THE EQUINOX

British Journal of Thelema

HADEAN

Hadean Press
 Table of Contents

Editorial 515
the Editors
The goetia 517
by Rufus Opus
food for thought 519
by Omi Toñí, Oní Yemayá
Liturgical Approaches to Invocation & Evocation II 530
by Jake Stratton-Kent
pyramidos requiem 540
by Jake Stratton-Kent
the Opening of the Mouth 547
by Mister Quick
the apprentice magician 554
by Rufus Opus
modern grimoire magick 556
by Aaron Leitch
that death may die in us 570
by Layo Lehmann
Working with Papaver Chthonios 575
by Harold A. Roth
Spirit houses in thailand 581
by Alex Dally MacFarlane
93 Currents 586
letters to/by the Editors
Reviews 588
of books, journals, films
Notices 591
advertisements, ephemera

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 Interior Illustrations

The Temptation of St. Anthony, in the manner of H. Bosch, ca 1515 516

Apostrophe Demon, 1814 518
Opening Prayers, Omi Toñí, Oní Yemayá 521
Boveda and Eggun, Omi Toñí, Oní Yemayá 522
Two Ladies, Omi Toñí, Oní Yemayá 525
Pyro Work, Omi Toñí, Oní Yemayá 526
A Child at Pray, Omi Toñí, Oní Yemayá 529
Boveda and Eggun, Omi Toñí, Oní Yemayá 529
Temple Layout of Pyramidos 530
Verum Circle 531
Spirit & Matter, Aria Nadii, 2009 539
The World Egg, Aria Nadii, 2009 546
Egyptian Priest, 5th Dynasty, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 548
Canopic Urns, source unknown 551
Djed Pillar, source unknown 552
Bune, Studio Raziel, 2009 555
Sacrificial Cherries, Layo Lehmann 570
Venus, Layo Lehmann 574
Elka Poppy Bud, Harold A. Roth 576
Elka Pod Drying, Harold A. Roth 577
Elka Poppy in Bloom, Harold A. Roth 579
K.V.N., household guard 592

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 Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
As most readers are aware this is the second of three issues completing Volume VII of The Equinox: British
Journal of Thelema after something of a pause. However this is not the first title the Journal has carried. In the
1970s there was The New Equinox under Ray Sherwin that saw the first declaration of Chaos Magic. In the
early 1980s The New Equinox: British Journal of Magick revealed English Qaballistic magick for the first time.
Since 1988 the work has undergone such transformations that the title now speaks more of the point of
departure than the goal. In other words, the contributors, readership and mission of this Journal represent a
global rather than national or even international phenomenon, while the form of Thelema represented is both
inclusive and non-aligned.
So with this penultimate issue of this volume, a re-examination of the current ‘magical motto’ is not out
of place. It is obvious enough what a Journal might be, but what exactly is British Thelema? It differs from that
emanating from America in overt inclusiveness and post-Crowleyan emphases. This is also represented by
many individuals and non-aligned groupings, often loosely attached to, emergent from or espousing certain
currents originating in England. Besides variants not originating in the Thelemic sphere, two examples are
the Typhonian magick and Chaos magick currents. Neither of these represents Radical Traditionalism; the
iconoclasm of the former and the solipsism of the latter have little if any connection with traditional approaches,
and are thus incapable of building upon them or unifying them. However there is also the tradition represented
by this Journal through two of its major phases: English Qaballa. This is the foremost school embodying
Radical Traditionalism at the present time.
Western magic as we know it – and as our predecessors over many centuries knew it – had its origins in
the intellectual ferment of the Hellenistic world. This ancient synthesis produced Alchemy, Astrology and
the magic of the grimoires, as well as a considerable portion of what was later termed Kabbalah. In today’s
globalised world a new synthesis is emerging for the first time in over two thousand years. It is only through
Radical Traditionalism that Thelema can regain its former position as a vanguard movement in modern
occultism, and contribute decisively to the emergent ‘New Synthesis’. This synthesis will and must transcend
mere Westernism, particularly in its predominantly Anglo-Saxon form. We must acknowledge firstly that both
modern European and American cultures already involve a fusion of African as well as European cultural
forms, and that magic will and is evolving accordingly. This is but the foremost of the transformations we must
acknowledge and embrace. Must, that is, if Western magic is to escape the doldrums in which it has languished
in great part for many decades. While Western magic is endlessly self-congratulatory – a compensation for its
insecurity – there is a great task ahead, in which few are as yet involved. This Journal embraces these coming
changes and encourages them where others ignore or oppose them. To paraphrase a rallying call of the last
century, you are either on the bus or under it.

There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.
Love is the law, love under will.

Dis Jake Stratton-Kent Erzebet

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516
 THE goetia
Rufus Opus

The word “Goetia” refers to a particular genre of magic. All too often in today’s occult realm, “Goetia”
means only the one little grimoire included in the Lemegeton, the Lesser Key of Solomon. Otherwise intelligent
people sincerely believe that the word only refers to the magic related to that particular grimoire.
However, “Goetia” comes from a Greek word meaning “howling, moaning, or lamenting.” It is the
form of magic used by “Goets,” the magicians that conjured the spirits, and it refers to the sounds they
made during the conjuration process. This style of magic has roots that go back beyond the dimly recalled
times of neo-platonic philosophy. It was performed by the average pagan magician long before the celestial
hierarchies were instituted, and resembles shamanism a great deal more than it resembles Golden Dawn
style aristocratic ceremonial magic.
Goetia was much more than a grimoire. Goetia was a way of life as much as it was a magical practice.
Rooted in the terrestrial systems of magic, this system put the magician in touch with the spirits of Nature, the
spirits of the terrestrial sphere. This sphere included what ceremonial magicians refer to now as “elemental”
spirits, but also the spirits of the departed, spirits of local trees and rivers, and the general Genius Loci, spirits
that were assigned rulership over the local lands.
These spirits had particular aspects over which they ruled. Some were fertility spirits that would aid in
child bearing or agriculture. Others were water or sea spirits that would aid in commerce or naval war. By far
the most popular spirit to work with seems to have been the spirits of the recently dead. In ancient times, it
was understood that all people who died became spirits that could watch over and protect the living, if the
living in question knew the secret words. Particularly spirits of those murdered or who died violent deaths
were sought to work deeds of violence, justice, and revenge.
The term Goetia refers to the methods of working with these spirits, whether they were spirits of the
dead or spirits of Nature. These spirits were understood to be of the Chthonic Underworld, the world that
lies within and behind and beneath the world we experience with our senses. Chthonic literally means “of
or pertaining to the deities, spirits, and other beings dwelling beneath the earth.” But to the practitioners of
what we call Goetia, it meant much more.
I worry sometimes that the meaning behind the words we use to refer to magical things blocks us
from understanding what it is that magic can do, and how it goes about accomplishing its effects. To many
modern magicians, the “Underworld” means only Hades, or the land of the dead. To people trying to work
Goetic magic, a new understanding of the word Underworld must be in place.
I like to think of the world of Goetic spirits as the Chthonic world. It is a whole universe operating at a
different vibration than the one we normally experience. Aboriginal people of Australia refer to the spirit
world as “The Dreaming,” while people with a Western Ceremonial Magician background might be more
inclined to think of it as the “Astral” realm. It is not hell, or any realm of the damned, although these realms
may be a part of the Chthonic world. It is not a bleak and grey place of cold stone permeated with regret.
The Chthonic world to the Goetic Magician is the land of potential.
All that ever was and all that ever will be originates from this wellspring, and the spirits that dwell in this
realm are intelligent manifestations of pre-existence that are eager to work with the denizens of our manifest
realm. Provided, of course, we have been properly introduced.
In modern times, Goetic magic has a dark quality about it. The spirits of the Goetia of the Lemegeton,
for instance, are called demons, and come with all the reputation that word carries with it. The spirits are
monstrous, hodge-podges of mankind and animals, with skins the colors of the earth and sky. The kinds of
magic traditionally associated with demons include pacts, blood offerings, rituals performed in caverns in
the earth and desecrated items of holy intent. Between the Church and Hollywood, modern occultists have
a very slim chance to understand the subtle textures of the background of this often maligned tradition.
Once a magician has been properly introduced to the denizens of the Chthonic realms, they begin to
realize that most of the dark reputation garnered by this class of spirit is largely undeserved. It’s true, magical

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operations with Goetic spirits can scare the hell out of you. Results can be terrible to behold, and much
suffering may come of working with these spirits. Yet the same is true of any magical operation.
I’ve never experienced anything as terrifying as standing in the presence of God. No alleged “demon” of
the Goetia has made me as nervous during a ritual as the Angels of the Shemhamephoresh who are charged
with bearing the Holy Names of God. Read the description of the Wheels in Ezekiel, the sacred angels that
serve God in all his righteousness and holiness; these entities are horrifying. A crow-headed man that speaks
in a hoarse voice is nothing compared to a huge being with eyes in its armpits. I’d much rather meet Agares
and his crocodile in a dark alley than Kammael, Archangel of Mars.
I don’t want to give the impression that the spirits you work with in the practice of Goetia are nice, or
particularly safe entities to work with. There are prerequisites to working with the spirits of any tradition,
and failure to have those prerequisites met will inevitably lead to disaster, whether you’re conjuring demons
of the Goetia, neo-pagan faeries, or the most beneficent of God’s holy angels.

Rufus Opus is the author of Head For the Red (http://headforred.blogspot.com).

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 Food for Thought... No Pun Intended

Omi Toñí, Oní Yemayá

I had a nightmare. I was jolted out of my bed in between worlds, agitated and most of all very hungry.
I had not done dream work in a very long time, but a few weeks before this horrid dream, during a spirit
transmission through my husband Eric, one of my spirits came with a request. We were to shift our line
of communications to the sleep realm. She outlined the first set of in instructions on how to sew a ‘dream
pillow’.
I enjoy sewing on my spare time and I even turn that craft into active meditation and as eager as I was
to start my project, I sensed something was missing. Further inspiration came to me hours later while
chatting with Terry, my best and dearest friend as well as my spiritual co-worker. Upon telling him about
my communication with my spirit guide, Madam G, he stated that he had been thinking about doing dream
work himself. Sharing the same interest, it is only natural we would keep each other company in this
adventure. So we resorted to divination with our respective spirit guides, both females, and sure enough we
concurred in using exactly the same ingredients.
I made both pillows, sent Terry’s to the UK and in return he sent me some herbs hard to find in the
Caribbean. On to sleep I went, but not without asking Madam G to open the way of communication
between her and I.
It was on my dressing gown in the middle of a busy hotel lobby, but only the front desk clerk noticed
me. My keys had been locked in my room and my roommate an old high school friend would not open the
door for me no matter how hard I knocked. After obtaining my keys, I entered the room but I still went
unnoticed. I left frustrated and I realized I was starving.
Across the lobby in the hotel restaurant a friend of mine was finishing breakfast and waved me to join
her. She was not eating alone; another mate of ours had just left the table to visit the restroom. So I sat
down and told my friend how hungry I was. The waitress came and cleared the table and I started to order,
but she paid no attention to me. My friend then interceded and repeated my order. Eggs, pancakes, sausages
and coffee were brought to the table by a waitress who seemed miffed to have to serve a second round of
breakfast and to a rather thin young woman. I was enjoying my food when our other friend returned and
enquired who in the world was supposed to eat all that food that now sat there on the table getting cold.
I could not believe my ears. Could she not see that I was half way through devouring my meal? It had
been so long since I ate and I was so delighted with my meal when a pair of hands reached out to take my
food away. I protested, but the waitress simply cleared the table while my kind friend was scolded for being
greedy and ordering things to them let them go to waste. My friend, the one who ordered for me looked
right in my direction with sad longing eyes. It was then when I realized, I was dead.
Communicating with spirits can be filled with surprises and provide the seeker with much food for
thought. I never imagined that my life’s journey would enable me to turn the table and see life from such
different perspective: From the eyes of someone no longer alive.

The Early Days

I started to hang around spiritist circles before I turned seven. My mother would visit at least once a
week the house of a woman reputed for her mediumship skills, her name is Bonifacia or Bonnie as we all
called her. She was tall and portly and her dark skin was always perfumed with all sort of interesting herbs
and oils. Funny how scents stay with you for so long, but then again it is hard to forget those inescapable big
matronly hugs when you are pint size.
From Bonnie I got my very first lessons in dealing with spirits. I learned back then that I was destined to
work with them, although that had been told to my mother while I was in her womb by yet another spiritist,
a blind one who had foreseen my gender and the fact that I would have a difficult entry into the world. I
was a breech birth, but the physician managed to turn me around, I was born on my feet and with my head

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surrounded by a caul – in the African Traditional religions that is a sign of children who can see through
veils into other worlds, amongst other things.
Bonnie’s house was always full of people, her dining room table doubled as her area of work or consultation,
where she had always pencils, paper, a lit white candle, Florida water and a big round bowl of fresh water to
cast away negative vibrations from spirits. As she prayed for spirits to communicate with her and her clients,
she would incessantly draw circles and doodles on her sheets of paper, later on, those drawings revealed
solutions to the issues at hand. Funny how to me they said nothing, but to her they were recipe books loaded
with herbs, oils, spiritual cleansing baths and so on. Spiritual communication takes interesting forms, being
automatic writing one of them.
She was by no means restricted only to that, she was a phenomenal physical medium. Through one of
her spirits I learned early on the mechanics of using fire during spiritist cleansings. My affinity for the use
of fire has increased through the years as it is a fast and efficient way to shed away destructive energies, but
it should never be done in haste, or else one might end up in harm’s way.
Bonnie shared her spiritual gifts with friends and family, sometimes I would spend nearly a day observing
her work for one person after another, while my mother waited patiently for her turn. Bonnie was tireless,
but that in itself is a gift, for some physical mediums are left depleted of energies with just one spirit coming
through them.
One of Bonnie’s spirit guides was a freed slave called Liberato. He was jolly and loud. As a medium
or horse, Bonnie retained nothing of her personality when she was mounted, quite the opposite. Liberato
would ask for rum, cigars and other items to perform his cleansings. He also would sing or ask those
presents to sing a song with his prowess:

“Liberato, negro ingrato.

Le gusta el ron, le gusta el Palo...”
“Liberato, ingrate nigger.”
He likes his rum, he likes [to practice] Palo...”

It is a shame that I could not continue on learning with her as I wanted. My mother was one of those
people who only visited a spiritist, or a church for that matter, when in need. Otherwise, Spiritism and
Santería were portrayed as a thing for “ignorant folks”. Attitudes fortunately have changed somewhat over
the years, now mom is as devoted to Spiritism and Santería as a born again Christian is to church services.
But back then attitudes did not change fast enough for me. Once I had shown a genuine interest and
aptitude, I was kept away from it all, when in fact I was meant to have been in training for years by the time
I finally realized I did not had to carry my affinity for the spiritual world in the bottom of my handbag.
It would take me over two decades to shed the conditioning established to persuade me to forget a gift
from birth and reclaim my spiritual heritage. The first words my husband ever said to me were an eye opener
as he asked me if being Puerto Rican I knew anything about Santería and Spiritism. It was like a light went
on in me. I realized the unfounded fears and my frustrated desires and how I had longed for Liberato and
other spirits. This guy named Eric, straight from Louisiana the land of American Voodoo took the veil
from me eyes and made me realize what a privilege I have had in having been exposed at an early age to the
spiritist system and tradition. Spirits and love work in mysterious ways.
Yet, with 20 years without being around spiritist practices, and only remembering bits and pieces of what
I had once learned, I had to start again from zero and without the guidance of an experience medium like
Bonnie because now I was living in Texas, disconnected from my land and religious culture.

Starting Over
Dealing with spirits is not a simple matter. Take for example the fact that for most people that line of
communications is in essence impaired. The unspoiled perception of the world held by a child still allows for
spiritual contact, but as societal conditioning sets in, doors are closed precluding most of us from believing
and partaking from the intangible, otherworldly or plainly said, from the world of spirits.
Therefore, communication with spirits at first is as simple as talking while having your head submerged
under water. Finding the means to articulate our thoughts and feelings to spirits is a matter of trial and error.

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After all, how to know what sort of communication is preferred by a spirit or group of spirits depending on
their classification? Factors such as the nature of the spirit being contacted also weighs in communications.
Was the intended spirit receptor at some point in our same plane of existence as humans? And once we cross
that barrier and we find a way to convey our ideas...how to understand a message sent back to us? Supposing
of course that said spirit feels inclined to reply.
Perhaps the most important issue to address early on in the development of a spiritist is how to know
which spirit to contact.

I have come across plenty of examples of aspiring spiritist of all ages with such lofty ideas about their own
skills and the sort of spirit they want to conjure right of the start. Nothing wrong with being ambitious, but I
happen to know from firsthand experience the sort of issues that can emerge when the gates of mediumship
are opened without the proper preparation and care. The spirit world is not always friendly. In the case
of spirits of people, passing on to a different plane of existence does not confer instantly an enlightened
status. Undeveloped human beings will continue with their own struggles once they die, particularly if the
reason they stay around is due to unresolved matters. Those matters usually point out a lack of full spiritual
advancement or to things left incomplete, such as guilt, debts to pay, and so on. Those are the first kind of
spirits that a medium usually attract and they can cause lots of havoc, not that they are bad, they come to the
medium in search of light, help, curiosity or simply to experience vicariously life — as they knew it.
Therein lays a source of trouble, a drunkard may influence a medium to drink and do other things that
may or may not match the lifestyle and aspirations of someone who wants to elevate their spiritual status
by developing spiritual skills. Mediumship comes with hardships and responsibilities, and of course some
interesting rewards.
I remember sitting in front of my first bóveda, my mouth dry and my mind filled with anticipation. The
altar was properly set including Florida water, and even a photo of my late grandmother Gloria who herself
was a spiritist, yet the process was alien, felt staged. It will take me many months of persistent work to finally
start receiving spiritual communication in such a way I could make sense of it.
Fortunately by then, I had found my godfather Jorge, a very well educated man in worldly and spiritual
matters who had been a spiritist for over 45 years and was willing to selflessly share a considerable amount
of insights. One of those early lessons was to have simplicity and sincerity in my prayers. Godfather is soft
spoken, but his words carry force and will behind them, they have authority and at the same time a gentle
coaxing that makes them plainly, a lure.
During those days of soul searching, I was often reminded of the expression commonly used in the
African Traditional Religions, “We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us”. In early spiritist
work it is crucial to reach out to the closest possible spiritual link at hand: Bloodline. Even those who never
met their parents because they are adopted still have a bloodline. It makes no difference; our cells are a living
archive, they hold the link to our history. Like we say in the Caribbean, people do not drop from coconut
trees.

