesis 31:30, 32; and elsewhere), and so forth. The four-fold name may have originated as an epithet of the god El, head of the Bronze Age Canaanite pantheon (“El who is present, who makes himself manifest”) or according to the Kenite hypothesis accepted by scholars, assumes that Moses was a historical Midianite who brought the cult of Yahweh north to Israel.

May all the angels pray for us and God (in every one of his names) bless the Internet that we may be worthy of the lulz of paradise.

Anyway, see you guys in June!

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Search Term Shoot Back, May 2014

June 1, 2014, 10:21 am

≫ Next: More about Geomantic Perfection

≪ Previous: Search Term Shoot Back, April 2014 (and an announcement!)

“why is yesod important in ring of solomon” — As far as I know, it’s not. The Ring of Solomon, given in the Lemegeton, has the names “Tetragrammaton”, “Tzabaoth”, and “Michael” written on it; the one given to John Dee is known as the “PELE Ring”, having that word inscribed on it (perhaps a reversed romanized “Aleph”?) with a circle with a V and L sticking through it. None of this is particularly associated with Yesod, the sephiroth associated with the sphere of the Moon, whose commonly-associated godname is Shaddai El Chai and whose angel presiding over it is Gabriel.

“big cock anal” — Yes, please.

“can orgonite be used for penis growth ?” — First, orgonite can’t really be used for anything that, say, a rock, a crystal, or a piece of wood can’t, and honestly anything else looks prettier than orgonite. Second, the penis is pretty much a fixed size once you hit puberty; with the exception of prolonged penis pumping or jelqing (either of which can be dangerous if you don’t do it right, including literally exploding the penis), you really won’t be changing the size much. Third, no. No, you cannot use orgonite for penis growth. You must be extraordinarily desperate to be thinking of that.

“black pepper in rituals” — It’s a pretty useful ingredient, actually. Anything that has a sharp or stinging smell or taste to it tends to be Martial, while anything dark black tends to be Saturnine; black pepper, being both, is a good example of an herb that combines both of these forces, but pepper generally tends to be a Martial ingredient. It’s good for banishing things, and a standby banishing incense of mine combines black pepper, red pepper, myrrh, clove, and star anise. It’s also good for offensive magic, especially if you’re trying to get someone to get the fuck out of your life or cause them slow-burning harm. Be careful when burning it, however, and don’t inhale it directly or get the smoke in your eyes.

“since greek god hermes had a big dick do virgo guy born on august 23 have big dicks as well” — …again? Why is this a thing people are searching for? (I may as well ask why there exists Rule #34 on the Internet.) First, August 23 is really on the cusp between Leo and Virgo, and depending on the year and exact time of birth, someone could be clearly on one side or the other, or could be really right on the fence between the two. In my experience, cusp people who have the physical attributes of one sign have the personality characteristics of the other. Second, the bigger (…erm) thing is that one’s rising sign really influences one’s physical form, which I would assume continue down to the girth and length of one’s cock; it’s not just the Sun sign that matters. Third, it’s really in very few depictions of Hermes that he’s presented with a huge dick; the hermai statues weren’t always Hermes but acted as generic intermediary messengers between humans and gods in ritual depictions, and it’s really only that huge ithyphallic Roman drawing of Mercury that we see a Pan-like figure with a caduceus. I mean, sure, the gods can present themselves (heh) in any way they chose, including the size of particular attributions of theirs, but I genuinely don’t think a huge cock is something attributable to Hermes in the same way the caduceus or winged sandals are. That said, he definitely has nothing to worry about, either.

“likeness between virgo males and greek god hermes” — If search term results are any indication, apparently a huge cock is one of them? This question is kinda weird to me, since it’s like asking the likeness between a Jew and YHVH, or a citizen of the United States and George Washington. Virgoan and Geminese people are both born under the Zodiac signs ruled by Mercury, but that’s hardly much to talk about. Again, the rising sign, Moon sign, signs of the Parts of Fortune and Spirit, and the planet of the almuten are all hugely important factors that can change from Virgo to Virgo, Gemini to Gemini, and so forth. In many regards, if a particular Virgo male has a huge cock, it’s probably coincidental and attributable to many other factors besides their Sun sign.

“can you pray to summon satan” — Totally, yes! Just make sure whom you’re praying to and why you’re praying for it line up right. Don’t pray to the Judeo-Christian God to summon Satan for world domination, and don’t pray to Satan himself to imprison himself for the rest of eternity. You might make more enemies than friends that way.

“religious amulet sash that you wear across the shoulder and end at the hip in yoruba” — I’m not an expert on ATR practices, but Santería (or Lukumi, which has its origins in the Yoruba culture) doesn’t wear these. They wear elekes or collares, beaded necklaces and bracelets, the colors and patterns of which reflect different orisha (Santerían deities). The sashes are from a nearby culture from the Congo, whose religion is known as Palo (viz. Palo Mayombe, Palo Kimbisa, Palo Briyumba, etc.). They don’t wear the beaded necklaces or bracelets (except maybe as a personal affectation), but instead wear the bandera, a sash that goes over the shoulder and down to the other hip, the beaded patterns of which represent the different nkisi (Palo deities), along with chains, cowrie shells, and other charms to reflect ancestry, ancestors, and the like.