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 At first my prayers were short. Slowly I fell on a pace of my own, sharing events of the day, asking for
guidance and help, waiting eagerly for a sign... I wanted to know I was on the right path. Signs came and
went; only I had still had my preconceived ideas on what communications from the spirit world to me were
supposed to be like. I missed many signs. Some other signs were clear as a bell; one of them saved my life
and that of my husband.
It had been a good six months since I started to work my bóveda every day and I was constantly praying
for a significant sign. I was also curious to know what my spiritual forte was. Was I a physical medium,
a clairvoyant, perhaps clairaudient, or psychometrist? Could I see spirits? Always the typical inquisitive
overachiever, and under the tutelage of a brilliant spiritist, I was eager to prove my worth and find my niche.
Little I knew that I was about to find out harshly which one was one of my ‘specialty’ areas.
I was driving on a two-way street, traffic against me was very light and I was about to come to an
interception. My husband and I were busy talking about a reading with Ifá I had gotten from my godfather
Jorge, he had warned me of a traffic accident and possible incarceration, and he explicitly asked me not to
make plans while driving. Well, we were in the process of moving to a different city. Planning happened
within the course of our conversation. Then the meaning of the reading unfolded.
I hear clear as daylight a crisp male voice in my left ear ordering me to, “Slowdown 5 miles now. You will
be hit from the left, brace yourself.” I did as I was told. My small Mazda got hit on its front fender from the
driver’s side by an old Buick that ignored a four-way stop and came like a charging bull towards me barrelling
at over 50 miles per hour. My car was pushed to the right corner of the crossroads where there was an old
black man standing on the corner dressed in red and black. We sustained no major injuries. The man
driving the Buick took off by foot running from the police that showed upon the scene within seconds. The
man was arrested because he was an illegal immigrant driving a stolen car without drivers permit and had
outstanding warrants for his arrest. The man standing at the crossroads, the only witness vanished from
the scene.
Had I not listened to that voice and followed its command, our car would have been t-boned and it is
likely that at the speed the Buick was travelling, it would have been a fatal accident for at least me.
As soon as I could, I ran to the phone and told my godfather. He was not surprised at all.
I realized after this accident, than the voice that spoke to me was not unknown. I had heard it on and
off through my life. I have most times dismissed it as a figment of my imagination. Conditioning in not
believing in the Spiritual realm had hindered me in the past and made me waste valuable opportunities for
development.
There are two areas that spiritists work on in order to develop their gifts, one of them is daily devotional
work, the other is collective work such as the spiritual masses.

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 Daily devotional work consists of upkeep of the shrine or bóveda This is followed by a brief cleansing and
prayers to one’s main spirit (if you already have identified it; otherwise the simple act of acknowledgement of
a main spirit guide, which we all have, is the first step), and some minutes of quiet contemplation sitting or
standing by the shrine.
In my case, I am a recovering Catholic, and some of my spirits were of that religious persuasion. Therefore,
I start with the Lord’s Prayer, a Hail Mary and prayers to the Holy Trinity. Then I proceed to greet my
spirits, share with them what I want, ask for help if need it, or simply just take time to meditate and allow
communication to flow as needed. Other times, I simply thank them for their protection and carry on with
my day. However, it is the act of acknowledgement and focused prayer what is essential. Otherwise, how
can a spiritist draw upon the strength of these beings if there have been no relationship established? Spirits
have complex personalities and most be treated with respect, charity and integrity, no matter their level of
development or the mission they may be carrying on.
When it comes to personalities, my spiritual group, framework or “cuadro spiritual” is composed of a
collection of colourful spirits that at one time were human and now are identified with traditional archetypes
due to the ethnic origin they had when they held their last physical incarnation.
My main spirit guide is a Mammy or Madama. However I have at least three of those spirits whom at times
joggle their positions depending on the needs I may have. I love them all equally though. One is Madama G,
she is talkative and very savvy and we communicate mainly through dreams and with the help of a pendulum.
Mammy M is very much the strong mother who always keeps a watchful eye over my affairs.
Both these beings have many levels of depth, but they are also jealous of our privacy so I will only share as
much as we agree upon. It is not uncommon for uncharitable practices to emerge in spiritists circles. One of
them is luring or stealing good spiritual guides. I have had at least 2 people trying to take Madama G away
from me, but her commitment is solely to working with me.
The third Mammy is fond of working with herbs, she is the most quiet of the group, but her presence is
felt in many ways, mainly when inspiration is needed, in healing workings, and, in the kitchen for she likes to
watch me cook and often times, we stir and season the pots together. Inspiration through gentle conspiring,
the usage of herbs for defeating obstacles, simple acts such as creating little charms and chants, all those things
flow from that spirit. I can feel her by me even as I write, for she often times works through my hands.
One of the most colourful spirits in my group won’t let me be until I write solely about her, the Gypsy. She
is lively and loves music and colourful skirts. Gypsy is quite the survivalist. She believes everything under the
sky belongs to her, thus there is no sin in taking from life what is needed when it suits her. She is also fond of
men. There have been periods in my life, when her ways have led me to misbehaviour, interesting wanderings
and experiences, and yes, very good luck with men. I sense that from her also comes the ‘reversed blessing’ of
never having been able to have a living female to call friend. She is quite predominant in the group but she
has yet to share her name or pseudonym with me. Names are important, but the relationship between spirits
and spiritist starts oftentimes without names. Labels between her and I seem to be irrelevant.
Some of the other beloved ‘personalities’ from my spiritual group are males. There are for example both
male and female Nation spirits. These spirits are pragmatic and very swift to action; they extend their protection
over the household, watching carefully over my children. Then there are my two Rambos, two strong Congo
spirits, both when last alive were practitioners of Palo, thus they have guided me to work with Palo Monte
religious system, a completely separate spiritual practice to which I am also an initiate. These spirits I call upon
when there are serious needs of survival and defence to address, though most times they deal with matters
without me even having to call upon them.
Such is the importance of knowing and relating to one’s spirits. As years of work go by and individual
relationships unfold, one learns if they have a preferred means of communication: The Tarot, geomancy,
pendulum, a black mirror or they may even guide the spiritist to develop a private coded divination system to
be or not to be shared with others.
Spirits nonetheless, are the first line of defence, each having areas of competence. When spiritist and
spirits work in unison they can help each other develop spiritually as spirits are indeed in their own path of
continuous development for which the spiritist is partly responsible. This team work allows the spiritist to have
a strong base from which to draw upon for divination, healing, self-defence and defence of others, as well as to
help in the development of other spiritists and many other things.

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 Working in Community
Godfather Jorge could only take me so far in my spiritual journey. He had started himself as a spiritist
much before I was born, but his path led him to Palo Monte, Santería and ultimately to become an Awó
Orunmila or priest of Ifá. This title carries on a great responsibility. As an Awó his specialty is to be the
mouthpiece to Ifá as a master diviner. Ifá is said to be the mouthpiece of Olofi, the great creator of the
Universe. Awós normally only train other awós, I am not one, nor will I be as the office is only reserved to
men, nothing sexist as feminists would want to claim, but this in itself is a subject outside of the scope of
Spiritism which deserves its own time and space.
Be that as it may, godfather Jorge took me as far as he should in the basic teachings of spiritism. He
motivated me to read a lot, to study all of Kardec books and to read other writers such as Jung. Observing
his daily devotional work over the course of years, participating in conversations about his favourite books
and learning how spiritism reinforces his work in divination and other aspects of his priesthood was enough
schooling for me. For it he has my eternal gratitude and love.
In time I met who would be my Orisha godfather, José B. Of Cuban origin like Jorge, he had a similar
spiritist background which enriched my learning and transition to a different teacher. Orisha priests are
oftentimes responsible for introducing spiritism to their godchildren as the basis of their spiritual practice.
In my case the spirits guided me to find an Ilé or orisha household. It is said that the dead gives birth to the
Orisha, in other words the spiritual path precedes the path into the priesthood.
Godfather José B comes from a strong line of spiritists and orisha priests both from his bloodline family
as well as from the members who are part of the extended orisha family. Kind, pensive and at times a bit
stubborn, godfather José B re-introduced me to community practice: The Spiritual Mass.
The structure of a spiritual mass depends greatly on the kind of spiritism practiced. Since its origins;
spiritism has evolved and splintered into similar practices but with certain peculiarities such as Espiritismo
de Cordón, Espiritismo Cruzado, Scientific Spiritism, Cuban Spiritism and Puerto Rican Spiritism.
But Spiritism did not originated in Cuba, although it flourished there. The spiritist movement developed
in Europe with the writings of Allan Kardec which was the pen name for Hippolyte Leon Denizard Rivail,
a French pedagogue who initially got interested in the study of the paranormal after hearing about the Fox
sisters (Kate, Margaretta and Leah) from Hydesville, Nueva York and the phenomena of strange raps in their
house. The Fox sisters happened to have moved to a home where a man had been murdered and he found
a way to communicate with the sisters by rapping. The phenomenon was such that it was observed not only
by the Fox sisters. The spirit agreed to allow neighbours to witness first-hand the rapping.
The writings of Kardec, Franz Mesmer and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle amongst others inspired Cubans
with spiritual curiosity and talents to gather in societies and practice based on the doctrine established by
Kardec which are mainly:
•God is the Supreme Intelligence and Primary Cause of everything;
•There are Spirits, all of whom are created simple and ignorant, but owning the power to gradually
perfect themselves;
•The natural method of this perfection process is reincarnation, through which the Spirit faces countless
different situations, problems and obstacles, and needs to learn how to deal with them;
•As part of Nature, Spirits can naturally communicate with living people, as well as interfere in their
lives;
•Many planets in the universe are inhabited.
In Cuba, spiritist groups truly congealed and gathered such strength as to have over 23 spiritist societies
already formed by the late 1850’s which congregated under the Cuban Spiritist Federation. These groups
left behind a legacy of writings in the form of newspapers like Luz de Ultratumba (1874), Luz de los Espacios
(1881), and La Alborada (1888).
Cubans are very passionate about their spiritual life. In a way I am blessed to have had two strong
influences in my development who are Cuban and who were nurtured in the midst of such rich Afro-
Caribbean culture.
Even though I met godfather José B’s a few months before I met godfather Jorge, my relationship with
the later has always been closer. While godfather José B is my orisha initiator, it is my godfather Jorge the

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one with whom I debate the philosophy of spiritual practices and the one who can truly see into my spiritual
world like no other human I have encountered to date.
Spirits have mysterious ways to interconnect people. I met godfather José B while working on a piece of
investigative reporting on the practices of Santería in Texas. My assignment was fortuitous and it opened
once again my world to Spiritism and Santería. Under his guidance I was asked to start my first bóveda as an
adult, he imparted directions and showed me how his was constructed, but, it was truly godfather Jorge the
one who was there in person at my apartment to show me the mechanics of setting up the shrine, blessing or
preparing my Spanish cards for readings and who gave my bóveda his spiritual blessing. Both men were in
charge of my spiritual development, but at different levels and they held great respect for one another.
Godfather José B was more concerned about progressing me through the ranks from aleyo to initiate in
Santería, and he also highlighted the practice of Spiritism as the key to open the doors to the Igbodu. As
part of this progress of development the ilé gathered periodically for Spiritual Masses.
White is the preferred color to wear when invited to a Spiritual Mass. Dressed in our finest whites, Eric
and I would normally show up early to see if there was anything needed to set up the temple.
Normally all that would be required was to bring some Florida water, cigars and prayer books. But
sometimes we would be asked to stop at the local HEB supermarket on the way to the Mass for a last minute
box of sweets to serve after the Mass or to gather a few branches of Paraíso for cleansings if the spirits so
required.
Normally the room would be moderately lit. The scent of Three Kings incense and charcoal permeated
the air and there was a buzz of excitement on the way to the Mass. We expected the presence of Spirit guides
and were eager to drink every word and advice, although sometimes surprising situations could arise and
leave a few eager attendees red-faced.
To avoid embarrassing situations, (as spirits depending on their degree of development can be blunt with
their advised or describing one’s affairs), there is a certain degree of preparation that attendees should not
neglect before a Spiritual Mass. Spiritual hygiene was a point that both godfathers highlighted over and over
before a public event. Doing a spiritual bath, a cleansing of the home or simply some fervent prayers to one’s
spirit guides to help illuminate the spiritists who would conduct the Mass the advice required for continuous
personal and spiritual progress.
During my first Spiritual Mass at José B’s, I sat quietly and eagerly observed the dynamics of the household,
the table was carefully arranged, dressed in white and set with an array of 9 glasses filled with water. A
large glass bowl of water dominated the center and in it there was a crucifix leaning against the back of the
bowl with bubbles all in it. White flowers were arranged on a base. Someone was busy about gathering last
minute items to bring to the table while humming a spiritist song to the Santísimo. Finally pencils, Florida
water and a stack of papers were deposited on the table.

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 The spiritist leading the Spiritual Mass would usually be my godfather’s Mother. White-haired and with
a perennial nervous smile on her face, one would never know her true state of mind. She was reputed for her
mediumship skills and we were eager to see what would happen. Two other mediums were at the table, one
was my godfather and the other his wife. Typically there are at least two mediums at hand to assist serving
as horses to the spirits and/or attend anyone who could become mounted.

“We pray all powerful Father that you provide for us the blessing of your enlightened spirits to assist
you. Distance us from the influence of spirits that could inflict error in our ability to receive your
message. Instill in us the light that will enable us to distinguish the truth from falsehoods.”

The lead spiritist role is to guide the congregation to follow a selection of prayers after reciting the
Lord’s Prayer and a Hail Mary. Traditionally a good 30 minutes of prayer readings takes place as the group
meditates in silence allowing their minds to be receptive to messages from the Spirit World. Through
the years, I have observed that a particular prayer which to me is more a poem than anything else, seems
to be the key to trance possession for many spiritists, this is the famous Plegaria del Náufrago. I am always
particularly touched by the last two stanzas:
“Father of my soul
Who listens to the afflicted
And sees my repentance
For what my life has been.

Save me Father, save me

And afford me, before I give account
An appointed time
So I can repent. Amen.”

As the last prayer is read, participants rise from their chairs and go to the White Table to cleanse
themselves by dipping their hands in a large basin filled with cleansing water placed at the foot of the table
and vigorously moving their hands about what we would normally call ‘the aura field.” Tapping on the table
three times with their hands concludes the cleansing by grounding onto the table undesired energies. The
liquid consists of a mixture of perfumes, oils and flowers, although the particular ‘formula’ is of personal
nature and often times its making is guided by the spiritual guides themselves.

At first the process was sort of boring to me; the Catholic tinged prayers turned me off completely.
Eric was there soaking it all up, going with the flow. Then it all happened fast, the lead medium started to
rub her knee and rock softly and the next thing we knew was the distinct presence of the spirit known as
Francisca. “Las buenas noches criollos, dice mi espírita que hay mucho criollo que necesitan resolvé cosas esta noche...”,
the spirit opened up greeting the crowd and affirming that there were plenty of people who needed to solve

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issues that evening. She then made gestures pointing to her mouth, asking for a drink. An attendant
produced an igüera or gourd filled with white rum and sugar. She eagerly took a drink and made smacking
sounds showing her pleased state. Spirits can only quench their thirst when in someone’s physical body.
Next she asked for a cigar, it was handed to her lit. She stood up and started calling those for whom she
had messages.
An attendant was careful to listen to the broken Spanish the spirit was using to communicate with those
present, taking notes and writing instructions for workings, cleansings or simply for advice.
At one point I was called to speak to Francisca, she gave me encouragement to continue my spirit work
and went on to describe briefly my main Spirit Guide and how she always watched out after me even if I had
yet to learn about her.
I walked away from my chat with Francisca with a square piece of paper in my hand, in it I had the recipe
for some spiritual baths to do over the next 3 nights.
There were those who had come to the gathering without any preparation, they were scolded for lack of
cleanliness, for leading disorganized lives and for doing things that could eventually lead to problems with
the law, their spouses or both. Spirits can be and will be meddlesome. Some of them see it as their task to
mediate and try to set matters straight, some other ones could care less, but those normally do not come to
‘work’ at a mass.
During the times I attended masses I was more an observant than a participant. I had yet to learn to
relax, receive and share messages or videncias (when a medium has a spiritual vision). Some people who
attended masses regularly were starting to develop physical mediumship qualities, amongst them Karelina
(ibá é layén t’orún ). Karelina was a friend of mine whom I introduced to godfather José B and later on
became initiated in the ilé as a priestess of Obatalá, the orisha representing fatherhood and ruling over
mountains. Karelina’s life would be deeply impacted by her spiritual beliefs, and her last actions on earth
would be predicted years later during one of the spiritual masses held in my own home.
Ilés have complicated dynamics. No matter how much I loved my Godfather José B, the time came
about years after my own initiation as a priestess of Yemayá — the orisha ruler of the Ocean, representative
of maternity and the same one to which my Godfather was initiated to — when we parted ways amicably.

The Adopted Godchild

Before I got initiated to Yemayá, I had heard that there was a family of orisha priests who owned a Puerto
Rican restaurant. Eager to meet kindred spirits and having just settled in the Dallas area, Eric and I went
to eat at the place. There I met this kind lady in her mid sixties, doña Silvia, ibá é layén t’orún, a daughter
of Oshún (the orisha of love, sensuality and femininity). I instantly liked her and told her that soon I was
to be initiated as a priestess of Yemayá. She was excited for me and shared that her son, an Awó Orunmila
owned the place, and her two other off springs, a son and daughter initiated to Oyá and Oshún respectively
helped to run it.
After my Iyawó year went by we returned to the restaurant, but doña Silvia had since passed away. It was
then I met her daughter and eventually I would meet who now has adopted me as godfather, José M.
During one of our visits to the restaurant, I was invited to participate at an orisha initiation. I accepted
joyfully and this is how I came to meet one of the most active circles of orisha devotees and initiates in the
North Texas region.
Eric had yet to be initiated, so I got to spend hours working with priests, young and old, in ceremonies
and preparations and witnessing the transformation from a devotee to a priest.
Part of that transformational journey involves a process of preparation that is deeply imbedded with
spiritist practices. The orisha priest to-be is first prepared with a series of Spiritual Masses in which elder
spiritists lighten the path for the future priest. These series of masses have a dual purpose: To remove
obstacles both material and spiritual on the way of the soon to be iyawó, and, to dig as deeply as possible into
the ‘cuadro espiritual’ and organize them in such a way that they learn to function as a well oiled machine.
The masses are a journey of discovery, for in each one it is likely to learn from a spirit guide that has
kept his or her presence rather quiet until a gifted medium sees, hears or senses enough of that presence to
provide a good description of the spirit in question.
Normally these masses are ‘closed,’ meaning held between selected spiritists who are closely related to

527
the soon to be priest. It is likely that intimate matters are vented and one would not like to have a room full
of gawkers and listeners simply soaking up private information about one’s life and spirit guides for the sole
purpose of sating their curiosity and having material for idle gossip. Yes, in spiritist circles human nature
of all sorts is observed and gossipers are also found. After all, we are all in a path of improvement and
discovery and far from being elevated spirits ourselves.
The first two spiritist masses seem to normally dwell on material, family or work issues that need to be
sorted by the Iyawó with the help of both godparents. The third mass is called the crowning mass.
In my case, my initiation ceremony as priestess was to happen too quickly for me to have the time to go
through this three-step process as I would have wanted. But in spiritual matters involving the Orisha, our
timing means oftentimes nothing to the Orisha. They exist in a time and place of their own.

During the crowning mass, usually a week before the Kariosha, the Iyawó-to-be wearing head to toe
white clothes, is seated on a chair in the middle of the room facing the table where the accoutrements for the
mass have been arranged. Underneath the chair occupied by the candidate, a white small candle and a glass
of water are placed for its guardian spirit. Prayers begin as usual and all mediums and spiritists present go
about a task single-mindedly: To see into the spiritual realm that surrounds this individual.
A variety of situations can emerge at this Crowning Mass, good spirits can manifest through mediums,
as well as causas which will quickly be handled by the group. Sometimes, situations pertaining to immediate
family will come to light, even if the group is focusing only on one person. What impacts family, impacts
that person as well and can’t be ignored for it could have further impact along the initiation process.
When I arrived to my Kariosha, I had flown with my three month old babe from Dallas to San Antonio
late on a Thursday night. I had had to work that day and my time off was barely the minimum required
for the process. I could not afford additional time off from my employment. Shortly after arriving to the
ranch where my godfather José B and his wife lived, I was relieved of my motherly duties. My child was to
be cared for by my husband and other priestess present and I was not to worry about it, tough luck if you are
breastfeeding a hungry little one like I was.
All was arranged for my Spiritual Crowning, I barely remember the process, and my head was dazed with
the frenzy of action. I remember sitting at the chair and literally I felt as though I was looking at things from
a long distant place. It was when the crowning songs started that I came aware of my surroundings. Music
is used at the ceremony to praise and lure spirits. The crowning song is alluring, it asks spiritual beings to
manifest in the life of the Iyawó-to-be as a veil and crown of white flowers is placed over the person and
everyone joins in the process of spiritually aligning energies.