“can i use orgonite in my crystal grid” — You can, but why? Crystals tend to be cheaper and more easily accessible and tend to have a purer energy feel to them. Besides, crystals are already present in orgonite, which tends to be a mishmash of metal shavings, glitter, sticks, and glue, so why bother? Just use crystals and leave the orgonite crap alone.

“keys of solomon used in a ritual death” — Very little in the Key of Solomon has to do with ritual deaths or killing, much less those of humans. However, animal sacrifice is a thing, and the use of blood as ingredients in ink or pigments is common in several of the rituals, as well as in making offerings to the demons in the Lemegeton Goetia. If you do this, first make the white-handled knife (which itself requires the blood of a goose) to consecrate it, then use that as the sacrificial blade for further sacrifices. Be careful, and also study how Jewish kosher slaughter works and try to use that method to ensure a quick and as-close-to-painless-as-possible death. If you cut yourself, halt all working and make sure you don’t get any of your own blood mixed up in the offerings or ink, and GTFO the ritual area. If you’re at all squeamish about using sacrifices of animals or blood, just look elsewhere or work on making plant-based substitutes for blood.

“hermetic wand pricing” — Depends on whom you ask. I can make wands for you as a custom commission, depending on complexity and style, though for wands used in the Golden Dawn, you’d be better off looking elsewhere or studying the craft and making one for yourself.

“are there any of the penticles of the moon out of the greater key of solomon that have to do with arc angel azreal” — Sorta? Azrael, sometimes known as Azriel, is commonly known as the Angel of Death, though his name literally means “One whom God Helps”. He’s known in Islamic traditions, though never by this name in the Qur’an, instead being referred to as the angel of death. The Zohar of Jewish Kabbalah has this angel receive the prayers of the faithful in Heaven and leads the heavenly hosts, and some esoteric forms of Christianity associate this angel with Sealtiel or Selaphiel, the angel of prayer. All told, though, he’s most known in his function of giving death to mankind. Though I didn’t think this angel appeared in the Key of Solomon, there is actually a pentacle of the Moon that references a very similar name to this: the Fifth Pentacle of the Moon, which “serveth to have answers in sleep”, and “serveth unto destruction and loss, as well as unto the destruction of enemies”, as well as “against all phantoms of the night, and to summon the souls of the departed from Hades”. This pentacle has the name “Azarel” written on it, which could just as easily be romanized from Hebrew as “Azrael”, so maybe this is the pentacle you’re looking for.

“i want to write my name in angelic script” — First learn to write your name in Hebrew, or find a Hebrew version of your name; then simply write the same letters in angelic script, which is basically a different font of Hebrew.

“letter v in isopsephy” — There isn’t one. Isopsephy is Greek gematria, and there is no letter V in Greek. The modern pronunciation of Beta or Upsilon can sometimes sound like the English V, but there is no such letter. Likewise, in Hebrew gematria, there is no letter V either, though Bet or Waw can sometimes sound like it, too. If you’re using isopsephy based on purely phonetic principles, you could pick either of those letters from those scripts, but the thing is that you’d be applying phonetic principles to a text-based system, and the disconnect is large enough to give me pause for concern. And no, I haven’t found an English/Latin isopsephy/gematria worth discussing yet.

“how to write a curse tablet in latin” — Much the same way as you’d write a curse tablet in any other language. The language doesn’t really factor into the magic unless you’re working with specifically Latin-speaking spirits, and depending where you are, those might be few and far between. Write in the language most comfortable to you; the spirits will understand. That said, if you happen to know Classical Latin or Greek comfortably well, by all means write in those languages.

“are summoming triangles evil?” — As much as pens and paper are. The summoning triangle is a tool used in rituals, which I suppose can only be declared “good” or “evil” based on their intent and result.

And, as you may have noticed, dear readers, I’m back! I’m all situated in the new house, all the spirits and altars are set up, and a few days’ worth of housewarming parties are complete. I’m getting settled back into a routine of commuting, ritual, and martial arts practice, so everything’s going well. I’m now open for craft commissions again, though I now have a minor backlog of things to do from people who happened to order something over the past month. How’ve you been this past May?

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More about Geomantic Perfection

June 5, 2014, 8:43 am

≫ Next: Hail, Alan Turing, Hero!

≪ Previous: Search Term Shoot Back, May 2014

The idea of perfection comes from horary astrology, considered to be the primary and foremost divination system of the antique, classical, and premodern periods; you can find good descriptions of astrological perfection here and here, among elsewhere. In horary astrology, where the planets move through the 360° of the Zodiac at different rates, the planets make certain aspects to each other at different times; noting how these aspects take place, where they take place, and what other planets make aspects at the same time can indicate different types of perfection or different ways that perfection cannot be obtained. Geomancy, however, uses sixteen figures that can appear at 12 discrete places in the House Chart instead of smoothly moving through 360°

So, with all that in mind, let me get out the basics first starting from first principles.