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 However, crowning masses are not done exclusively because a person is on the path of initiation to the
Orisha. They can also be performed for someone whose only intention is to further spiritist development. I
have however never been at one of those. My experience relates to the many I have observed as a priestess.
Working within the ilé of José M and having been adopted as goddaughter by him and by his Orisha
Oyá, I got to participate and observe crowning masses where lots of spirits were identified for the future
initiate. That is considered a boon because otherwise it takes years of hard work to put the pieces of one’s
spiritual puzzle painstakingly together. In my case, since I lacked those two initial masses, I managed to
make up in years to come and filled in gaps. By participating in many other masses I started to learn more
about my accompanying spirits through testimonies brought forth by mental mediums, seers and trance
possession.
After 15 years of constant practice working with spirits, I find it easier to simply let go and explore my
own ‘spiritual group’ privately with the help of close spiritist friends and my husband who is a talented
‘horse’. But dreaming that I am dead is not my idea of a fun exploratory session, but it is hardly up to me to
determine what Madam G wanted to show me.
This journey of a life amongst the spirits is far from over. For now, I leave you with some food for
thought. Spirits want and need offerings. Where I once considered that I was having a momentary lapse of
reasoning by setting down on an altar food, candles, flowers and water for the dead, now I see it as an act of
kindness and thanksgiving. Looking at it from the other side (like Madam G showed me) made me realize
that somewhere behind the veil, one of my spirit beings could be starving for food, water, love, attention,
recognition, light and prayers. Perhaps one day that spirit could be you, or me.

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 Liturgical approaches to Invocation and
Evocation Part II

Jake Stratton-Kent

The Invocation of Tahuti

As may already be clear to some readers, my main interest in traditional Thelemic ritual is centred on
those elements with a Greco-Egyptian emphasis. These are more compatible with elements from the magical
papyri, and in turn with my ‘liturgical transplant’, i.e. adapting Verum from the Judaeo-Christian paradigm
in which most grimoires were recast from the Greco-Roman synthesis underlying most Western magic.
These rituals comprise: Liber Pyramidos, Liber Israfel, the Invocation of Horus, the Bornless or Headless Rite
and the Adorations of the Sun in Liber Resh vel Helios.
In this instalment of the series is presented the most straightforward example of the use of the Opening
and Closing sub-rituals from Pyramidos as a frame for a rite of Invocation. The invocation in this case is the
Invocation of Tahuti from Liber Israfel. This rite is also known as ‘Majesty of Godhead’, since the actual
invocation in Israfel, when shorn of preliminaries and extras, begins with those words. It is accordingly a
simple matter to replace the ‘preliminaries and extras’ with the Opening and Closing of the Pyramid and
the adjuncts of evocation described in the previous instalment. From the combination of these elements
developed the entire liturgical approach outlined in this series. Thus the Invocation of Tahuti within this
framework is illustrative of the whole approach.
Understanding and performance of this Invocation, and others of which it is a premier example, may
be greatly enhanced by reference to Crowley’s Magick, Book II Chapter II – The Formula of the Elemental
Weapons. Here he details that the first part of the invocation commemorates the physical attributes of the
god, enabling a clear mental picture to be built up. The second part is as it were the voice of the god making
his characteristic utterance. The third part asserts the identity of the magician with the deity. The fourth
part is as it were uttered by the god invoking themselves, as if it were their will to manifest to the magician.
After this the purpose of the invocation is stated, which is often a conjuration of a spirit or spirits of a similar
nature to the deity concerned; in this case Lucifer, his deputies and their subordinates.
In my opinion a pre-existing relationship of Israfel and Pyramidos is readily detectable. This is particularly
exhibited by the otherwise unexplained appearance of Asi, prominent in the latter, towards the end of the
former:

I invoke the priestess of the Silver Star, Asi the Curved One, by the ritual of Silence.
‘I make open the gate of Bliss; I descend from the Palace of the Stars; I greet you, I embrace you, O
children of Earth, that are gathered together in the Hall of Darkness.’

Applied Cosmology in Pyramidos

In the first part of this series the use of Pyramidos as the basis for Invocation and Evocation rites was
introduced. The essential principles of this approach involve correlation of the three points of the ‘Pyramid’
and their gods with the three chiefs of the Grimorium Verum. This is greatly facilitated by the similar floor-
plans of the Verum circle and the temple layout of Pyramidos.

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 The three points of the internal triangle of the goetic circle correspond to the directions personified in
Pyramidos by three deities, who in turn represent the highest expression of the forces ruled by the three chiefs
of the Verum system, thus:

Direction Meaning Egyptian Godform Greek equivalent Chief spirit

East Balance Tahuti Hermes Kthonios Lucifer
South-West Life Asi Persephone or Hecate Astaroth
North-West Death Hoor-Apep Hades or Dis Pater Belzebuth

The ‘Egyptian’ forms of these names in this schema require some comment: Tahuti is the pre-eminent
magician god, also known as Thoth and as Hermes Trismegistus; Asi is a ‘poetic’ Egyptian form of Isis;
Hoor-Apep represents a unification of the twin gods Horus and Set. As shown in my Headless One (Equinox
BJoT VII 6) this combined form is authentically Egyptian as well as important within Thelemic cosmology.
While this ritual derives from Thelemic sources it should be well understood that the trinity of gods
employed has much older predecessors. The ritual can in fact be employed regardless of whether the magician
is an adherent of Thelema or not.
For example, the triad can be readily identified as Egyptian equivalents of Hermes Kthonios (the
Underworld form of Hermes), Persephone or Hecate, and Hades or Dis Pater.
These are particularly important deities in Greek and Greco-Egyptian magic and archaic goetia; the
rulers of the Underworld and their messenger or psychopomp, the ‘Guide of Souls’. The ritual modus
operandi here delineated can therefore be employed in a huge variety of workings. As well as the conjuration
of spirits from the grimoire the magician has the additional option of employing this ritual in conjunction
with elements drawn from the Greco-Egyptian Magical Papyri. Thorough ongoing investigation of the ritual
in these forms will also reveal how closely allied these options are.
It should also be firmly born in mind that there are differences in effect as well as emphasis between
Pyramidos and the two variants. These effects go beyond the particular purpose for which the ritual is
performed on any given occasion.
Generally speaking the Invocation of Tahuti – and the conjuration of Lucifer – imply balance and are
without significant side effects other than a general enhancement of the magician’s life and development.
The invocation of Isis or Hecate, and the conjuration of Astaroth, emphasises Life. Since Life and Death
are a polarity, emphasis on one without the other involves imbalance. Performance of this ritual thus has
side effects which while generally desirable are not in balance. Peak experiences may follow quite swiftly, of
an extraordinary kind, requiring careful assimilation. An account of such a ‘side effect’ forms a part of my
account of the conjuration of Nebiros in a forthcoming book from Scarlet Imprint.
The invocation of Hoor-Apep (in whatever form) implies death, and powerful negative side effects may
follow. The forces involved in this ritual are ‘hotter’ or ‘harder’; they are difficult to mediate and far less
forgiving of lapses in procedure, regardless of mitigating circumstances. In addition they are primarily
destructive, and may negate unconstructive influences in the magician’s life to which the magician is
nevertheless strongly drawn or attached. It is of course understood that dire warnings of this kind are
frequently ignored or undervalued. The magician would nevertheless be well advised not to attempt this
form of the ritual without careful preparation and considerable experience.

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 Practical Considerations
I – Building of Godforms

The original form of Pyramidos involved Tahuti as the focus of the rite in the East, with Isis and Hoor-
Apep representing twin poles in SW and NW. Within the existing Thelemic liturgy Pyramidos was developed
to serve a dual function. The rite in its entirety is an initiation ritual of A...A... . In addition Pyramidos
contains sub rituals which Crowley employed in composing rituals of invocation, as in the Paris Working
and elsewhere. It is the second aspect of the ritual which is developed and illustrated in this series. Our
introductory instalment introduced the concept of variant rituals attributed to SW and NW giving an
example of the former. In this second part the original rite is examined in this role, while in that to follow
the remaining variant will be introduced and its applications analysed and illustrated.
The god of the Eastern station of the temple in this rite is Tahuti; his attributes are rehearsed in the short
invocation in the Opening rite:

‘O Thou, the Apex of the Plane,

With Ibis head and Phoenix Wand
And Wings of Night! Whose serpents strain
Their bodies, bounding the Beyond.
Thou in the Light & in the Night
Art One, above their moving might!’

This invocation enables the magician to swiftly build up an image of the god in the East. The main
invocation which follows the Opening develops the same approach, with a more detailed rehearsal of
attributes. This balancing of a short and long invocation within the same ritual has a partial parallel in
another important Thelemic ritual, namely the Invocation of Horus. In that ritual too there is a short rhyming
invocation of Horus:
Strike, strike the Master Chord
Draw, Draw the Flaming Sword
Crowned Child and Conquering Lord
Horus, Avenger!

These ‘short invocations’ should be seen as models of a type, which can be used independently in a
variety of roles.
Incidentally the Invocation of Horus is one that can readily be performed with the NW variant of Pyramidos
as its ‘frame’. This particular variant will be explored in the next instalment.

II – The Secret Word

The ‘Secret Word’ in Pyramidos is capable of several layers of interpretation. In the original script it was
encoded using colours from Liber 777 as fairly transparent cipher substitutes for Hebrew letters. This is easily
decoded as M Tz T B Tz M (made pronounceable by adding the vowel following the initial of each Hebrew
letter: Metzatabetzam), the Tarot Trumps corresponding in Hermetic Qabalah symbolise the key stages of
Pyramidos. On another level this word itself is a substitute for the ‘Password’ of the grade 0=0 in A...A....
All of this is very recondite and interesting in its way, while on a more immediate and practical level it
is not particularly significant. Magicians can substitute other words appropriate to the task in hand, or to
their overall work. While ‘Abrahadabra’ is perhaps the best such general word, Names of Power relevant to
spirits conjured in the ceremony are good ‘task related’ options. An inkling of these can be found in the Path
of the Names in the previous issue. In my own work I have used both Abrahadabra and more specific names
derived from gematria analysis of the Trees of Eternity.

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 III – The Oath and Confession

As will be noted by careful readers, the version of Pyramidos presented here differs in some respects from
the original. Chief among these is the omission of the self-inflicted wounds and the employment of scourge,
dagger and chain (although the description of these in MTP remains important and is recommended to all
practicing magicians, I prefer to interpret them as allegorical). In place of these is the dousing of the head
with cold water, inspired by a classical description of an Isis invocation in the Golden Ass.
The combination of Verum elements and Pyramidos has another consequence of similar import. The
Confession phase of the ritual involves the raising and lowering of two wands alternately while in a position
of abasement. This is deeply suggestive of a rite of auto-flagellation. It is important to bear in mind in this
respect that flagellation was substituted for human sacrifice in ancient Sparta. The confession therefore
involves a powerful physical, emotional and psychic stimulus; this is of central importance as a practical
technique within the recitation of the ritual.
As the Confession and a variant form thereof were included in the previous issue they are omitted from
the script here, and are simply indicated by a title between Opening and Invocation. While superficially one
might interpret the Confession as a Christian idea, it is fully recognised, and its employment recommended
in Crowley’s description of ritual in MTP III 15. This chapter is also therefore recommended as further
reading.

IV - The Eucharist at the Altar

The ritual of initiation that is the original form of Pyramidos as a whole involves an additional god besides
the three so far alluded to. The station occupied by this god is the topmost point of a ‘pyramid’ (in the
form of a tetrahedron) of which the triangular floor-plan of the ritual forms the base. The god subsequently
descends from this point to occupy the temple when it is properly builded, and this is celebrated in the
Eucharist.
This god is Osiris, more properly Asar-Un-Nefer, the Perfected Man; he is, in Thelemic terms, no longer
the Hierophant as of old but the higher self of the Candidate. The Eucharist therefore is a magical Mass; it
is both ‘pagan’ and comparable with Gnostic Christianity.
The magician who performs the Eucharist signals their intention of performing the Great Work, or
commemorates actual union with their ‘Angel’ (the Task of an Adeptus Minor). While derived from the
Neophyte ritual, in practice Pyramidos can initiate into all three grades mentioned in the Book of the Law,
(0=0, 5=6 and 8=3).
In all the variants of the ritual the god of the Eucharist remains the same; Osiris as slain god, who was
thus also Lord of the Underworld. In Liber Tau – which forms a profound commentary on the triadic nature
of Thelemic initiation and ritual – we read ‘Asar as Bull, as Man, As Sun’, these forms relate to the three
grades above mentioned, in the same order. The Greek equivalent of this Eucharistic god is Dionysus, the
god of divine madness or inspiration. It thus reflects initiatory traditions intimately associated with archaic
goetia.
The remarks on appropriate offerings in the previous issue should be carefully examined when deciding
to retain or substitute the various items of which the Eucharist consists. So long as adaptation or substitution
is sensitively done the four elements of the Mass will retain their main symbolism when adapted to the
purposes of one performance or another. Fire should always be present when working with the spirits of the
True Grimoire; the incense, wine and bread may be adapted or substituted according to the known preferences
of individual spirits (but only once this is ascertained directly).
If these elements of the rite are well understood the ritual and its variants becomes readily worked by
any ritualist; their own experience will supply further insight and enhancement. The ritual itself deserves
to become part of the repertoire of any serious magician either empathic with the Thelemic cosmology or
seeking to operate within a reconstructed Greco-Egyptian frame. This obviously includes modern pagan
magicians uncomfortable with the Judaeo-Christian cast of the grimoires while simultaneously attracted to
them.

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 The Building of the Pyramid
(Sub ritual 672)

(The Magus with Wand. On the Altar are Incense, Fire, Bread, Wine. The bell is held in the left hand.)

‘Hail, Asi! Hail, Hoor Apep! Let

The Silence speech beget!’

(Two strokes on the Bell. Banishing spiral dance.)

‘The Words against the Son of Night.

Tahuti speaketh in the Light
Knowledge and Power, twin warriors shake
The Invisible; they roll asunder
The darkness; matter shines, a snake.
Sebek is smitten by the thunder
The Light breaks forth from Under.’

(The Magus goes to the West, in the centre of the base of the Pyramid of Thoth, Asi, and Hoor.)

‘O Thou, the Apex of the Plane,

With Ibis head and Phoenix Wand
And Wings of Night! Whose serpents strain
Their bodies, bounding the Beyond.
Thou in the Light & in the Night
Art One, above their moving might!’

(Lay the Wand on the altar, and douse head saying:):

‘The Lustral Water! Smite thy flood

Through me lymph, marrow & blood!’

(Anointing, say):

‘The Fire Informing! Let the Oil

Balance, assain, assoil!’

The Invoking Spiral Dance

‘So Life takes Fire from Death, & runs

Whirling amid the Suns.
Hail Asi! Pace the Path, bind on
The girdle of the Starry One!’

(Sign of the Enterer):

‘Homage to Thee, Lord of the Word!’

(Sign of Silence):

‘Lord of Silence, Homage to Thee!’

(Repeat both Signs):

534
 ‘Lord, we adore Thee, still & stirred
Beyond Infinity.’

(The Secret Word.)

‘……’

‘For from the Silence of the Wand

Unto the Speaking of the Sword.
And back again to the Beyond,
This is the toil & the Reward
This is the Path of HUA Ho!
This is the path of IAO.’

(Bell.)

‘Hail Asi! Hail, thou Wanded Wheel!

Alpha & Delta kissed & came
For Five that feed the Flame.’

(Bell.)

‘Hail, Hoor-Apep! thou Sword of Steel!

Alpha & Delta and Epsilon
Met in the Shadow of the Pylon
And in Iota did proclaim
That tenfold core & crown of flame.
Hail, Hoor-Apep! Unspoken Name!’

(Thus is the Great Pyramid duly builded.)

(Oath and Confession – see part one)

Invocation of Tahuti

O Thou! Majesty of Godhead! Wisdom-crowned Tahuti! Lord of the Gates of the Universe! Thee, Thee,
I invoke.
O Thou of the Ibis Head! Thee, Thee I invoke.
Thou who wieldest the Wand of Double Power! Thee, Thee I invoke!
Thou who bearest in Thy left hand the Rose and Cross of Light and Life: Thee, Thee, I invoke.
Thou, whose head is as an emerald, and Thy nemmes as the night-sky blue! Thee, Thee I invoke.
Thou, whose skin is of flaming orange as though it burned in a furnace! Thee, Thee I invoke.

II

Behold! I am Yesterday, To-Day, and the Brother of To-Morrow!

I am born again and and again.
Mine is the Unseen Force, whereof the Gods are sprung! Which is as Life unto the Dwellers in the
Watch-Towers of the Universe.
I am the Charioteer of the East, Lord of the Past and of the Future.

535
 I see by mine own inward light: Lord of Resurrection; Who cometh forth from the Dusk, and my birth
is from the House of Death.
O ye two Divine Hawks upon your Pinnacles!
Who keep watch over the Universe!
Ye who company the Bier to the House of Rest!
Who pilot the Ship of Ra advancing onwards to the heights of heaven!
Lord of the Shrine which standeth in the Centre of the Earth!

III

Behold, He is in me, and I in Him!

Mine is the Radiance, wherein Ptah floateth over the firmament!
I travel upon high!
I tread upon the firmament of Nu!
I raise a flashing flame, with the lightning of Mine Eye!
Ever rushing on, in the splendour of the daily glorified Ra: giving my life to the Dwellers of Earth.
If I say “Come up upon the mountains!” the Celestial Waters shall flow at my Word.
For I am Ra incarnate!
Khephra created in the Flesh!
I am the Eidolon of my father Tmu, Lord of the City of the Sun!
The God who commands is in my mouth!
The God of Wisdom is in my Heart!
My tongue is the Sanctuary of Truth!
And a God sitteth upon my lips.
My Word is accomplished every day!
And the desire of my heart realises itself, as that of Ptah when He createth!
I am Eternal; therefore all things are as my designs; therefore do all things obey my Word.

IV

Therefore do Thou come forth unto me from Thine abode in the Silence:
Unutterable Wisdom! All-Light! All-Power!
Thoth! Hermes! Mercury! Odin!
By whatever name I call Thee, Thou art still nameless to Eternity:. Come Thou forth, I say, and aid and
guard me in this work of Art.

Thou, Star of the East, that didst conduct the Magi!

Thou art The Same all-present in Heaven and in Hell!
Thou that vibratest between the Light and the Darkness!
Rising, descending! Changing ever, yet ever The Same!
The Sun is Thy Father!
Thy Mother is the Moon!
The Wind hath borne Thee in its bosom: and Earth hath ever nourished the changeless Godhead of
Thy Youth!
Come Thou forth, I say, come Thou forth!
And make all Spirits subject unto Me: So that every Spirit of the Firmament, and of the Ether, and of
the Earth, and under the Earth, on dry land and in the Water, of whirling Air and of rushing Fire, and every
Spell and Scourge of God the Vast One, may be obedient unto Me!

536
 Conjuration of Lucifer
(repeat seven times)

LUCIFER: WA-ASARNA TAWA-YAEL

LU, AL-OAI HOOR CHI-FU QADOSH-ASI
AN CHAOS KU-AIWAZ, IAO AIWASS, E!
TA CHI AIWAZ, I-I HADES ASAR-ISA FU,
WA-YA FU IAO PAN, OHE! NOX! CHAOS!
EL QADOSH AIWASS, ASAR-ISA OURDA BES-NI,
O-O ASI EFU-IONILAM Come Lucifer X AMEN X

(The Greeting, Conversation and Invitation, as also the Conjurations of deputies and subordinates, with their
Greetings, Conversations and Invitations, have been detailed previously).