What is perfection? Perfection is a technique used in geomantic divination where a House Chart and not the Shield Chart is used. This technique helps indicate different types of connection, or the lack thereof, between different actors, events, or goals in a situation. While the figures themselves describe what a given actor, event, or goal may be like, perfection indicates how these things relate to and work with or against other things. The things that play a role in a situation are represented by figures called significators, and these figures are found by inspecting a particular house of the House Chart that best represents the thing. For instance, the querent (person asking the query, or question of divination) is represented by house I, so the figure that appears in house I represents the state, quality, and person of the querent. If the querent is asking about something in specific, such as a marriage, job, health problem, or debt, we would look to other houses to see what those things are represented by in the chart, which are houses VII, X, VI, and XII, respectively; the thing being asked about is the quesited.

Because any given figure can appear in multiple places in the House Chart, it is possible that one of the significating figures can appear in multiple places, as well. Different houses that share the same figure indicate a strong connection between the two areas of life, actors, events, or goals. For instance, if the significator of the querent appears in houses I and VI, we might say that the querent is heavily involved with matters of health, service, or working for others in addition to those things having qualities similar to the querent since they share the same figure. A figure can appear in more than two houses; in one rare case, the same figure can even appear in all 12 houses, but it’s more common that a figure appears in one to three houses at a time, depending on the chart.

All this puts geomancy in an unusual place in divination systems generally; unlike Tarot, runes, astrology, or other forms of divination, where any given symbol can appear at most once in a reading, a geomantic figure can appear multiple times in a reading. This allows us to make use of this repetition of figures to indicate relationships between significators based on how they repeat, or pass, around in the chart in relationship to each other. This is where geomantic perfection is superficially similar to astrological perfect, where the latter relies on aspects being made between planets to form contacts between significators, the former relies on repetition of figures to do the same. Say the querent wishes to know about marriage, or marrying a particular person; in this case, the significator of the querent is in house I, and the significator of the quesited is in house VII. If the querent’s significator passes from house I to house VI, then we note that house VI and house VII are neighboring each other; the querent’s significator comes into direct physical contact with that of the quesited. This is a type of contact made that illustrates perfection.

There are four types of perfection used in geomancy, and I went over those in an earlier post, which you should read up at this point. To review, there is occupation (the same figure appears in both the house of the querent and the house of the quesited), conjunction (either significator appears in one of the two houses neighboring the other), mutation (when both significators neighbor each other at some other location away from their own houses), and translation (when the same figure which is neither significator appears next to both). If no method of perfection applies, then we say that the chart is in denial, or lacking perfection. Where the figures pass to, such as before or after the significator, or whether a figure passes to both before and after, or a mutation-conjunction combination, can all offer variants of these four methods of perfection, but the same basic rules apply. If a chart has perfection between the significators, then we say that the chart perfects for those signficators; otherwise, we say that the chart denies perfection.

What does perfection answer? To speak floridly, perfection indicates the connection between different realities, the experienced reality of the querent (represented by the significator of the querent) and the hypothetical reality of the query (represented by the significator of the quesited). If the chart perfects, then the hypothetical reality will come to pass; if the chart denies perfection, the hypothetical reality will not come to pass. In more direct terms, perfection in a chart indicates a simple “yes” to the query, and denial of perfection indicates “no”. So, if Jane Doe asks “will I get married to John Smith?” and the chart perfects between houses I and VII in any way, then the answer is yes, Jane will marry John; if the chart denies perfection, the answer is no, Jane will not marry John. It’s important to be clear on phrasing the query, because perfection answers about the situation inquired; if Jane asks “will I not marry John?” and the chart perfects, then the answer is yes, she will not marry John. In other words, perfection affirms or denies the query put to divination. Learning how to phrase the query clearly and concretely is an important aspect of divination generally, but especially so when perfection is used.

Being able to phrase a query clearly and directly is important especially if one phrases a query in a negative light. Perfection will affirm whatever is asked, and denial of perfection will deny whatever is asked. So, if one asks a question negatively, like “will X not happen?” or “should I not do X?”, then the query will be answered as it is. Thus, if one asks “will X not happen?” perfection says “yes, X will not happen”, and denial says “no, X will not not happen” (or, more directly, “X will happen”). Thus, the more directly one can phrase the query, reducing all ambiguity and complexity to its barest, the more clear and easily accessible the answer will be.