Sub Ritual 656: Of the Sealing of the Pyramid.

(The Magus with Wand. On the Altar are Incense, Fire, bread, Wine, the Chain, the Scourge, the Dagger, & the
Oil. The bell is held in the left hand.)

‘Hail, Asi! hail, Hoor Apep! Let

The Silence speech beget!’

(Two strokes on the Bell. Banishing spiral dance.)

‘The Words against the Son of Night.

Tahuti speaketh in the Light
Knowledge and Power, twin warriors shake
The Invisible; they roll asunder
The darkness; matter shines, a snake.
Sebek is smitten by the thunder
The Light breaks forth from Under.’

(The Magus goes to the West, in the centre of the base of the Pyramid of Thoth, Asi, and Hoor.)

‘O Thou, the Apex of the Plane,

With Ibis head and Phoenix Wand
And Wings of Night! Whose serpents strain
Their bodies, bounding the Beyond.
Thou in the Light & in the Night
Art One, above their moving might!’

The Magus lays the Wand etc. on the altar, and douses their head saying:)

‘The Lustral Water! Smite thy flood

Through me lymph, marrow & blood!

(Anointing, say:)

‘The Fire Informing! Let the Oil

Balance, assain, assoil!’

537
The Banishing Spiral Dance

‘So Life takes Fire from Death, & runs

Whirling amid the Suns.
Now let my hands unloose the sweet
And shining girdle of Nuit!’

(Sign of the Enterer:)

‘Homage to Thee, Lord of the Word!’

(Sign of Silence:)

‘Lord of Silence, Homage to Thee!’

(Repeat both Signs:)

‘Lord, we adore Thee, still & stirred

Beyond Infinity’

(The Secret Word.)

‘……’

The Eucharist at the Altar.

‘Behold the Perfect One hath said

These are my body’s elements
tried & found pure, a golden spoil.’

(Act accordingly.)

‘Incense and Wine and Fire and Bread

These I consume, true Sacraments,
For the Perfection of the Oil
For I am clothed about with flesh
And I am the Eternal Spirit.
I am the Lord that riseth fresh
From Death, whose glory I inherit
Since I partake with him. I am
The manifestor of the Unseen,
Without me all the land of Khem
Is as if it had not been’

‘For from the Silence of the Wand

Unto the Speaking of the Sword.
And back again to the Beyond,
This is the toil & the Reward
This is the Path of HUA - Ho!
This is the path of IAO.’

(Bell.)

538
‘Hail Asi! Hail, thou Wanded Wheel!
Alpha & Delta kissed & came
For Five that feed the Flame.’

(Bell.)

‘Hail, Hoor Apep! thou Sword of Steel!

Alpha & Delta and Epsilon
Met in the Shadow of the Pylon
And in Iota did proclaim
That tenfold core & crown of flame.
Hail, Hoor Apep! Unspoken Name!

Hail, Hoor! Hail Asi! Hail Tahuti! Hail,

Asar Un nefer! through the rendered veil.
I am Thyself, with all Thy brilliance decked

Khabs Am Pekht.’

(Thus is the Great Pyramid duly sealed.)

539
 Pyramidos Requiem

Jake Stratton-Kent

This ritual is one I first composed for a friend and brother on the occasion of their ‘greater feast’, and
have now had occasion to perform twice. A further friend, gravely ill, has asked me to perform it for them
in the future, appropriate arrangements having been made with the funeral director. The ritual is designed
as a Gnostic ascent ritual, with the appropriate Names recited for all spheres and powers on behalf of the
departed. It will clearly be seen that the rite subsumes the ancient and original role of the necromancer
as shaman, opening the Gates of the Underworld on behalf of their community. A further implication
of the ritual, which the magician speaks as if the departed one, is its post mortem use by the magician
on their own behalf. The Opening ritual is identical to that of Pyramidos, and is here omitted (see the
Liturgical Approaches article elsewhere in this issue); it is suggested that the Secret Word to be declared
in the Opening, as in the Closing, is ABRAHADABRA signalling completion of the Work of Life. As the
Closing incorporates some adaptations it is included here in its entirety. The name of the departed is to be
inserted wherever appears the letters NN, the metre being adjusted if necessary to accommodate it.

Requiem Rite
Open the Rite with the Opening of the Pyramid, and then proceed as follows:

III,36: Then said the prophet unto the God:

III,37: I adore thee in the song –

I am the Lord of Thebes,and I
The inspired forth-speaker of Mentu;
For me unveils the veiled sky,
N….N…. prophet of Nu
Whose words are truth. I invoke, I greet
Thy presence, O Ra-Hoor-Khuit!

Unity uttermost showed!

I adore the might of Thy breath,
Supreme and terrible God,
Who makest the gods and death
To tremble before Thee –
I, I adore thee!

Appear on the throne of Ra!

Open the ways of the Khu!
Lighten the ways of the Ka!
The ways of the Khabs run through
To stir me or still me!
Aum! let it fill me!

Thy light is in me; its red flame is as a sword in my hand.

As I make my way in all the quarters, as it is said:

The light is mine; its rays consume

Me: I have made a secret door

540
 Into the House of Ra and Tum,
Of Khephra and of Ahathoor.
I am thy Theban, O Mentu,
N….N….prophet of Nu.

By Bes-na-Maut my breast I beat;

By wise Ta-Nech I weave my spell.
Show thy star-splendour, O Nuit!
Bid me within thine House to dwell,
O winged snake of light, Hadit!
Abide with me, Ra-Hoor-Khuit!

Unto N….N…. from whose eyes the veil of life hath fallen may there be granted the accomplishment of
his true Will; whether that Will be absorption in the Infinite, or to be united with his chosen and preferred,
or to be in contemplation, or to be at peace, or to achieve the labour and heroism of incarnation on this
planet or another, or in any Star, or aught else, unto him may there be granted the accomplishment of his
will; yea the accomplishment of his will. So mote it be; Amen.

The Rite of Primal Heaven

1-49

Open to N….N…. the Justified O Heaven, Mother of the Gods!

So he shall see the Boat of Ra ascending and descending;
For I N….N….the Justified am Geb, Heir of the Gods, making prayer before Ra My Father, For that these
things precede from Me.

O Hekau, Great One, Lady of the Shrine, open to Me the Rishtret Gate, Mistress of Spirits:
Open to Me Primal Heaven; let Me give honour to the Gods!
For I N….N…. the Justified am Geb, true Heir of the Gods!

In the Name of the Great God F.I.A.T.; Open to Me Primal Heaven!

In the Name of the Minister of the God, AIWAZ; Open to Me Primal Heaven!
In the Name of the Scarlet Woman BABALON; Open to Me Primal Heaven!
In the Name of the Fire Serpent APEP; Open to Me Primal Heaven!
In the Name of the Lord of the Two Horizons, RA-HRUMACHIS and of NEPTHYS, Sister of Isis:
Open to Me Primal Heaven!

My heart, My mother,
My heart, My mother,
My heart of My life upon Earth.
Do not witness against Me –
Before the Lord of the West;
Since I have united the Earth and Sky –
With the West while I lived upon Earth.

Hail! Ye Seven Kings! Ho! Ye Seven Spirits of Mentu!

He the Bull of Generation, Lord of Strength
That enlighteneth the Earth; Soul of the Void!
Ho Lion! Thou that art as the Lion of the Sky at Midday,

541
Thou who art as the Bull of the Sky before the morning;
Hail Thou that rulest the Kingdom of the East, Great One, Lofty One!
Hail Soul of the Ram, Soul of the Kingdom of the West, Hail Soul of Souls!
Great Bull of Heaven, Son of Nuit, Hail unto Thee!

In the Name of the Great God F.I.A.T.; Open to Me Primal Heaven!

In the Name of the Virgin of Heaven, MARY; Open to Me Primal Heaven!
In the Combined Name: NU-HAD; Open to Me Primal Heaven!
In the Great Name IO PAN; Open to Me Primal Heaven!
In the Name of Thy Minister, AIWAZ; Open to Me Primal Heaven!
In the all powerful syllable AUM; Open to Me Primal Heaven!
In the Name SOL INVICTUS; Open to Me Primal Heaven!
In Thy Name of RA HOOR KHU; Open to Me Primal Heaven!

Yea, in the Name of the Great God F.I.A.T.;

In the Name of the Twin Goddess, ASI-NEPTHI;
In the Name of the Great God HERU-RA-HA:
Open to Me for I am the Piercer of the Earth,
He that came forth from Geb!

II

I invoke the Great God, who giveth light exceedingly;

The Companion of the Flame;
In whose mouth is the Fire that is not quenched;
The Great God who is seated in the fire,
In the midst of the fire which is in the lake of heaven;
In whose hand is the sceptre of divine power:
Reveal Thyself to N….N…. Prophet of Nu!

PAN-IO-PAN! Open to Me Primal Heaven.

By the Five Runes AOUIE! Open to Me Primal Heaven.
O NUIT, Continuous One of Heaven! Open to Me Primal Heaven.
AORMUZDI, Lord of Light! Open to Me Primal Heaven.
Great TITAN of Sumer and Akkad! Open to Me Primal Heaven.
ISIS, Queen of Starry Space! Open to Me Primal Heaven.
Thou who art KHEPHRA at Midnight! Open to Me Primal Heaven.
HADIT, burning in My heart! Open to Me Primal Heaven.
By TAHUTI and the Child of the Prophet! Open to Me Primal Heaven.
By Thy Minister AIWAZ! Open to Me Primal Heaven.
In Thy tremendous Name MENTU! Open to Me Primal Heaven.

III

O Great God, Who is above Heaven;

In whose hand is the beautiful staff,
Who created deity- deity not having created Him.
Who art seated upon the Mountain of Eternity;
Who dieth not – who liveth forever,
Open to Me Primal Heaven!

Yea in Thy Name of MENTU: Open to Me Primal Heaven!

O MAUT, Vulture Goddess of the Twin Niles: Open to Me Primal Heaven!

542
 IACCHUS, Spirit of Ecstasy: Open to Me Primal Heaven!
FALUTLI, FALUTLI! By the IOD and the PE: Open to Me Primal Heaven!
By the Grand Word ABRAHADABRA that is the Word of the Aeon: Open to Me Primal Heaven!
O BES, COPH, KUT: Open to Me Primal Heaven!
O Thou Twin God in One, HERU-RA-HA: Open to Me Primal Heaven!
Great SET, the Terrible and Invisible God: Open to Me Primal Heaven!
Great TYPHON, Thou Golden God! Open to Me Primal Heaven!
By the Great God AL OAI and the word ABRA: Open to Me Primal Heaven!
By the Great Combined Name NU-HAD-IT: Open to Me Primal Heaven!

IV

O Thou God of Fire, who art seated in the Invisible Darkness! Thou Great God Who is in the midst of
the Company of Heaven! Thou enthroned in Ra’s Seat, Lord of the Aeon! Open to Me Primal Heaven!

In the Name of the Prophet, ANKH AF NA KHONSU: Open to Me Primal Heaven!

ISIS-HATHOR, HOOR-APEP, Open to Me Primal Heaven!
QADOSH-ISIS: Open to Me Primal Heaven!
By the Wand of the Force of COPH-NIA: Open to Me Primal Heaven!
O Infinite Goddess NUIT: Open to Me Primal Heaven!
By thine sacred Name of JESUS: Open to Me Primal Heaven!
O Hawk-Headed God HERU: Open to Me Primal Heaven!
By ASAR & ISA: Open to Me Primal Heaven!
By Thy Threefold Book, O AIWASS, O YAMA: Open to Me Primal Heaven!
By the ANKH, the Rose-Cross of Life and Light: Open to Me Primal Heaven!
By Thine own, Thy Sovereign Name BAPHOMET: Open to Me Primal Heaven!

Hail thou who art exalted,

Hail thou who art adored,
The Great One of Power,
The Divine Soul feared by the gods.
Thou who blazest upon Thy mighty throne.
Make a path for My soul,
For My spirit, for My shadow,
That I may shine forth as a divine living one
In the place of Ra and Tum of Khephra and of Ahathoor.

O upraised arm of the shining Moon,

May I go forth among the multitudes,
And pass through the doors and dwell
Among ye in the region of stars;
That I may go forth as I please
Among those living upon Earth.

Sub Ritual 656: Of the Sealing of the Pyramid.

(The Magus with Wand. On the Altar are Incense, Fire, Bread, Wine & the Oil. In his left hand the Bell he
taketh.)

‘Hail, Asi! hail, Hoor Apep! Let

The Silence speech beget!’

(Two strokes on the Bell. Banishing spiral dance.)

543
‘The Words against the Son of Night.
Tahuti speaketh in the Light
Knowledge and Power, twin warriors shake
The Invisible; they roll asunder
The darkness; matter shines, a snake.
Sebek is smitten by the thunder
The Light breaks forth from Under.’

(He goes to the West, in the centre of the base of the Pyramid of Thoth, Asi, and Hoor.)

‘O Thou, the Apex of the Plane,

With Ibis head and Phoenix Wand
And Wings of Night! Whose serpents strain
Their bodies, bounding the Beyond.
Thou in the Light & in the Night
Art One, above their moving might!’
He lays the Wand upon the altar and douses himself saying:

‘The Lustral Water! Smite thy flood

Through me lymph, marrow & blood!’

Anointing himself he says:

‘The Fire Informing! Let the Oil

Balance, assain, assoil!’

The Banishing Spiral Dance

‘So Life takes Fire from Death, & runs

Whirling amid the Suns.
Now let my hands unloose the sweet
And shining girdle of Nuit!’

(Sign of the Enterer:)

‘Homage to Thee, Lord of the Word!’

(Sign of Silence:)

‘Lord of Silence, Homage to Thee!’

(Repeat both Signs:)

‘Lord, we adore Thee, still & stirred

Beyond Infinity’

(The Secret Word.)

ABRAHADABRA

The Eucharist at the Altar.

544
O Lion and O Serpent that destroy the destroyer, be mighty among us.
O Lion and O Serpent that destroy the destroyer, be mighty among us.
O Lion and O Serpent that destroy the destroyer, be mighty among us.

‘Behold the Perfect One hath said

These are my body’s elements
tried & found pure, a golden spoil.’

(Act accordingly.)

‘Incense and Wine and Fire and Bread

These I consume, true Sacraments,
For the Perfection of the Oil
For I am clothed about with flesh
And I am the Eternal Spirit.
I am the Lord that riseth fresh
From Death, whose glory I inherit
Since I partake with him. I am
The manifestor of the Unseen,
Without me all the land of Khem
Is as if it had not been’

‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.’

‘Love is the law, love under will’.

Eating the bread:

‘In my mouth be the essence of the life of the Sun!’

Drinking the wine:

‘In my mouth be the essence of the joy of the earth’

‘There is no part of me that is not of the Gods’.

‘For from the Silence of the Wand

Unto the Speaking of the Sword.
And back again to the Beyond,
This is the toil & the Reward
This is the Path of HUA – Ho!
This is the path of IAO.’

(Bell.)

‘Hail Asi! Hail, thou Wanded Wheel!

Alpha & Delta kissed & came
For Five that feed the Flame.’

(Bell.)

‘Hail, Hoor Apep! thou Sword of Steel!

Alpha & Delta and Epsilon

545
Met in the Shadow of the Pylon
And in Iota did proclaim
That tenfold core & crown of flame.
Hail, Hoor Apep! Unspoken Name!

Hail, Hoor! Hail Asi! Hail Tahuti! Hail,

Asar Un nefer! through the rendered veil.
I am Thyself, with all Thy brilliance decked

Khabs Am Pekht.’

(Thus is the Great Pyramid duly sealed.)

546
Modern Usage of the Ancient Egyptian Opening
of the Mouth Ceremony
Mister Quick

Introduction
A full analysis of the ritual material here presented is beyond the scope of this essay. Explanation has
been kept to the minimum necessary to facilitate performance of the ceremony. The practicing magician
will find that a little research will greatly deepen his understanding of this material. All other readers are
encouraged to stop here, read Crowley’s Liber O, and not bother with this essay until after a few years of daily
practice of the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram (and whatever other work that practice leads them to).
The primary virtues of ritual magick are the same as those of any other practical science: convenience
and efficiency. Through the expenditure of time and effort (the performance of ceremonial magick) the
magician creates temporary worlds within which he can interact with intelligences unlike those encountered
elsewhere. The word ‘world’ is used here in the same sense as the words ‘grammar,’ ‘game,’ and ‘grimoire,’
that is to say a set of rules wherein some events can happen and other events cannot happen. Within
ceremonially created worlds entities are contacted, interacted with, and licensed to depart, after which the
worlds formed for this purpose are dissolved, hopefully in a controlled manner with banishing rituals.
The entire process has to be repeated to communicate with the entity in question again. A more efficient
way to work repeatedly with a single entity was used in ancient Egypt – to imbue a statuette or image with
the breath (spirit) of the entity which could then be interacted with at any time, without preparation. The
physical object so treated effectively remains a part of the world which was created in order to enact this
transformation, even after that world is dissolved. This can be thought of as being the magical equivalent of
the legal status of the grounds of a foreign embassy – while physically in one country the territory is deemed
to be ‘foreign soil’ and is considered to be part of another country in all senses except geographically.
A couple of fundamental facts need to be understood about the magick practiced in Ancient Egypt if the
modern magician wishes to employ any more of that technology than isolated components, such as working
with their ever-popular deities. First of all almost everything changes over time and Egyptian magick had
plenty of time in which to change. Consequently inconsistency and contradiction are not uncommon; this
is aggravated by other factors such as false archaisms and outright errors. It should be remembered that even
the copy of the Book of Going Forth by Day which has been used as an ‘academic template’ in modern times is
flawed. The scribes of that copy repeatedly misspelled the name of the man for whom it was made, despite
that man being a high-ranking scribe himself. This is pertinent because it forces the magician to remember
that he is not an archaeologist. For the archaeologist all that matters is literal, historic truth; for the magician
the only important thing is that his rituals work.
The second fact is context. Ceremonial magick was a major part of the society of Ancient Egypt, but
magick is fictional according to the superstitions of most modern nations. For a large number of reasons
(that would take too much space to list here) it seems highly probable that the average magical ceremony
performed in Ancient Egypt was much more powerful than the average modern equivalent. Almost as a
balance, the average magician today surely has much more freedom in regard to his magical career (and
primarily performs solo magick) than his Ancient Egyptian counterpart, who usually worked as part of a
fairly rigid religious hierarchy (and primarily performed group magick). This is relevant because it forces the
conclusion that the literal reconstruction of Ancient Egyptian magick is pointless. Anyone in the modern
western world who would go to the effort of having half a dozen assistants and a bull to sacrifice for every
ceremony he performs would inevitably develop an attachment to ephemera which would preclude any
significant development as a magician. “Do not depend upon external conditions,” as it is written in the root
text of the Buddhist masterpiece Training the Mind in Seven Points.
Therefore in order for the modern magician to make use of the ceremonies of Ancient Egypt shallow
understanding and rote repetition are insufficient. The underlying formulae and energy transformations

547
must be exposed, studied, and understood in order for this magick to be effectively utilised. Although
ancient forms have an exotic mystique and external splendour which modern forms often lack, the modern
are superior. The lions of today would vastly outperform sabre-toothed tigers in either direct or indirect
competition. The priests and cults of Ancient Egypt are gone, yet solitary magicians not only carry on their
work in every country today, but furthermore continue to expand and evolve the art and science of magick
beyond that which was previously possible. Some of them can even spell each other’s names correctly.

Method
The following ritual was adapted from the Opening of the Mouth ceremony as it was described on a
temple wall at Rekhmira. Developmental methodology was essentially reductionist; several hundred iterations
were required to produce this ritual as is.

01 Temple opening

02 Circumambulate deosil four times, vibrating Djehuty once each circuit

03 Gesture (point or touch with hand or dagger) towards the space above the head of the iru and vibrate:
Amun

04 Gesture towards the groin of the iru, visualise the bottom bar of the djed pillar and vibrate:
Quebehsenuf

05 Gesture towards the centre/base of ribs of the iru, visualise the second bar of the djed pillar and
vibrate: Imset

06 Gesture towards the stomach of the iru, visualise the third bar of the djed pillar and vibrate: Hapy

07 Gesture towards the throat of the iru, visualise the top bar of the djed pillar and vibrate: Duamutef

08 Assume the posture of Horus (Osiris) Risen, visualise the whole djed pillar within the iru and vibrate:
Heru-Amun-Ra-Ha

548
 09 Standing in the East, vibratory formula to the East, image: the djed pillar, name: Neith

10 Standing in the South, vibratory formula to the South, image: the djed pillar, name: Isis

11 Standing in the West, vibratory formula to the West, image: the djed pillar, name: Serquet

12 Standing in the North, vibratory formula to the North, image: the djed pillar, name: Nephthys.

13 (Returning to the iru, if it is not in the east) face iru and vibrate:
Ra-Hoor-Khuit wen re en (Name) Ra-Hoor-Khuit wep re en (Name)
Weneh-en Ra-Hoor-Khuit re en (Name) wepeh-en Ra-Hoor-Khuit re en (Name)
Em wepeteh-neh-ef re en iteh-ef im em wepeteh-neh-ef re en Osiris im
Em biah per em Seti meskhetew biah
Wep re en netjeru im wepeh-ek re en (Name) imeh-ef

14 Vibratory formula towards the iru, image: the entity being imbued into the iru (or a symbol of the
same), name: (Name)

15 Vibrate: Semeh-ef medeweh-ef djeteh-ef kher pesedjet ah-at em hewet ser weret imet Iunu

16 Continuing, but assuming the posture of Horus Risen and visualising Horus enthroned (in the East,
or above the magician) vibrate: Iteh-i Iteh-i Iteh-i Iteh-i

17 Close and banish

Discussion
01 The author favours: Star Ruby, Star Sapphire, opening of the Enochian Watchtowers, opening of the
Sigillum Dei Aemeth.

02 Circumambulation seems to have been much used in Egyptian ceremony, as was fourfold repetition.
Due to the mythological basis of this ceremony Thoth cannot be omitted. Inclusion of this deity at this stage
and in this manner is appropriate due to the earlier interpretation of Thoth as creator deity; as well as being
the god of magick.

03 Amun is the secret, hidden, divine power. Void/spirit as catalyst/creator. The iru is the statuette or
image being consecrated. See Egyptian Vocabulary below for more information on the meaning of this and
other words. Placement of the iru within the temple and the direction faced in steps 04 to 07 should be
varied according to the entity being worked with.

04-07 See Canopic Deities below for more information on these four gods and The Djed Pillar for more
on that symbol. This section of the ritual sets the basis for the connection of the iru to the energy matrix of
the temple opening in order for it to be imbued with the essence of the entity to be worked with.

08 The author favours the use of the name Heru-Amun-Ra-Ha at this point, but any Horus name would
do. Sol is the macrosmic equivalent to spirit, as harmony. Establishment of the connection of the magician to
the iru and to Horus, identification with Horus being crucial due to the mythological basis of the ceremony
(being the resurrection of Osiris). The extent to which the magician assumes the god form of Horus should
be modified according to the nature of the entity being imbued into the iru.

09-12 These four goddesses are the guardians of the canopic deities. Each is attributed to the quarter
which corresponds to the canopic deity she protects. These steps further develop the energy matrix in
preparation for the opening of the mouth of the iru.

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 13 Throughout the ceremony ‘Name’ refers to the name of the entity being imbued into a statuette or
image. The letter ‘i’ is intended to be pronounced ‘ee’ not ‘ay’. No pronunciation of the language is more
than guesswork, but some guesswork is better than others. My ‘touchstone’ reference is Gardiner’s Egyptian
Grammar (henceforth ‘GEG’), although that is now somewhat out of date. Slavish adherence to academic
accuracy is not necessarily advantageous (see Egyptian Vocabulary below). A translation of this section:
(A) ‘Ra-Hoor-Khuit is the opener of the mouth for (Name), Ra-Hoor-Khuit is the opener of the mouth for
(Name) Ra-Hoor-Khuit has opened the mouth of (Name), Ra-Hoor-Khuit has opened the mouth of (Name)
(B) with that with which he opened the mouth of his father, with that which he opened the mouth of
Osiris with the iron that came from Set, the meskhetyu-blade of iron with which the mouths of the gods are
opened – may you open the mouth of (Name) with it.
The difference between the meanings of the roots ‘wen’ and ‘wep’ is not clear. GEG gives the former
as ‘open’, the latter as ‘divide, open, judge’. It seems likely that the former emphasises the physical act, the
latter the symbolic importance thereof. The inclusion of section (B) is particularly driven by practical work.
The omission of each element included – especially the iron coming from Set – was found to result in a
noticeable reduction of energy levels.

14 This step is functional and convenient as it is, however what is written in Notes on Performance below
should be carefully considered.

15 Translation (“he” may refer to either gender):

So that he may walk as he will, speak as he will, and evolve as he will before the great Nine Gods in the
great mansion of the official that is in Iunu.
The translation as given from my sources is ‘walk and talk with his body’. Semeh-ef means to walk (with
the connotation of ‘procession’, not casual walking), medeweh-ef means to talk, and GEG gives the root of
djeteh-ef as “take stock of one’s own person, i.e. grow up.” It seems to the author that the word choice is due
to an emphasis on free will and self-knowledge, hence the translation as it is given above. This freedom of
action is a very important concept in Egyptian magick – indeed it could be said to be the entire subject of
the Book of Going Forth by Day – and as such could not be omitted from this ritual. Iunu is Heliopolis, or ‘the
heavenly city’.

16 Translation: My father, my father, my father, my father. Assumption of god form is not intended
here, but rather the magician aware of himself as a magician and being granted the power of Horus for the
purpose of the ceremony.

17 The author favours the Star Ruby and the Star Sapphire for this step.

Notes on Performance
Memorisation of a ritual is not learning it, but rather something that needs to be done before a ritual
can be learnt. Only when all the words, gestures, and visualisations have been memorised to the point of
requiring no effort whatsoever to recall can the magician truly begin to learn the ritual. The ceremony given
above is complex in that it involves a comparatively large number of entities and shifts of identity. These
produce a series of tensions in the energies being manipulated which can be confusing to the magician
concentrating on the subtle energies – he may feel that the development of the subtle energies progress too
quickly or too slowly, so that the energies are ready to be transferred to the iru too soon or too late. Step 14
is the climax of the whole ceremony, and is by far the most difficult. This is because it requires the magician
to be both active and receptive, dominant and submissive, and it is very easy to ‘drop the ball’ at this point.
Although the method above states the use of the vibratory formula at this stage, simply whispering the name
without any conscious control of energy (which is not that necessary due to the tensions and momentums
that have been established by this point), or even just breathing on the iru may be found more effective.
Experimentation and practice will resolve any difficulties; if in doubt, slow the ceremony down.
The potential for expansion of the ceremony is obvious, a full separate invocation of the entity being
imbued into the iru at step 14, Liber Israfel at step 2, a full Horus invocation at or after step 8, et cetera. Also

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some reordering, particularly in the later part of the ceremony, may seem desirable. Experimentation with such
alterations is encouraged, and the author doubts there is any other way to develop sufficient understanding
of the energy transformations required to perform the ritual successfully. The author reconfigures this ritual
depending upon the nature of the entity he wishes to imbue into an iru (the degree of resonance that the
entity in question has with Horus being the key factor).
In Ancient Egypt this ritual was typically performed four times a year on iru intended to be used
indefinitely, the author is of the opinion that twice a year is sufficient.
A use of the ceremonial material given above that may not be so readily apparent is as an alternative to
the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram. In that classic ritual, the apotheosis of theurgy, a vacuum is created which
naturally results in an influx of balanced energy from higher planes. The Opening of the Mouth breathes
the spirit of a god into an inanimate object, a very similar formula. There is also partial similarity with the
Eucharist formula. Comparing and contrasting these two formulae with the processes of the Opening of
the Mouth will deepen understanding of this ceremony. To use the Opening of the Mouth as a microcosmic
banishing the magician’s own body serves as the iru, which he can then imbue with either one of his own
names (self becoming self) or a magical formula (such as VIAOV). Similarly a god name can be used and
the whole ceremony configured for invocation and assumption of god form. The author has repeatedly
tested these alternative configurations and continues to use them regularly. The supplemental information
provided below will facilitate such reconfiguration.

The Canopic Deities

The canopic deities are the four sons of Horus, and were associated with the four cardinal directions.
Hapy is not to be confused with the god of the Nile; this Hapy is a separate deity. The following table shows
some of their correspondences. Not much more appears to be known of these rather minor deities. It should
be noted that the organ attributions I have assigned to Duamutef and Hapy are not the most common, and
other variations are known – for example the animal attributions of Duamutef and Quebehsenuf are often
reversed. The goddesses in the table were held to be guardians of the four respective sons of Horus. The final
row in the table actually refers to the rough positions of the four sections of the spine. Most of the symbology
I have settled on seems to be from around the 18th and 19th dynasties in particular.

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Duamutef Hapy Quebehsenuf Imset
East North West South
Jackal head Baboon head Hawk head Bearded man
Neith Nephthys Serqet Isis
Lungs Stomach Intestines Liver
Hands Hands Feet Feet
Top bar of Djed Lower middle bar of Bottom bar of Djed Upper middle bar of
Djed Djed
Throat Navel Groin Lower centre of chest

The Djed Pillar

I am given to understand that anyone studying the human

spine, even without any modern medical knowledge, would
inevitably classify it into four sections based on morphological
differences. From the top down these four sections are the cervical
spine (seven vertebrae), the thoracic spine (twelve vertebrae), the
lumbar spine (five vertebrae), and the sacral spine (five fused
vertebrae, also the coccyx which is composed of three or four
fused and extremely rudimentary vertebrae). Although there is
much evidence to suggest that the symbolism of the djed pillar
changed and developed a great deal over the centuries, my work
with the djed pillar has focussed on the spinal interpretation
as a symbol of the microcosm. It is also easy to equate the djed
pillar to the hermetic pentagram. The stem corresponding to
spirit (uniting and separating) the lesser four elements being
the bars, attributions according to the correspondences of the
quarters given in the previous section. The djed pillar has also
been connected with a tree, particular the tree from the primary
story of Osiris, the wood of which contained him for a time. This
strikes the author as a later development of the symbol.

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 Egyptian Vocabulary
The Ancient Egyptians called their language the medew netjer, the ‘words of the gods’ (usually ‘Middle
Egyptian’ to the academics). Like many ancient languages the written form has no vowels, only consonants
and semi-vowels. It should be noted that the vulture hieroglyph, usually transliterated as the English letter ‘a’,
is the glottal stop – ‘a’ as in ‘bat’ but not as in ‘tart’ – hence the apostrophe in Ma’at as the glottal stop cannot
be drawn out as a true vowel can be. Furthermore on the subject of vowels, modern Egyptology assumes
all vowels to be equivalent to the English ‘e’. This is known to be untrue, but as the vowels are lost this is
academically convenient. This has led many modern magicians to alter their pronunciation accordingly; the
sun god whose name used to be pronounced ‘Rah’ is now more commonly spoken as ‘Reh’. However the
vowel sound in the first of these two pronunciations is not the semi-vowel of the vulture hieroglyph, and
there is no reason whatsoever to think this pronunciation less accurate. Indeed, as the second pronunciation
requires greater constriction of the muscles of the throat and mouth it could be argued to be less solar than
the older pronunciation. Experimentation guided but not ruled by academic accuracy is recommended.

Iru – Icon or aspect. A consecrated statuette of a deity would be an iru of that deity. As would an individual
animal of the species sacred to it, or an exemplar of another correspondence of the deity, or even the name of that
deity. As would also be another deity which we would say was an aspect of the deity in question.

Sia – Implicit knowledge. Instinct but not, I would say, intuition. Talents, attitudes, reflexes.

Rekh – Acquired knowledge, skill and learning.

Ma’at – Order (and the vulture deity thereof). The right and natural movement of the universe.

Ishvet – The closest word in Middle Egyptian to ‘evil’. Disorder, disquiet, disease. Disturbance of Ma’at.

Heka – Magick practiced by the living.

Akha – Magick practiced by the dead.

Arefem – Literally come unto me. Can be used ceremonially in the same manner as the phrases ‘I invoke thee,’
or ‘hear me.’ Example: Arefem Heru.

Recommended Reading:
Gardiner’s Egyptian Grammar (GEG). For a long time the text on the Middle
Egyptian language. It has been superceded in recent years but can still serve well as a
touchstone.

The Egyptian Book of the Dead - The Book of Going Forth by Day, the recent Dr R
Faulkner translation. This book is a beautiful A3 sized volume, at the time of its first
printing it was the most complete reproduction and translation of a BoGFbD ever
made. The introductions and explanations are also of the absolutely highest quality, an
essential for anyone looking into heka.

The Daily Lives of the Egyptian Gods, Dimitri Meeks et al.

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 The Apprentice Magician
Rufus Opus

It was a dark and stormy night. The lightning flashed and the thunder roared across the heavens.
I sat on the floor of my cookie-cutter rental townhouse in a suburb of Baltimore surrounded by flat-white
painted drywall and generic beige carpet. Around me on the floor were scattered a cheap gray and green
plastic compass, a blue protractor, a mechanical pencil, and sketch books covered in arcane symbols, half-
drawn seals, and notes on magical circles. Within reach were a box of raisins, some dates, a coil of Cedar
Grass, and a packet of incense that claimed to include lignum aloes, but smelled suspiciously of sandalwood.
A brass pot wasn’t too far away, the eventual home of the ingredients I had gathered. It sat on a carefully
printed out enlarged picture of the Triangle of Art from the Goetia.
It was my first Goetic operation of note. Honestly, it was technically my third attempt at magic from the
Lemegeton’s Goetia, but the first two don’t count. The first was an attempt to get a house, performed loosely
using “Chaos Magic Techniques.” After performing the rite and telling the demon to return in a month to
report on its progress, I banished all thought of the Work to avoid the dreaded “lust for results” I was so
concerned about.
A month passed and the demon returned; I had quite forgotten about it, and it playfully sank its tusks
through my arm in a dream. (Did I mention it appeared as a sea lion with foot-long tusks in a dream I was
having about swimming in the Caribbean?) I promptly freaked out and banished the thing to the best of my
abilities. I had no idea what had happened, and it took some time to figure it out. That was my first inkling
that these things were really real and not just a figment of my imagination.
My second conjuration attempt consisted of carefully writing out a charge to the Spirit Bune to make
me win the lottery. I was being original, you see. This time, I figured I’d use some traditional techniques,
since the chaos method had been such a dismal failure. I had been reading about Greek Magical Papyri and
Defixiones, and so I printed the spirit’s seal out, printed out its charge, rolled them up with some lottery
tickets I bought, and nailed it to the doorpost of my house.
I didn’t realize that the technique I had borrowed was to bind a spirit, that iron is anathema to spirits of
the Goetia, or that buying five quick picks and nailing them to a script I hadn’t read with a seal of a spirit
I hadn’t conjured wouldn’t result in much of anything. When it failed, I took the seal of the spirit, set the
stove to 200 degrees, and threw it in on a baking sheet to punish the spirit for failing to get me the winnings
I had demanded. I still have the toasted seal around as a reminder of what can happen when you’re stupid.
(That is, nothing. Nothing at all will happen from stupid magic. If you’re lucky.)
But this time, things were different. I had read a lot more, and I had gone through a spiritual initiation
that had completely changed my understanding of magic in general. Again I was conjuring Bune, but this
time I was actually going to conjure him. I had spent days drawing the seal, getting used to fitting the crosses
and circles and triangles all together in the weird shape with the smiley face on one end and what looked like
two bee stings on the other. I was using Crowley’s “corrected” image from he and Mathers’ translation.
I read an article by Aaron Leitch, author of Secrets of the Solomonic Grimoires that had been published in
the Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition. He postulated that the brass vessel in the Lemegeton’s Goetia was
supposed to be like the Spirit Pot of the Palo or Santeria traditions. I decided to put it to the test.
I used 777 to figure out the spirit’s correspondences. I gathered a bunch of things that seemed to relate to
Bune in the “Jupiter-Sagittarius” correspondence listed in 777, and I was going to throw them together into
the Spirit Pot. I had the names of the angels on the sides of the Pot, and the Secret Seal of Solomon drawn
out and placed in the lid of the pot. I was serious this time.
I timed it in a Jupiter Hour on a Jupiter Day using the Planetary Day and Hour calculations I had recently
stumbled upon. I put a lot of time and effort into these preparations, and I was quite nervous. I recently had
the honor of realizing that Spirits are real, they are not human, and they really do what people said they did
in the grimoires from the 15th century. I had worked with the Angels of the seven planets, and I had attained
Knowledge and Conversation with my Holy Guardian Angel using Liber Samekh.
I knew from him that I was spiritually ready for this operation. I had learned that “demons” are just
spirits with a bad rap because when they do their jobs right, people suffer when they’re not in a right

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relationship with their Creator. I knew that I was ok with God, and my Holy Guardian Angel had my back,
as it were, but you know, this was demon magic I was contemplating. Despite the assurances of God and my
Holy guardian Angel, my palms were sweating.
So I sat there in the right hour, on the right day, the room was lit by candles and the smell of Jupiter
incense filled the room. The storm was a nice effect. It totally added to the feeling of power in what I was
doing. I had been going over my notes one last time, making sure I had everything set up the way it should
be. I had a tin-copper talisman I had made for the spirit, engraved with his seal that I was going to put in the
pot. When the time was right, I began the ritual.

I sat, relaxing, and began Conversing with my HGA. I closed my eyes, and felt the warm feeling of
his presence. I smelled the indescribable smell that signaled his presence. I opened my astral vision and
started to ask him some last minute questions, when I noticed something out of the corner of my astral eye.
Hovering over the seal and pot was the spirit Bune. I don’t know how I knew it was him, but apparently he
had been there for quite some time. I got the feeling that my Holy Guardian Angel was amused.
Tentatively, I asked aloud, “Bune?”
“Yes.” The spirit’s voice was high and comely, just like the book said it would be!
“Are you here for the ceremony?”
“Yes.”
“You know I made you the Spirit Pot, and that I want you to enter it and Work with me to make me rich,
and eloquent?”
“Yes.”
“Will you get in and Work with me going forward?”
“Yes.”
And that was that. The spirit went into the pot with all the stuff in it, eagerly. I saw it infuse the stuff,
sort of phase-shift into the things I had gathered and arranged for him. I placed the charred paper seal and
the copper-tin talisman I’d made in the pot with the herbs and raisins and dates and cedar and sweet grass,
and some rocks from my local bank branch, and then I just sat there, surprised at how easy it had gone. No
big conjuration ritual, no circle traced out on the floor, no detailed conjurations, no threats, no License to
Depart. I went ahead and thanked the Spirit and God, and put the Spirit Pot on my altar with some candles
and a handwritten charge to the spirit that I read out loud to him. I lit some candles once in a while, and
over the next three years, I have continued to reap the benefits of this wonderful spirit.

Rufis Opus is the author of Head For the Red (http://headforred.blogspot.com).