Now that you understand (hopefully) what perfection is, let’s talk about the limits of this technique. For one, perfection does not answer whether something is good or bad; it only indicates whether something will or won’t happen. It indicates a connection between different realities, but it does not indicate whether it’ll be good or bad, pleasing or displeasing, or any other qualities besides whether there exists a connection and how that connection is forged. For understanding the qualities of the situation, you’d need to look at the figures themselves and whether they’re good or bad, how those figures relate to the rest of the chart, the Court figures, and so forth. You can envision a kind of 2×2 table that shows this:

	Good figures	Bad figures
Chart perfects	Will happen, situation will turn out well	Will happen, situation will turn out badly
Chart denies	Will not happen, situation will turn out well	Will not happen, situation will turn out badly

There are lots of techniques in geomancy, and perfection is only one of them. Perfection really comes in help when a query is phrased in a way that “yes” or “no” will answer it, i.e. if the query expects a binary answer. Anything that is asked in a way like “Will X happen”, “Should I do X”, “Can I do X”, and the like are all things that can be answered directly and easily with perfection. Other queries, such as “When will X happen”, “What will X be”, “Where is X”, and the like are not answered by perfection; in this case, the use of perfection simply doesn’t apply to these queries and will produce nonsense answers. For instance, if Jane Doe lost something, she might ask “will I find my lost object?” and use perfection for that reading; if she wants to know the answer to “where can I find X?”, she should use another technique entirely, since this isn’t a yes or no question. Perfection is only one tool in the toolkit of the geomancer; just as one wouldn’t use a screwdriver to hammer in a nail, perfection isn’t the best tool for the job when the query is best answered in a non-binary way.

Many binary queries put to divination are straightforward: whether I can get such-and-such a job, whether I’ll find my true love in the next five years, whether I’ll flunk out of college even if I study hard, and so forth. In many instances, it suffices to use only two significators in the reading, one for the querent and one for the quesited. However, some queries are more nuanced and complicated, and to fully answer it require a nuanced and complicated reply from the reading. This is most easily done by considering multiple significators, where one figures out how different actors (plural) relate amongst themselves as well as with the querent in a situation. Consider a situation where a querent wants to know how a new medical treatment prescribed by their doctor will help a health issue they’ve had for some time now. We know of several factors here: the querent (house I), the doctor (house VII), the medical treatment (house X), and the health issue itself (house VI). Any of these significators can perfect with any other, and since there are six different ways perfection can be forged between the significators (I and X, I and VII, I and VI, X and VII, X and VI, VII and VI), the answer could get quite complicated, indeed! In this case:

Perfection between I and X indicates that the querent will carry out the medical treatment prescribed to them. Denial indicates that they won’t or it simply won’t be available to them.
Perfection between I and VII indicates that the querent will be in contact with their doctor to work with them. Denial indicates that their relationship may be blocked, broken off, or obstructed.
Perfection between I and VI indicates that the health issue will be resolved or will be helpfully controlled. Denial indicates that the health condition will continue unmitigated.
Perfection between X and VII indicates that the doctor is the one prescribing the treatment and understands it. Denial indicates that the doctor isn’t in control of the treatment or has no clue what he’s doing.
Perfection between X and VI indicates that the health issue will respond to and be helped by the treatment prescribed. Denial indicates that the issue will not be changed or helped by the treatment.
Perfection between VII and VI indicates that the doctor understands the health issue and is actively working to help it. Denial indicates that the doctor has no idea what’s going on and doesn’t really care.

These types of readings with multiple significators can be deeply involved, and there’s no simple yes or no to be had with these. Instead, one has to develop a nuanced, qualified answer that might be yes in some ways and no in others, and build a complete message from that. For instance, say that in this hypothetical health reading, say that perfection exists between I and VII (querent and doctor), I and X (querent and treatment), I and VI (treatment and health issue), and VII and X (doctor and treatment); the chart denies perfection between X and VI (treatment and health issue) and VII and VI (doctor and health issue). In this case, the querent is getting along fine with the doctor and will take the steps prescribed by the doctor to change the situation. However, the treatment prescribed by the doctor will not have any effect on the condition since the doctor doesn’t really understand it well enough to prescribe something useful; even then, however, the treatment will still be cleared up on its own or due to the personal actions of the querent. So, in some ways, the query of “will the treatment prescribed by my doctor help this health issue?” is answered by “no”, and in some other ways “yes”, but it’s hard to answer that query fully in a single word if the whole story needs to be communicated.

Perfection is a useful tool, don’t get me wrong, but it’s also one of the most difficult to understand for many beginners due to its complexity. I ascribe this to the mechanics of geomancy itself, since this isn’t your standard oracle deck-fare divination; there’s math and analysis involved that go far beyond intuitive readings of the figures themselves as you might normally do in other divination methods. Many people don’t pick up geomancy as their first divination system, so they’re used to systems that are simpler, more rudimentary, and less mechanical in their own ways; this is not a bad thing, but it ill-prepares them to study geomancy in a proper way. It’s important to know the limits of perfection here, as well as when to use it and when not to use it, to fully understand how the technique works and what it represents in a chart.

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Hail, Alan Turing, Hero!

June 7, 2014, 9:48 am

≫ Next: The Holy Guardian Angel in Religion and Magic

≪ Previous: More about Geomantic Perfection

As part of my new grammatomantic lunar calendar rituals, I’m setting aside three days each lunar month for the veneration of the dead in my life. The first day is given to my Ancestors of Kin, those to whom I am descended from by blood. The final day is given to the Ancestors of the Great, culture heroes and other Mighty Dead who shaped the world we all live in. The second day, however (associated with the letter Qoppa, and held this lunar month on June 16), I give to my Ancestors of Work, famous people to whom I look up to for the things I do in my life. They’re like my family ancestors, but with ties of labor and field rather than blood and kin, a family linked together by the things we do rather than who we are. As a magician, I put people like Pythagoras, Orpheus, Cornelius Agrippa, Crowley, and the like in there, but magic isn’t the only thing I do. My day-job professional and academic career is based in computer science, and today, on the 60th anniversary of his death, I’d like to recognize Alan Turing, one of the greatest computer scientists the world has ever had.

Born on June 23, 1912, Alan Turing came from Irish, English, and Scottish family, and had a natural inclination towards mathematics from a young age. This didn’t serve him too well in public schools at the time, when education focused more on classics than what we’d consider hard sciences today; still, even at 16 and not only reading but expanding on the work of none other than Albert Einstein, the dude was pretty cool at the things he was good at. His work really shone through in the early development of computer science, working on one of the most famous problems of mathematics, the Entscheidungsproblem, or “Decision Problem”, the solution to which was that there was no solution at all. Not only would this have surprised some of the most famous mathematicians of the time, but it’s become a central topic in computer science taught from the beginning ever since.

Not only was he a brilliant computer scientist and mathematician, but Turing also served the British Army, especially helping during World War II. With his extensive knowledge of mathematics and science, Turing became one of the foremost codebreakers and leaders in deciphering enemy ciphers. Not only did he produce general means to break German codes, while other methods used at the time were fragile and relied on too many assumptions, he also provided efficient means of breaking various types of code, helping to critically fight the German war machine (in several senses). After WWII, he furthered the field of computer science as well as that of artificial intelligence, and pursued several advances in chemistry.

Despite having chatted with the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, occasionally ran the 40 miles from his office to London, and inducted into the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by King George VI, and basically invented modern computer science in an accessible manner, the world at that time effectively condemned him: he was gay. After having his house robbed by an acquaintance of a lover of his, and noted that fact to the police, he was charged with indecency, since homosexuality was still illegal at that time in Britain. Charged with this non-crime, he pleaded guilty (despite having no guilt nor shame for being gay, as he damn well shouldn’t’ve), he was given the choice of imprisonment or probation with chemical castration; he chose the latter, which would allow him to continue working, but it rendered him impotent and caused gynaecomastia. This, combined with reparative treatment to “cure” his homosexuality (which we know nowadays from the “ex-gay” movement never works and only causes further harm), did nothing good.

Adding insult to injury, he lost his security clearance and was barred from continuing with cryptographic research with the government (even though he pretty much won WWII for them), and was even barred from entering into the United States. He died on June 7, 1954, only at 41 years old. Two years after his conviction and beginning of hormone treatment, with an investigation reporting that he committed suicide by cyanide poisoning with a half-eaten apple near his body, which is thought to be (but never confirmed) to be how he killed himself. Rumor has it that this is where the original rainbow-colored partially-bitten apple logo came from for the Apple computer company, but that’s not the official story.

Today, I honor Alan Turing especially as a hero in my life. An incredible amount of the technology I use and work I produce is indebted to him, not only because he helped develop the computer, but also because he helped turn the tides of war that could’ve endlessly shaped the world some 70 years ago. His brilliance shines as a light for me, as a computer scientist but also as a human being. Being a gay man myself, my heart breaks every time I recall how the world back then treated him for being the same way, and I pray that neither I nor anyone else has to undergo that sort of blatant bigotry and persecution. Like Turing himself, though, I bear no guilt nor shame for who I am, and I take only joy in the work I do. I’ll likely never run 40 miles nor ever care to, but hey, more power to Turing for doing that, too.

Ave, Alan Turing. May your memory never be forgotten, and may your name and spirit always live on. Guide our minds to know what can be known, and guide our hearts to love whom we will love, both without fear and without scorn. Help us and be with us in our work, and may we thank you every time information flows through the fruits of your labors to us.

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The Holy Guardian Angel in Religion and Magic

June 11, 2014, 9:29 am

≫ Next: Lunar Grammatomantic Ritual Calendar

≪ Previous: Hail, Alan Turing, Hero!

As you might have guessed, dear reader, working with the Holy Guardian Angel is, in fact, a thing. A pretty big thing, at that. There’ve been rituals written for thousands of years now on how to come in contact with this spirit, along with plenty of kinda-similar-kinda-dissimilar descriptions on the nature of this spirit. And, judging by the pan-blogosophere/occulture debates on the nature of the HGA, chances are this topic will continue on for quite a lot longer. In fact, some magicians go so far as to say that coming in contact with the HGA, also known as Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel (KCHGA) is the sum and whole of the Great Work itself. This isn’t a wrong view, but it’s a little misleading if you don’t inspect all the ramifications of such a statement.