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 Modern Grimoire Magick: Folk Magick and The
Solomonic Path
Aaron Leitch

The medieval systems of “grimoiric” mysticism (of which the European Solomonic tradition is a part) are
outlined in such manuscripts as The Key of Solomon the King, the Goetia, the Book of Abramelin, The Magus,
etc.(1) The authors of these texts (many of them members of the medieval Catholic Church) drew magickal
secrets from the cultures they found around them- such as Jewish Merkavah Mysticism and Qabalah, classical
Gnosticism, Arabic Sufism and the rich traditions of European pagan folklore.(2)
The mysticism that evolved among these Christian mages was fairly shamanic. It called upon the Angels
and spirits of nature. It described methods of exorcism and acquisition of spirit familiars. Wax images,
sacrifices, incantations and necromancy all proved a marked pagan influence on the texts. Yet, they were
unquestionably the work of devout Christians, who invoked the name of Jesus, used standard Christian
prayers (such as the Pater Notser and the Psalms) as magickal spells, and presented a blatantly Christian
mythos.
The Solomonic mystics were unique because they were among the first humans in history to have
access to the technology of paper and bound books.(3) (They were very often scholars, scientists or scribes.)
Therefore, they naturally recorded much of their tradition into manuscripts called textbooks or “grammars”
(French: grimoire). The appearance of these grimoires shocked Roman Catholic and many Protestant
authorities so deeply, it triggered the Inquisitions and mass book burnings. What we know of Solomonic
mysticism today comes largely from the grimoiric manuscripts that survived.
After the Inquisitions, the Age of Enlightenment dawned in Europe. The surviving grimoires had
vanished into private collections and museum archives – mostly guarded by the Masons as occult curiosities.
There was the odd scholar or quasi-Masonic group (most of them students of Hermeticism) who discovered
the texts and made use of some of the material. You might recognize many of the names- Elias Ashmole,
“Dr. Rudd”, Francis Barrett, MacGregor Mathers and Aleister Crowley are just a few. However, few of them
practiced the texts on their own terms. The more pagan elements of the grimoires vanished, and the mark
of Masonic lodge-style magick was eventually imprinted upon them.
Today, there are many ceremonial groups that make limited use of the Solomonic material- most of
them descended from or influenced by a late Victorian quasi-Masonic lodge called the Hermetic Order of
the Golden Dawn. There have even been a number of modern Orders that focus entirely on the grimoires(4),
though even they are influenced by post-Golden Dawn magickal methodology. Toward the end of the 20th
Century, several books were released that present methods for summoning Angels and spirits based upon
(or influenced by) Golden Dawn techniques.(5)
While the modern ceremonial systems may draw names, sigils and talismans from the medieval
grimoires, the techniques they utilize are no older than the late 1800s –and in some cases are even younger.
The grimoires are not composed of lodge-style ceremonial magick. You’ll find no “Lesser Banishing Ritual
of the Pentagram” in the Key of Solomon the King. You will not see instructions in the Goetia to inscribe
geometric figures in the air. No Tarot-based Elemental Weapons or Lotus Wands are found anywhere in the
vast corpus of medieval Solomonic literature.
At the time I wrote my book on grimoire magick, I was operating under the impression that the “living
grimoiric tradition”- as recorded by the medieval mages themselves- had long-since ceased to exist. I focused
strictly upon the historical European Solomonic tradition, along with suggestions for following a similar
path in the modern world. (In fact, I was hoping my book would help to reignite the Solomonic tradition,
and provide a textbook – grimoire – for it.)
However, over the past several years, I have discovered that I was fundamentally wrong about the passing
of the “living grimoiric tradition.” It was not stamped out by the Church, nor has it been dead and buried in
Masonic vaults for the past 400 years! Indeed, it survived the inquisitions, migrated to the New World with
European immigrants, and- true to its shamanic nature- mutated to a new form. It has been with us right

556
here in America for nearly as long as the nation has existed – and it is currently becoming part of a larger
occult revival. I have been shocked to discover just how many people are currently out there really working
with this material! Their procedures may or may not differ from what I describe in my book. I may or may
not always agree with their philosophies about the magick. Yet, one way or the other, they are using the old
methods and getting results.
Thus, contrary to what you may read in my previous work, the Solomonic tradition is alive and growing
today. In this essay, I will trace this slightly mutated “grimoiric” trend from Europe to the New World (both
New England and the American South), and finally discuss how it is currently affecting aspirants searching
for the Solomonic path. Overall, I hope to give the reader a solid impression of what it means when someone
– right here in the modern world – calls him or herself a “Solomonic magician.”

European Folk Magick in the New World

The medieval Solomonic grimoires are, in fact, a sub-set of a larger literary genre – the folkloric “receipt-
book.” (The word “receipt”, used in this sense, is an archaic form of the word “recipe.”) A receipt-book was
a hand-written journal of family and local folklore, passed down from generation to generation.
The typical receipt-book contained such things as agricultural lore, cleaning tips, beauty aids and “home
remedy” medicinal secrets. For an example of such domestically-useful content, take this recipe for a plaster
that aids healing:

A Very Good Plaster.(6)

I doubt, very much whether any physician in the United States can make a plaster equal to this. It heals the white
swelling, and has cured the sore leg of a woman who for eighteen years had used the prescriptions of doctors in vain.

Take two quarts of cider, one pound of bees-wax, one pound of sheep-tallow, and one pound of tobacco; boil the
tobacco in the cider till the strength is out, and then s train it, and add the other articles to the liquid: stir it over a
gentle fire till all is dissolved.

Or this recipe for curing fatigue:

Another Remedy for Weakness.(6)

Take Dittany and St. John’s wort, and put them in good old rye whiskey. To drink some of this in the morning
before having taken anything else, is very wholesome and good. A tea made of the acorns of the white oak is very good
for weakness of the limbs.

The receipt-books also contained occult lore – in the form of incantations, spells and simple conjurations.
Depending on the source, this occultism is variously known as European folk magick, witchcraft or
“collections of local superstitions.” For example, here is a folk remedy for the fever:

How to Banish the Fever.(6)

Write the following words upon a paper and wrap it up in knot-grass, (breiten megrich,) and then tie it upon the
body of the person who has the fever:

Potmat sineat,
Potmat sineat,
Potmat sineat.

557
 Or, how about this helpful hint for ranchers:

Another Way to Make Cattle Return Home..(6)

Feed your cattle out of a pot or kettle used in preparing your dinner, and they will always return to your stable.

There are also more involved spells, which should sound very familiar to any student of the Solomonic
tradition:

To Prevent Bad People From Getting About the Cattle.(6)

Take wormwood, gith, five-finger weed, and assafœtida; three cents’ worth of each; the straw of horse beans, some
dirt swept together behind the door of the stable and a little salt. Tie these all up together with a tape, and put the
bundle in a hole about the threshold over which your cattle pass in and out, and cover it well with lignum-vitæ wood.
This will certainly be of use.

This kind of magick was a hold-over from the paganism that existed in Europe before the domination of
the Church. While the pagan religions themselves may have been destroyed, local and family traditions and
folklore often survived. Many of them simply adapted to the new Christian environment. By the time the
receipt-books were penned, Biblical scripture and prayers to Jesus and Saints had become intermixed with
the older pagan material:

Another Well-Tried Charm Against Firearms.(6)

Blessed is the hour in which Jesus Christ was born; blessed is the hour in which Jesus Christ was born; blessed is
the hour in which Jesus Christ was born; blessed is the hour in which Jesus Christ has arisen from the dead; blessed
are these three hours over thy gun, that no shot or ball shall fly toward me, and neither my skin, nor my hair, nor my
blood, nor my flesh be injured by them, and that no kind of weapon or metal shall do me any harm, so surely as the
Mother of God shall not bring forth another son. X X X Amen.

At the same time, aspects of Judeo-Christian occultism (such as we see in the Solomonic grimoires)
were incorporated into the receipt-books. Perhaps the best example of this is the famous SATOR/ROTAS
magickal square:

SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS

We’ve seen this square on Solomonic talismans, and a (slightly altered) version even appears in the Book
of Abramelin.(7) Meanwhile, the lesser-known receipt-books grant this talisman various powers. If written
on either side of a plate and cast into a fire, it can extinguish the flames without water. If written on paper,
ground up and added to cattle’s feed, it will protect the beasts from evil witchcraft. If built into the structure
of a door or window, it will keep evil spirits from entering.(8)
Another folk remedy for the fever should be familiar to students of European occultism:

To Banish Convulsive Fevers.(6)

Write the following letters on a piece of white paper, Pew it on a piece of linen or muslin, and hang it around the
neck until the fever leaves you:

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 AbaxaCatabax
AbaxaCatabax
AbaxaCataba
AbaxaCatab
AbaxaCata
AbaxaCat
AbaxaCa
AbaxaC
Abaxa
Abax
Aba
Ab

This talisman is obviously adapted from the “Abracadabra” formula, which adopts its principal from
Qabalistic philosophies on the power of words. The fever is symbolically linked to the word “Abracadabra”
(or, in this case, “Abaxacatabax”), and should diminish as the letters of the word are reduced one by one.
(Most folks are familiar with “Abracadabra” because stage-magicians in the early 1900s – who sometimes
claimed real occult power- adopted the word into their acts.)
The receipt-books were grimoires in every sense of the word- and were sometimes known as “wonder-
books.” In fact, it could be said that the Solomonic grimoires were merely the receipt-books (or wonder-
books) of one group of medieval Christian mystics.
Once the Inquisitions had finished searching for grimoires on the shelves of their clergy, they began
seeking out the local healers and midwives who often had receipt-books of their own. (From this grew the
legends of “witch-burning” that characterize the Inquisitions to this day.)
It was this atmosphere of religious persecution throughout Europe that prompted many individuals and
entire communities to seek their fortunes in the New World. Those whose faiths were labeled (or bordered
upon) “heresy” migrated especially to the colony of Pennsylvania, which had been founded (in 1681 CE by
the Quaker William Penn) on the principal of religious freedom. It quickly became a haven for Quakers,
Mennonites, Anabaptists and other obscure (and often mystical) religious sects. By 1683, German settlers
had established the community of Germantown near Philadelphia – and they brought their receipt-books
with them.(9)

Once in the New World, the lore we find recorded in the books combined with Native American
herbalism. (The immigrant cunning-folk and healers would have wanted to learn about the local plant life
as soon as possible, in order to make necessary medicines and potions.) The information then began to
appear in published works in the late 1700s and 1800s. Thanks to mass distribution through mail-order
catalogs(10), books like the Farmers Almanac, and John Hohman’s Pow-Wows, or The Long Lost Friend (first
published in German, in 1820, as Der Lange Verborgene Freund) became the foundation of the New England
folk tradition.

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 This New England folk tradition is sometimes called Hexcraft – though this may be a modern convention.
Alternately, it has been called braucha in the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect, speilwerk in the German, or “Pow-
wow” after the title of John Hohman’s book. (He had simply borrowed an Algonquian word for “shaman.”)
(11)
Practitioners of Pow-wow magick were known by the German term Hexenmeisters (spell-masters). Besides
their spells and conjurations, they were most famous as herbologists and healers. In most cases, the tradition
could only be handed down from a male to a female, or from a female to a male – especially from mother to
son. (Modern students of Wiccan history may find that information of interest.)
Receipt-books had been kept within families since the invention of paper and bound books, and they
continued to appear even as late as 1950s America. Eventually, the advent of the Industrial Age and the
nuclear family destroyed the transmission of such folk wisdom from the older generations to the younger,
and the receipt-book finally disappeared.(12) Today, it is unclear how many hexenmeisters are left, or whether
or not the tradition will be handed down to another generation.
Nonetheless, Mr. Hohman’s book eventually became the quintessential American grimoire, and was
the principal (but not the only) source of spells for Pow-wowing. (In fact, all of the above examples of
receipt-book folklore were taken from The Long Lost Friend.) Another text of importance was Egyptian Secrets,
(supposedly) by Albertus Magnus – which was one of the main sources for Hohman’s book.
Even more interesting for us here, there were several classical grimoires that made it through the
Inquisitions and across the sea to America. The most important to the Pow-wow tradition were the Sixth
and Seventh Books of Moses, the Black Pullet and possibly the Goetia as well. The hexenmeisters were not very
interested in the purification rites and conjuration ceremonies. Instead, they merely adopted the elaborate
seals and sigils – which they charged according to their own tradition. (For instance, merely placing a
grimoiric seal inside a Bible for seven days was often enough to make it magically viable.)
Unfortunately, these classical grimoires were often associated with “black-magick” by Pow-wow healers.
Even owning such a book was seen as an indication of satanic influence – and they were strictly avoided by
those who wished to present Pow-wow magickal lore as lawful within Christian dogma.(13)

The Magick Moves South: The Hoodoo Tradition

While the European immigrants were bringing their religions and folk magick with them to New
England, the slaves were bringing theirs to the South. In places like Cuba, the Caribbean and the American
southern states (like Louisiana), we find a strong presence of the African Diaspora religions – such as
Santeria, Palo and Voodoo (or Voodoun).
These initiatory shamanic faiths were themselves combinations of the original African religions and
elements from religions in the New World. Santeria adopted much from Catholicism, so that Saints were
invoked as indistinguishable from the African Orishas (gods). Both Santeria and Palo drew from Allan
Kardec’s Spiritism (an offshoot of Spiritualism) to replace their lost ancestral worship – resulting in the mesa
blanca (white table) séances.
It would also appear that, unlike the New England hexenmeisters, the Diaspora faiths had no compunction
against making use of the European grimoires.(14) For example, at some point, several of the seals from the
Goetia and related texts were adopted by the Voodoo priests as veves (sigils) for the African Loas (gods).(15)
For example, compare the following two sigils. One is from the Goetia, representing the spirit Gomori.
The other is the Voodoo sigil for the Loa Ezili-Freda:

DUKE GOMORI LOA EZILI FREDA

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 The next example is also from the Goetia- – the seal of the spirit Marbas. Compare this to the sigil of
the Loa Ibo:

President Marbas Loa Ibo

I’ll give one final example here – this time the seal is from the grimoire called the Grimoirum Verum,
representing the spirit Frucissiere. Corresponding to this, we have the Voodo sigil of the Loa Papa-Legba:

Spirit Frucissiere Loa Papa-Legba

As one should expect, these African-descended religions also brought with them a rich tradition of
African folk magick. Crossroads magick, “foot track” magick, “laying down tricks”, crossing and uncrossing,
gris-gris or mojo bags, ritual sweeping and bathing are all African survivals. And, as usual with folk traditions,
these things were not strictly contained within the Diaspora religions. Instead, during the late 19th century,
they disseminated among the lay-people as well – intermixing freely with the folklore and occultism of
surrounding cultures. Included in the mix were Native American herbalism, Spiritism, European folk
magick (especially Pow-wow), and the medieval grimoires.
This new southern American folk tradition was eventually labeled “Hoodoo” – also known as root-
working and conjure sorcery.(16) Because of its close ties to Voodoo, Palo, etc, it is often mistaken as a Diaspora
religion in its own right. However, Hoodoo is not a religion, nor does one have to be an initiate of any of
these religions to practice. Like the Pow-wow tradition, it was taught and practiced by common folk within
families or close-knit communities. (Pre-WWII blues music is known for references to Hoodoo – such as
Crossroads Blues by Robert Johnson and Hoodoo Lady by Memphis Minnie.)
Of course, for this essay, we are most interested in the influence of European folklore and occultism
on Hoodoo. The southern rootworkers (or root-doctors) were great fans of what they considered “Jewish
Kabbalistic” works like Hohman’s The Long Lost Friend(17), Magnus’ Egyptian Secrets and grimoires like The
Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, The Black Pullet, The Key of Solomon the King and The Goetia. (In fact, there is
some speculation that the term “Hoodoo” may descend from the Latino word Judio – pronounced “hoo-dee-
oh” and meaning “Jewish.” It could easily have come into the culture via Palo, within which is a path named
Palo Judio. If this is the origin of the word Hoodoo, then it is likely the practice was named for its association
with so-called “Jewish magick” – the medieval grimoires.)
However, much as we see with New England folk magick, the southern rootworkers were not interested
in the grimoires’ ritual instructions – they wanted books with lots of seals and words of power associated
with them.(18) These seals were then drawn on paper and placed in sachets, buried in pathways, built into
doors, placed upon wounds, etc – similar to the manner in which the SATOR square is used. They could
be empowered via several simple methods such as intonation of their words of power, anointing with oil,
recitations of scripture and/or enclosure within a Bible for seven days.

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 Another European magickal tradition adopted into Hoodoo was the use of the Biblical Psalms as spells
or conjurations in their own right.(19) This was largely (but not entirely) thanks to the publication of a
text called Secrets of the Psalms: A Fragment of the Practical Kabala by Godfrey Selig.(20) (Possibly based upon
a medieval Jewish book entitled Shimmush Tehillim – On the Use of Psalms.) Selig’s book described the
Qabalistic philosophy that the Psalms (especially those attributed to King David) contain hidden “seed
syllables” that will produce magickal affects if pronounced aloud.
In practice, however, the use of Psalms in Hoodoo magick is much like the conjurations of the Solomonic
tradition. The magickal effect produced by the scripture is directly related to the subject-matter of the
passage – rather than to Hebrew “seed-syllables.”(21)
For instance, if one wants to bring fortune to his home, one might recite Psalm 61 which says:

Thou hast been a shelter for me, and a strong tower from the enemy. I will abide in Thy tabernacle forever, I will
trust in the covert of Thy wings.

If one has need to travel by night, one might invoke protection via Psalm 121 which says:

I will look up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

For headaches or backaches, one can recite Psalm 3 (traditionally used in exorcism) which contains the
line:

Thou, o Lord, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter of my head.

In this manner, Secrets of the Psalms outlines Psalms for numerous uses – such as release from prison,
business success, safe childbirth, success in court, defeat of enemies, general protection from evil and more.
Psalm magick remains central to Hoodoo practice to this very day.

Hoodoo reached its greatest popularity during the early 1900s – largely thanks to the growing mail-order
industry and companies like King Novelty Co., Valmore Beauty Products, the Lucky Heart Co., and R.C.
Strong. These companies specialized in beauty products (like Sweet Georgia Brown Hair Pomade, Bleach
Cream and Face Powder), cleaning supplies, and “spiritual curios.” The spiritual curios are what interest us-
the basic components of conjure-spells like roots and herbs, incenses, anointing oils, lodestones and herbal
washes.
Within these same catalogs, rootworkers could find such grimoires as The Long Lost Friend, The Black
Pullet, The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, and the Secrets of the Psalms – right alongside of books like The Art
of Kissing, the Book of 1000 Ways to Get Rich and The Egyptian Witch Dream Book and Fortune Teller.
Eventually, an expanding market lead to several new books that blended the European occultism of the
grimoires with the growing lore of Hoodoo. Lewis de Claremont(22) released a number of books – among

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them The Ten Lost Books of the Prophets, The Seven Keys to Power, and The Ancients Book of Magic. Also of
particular interest to us is Henry Gamache’s The 8th, 9th and 10th Books of Moses – which is similar to the
older grimoire, but includes a lengthy introduction by the author that links African tribal beliefs with (so-
called) anceint Jewish and Egyptian practices.
Henry Gamache also wrote an important Hoodoo book called The Master Book of Candle Burning. The
folk use of candle burning likely originated in the Catholic practice of lighting votives to the Saints and the
dead. Then, thanks to mass-production in the early 1900s, candles of all sorts of shapes and colors became
easy to obtain from local drugstores. This led to the central role that candle-burning magick played in
Hoodoo.(23)
The practice was fairly simple. One merely needs to take a candle of an appropriate color (such as green
for money, red for love, black for curses, etc), anoint it with a related dressing oil (Money Drawing Oil,
Healing Oil, Follow Me Girl Oil, Aunt Sally’s Lucky Dream Oil, etc), and light it with an appropriate Psalm
or statement of intent.(24)
Today, Hoodoo candles are available in a plethora of types and shapes. The most popular are glass-
encased seven-day candles with pictures of Saints on their labels. (They usually have a prayer to the Saint
on the back of the lable as well.) Some of them are multi-colored for spells designed to have different effects
at different stages. You can even buy candles with one color on the outside and another on the inside – for
removing jinxes and returning them to their senders. You can even buy candles shaped like men, women,
penises, and other shapes that aid in magickal sympathy with the object of the spell.
It is very unlikely that Hoodoo is in the same danger of dying out as Pow-wow. (This is likely due to
the fact that Pow-wow put heavier restrictions upon its transmission.) As Hoodoo once disseminated itself
through mail-order catalogs, it is now gaining popularity through the Internet. Websites like the Lucky Mojo
Curio Co.(25) make the obscure spell ingredients, altar tools, talismans, and books easy to find.
Rootworking and conjure-magick is alive and well. One reviewer of Secrets... suggested the release of
my book was well timed, because it met with an “...increased interest in operative magic...”(26) I suppose
what they meant by that was a rising interest in good old-fashioned witchcraft. The kind of folk-magick that
requires a crossroads at midnight and railroad spikes, rather than initiations and lodge-style ceremonies. The
kind of magick our ancestors used and passed on to their children, but was sacrificed to “scientific reason”
and the nuclear family before our generation came along. As the world becomes an increasingly hostile and
dangerous place, perhaps the younger generations desire to reconnect to the healing spells, protective spirits
and results-oriented “operative magick” we have lost.