No, I’m not going to talk about how to attain KCHGA, or how to find your HGA’s name, or which ritual is best to come in contact with your HGA. Yes, I have contact with my own HGA, and I’ve been working with him and involving him at nearly every step of my occult path since I first met him. What I want to talk about is something that I don’t see often discussed: the relationship and differences in view of the HGA between practitioners of magic and devotees of religion. The two feed into each other, clearly, and the notion of the HGA itself can easily be attributed to either source or a mixture of both. It’s the relationship and lack of correctness I’ve noted between what the HGA is claimed to do and how one is supposed to work with the HGA, at least in my own experience, and what the HGA actually does and how one should really work with the HGA.

The term “Holy Guardian Angel” itself can be attributed quite clearly to the Book of Abramelin, but the term was already in use by the Catholic Church, the culture of which helped form and develop the spiritual context for the Abramelin (along with other Solomonic, goetic, and qabbalistic traditions interwoven together). It’s been canon in the Catholic Church for each human being to have a guardian angel for quite a long while now; there are scriptural hints that this has been a longstanding notion (Matthew 18:10, Acts 12:13-15) since before the development of the proper Church, but it was really codified when Saint Basil in the 4th century wrote that “beside each believer stands an angel protector and shepherd leading him to life” (Adversus Eunomium III, Catechism of the Catholic Church 1.2.1.1.5.1 #336). Okay, cool; we know that it’s actually a belief that guardian angels exist in Catholicism and, moreover, that its believers are actively encouraged to work with and ask for help from one’s guardian angel. This is further indicated by the prevalence of medallions, litanies, candles, novenas, and the like dedicated to this divine figure.

However, the perceived goal of the HGA is different between Abramelin and Saint Basil. In the Abramelin, the text states that “[e]very learned and prudent man may fall if he be not defended and guided by the angel of the Lord, who aided me, and prevented me from falling into such a state of wretchedness, and who led me undeserving from the mire of darkness unto the light of the truth” and later that “[y]e shall also supplicate [God] that in the time to come he may be willing and pleased to regard you with pity and grant you his grace and goodness to send unto you his holy angel, who shall serve unto you as a guide, and lead you ever in his holy way and will; so that ye fall not into sin through inadvertence, through ignorance, or through human frailty”. Magically, however, Abramelin states that “my holy angel, whom God the most merciful had destined from my creation for my guardian, spake unto me with the greatest goodness and affection; who not only manifested unto me the Veritable Magic, but even made easier for me the means of obtaining it”. Mathers writes in his own introduction more succinctly that “thereby and thereafter [obtaining knowledge of and conversation with one's guardian angel] we may obtain the right of using the evil spirits for our servants in all material matters”. Of course, even the Abramelin alludes to the difficulty in describing the nature of the HGA, perhaps foreshadowing decades of internet-based flame wars: “their angel being by its nature Amphiteron [inaccessible, double?], because the angelic nature differeth to so great an extent from that of men, that no understanding nor science could express or describe it, as regardeth that great purity wherewith [the angels] be invested”.

The thing is that the Abramelin is, above anything else, a work on magic. The whole 6-month (or 18-month, if you’re reading Dehn’s translation) period of prayer and asceticism is meant to put you in contact with your HGA, after which you work with the HGA to accomplish any and every other type of magic. In other words, the HGA becomes the only familiar or supernatural assistant one would ever need, able to bind or loosen any other spirit, achieve any task, or obtain any objective. In this light, Abramelin shares strong similarities with several PGM texts (I.1, I.42, IV.154, VII.505, inter alia). The general gist is that the magical view of the HGA is to assist you in getting what you want.

This is counter to the standard religious view that the HGA is to lead you to virtue. After all, probably the two biggest drives for people studying magic are to (a) get paid and (b) get laid, and texts like the PGM, Grand Grimoire, and the like are pretty blatant in saying so, with books like Abramelin and the Keys of Solomon being a little more subtle about it. What we want to accomplish is not always in line with virtue, if not directly opposed to it. From this, it might be said that the magical HGA isn’t an angel at all, but a familiar spirit of a lower rank than an angel. I disagree; after all, it’s a staple in Stoicism, Christianity, and Thelema that you shouldn’t judge what others do, and what might be terrible vice for you can just as easily be blessed virtue for another. The Abramelin approach to this is to strike a balance between the two: the HGA is to help you achieve what you want, but also to lead you to virtue, so what you want will eventually coincide with what God wants.

From this, it’s easily understandable how Thelema linked True Will with the HGA. If True Will is what we’re meant to accomplish according to the Divine, then our True Will is the will of God. Thus, by aligning our will with our True Will, we align our will with God’s will. It’s still free will and freely chosen, but it’s that alignment that produces true power and true Work. However, the vessel for knowing and keeping on our path of True Will most easily lies with the HGA compared to other paths, since the HGA is most in tune with our lives specifically and knows our specific needs and wants, and since the HGA leads us to God, he can lead us in a way most effective for ourselves to God. If I recall correctly, this is likewise why many Golden Dawn lodges have no formal initiations above Adeptus Minor (5=6, corresponding with Thiphareth/Sun), which is associated with KCHGA, since the KCHGA becomes one’s real teacher after that point and the Work they indicate to do becomes proof of one’s real grade. The HGA will still accomplish nearly anything you ask for, but rather than the HGA changing their nature through your working, the HGA is the catalyst for you changing your own nature through your Work.