The Modern Solomonic Path

In this essay, we have traced grimoiric shamanism from medieval times to the present day, and we have
seen that it followed two specific paths: One path was with the Masons and Hermeticists. They eventually
borrowed the grimoires’ talismans and words of power, but applied them to their own lodge-style magick.
The second path was with the immigrants who took the grimoires with them to the New World, packaged
with their native folklore. However, they also ignored the ritual instructions in favor of the talismans and
words.

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 The modern Solomonic Path differs from these in that it does not eschew the instructions recorded in
the grimoires. The purifications and preparations, robes and magickal tools, conjurations and ceremonies
are what define the Solomonic Path. However, at the same time, the Solomonic mage is just as interested
in the “rootworking” aspects of the grimoires that have been dismissed by the magickal lodges. The wax
images, virgin-spun thread, sacred herbs, etc.
The Solomonic mages in medieval Europe had borrowed what they could from local pagan folklore.
Likewise, modern Solomonic mages are drawing pagan material from systems like European folk-magick,
the African Diaspora religions and Hoodoo. (In fact, the practice of borrowing material from European and
African folklore is a hallmark of Hoodoo itself.)
When I began to explore the Solomonic material (during the 1990s), I was unfamiliar with the traditions
of Pow-wow and Hoodoo. I knew that Pow-wow existed, but I knew very little about it and had no idea it
was connected to the medieval grimoires. Of Hoodoo I knew even less – except for a vague understanding
that some members of the Afro-Caribbean communities were using the Books of Moses and possibly a few
other medieval European texts. In fact, I had heard there was a growing “Solomonic trend” within these
communities, though I had no clue where this movement was taking place.
For some years, I had used the grimoires in the modern ceremonial fashion; with acceptable results. I
knew it was not a true reflection of the magick presented in the medieval texts – however, the grimoires were
not easy to understand on their own terms. Besides being jumbled and obscurely worded, they were missing
a lot of material that had likely been transmitted orally from teacher to student. Plus, their instructions
often directly contradicted what I “knew” to be true about magick.
Eventually, I stumbled upon Santeria and Palo Mayombe through a friend who had initiated into
both faiths. At first, my interest in his knowledge was purely academic. I love to speak with people of
differing faiths and worldviews, and especially of different magickal systems, in order to widen my own
perspective. In this case, I was wildly successful – because my discussions with the Santero radically altered
my worldview. Those long conversations were my first real introduction to magickal principals outside the
influence of Neopaganism or the Golden Dawn. It was my first direct encounter with established systems
of shamanism.
It all came together when the Santero and I realized that his descriptions of African-descended magick
were coming awfully close to my descriptions of the Book of Abramelin, The Key of Solomon and several other
grimoires. Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy did not contradict his own at all. (He was particularly fascinated
by Book I of the Three Books... – dealing with “natural magick,” or what we have been calling folk-magick.)
Many aspects of the grimoires that made no sense to me- and were often called “blinds” by others- were
perfectly logical when viewed through his shamanic worldview. (Frog skin? Blood from a black cat? Ritual
sacrifice??)

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 Before long, I was bringing the grimoires to him for clarification. I would ask him about the obscured
and missing aspects of Solomonic magick, and he would fill in the gaps by describing similar practices
in Santeria or Palo. He could tell me why certain things were done, and even where to find the obscure
ingredients. (The corrollations were so close, I began to suspect the African and Solomonic traditions
had crossed paths before.) Eventually, my girlfriend decided to explore the path of Palo with my friend as
her spiritual god brother, and the two of them have been invaluable sources of information and practical
experience ever since.(27)
In some cases, the grimoires and folk traditions like Hoodoo match almost exactly. A great example is
the parallel folklore about crossroads found within both. Hoodoo teaches that a crossroads at midnight is a
place of convergence- between days, human destinies and “between the worlds” of human and spirit. At the
crossroads, spirits are met, deals are made and power is gained.(28)
Meanwhile, grimiores like the Key of Solomon the King insist that evocations (especially necromancy
or goetic work) are best performed at a crossroads “during the depth and silence of the night.”(29) In The
Magus, we find an operation for binding a number of familiar spirits to a magickal book – including both a
crossroads and the hour of midnight.(30) One is to prepare the book with all the prayers and conjurations
necessary to call the spirits. Then, at a crossroads at midnight, one must prepare a magickal circle. The book
is consecrated and the spirits are summoned. The book must then be buried in the center of the crossroads
and (after wiping away all traces of the circle) left for three days. On the third night, one must return again
at midnight, reform the circle, offer prayers of thanks and retrieve the book. That is the kind of magick any
good rootworker can appreciate!
We can find even more examples of folk magick in Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy, Book I, “Natural Magic.”(31)
In fact, I would suggest that it stands on its own as a root-worker’s manual – especially for someone geared
toward the Solomonic path. It is certainly the most neglected book of Agrippa’s trilogy, merely wanting
rediscovery by modern aspirants.
A wonderful example is found in Chapter 16, “How the operations of several Virtues pass from one
thing into another, and are communicated one to the other”:

Therefore they say that if any one shall put on the inward garment of an Harlot, or shall
have about him that looking glass, which she daily looks into, he shall thereby become bold,
confident, impudent, and wanton. In like manner they say, that a cloth that was about a dead
Corpse hath received from thence the property of sadness, and melancholy; and that the
halter wherewith a man was hanged hath certain wonderfull properties.
[...] If any shall put a green Lizard made blind, together with Iron, or Gold Rings into
a glass-vessel, putting under them some earth, and then shutting the vessel, and when it
appears that the Lizard hath received his sight, shall put him out of the glass, that those
Rings shall help sore eyes. The same may be done with Rings, and a weasel, whose eyes after
they are with any kind of prick put out, it is certain are restored to sight again. Upon the
same account Rings are put for a certain time in the nest of Sparrows, or Swallows, which
afterwards are used to procure love, and favor.

This sounds like something one would expect to read in a Hexenmeister’s receipt-book. It is an example of
sympathetic magick – or “like attracts like” – the hallmark of most primitive shamanic and folk traditions.
Agrippa makes much of magickal sympathy in his book on Natural Magick. Another example can be
found in Chapter 19, “How the Virtues of things are to be tried and found out...”

Moreover thou must consider that the Vertues of things are in some things according to
the species, as boldness, and courage in a Lyon, & Cock: fearfulness in a Hare, or Lamb,
ravenousness in a Wolf, treachery, and deceitfulness in a Fox... So is boldness in a Harlot,
fearfulness in a Thief. And upon this account it is that Philosophers say, that any particular
thing that never was sick, is good against any manner of sickness: therefore they say that
a bone of a dead man, who never had a fever, being laid upon the patient, frees him of his
quartane.

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 Extending from this philosophy of sympathy, we find healing practices in faiths like Santeria wherein an
animal (usually a bird) is applied to the body to “absorb” a sickness. This is described by Agrippa in Chapter
21, “Of the Virtues of things which are in them only in their lifetime...”:

So they say that in the Colick, if a live Duck be applyed to the belly, it takes away the pain,
and her self dies.

Agrippa gives many further examples in Chapter 51, “Of Certain Observations, Producing Wonderfull
Virtues”:

So they say that quartanes may be driven away if the parings of the nails of the sick be bound to the
neck of a live Eel in a linen cloth, and she be let go into the water. And Pliny saith, that the paring of a
sick mans nailes of his feet, and hands being mixed with wax, cure the quartan, tertian, and quotidian
Ague, and if they be before Sun rising fastened to another mans gate, will cure such like diseases. In
like manner let all the parings of the nailes be put into [anthills], and they say that that which begun
to draw the nailes first must be taken, and bound to the neck, and by this means will the disease be
removed. They say that by Wood stricken with lightning, and cast behind the back with ones hands,
any disease may be cured...

Also the Spleen of Cattle extended upon pained Spleens, cures them, if he that applies it, saith that
he is applying a medicine to the Spleen to cure, and ease it: After this, they say, the patient must be
shut into a sleeping room, the door being sealed up with a Ring, and some verse be repeated over
nineteen times.

I find the following quote – from the same chapter- to be particularly fascinating from the root-working
perspective:

It is said also in gathering roots and herbs, we must draw three circles round about them,
first with a sword, then dig them up, taking heed in the mean time of a contrary wind.

Space prohibits me from giving more excerpts – though I certainly could continue at some length.
Agrippa continues to describe auguries by animals, the power of “enchantments” (incantations), and many
more tidbits of use to modern sorcorers. The entire book discusses the philosophies behind Natural Magick
in depth- all based upon the four Elements and the seven Planets.
As we can see, there is plenty of material within Solomonic literature to appeal to members of Afro-
Carribean religions and Hoodoo rootworkers. For this reason, it would seem, the modern Solomonic
movement has become wedded to a parallel “ATR” (African Tribal Religion) movement.
There is currently a growing interest in the ATRs, as cultural intermixing in America has slowly opened
them to Caucasians.(32) Many are taking the full initiations, while some are choosing the Hoodoo route of
merely drawing folklore and folk-magick from the religions. The modern Solomonic sorcerer usually falls
into the latter category – though I know of some Diaspora full-initiates who also engage in Solomonic
practice.
Therefore, when we encounter the records of a modern grimoiric practitioner, we are likely to find a
kind of hybrid between Solomonic magick and African rootworking. Let us take a look at some examples:

566
 The Goetia tells us that King Solomon bound spirits into a brass vessel. The book also tells us how to
make a brass vessel of our own – including the Hebrew Divine Names and the Seal of Solomon. However,
it tells us nothing at all about what to do with the thing. One can assume the vessel should be placed in the
Triangle of conjuration (with the spirit’s sigil traced on the ground beneath it), and perhaps a metallic seal of
the spirit placed inside. Beyond that – where it comes to working with such a spirit in a vessel – the grimoire
is silent.
Meanwhile, if we look to Palo, we also find familiar spirits bound to vessels (called ngangas) – and a
practice backed by an elaborate (and ancient) tradition. They know the secret ingredients to include inside
the vessel to provide a living environment for the spirit. They know how to feed and care for it. And they
know how to get it to work for them.

The modern Solomonic mage can draw from such lore to “flesh out” the instructions of the Goetia.
The brass vessel could include its own set of ingredients to provide the Goetic spirit with a harmonious
environment. A Goetic “King” (a Solar spirit) like Belial would be in sympathy with the metals gold (from
which his Seal should be made) and pyrite, solary plants (like saffron, sunflower, laurel and frankincense)
and solar stones (such as ruby, yellow topaz and carbuncle). Small figurines of a sun, a hawk, a king, a
scepter, and/or a throne (and better if they are fashioned from gold) can be included.
Also dirt from places like local hospitals, courthouses, police stations, etc. will grant the spirit a direct
astral link with the places from which the dirt was taken. This gives the shaman some amount of protection
from and influence over the organizations at those locations.
Adding fresh hot peppers to the vessel is an obscure secret. Paleros include them to add “spiritual heat”
to their Ngangas – to excite the spirit and discourage it from lapsing into sleep.
Further ingredients could be included – such as tools for the spirit to work with. A writer would make
sure to include a pen and paper. An artist could add a paintbrush and easel. A police officer could include
a badge and bullet- or even a gun. Much like the dirt, the tools you give the spirit will give it influence over
the arts that utilize those tools.
Santeria makes use of a special water it calls “Omiero” as a kind of offering to newborn Orishas. Simply
put, it is water that has been strained through sacred herbs while a Santero sings shamanic songs over it.
The Santero then uses this sacred water to wash the Orisha’s sacred objects before sealing them in an urn.
The practice appeared in Hoodoo in the form of various herbal washes – usually sold in the catalogues as
floor washes and baths. They can even be purchased today.(33) Or one could make their own by straining
Solomonic holy water through herbs sympathetic to the spirit (i.e. solary herbs for Belial, etc). For the right
Psalms to chant, one could reference Secrets of the Psalms(34) and/or read up on Psalmody in Secrets of the
Magickal Grimoires(35). Then, the resulting water could be used to wash the objects placed into the vessel, and
even poured directly into the vessel itself during the Conjuration.
After the Goetia’s conjuration rites are complete, the brass vessel could be placed on a simple altar or
shelf decorated in sympathy with the spirit. (Objects, colors, stones, plants, etc.) Light a candle and incense
when consulting the spirit, and don’t forget to feed it!(36)
I’m afraid I must now bring this discussion to a close. If you are a Solomonic mage, I hope these practical
examples have fired your imagination. If you are a student or aspirant seeking to discover the “Solomonic
Path”, I hope I have given you some idea of the spirit behind the tradition and its history. (Make sure to
explore the links in the footnotes!)

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 -----------------------------------

(1) See http://kheph777.tripod.com/secrets_chap1.html for an introduction to the medieval grimoires.

(2) In fact, one of the grimoires – the Book of Abramelin – chronicles the journeys of one Aspirant who investigates all of
these sources in his quest for the True and Sacred Magick. See http://www.esotericarchives.com/abramelin/abramelin.htm .
During the medieval period, both Gnosticism and Hermeticism were nearly dormant, and Rosicrucianism had yet to
be introduced. These three, along with the Christian Qabalah, would arise later during the renaissance era and become the
foundations of Christian Mysticism.
(3) Paper was invented in China in the first century CE. However, they guarded the secret of its manufacture for quite
some time, and the technology did not reach Europe until the 13th Century. This is the late medieval period. See http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper#History
(4) See http://www.templeofastarte.com/ for the Order of the Temple of Astarte.
(5) See The Golden Dawn, by Israel Regardie. P. 402
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0875426638/13thstarcomin-20
Modern Magick, by DM Kraig. Lesson Nine.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0875423248/13thstarcomin-20
The Book of Solomon’s Magick, by Caroll Runyon.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/096548811X/13thstarcomin-20
Summoning Spirits, by Konstantinos
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567183816/13thstarcomin-20
(6) Excerpts from John Hohman’s Pow-Wows, or the Long Lost Friend. See http://www.locksley.com/llf/>.
(7) In the Key of Solomon the King, see the Second Pentacle of Saturn (where the square is written with Hebrew letters).
In the Book of Abramelin, see Book III, Chapter Nineteen (For Every Description of Affection and Love), the ninth Talisman
(By a Maiden in General). The square is there written:

SALOM
AREPO
LEMEL
OPERA
MOLAS

The earliest known appearance of the SATOR / ROTAS magickal square was in first-century Pompeii, where it was written
on a the wall of a residence, as “graffiti.” (It was more likely someone casting a Roman folk-magick spell.)
(8) For further discussion of the folk use of the SATOR square, see Pennsylvania German Mysticism and Folk Spirituality, by
Dr. Brendan D. Strasser. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/voxhermes/files/ (file: Mystic.doc)
(9) Ibid. for further discussion of the migration of German mysticism to America.
(10) See “Admixtures: European, Spiritist and Kabbalist Influences on Hoodoo” (from Hoodoo in Theory and Practice by
Catherine Yronwode). http://www.luckymojo.com/hoodoohistory.html#admixtures
(11) See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pow-wow_%28folk_magic%29 for a short introduction to the subject of American
“Pow-wow” magick.
Powwowing: A Persistent American Esoteric Tradition, by David W Kriebel, Ph.D. http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeIV/
Powwow.htm for a lengthy discussion of the Pow Wow tradition.
(12) However, the receipt books would become source-books for later spiritual traditions. No doubt, Gerald Gardner and
the founders of British Traditional Wicca had access to such books (the “family traditions” to which many of them laid claim?)
and drew much witchcraft lore from them.
(13) See Powwowing: A Persistent American Esoteric Tradition, by David W Kriebel, Ph.D. http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/
VolumeIV/Powwow.htm
(14) In Secrets of the Magickal Grimories I made a small case for the idea that the African religions had affected the European
grimoires during the time of their writing. If this is the case, then the favor was returned in the New World once the African
Diaspora religions began to adopt material from the grimoires.
(15) See Sigils and Veves, by Frater Alastor, http://www.frateralastor.com/veve.htm
(16) See Hoodoo in Theory and Practice by Catherine Yronwode http://www.luckymojo.com/hoodoo.html

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 Hoodoo, A presentation for “The Moot with No Name,” by Stephen Grasso. http://philhine.org.uk/writings/ess_
hoodoo.html
(17) See Powwows by Catherine Yronwode http://www.luckymojo.com/powwows.html
(18) Even today, you can purchase the Seals from the Books of Moses in Botanicas or even from online curio suppliers. See
http://www.indioproducts.com/webstore/index.php?cPath=580 for an example.
(19) We can see this throughout the Key of Solomon the King, as well as other medieval grimoires both Christian and
Jewish.
(20) See Secrets of the Psalms: The Kabbalist Influence on Hoodoo http://www.luckymojo.com/secretspsalms.html
(21) See The Magus, Book II, “Of The Consecration Of All Magical Instruments And Materials Which Are Used In
This Art.” - “Then in the prayer by which the consecration is made it derives its virtue either from divine inspiration, or else
by composing it from sundry places in the holy Scriptures, in the commemoration of some of the wonderful miracles of God,
effects, promises, sacraments and sacramental things, of which we have abundance in holy writ.”
(22) See The Enduring Occult Mystery of Lewis de Claremont, Louis de Clermont, Henri Gamache, Joe Kaye, Joseph Spitalnick, Black
Herman, Benjamin Rucker, and the elusive Mr. Young. http://www.luckymojo.com/young.html
(23) See Hoodoo, A presentation for “The Moot with No Name,” by Stephen Grasso. http://philhine.org.uk/writings/
ess_hoodoo.html
(24) Again, Wiccan scholars may wish to take note, as this could be the origins of modern Neopgan and Newage candle
magick.
For Hoodoo anointing oils, see http://www.luckymojo.com/mojocatoils.html#hoodoo
For Hoodoo ritual candles, see http://www.luckymojo.com/mojocatcandles.html
(25) See http://www.luckymojo.com/catalogue.html
(26) See http://kheph777.tripod.com/secretsrev2.html
(27) Both of them appear in the acknowledgements for Secrets of the Magickal Grimoires, as their influence is found throughout
the book.
(28) See Hoodoo, A presentation for “The Moot with No Name,” by Stephen Grasso. http://philhine.org.uk/writings/
ess_hoodoo.html
(29) See The Key of Solomon the King, Book II, Chapter 7, “Of Places Wherein We May Conveniently Execute the Experiments
and Operations of the Art” http://www.esotericarchives.com/solomon/ksol2.htm#chap7
(30) See The Magus, Book II: The Perfection and Key of the Cabala, or Ceremonial Magic, “Of the Invocation of Evil
Spirits, and the Binding of and Constraining of Them to Appear.” http://www.sacred-texts.com/grim/magus/ma241.htm
(31) See Joseph Petersons edition of Agrippa’s Three Books, http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agrippa1.htm
(32) As always, the Internet is helping this along. Plus, there was an entirely new Diaspora in the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina- which spread the lower classes of New Orleans across America. This should result in further dissemination of Afro-
Caribbean folklore.
(33) See http://www.luckymojo.com/mojocatbaths.html
(34)Secrets of the Psalms, by Godfrey A Selig.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0007HU96G/13thstarcomin-20
The original version of this book – Schimmusch Tehillim, or the Use of the Psalms– can be found online here: http://www.
esotericarchives.com/moses/67moses2.htm (Scroll down to “Sepher Schimmusch Tehillim.”)
(35) Secrets of the Magickal Grimoires, by Aaron Leitch. http://kheph777.tripod.com/indexsecrets.html
(36) See The Key of Solomon the King, Book II, Chapter 23, “Concerning sacrifices to the spirits, and how they should be
made.” http://www.esotericarchives.com/solomon/ksol2.htm#chap23
I would feed the spirit at the time the Goetia prescribes for its conjuration.