This is an element that appears to be lacking to me in religious-devotional methods of working with the HGA, like through novenas or simple prayer. Without truly needing and aspiring to know and converse with the HGA, it’s extraordinarily rare for one to contact and accomplish anything with them, and the methods involve at a minimum powerful and wholly-concentrated prayer to the point of fanaticism and faith so extreme things become more magical than theological. Sure, you can obtain the favor and a few helpful nudges after repeated novenas or litanies to the HGA, and they’ll probably throw a sign to you once in a while that you may or may not miss, but for concentrated work and learning, I haven’t found the Catholic prayer stuff nearly as useful to work with the HGA as I have magical methods and involved ritual. (Then again, Catholic rituals as I would reckon a “ritual” to work with the HGA are few and far between, and I don’t know of anything that powerful besides Mass itself, and I’m not qualified to perform that.)

Despite that I’ve worked with plenty of other angels, the HGA seems to be an angel of a wholly different type than the planetary angels/intelligences/spirits/choirs, and is distinct still from the seven archangels themselves. I can’t yet discern whether this is a function of him being so close and connected to me, lower than the rest, higher than the rest, an outgrowth of God itself into my life in a discrete form I’d recognize as an angel, or something else entirely; I sense my HGA smirking and snickering as I write this, which I take as a recognition of the futility of this sort of pondering. What I do know is that the HGA is definitely worked with in a way distinct from any other spirit. He doesn’t require or feel the need for formal conjurations, nor does he care for chaplets and novenas and candles burned in his honor. He instructs me to pray, but with a special prayer he helped me write to align myself to the Almighty and not to his specific presence. He directs and smooths out my work, but has no specific ritual for himself (beyond the Headless Rite, which is how I came to contact him in the first place, but which he’s somewhat distanced himself from since). He’s distinctly Other, but in a way that makes him not-Other at all.

Personally, I take the HGA, as the Golden Dawn does, as one’s true teacher, but in a farther and in a more ecumenical way. I claim that once one has true and certain contact with one’s HGA (which is a complicated and hard-to-accomplish thing to begin with), they need no more dogmas or religions or texts beyond that which their HGA directs them to study. If the HGA is one’s connection to God and one’s true path, then that path becomes their true religion; no other path will do for them, since any other path would divert from their True Will. In that sense, the HGA can act as one’s personal Christ, or personal God who talks to them, or another emanation of the Divine suited just for them that only they hear, that they need to hear, and that only they need to hear. As one of my Golden Dawn friends has said in the past, the HGA is a kind of divine sockpuppet, throttling back the infinity of the Almighty into a finite and “easily” understandable form for our finite minds to process and comprehend. It’s a kind of hilarious metaphor, but it definitely works, and probably works best and most succinctly of any blog post I’ve read or written on the subject.

In that light, I suppose I should reevaluate my earlier evaluation that strictly devotional methods are sub-par compared to magical methods to contact the HGA. After all, not everyone is suited to magical practice (though I’d like to think they are), and some people should probably stick to the devotional methods and get the most out of them than they would of any set of spiritual practices. After all, my own HGA would rather me work in more active ways than simple prayer, but that wouldn’t go for everybody’s HGA. Regardless of whichever path one should be taking to contact their HGA, it’s definitely something everyone should work on, since knowing one’s HGA is equivalent to knowing one’s True Will, which is equivalent to knowing one’s place in the cosmos and in the plan of the Divine; KCHGA in any form is “know thyself”.

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Lunar Grammatomantic Ritual Calendar

April 28, 2014, 8:11 am

≫ Next: Search Term Shoot Back, April 2014 (and an announcement!)

≪ Previous: The Holy Guardian Angel in Religion and Magic

Day	Name	Letter	Festival
1	New Moon	Α	Noumenia
2	2nd rising	Β	Agathos Daimon
3	3rd rising	Γ	Athena
4	4th rising	Δ	Heracles, Hermes, Aphrodite, Eros
5	5th rising	Ε
6	6th rising	Ϝ	Artemis
7	7th rising	Ζ	Apollo
8	8th rising	Η	Poseidon, Theseus
9	9th rising	Θ
10	10th rising	—
11	11th	Ι
12	12th	Κ
13	13th	Λ
14	14th	Μ
15	15th	Ν
16	16th	Ξ	Full Moon
17	17th	Ο
18	18th	Π
19	19th	Ϙ
20	earlier 10th	—
21	later 10th	Ρ
22	9th waning	Σ
23	8th waning	Τ
24	7th waning	Υ
25	6th waning	Φ
26	5th waning	Χ
27	4th waning	Ψ
28	3rd waning	Ω
29	2nd waning	Ϡ	Omitted in hollow months
30	Old and New	— (Ϡ if hollow month)

For any given letter and its singular stoicheic correspondence, there are usually multiple gods that correspond to it; for instance, Khi, associated with Fire, can be attributed to Rhea, Hephaistos, Hekate, or Hestia equally well. I associate each day with one god, perhaps with a closely-associated figure, such as Hermes with his son Pan, or a group of gods or spirits as a class.
Some of the days of the month are significant purely for their lunar symbolism, such as the dates of the New Moon, Dark Moon, and Full Moon. Other rituals happen on these dates, but are not specifically nor necessarily associated with the celebration of a particular god.
Days of the month that have no letters associated with them (days 10, 20, and the final day in full months) have no rituals associated with them. No letter, no stoicheia, no gods, no ritual. These are basically dedicated break days, a kind of sabbath, or they can be used to clean up offerings and rituals from the preceding decade of days or prepare for the next.
Three days of the month (days 6, 19, and 29) are given the obsolete Greek letters Digamma, Qoppa, and Sampi. These letters have no stoicheic correspondence, nor do they have any gods associated with them. Since they were pirits of light, shadow, and the starsonce used and inherited from the Phoenicians, however, while they may be effectively missing from use, they’re not forgotten. I’ve given these days to the ancestors, whom I divide into three groups: Ancestors of Kin (those related by name, family, marriage, and blood), of Faith (those of spiritual lineage, teachers, prophets, and tradition founders), and of the Great (culture heroes, saints, and other great people whose work has benefited our lives).
Although it might be expected that the seven days that have the seven vowels associated to them (days 1, 5, 8, 11, 17, 24, and 28) would be given to the gods that equate to the planets (such as Hermes for Epsilon on day 5), I normally invoke and make offerings to the planets on their corresponding days of the week (which is an unrelated cycle to this calendar). Instead, I mark these days by honoring a set of powers I call “Guardians of the Directions”, kinda like Watchtowers of Enochiana or Archangels in the LBRP, but associated with the seven directions (east, south, west, north, above, center, below). These are from my PGM explorations and daily energy work, which I’ve mentioned before, but they’re quite powerful forces in their own rights. The Guardian at the center I associate with the word of power ΜΑΛΠΑΡΤΑΛΧΩ, or “MALPARTALKHŌ”, a word I’ve received for this direction when I don’t want to use my own Agathodaimon/HGA name, though it refers to the Agathodaimon generally. These forces are closer to the earth than some of the other gods, and certainly closer than the seven planets, yet still distinct from the world itself and its own sets of spirits. Their letter correspondences come from the directions one faces when working with the powers of the seven planets, themselves associated with the seven vowels, according to a ritual from the PGM that I’ve adapted to my own uses. These seven powers, as the seven planets or seven archangels, form a synaxis, a coherent and unified group, that work together, so I figured I should recognize them and elaborate on their places in my life a little more than I do currently. Sets of gnostic aeons, the seven planets as gods in their own rights (perhaps as titans?), the seven Sages of Greece, or similar entities might similarly be worshipped on these days, but I figure that the Guardians are good for now.
Although I tried to keep the five elemental letters associated with things close to their elements, these are basically the catch-all days for groups of spirits or deities, with the exception of Psi, given to Dionysus, since Psi’s associated stoicheion is spirit, not quite an element but not quite a celestial force, either, perfect for the god as I see it.

Day	Name	Letter	Festival
1	New Moon Noumenia	Α	Erbeth
2	2nd rising	Β	Athena Nike
3	3rd rising	Γ	Aphrodite Eros
4	4th rising	Δ	Apollo Asklepios
5	5th rising	Ε	Lerthexanax
6	6th rising	Ϝ	Ancestors of Kin
7	7th rising	Ζ	Hermes Pan
8	8th rising	Η	Ablanathanalba
9	9th rising	Θ	Gaia and Oceanos Spirits of land and water
10	10th rising	—	—
11	11th	Ι	Sesengenbarpharanges
12	12th	Κ	Zeus Tykhe
13	13th	Λ	Demeter
14	14th	Μ	Hephaistos
15	15th	Ν	Ares
16	16th Full Moon	Ξ	Persephone Hades
17	17th	Ο	Damnameneus
18	18th	Π	Artemis
19	19th	Ϙ	Ancestors of Faith
20	earlier 10th	—	—
21	later 10th	Ρ	Hestia Spirits of house and home
22	9th waning	Σ	Hera
23	8th waning	Τ	Poseidon
24	7th waning	Υ	Agathodaimon
25	6th waning	Φ	Nine Muses Three Graces
26	5th waning	Χ	Hekate Three Moirai Three Erinyes
27	4th waning	Ψ	Dionysus
28	3rd waning	Ω	Akrammakhamarei
29	2nd waning	Ϡ	Ancestors of the Great (day omitted in hollow months)
30	Old and New Dark Moon	— (Ϡ if hollow month)	— (Ancestors of the Great if hollow month)

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