“Modern Grimoire Magick: Folk Magick and The Solomonic Path” first appeared in the Journal of the
Western Mystery Tradition, No. 10, Vol. 1, Vernal Equinox 2006.

Aaron Leitch is an author and a teacher of the Western Mysteries. His book, Secrets of the Magickal
Grimoires: The Classical Texts of Magick Deciphered, was published in 2005 by Llewellyn Worldwide. Visit
Aaron at http://kheph777.tripod.com/

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 That death may die in us

Layo Lehmann

This is the story of how I came to be a creator of alchemical wines for use as ritual libations. The
consecration of the victim to a planet; its sacrifice, decomposition, spiritualization, purification and
resurrection; its passage through the underworld, and into the dawn, transform a mortal and corruptible
product of nature into an immortal and exalted blood of the god from whom it gathers virtue. I share
in the death, fermentation, burning to ashes and reuniting of my materials, and I am remade as they are
transformed. This is my own exploration of the mysteries of Samekh.
I’m an astrologer and a magician. My interest in learning alchemy is much more recent, and came from
an interest in the nature of fate, time, and the principles that govern existence. That, yes – but also how to
get around them. Learning astrology too well can be demoralizing in a sense. I decided early on that I don’t
care to be the puppet of fate and the victim of my nativity. I was willing to try many dangerous things in
order to get out of what I see as my own imprisonment in a personal Truman Show. Eventually, I pushed my
luck enough to get the attention of Death and the Devil, which I did not expect to be so personal and literal.
Nevertheless, I still sought the middle way to the Sun, even in the face of hatred and futility, temptation
and exhaustion, loneliness and illness. But how shall it be accomplished? This is the approach I have taken
toward Temperance.
Betrayed by my school and left to sort through what I regretfully concluded were deliberate misteachings
interwoven like neutralizing agents throughout an otherwise useful course of instruction, I began to
experiment. After a more conservative series of invocations, I eventually tackled sympathetic dismemberment
and resurrection, having at that time no true idea what my results might be. I did this methodically, and with
the help of an intuition whose voice I heeded when human contact began to seem increasingly corrupt. My
paranoia introverted me into the rabbit hole of a hybrid practice I’d call alchemical witchcraft.

My alchemy teacher is not a close friend, but though my judgment is poor in personal matters it is
excellent in judging quality, and here, I aver, is a master of his art. He lives on a Native American reservation,
where the mineral works may be pursued despite the federal laws that constrain us elsewhere. People drive
out there to buy fireworks and gamble because of this freedom, and it is another country, farmlands and
winding roads far from chain stores and fast food. He is a conventional chemist as well, a hermit by preference,
devoted to his work for more than three decades. He is ingenious at creating lab equipment from thrift store
odds and ends; he has labs in old trailers, and sometimes makes a slow furnace in a pit of horse dung. He
showed us how to make plant stones, the threefold nature of a spagyric preparation, as well as many other
things such as how to collect prana from dew and separate it out into the signs of the zodiac.

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 What I do is not exactly what he does, in that my approach is intuitive rather than purist, and I follow
my instinct for beauty more than tradition. However, it is inspired by him. I focus a lot on flavor and
drinkability rather than just taking a strictly alchemical approach to the operation. The purist approach, for
example, lets the yeast consume only the juice occurring naturally in the fruit, rather than feeding it with
extra as desired; however, adding sugar is a means by which flavor and alcohol content may be manipulated,
and I have considered it a benefit after trying it without. Traditional alchemy would certainly not involve
such things as a complex recipe for porter, which I have made for Mars. I want my fermentations to be
beautiful in the mouth, and they are more than abstract scientific processes to me.
I invoke the classical planet who rules the day of the week almost every day, as well as the sign through
which the Sun is transiting. For awhile I would consecrate wine I bought at the store as a libation to the
planet, and then I began to add spagyric elixirs to it which were made from an herb ruled by that planet.
Finally, my partner and I decided to make our own merlot, consecrated to the Sun; but it became much
more than that.
To purify a planet through sympathetic magic, you kill it, raise it to the spirit world, refine its body
with fire, and then bring it back to life. What you do to your matter, you do to yourself. I felt it in my
own body very intensely, especially the first time we went through the process with a planet. It is the most
transformative work I’ve ever done.
For example, I chose to make pomegranate wine for Mercury, which I chose for Mercury because
pomegranates have many seeds. Its role in the underworld was not lost on me either. I bought four fresh
pomegranates and four bottles of pure organic pomegranate juice and used this as the basis of the wine. I
consecrated the fruit, the juice and the yeast to Mercury. My intention is that it would be my Mercury. Then
I tore open the fruit with my hands, and killed it, murdered it until my face was covered in spattered blood,
crushed the life out of seeds into a bowl, dropped that handful in, and tore out another from the fruit. It
took an hour to hand-crush all the seeds. It was very emotional, too; I sorrowed for Mercury. When I was
finished I was a little appalled, wondering what I had done to these pristine and beautiful pomegranates who
now lay dead and rotting in the fermentation vessel. Adding the consecrated juice and yeast to the vessel
began the next phase: the decay into spirit.
Every time I set these preparations to ferment, I feel a fizzy and strange feeling within a few hours
percolating through my own body as my personal planetary principle begins to change. I usually stop noticing
the sensation within a few days, though the fermentation continues. What I do notice is that this planet’s
activities in my life seem oddly dormant, like a noise that has become muffled. When I have slain Saturn,
for example, my boundaries are lower. At times this makes me feel insecure and ready to get on with it, so
that I can have my planet back.
It usually takes fermentation about two weeks to settle down. Some things will keep going for months,
and some things are done much earlier. Still, at two weeks I filter my ferment and remove seeds, pulp, and
whatever else is solid. This gives me a body to burn.
I calcine on the day of the week ruled by the planet most of the time; at any rate, this is ideal. Depending
on how wet the dead head is, it can take a while to be reduced to ash; sometimes it takes as long as six hours,
which seems interminable, particularly if I have to take the embers from the fire and grind them into powder
in order to finish the incineration. I often roast it in a pan sitting atop charcoal in the fireplace.
This is another phase of the operation that is extremely palpable. When I strain the ferment, I myself feel
filtered. When I begin to heat the must, I feel a glow in my own body. As I am reduced to glowing embers,
everything seems unreal; while the pomegranate seeds were burning I was in agony, sad, emotional, lost,
consumed; I was the discarded husk on the pyre. For me, this is the most intense phase of the operation.
I always do the resurrection ceremony on that planet’s day of the week, and if I can make it a special
astrological election then I do. I like to elect a favorable day for the first consecration as well, a day when
that planet is well-aspected and strong. I invoke the planet, with the wine and the ash set to the East in the
temple. The ash has previously undergone a second refinement, covered in water and the coarser particles
allowed to settle out. Only the clear part of the water will be added back to the wine, though this will still
have fine ash suspended in it; this is the very most refined part of the body. It will often have an alkaline,
slippery feel to it.
Once I have infused both the wine and the washed ashes with a final planetary consecration, I carefully
pour the clear ash water into the wine while intoning the planet’s holy names. The body is reunited with the

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spirit and the soul, and the wine becomes again a living thing, but spiritualized and refined beyond decay.
This is a splendid moment, when my own body feels luminous and complete. The wine is then ready to be
used as a sacrament in future invocations. The first time I get to try the finished preparation is invariably
beautiful, as though I had never fully understood what this principle signified but can now feel it in my body,
a truth beyond words.
I have found that there are three ways to use the ingredients in a fermentation to increase sympathy with
a particular planet: you can use a sugar that corresponds to the planet; a fruit that corresponds to the planet;
and the infusion of an herb that corresponds to the planet. All may be used in the same fermentation if a
complex flavor is preferred. Alternatively, only the sugary part or extract of a plant (from root, stem, grain
or fruit) may be used if a straightforward result from a single source is desired.
Fermentations always require a sugar for the yeast to digest into ethanol. This can be derived from fruits,
such as apples, pears and grapes; grains, such as barley, rice, and corn; roots, such as tapioca, beets, and
potatoes; trees, such a maple syrup and ash manna; honey, raw or refined; sugarcane, raw or refined; and
agave nectar, which is extracted from the juice of the flowering stem of a succulent. Making beers, wines and
liquors is an ancient artform with many nuances, but a drinkable wine is easily made from yeast and any
sugar-bearing source that it can ferment. How deeply you want to delve into traditional techniques is up to
you. The advantage to the existence of so many sources of sugar is that you can choose a sugar that is ruled
by the planet for whom you wish to make a wine, given that fruit juices by themselves are often not sweet
enough to make anything but a very dry, weak fermentation.
The more sugar you add, the higher the potential alcohol content will be, and the sweeter will be the
finished wine. You can stop the fermentation when you decide the result has the balance you desire with
Campden tablets (sodium metabisulphite), or you can let it run its course until the yeast is either killed by
the alcohol, or the sugar is used up and it stops on its own. I prefer to let the fermentation run its course
so that the energy is not altered by the added sulfites. Some people also add sulfites to the must or wort at
the beginning of the process, 24 hours before the yeast is pitched. This is done to kill wild yeast, as well as
bacteria that may have contaminated the herbs or fruit. We determined by our own experience that letting
the wild yeast affect the fermention will have a marked effect upon the flavor, and the result is generally
much sourer, so this is up to you.
Planetary correspondences to plants differ according to the source consulted. Here is a list for sugars that
I present as a guideline, though your own research may suggest other matches:

Moon - tamarind sugar, tapioca

Mercury - rice bran syrup
Venus - honey; corn syrup
Mars - barley malt syrup; blackstrap molasses; agave nectar
Sun - rice syrup, ash tree manna, grape sugar
Jupiter - maple syrup; sugar cane
Saturn - beet sugar

Honey has the complexity of being sourced from different flowers, which adds a further level of
correspondences to meads. Clover honey will have different flavors and properties than orange blossom
honey, for example. Nevertheless, I consider all meads to be under Venus, with the source of the honey
providing a sub-theme.
The alcohol that is produced by plant fermentation is thought to be the universal Mercury, or spirit, of
the plant kingdom. By fermenting a plant, you are spiritualizing it. The essential oil, on the other hand, is
the alchemical Sulphur of the plant, or its soul. This Sulphur is its own distinctive personality, and this goes
for the chemicals that give it its flavor, scent, and medicinal properties. The inert fibers are the basis of the
plant’s alchemical Salt, and this is the body of the plant. This is what is strained out of the wine at the end
of the fermentation or what is left behind when the fruit is pressed. It is this which is refined by burning, or
calcination, and added back to the wine to complete it and give it back its life.
Whereas fruits and grains are good sources of sugar, herbs, flowers and seeds are often superior sources
of essential oils. I have experimented with steeping an herb that corresponds to the planet I wish to work
with in hot water (covered, in a non-metallic pot) until an infusion is made, and then pouring both the water

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and the herb into the fermenter with the fruit juice, honey or syrup corresponding to the same planet. This
has given me pleasing results. It adds a spicy or floral flavor to the mead or wine. For many beers, barley
malt provides the sugar, and hops (the flower of the hop plant) provide the herbal flavor. (It is important to
make sure that the herb or flower you choose is non-toxic, or, if you feel confident in working with alkaloids
and other toxins that have psychotropic effects, that you understand the toxic characteristics very well.) If
you decide to add an herb or a flower, it can be handy to put it in a cheesecloth bag weighted down with
marbles to that you don’t have as much work before you later when you need to remove it for the calcination.
Otherwise, the wine will need to be filtered through cheesecloth at the end of the fermentation to remove
the solids for calcination.
Deciding on a plant’s correspondence can be complex. According to Agrippa, the root of any plant
belong to Saturn, the fruit to Jupiter, the wood to Mars, the flower to Venus, the seed and bark to Mercury,
and the leaves to the Moon. I have observed that resins are often of a Solar character. On the other hand,
the plant as a whole falls under the rulership of one planet, sometimes two – and sources will disagree as to
which ones. For example, lavender flowers are the Venus part of an overall Mercurial plant. Furthermore,
some plants are sacred to deities that are not among the seven classical planets, and you may prefer to
consecrate them to their own gods according to tradition rather than work with them astrologically. Where
sources conflict, I use divination and observation of characteristics and magical properties to decide to
whom it should be consecrated.
For Sun wine, I used nothing but merlot grapes and merlot yeast. I did not fortify it with sugar at all.
For Mercury wine, however, I used fresh carrot juice, infusions I prepared of lavender and fennel, and two
cups of raw sugar per gallon. Two cups of sugar added to each gallon of juice has worked well for most of the
fruit juices I’ve fermented, and I judiciously add more if upon sampling the wine has gotten too dry. Venus
mead can be flavored with flower petals, with beautiful results. My Saturn wine was made with crushed
blueberries, water and sugar (and it took the charge powerfully, and really kicked my ass).
If you can grow or gather your fruits and herbs yourself, this adds to the experience. It’s important to put
as much of your own personal energy into the materials as you can in order to benefit from the alchemical
transformation to which they will be subjected. Pulling up my own carrots was very moving. When ritually
consecrating the materials, I got good results from charging them with sacred names and prayers; charging
them again with invoked energy I built up in myself with the Middle Pillar, and the use of names and colors
of the planet; and charging them further by passing them through the incense I was burning to the planet. I
told the materials what I was going to do with them, and asked the planet for his or her blessing. All of this
made a palpable difference.
As you ‘kill’ the planet by crushing, steeping or juicing the ingredients, vibrate the relevant names. For
me, this intensifies the perception that here beneath my knife is this planet’s own flesh. Get the juice on your
hands and face as you work and know that you are spattered with its blood. This is a part of *you*, and you
should feel sorrow when your work is done and you pitch the yeast to begin its decomposition.
Expect to feel an odd tingling in your body within 24 hours of adding the yeast, as the must or wort
begins to bubble. I should mention that a fermentation bucket is simply a sterilized bucket with a lid and
an airlock. Be sure to “punch down” the material floating at the surface once a day by stirring it well with
a sterilized utensil. After the bubbling stops, filter the wine and transfer it to a carboy. This is a vessel with
a narrow neck which should be filled until the narrow part is reached, adding white wine to top it up if
necessary. The top is fitted with an airlock, and the yeast will settle out as the final fermentation finishes,
leaving a clarified wine suitable to be racked into bottles. This phase takes about a month, longer for mead.
It’s not time to bottle it yet, however! There is still a final step.
Roast the solids that are filtered out down to a very fine ash, removing them from heat and grinding
them up if the coals are too large and they refuse to keep burning. Put the ground powder back on the fire
and see if the burn continues. The best ash is white, but you may get orange, grey, or even a gunpowder-
black, depending on what you burn. Next, put the ashes in a measuring cup and cover them with purified
water. Once they settle out, it’s time to pour *just the water* back into the wine. In it is suspended the very
finest part of the ash. This is the resurrection of the wine, and I always choose a good astrological election
and perform a robust ritual to bring the planet back to life. You should feel transformed at each step of the
process, the harvest, the processing of the plant, the fermentation, the calcination, and the resurrection: all
of these things are happening to you. You are refined and remade by this process. This finished wine can

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then be used as a libation in further invocations of that planet.
If you bottle wine that is still fermenting with an ordinary winecork, be aware that the pressure of the
CO2 will push the corks out, leaving you with a surprise series of wine fountains in your storage area. We
found that out the hard way when we bottled our first batch of mead. We now use bottles with swingtop or
screwtop lids. The finished wine should be kept in a cold, dark place, whereas during the fermentation its
good if the room is nice and warm to help the yeast multiply.

Here is a recipe for a Venus mead that tastes just like roses:

12 lbs Star Thistle honey

2 lbs Fireweed honey
4 lbs black cherries
4 lbs Ranier cherries
32 oz pure cherry juice from concentrate
4 cups fresh rose petals
Sweet mead yeast
Enough purified water to bring the volume to 7 gallons

The difficult part is de-pitting all those cherries, but it is a powerful exercise. The juice of black cherries
looks just like blood, and the pits like bones. The processed cherries should be lightly pureed in a blended
before being added to the fermenter. Add the cherry juice, the honey, and the rose petals that have been
infusing in purified water (do not let it boil; keep the container covered). Add the purified water, which will
probably be three or four gallons, until it comes up to the seven gallon mark. Stir it vigorously to aerate it.
Add the sweet mead yeast, and stir it again. Affix the lid and the airlock to the fermenting bucket. Let it
bubble, stirring daily. When the bubbling stops, filter out the flower petals and the cherry skins and put the
mead in a carboy to mature. Keep the carboy covered in rose or green silk. Meanwhile, burn the solids to
ash. When the mead is finished, add the alchemical Salt – the ashwater – back to the honeywine. I suggest
offering the risen Venus mead as a libation to Babalon.

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 Working with Papaver Chthonios
Harold A. Roth

Opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) has been growing amongst human beings so long that we no longer
know of any wild varieties. A plant that has so come to trust us must have played a strong role in magic from
early times. But what were those roles? And how by extension might that plant be used today? What can it
teach us? I often hear the claims that because magical practices have not been written down anywhere, that
one shouldn’t waste time reading books and instead must join some secret organization in order to acquire
the necessary hidden knowledge. Perhaps; I haven’t been a member of any such organizations, so I don’t
know. But I do know that it is definitely possible to create valid, powerful magical practices strongly rooted
in tradition by combining knowledge gathered from the study of scholarly books and mundane skills like
cooking or perfumery with a willingness to listen to the plant itself. I know what you’re saying; “listening to
the plant” sounds like New Age malarkey. It isn’t. Let me show you what I mean.
First let’s look at how some of the ancients considered poppy. In what Europeans consider the ancient
world, the poppy was associated with fertility and death. Demeter, the goddess of agriculture (and also of
the Eleusinian mysteries), holds a sheaf of grain in one hand and three poppy pods1 in the other. Combine
this information with some mundane knowledge about the plant gleaned from books: The seeds of poppy
are great in number and germinate easily and quickly in the right temperatures; they stay vigorous for many
years and so clearly have a strong life force. It’s difficult for us wrap our heads around it, but poppy seeds and
their oil were valuable to people who did not have a lot of access to fatty protein, which poppy seeds have
in spades. The oil didn’t burn well but was good for cooking and making soap, and the pressed seeds made
good food for animals. And poppies are almost foolproof to grow. So far, we have a lot of information going
for poppy being aligned with fertility.
But poppy is in no way so one-dimensional as that, because it has just as strong associations with the
sort of flip side of fertility: death2, Hades3, ruler of the Underworld and the souls of the dead, wears poppies
in his headband. A perhaps even older god is represented in the somewhat cherub-like Hypnos/Somnus,
Greek/Roman god of sleep, death’s cousin. This deity is often portrayed as a black-winged boy sleeping on
the head of a lion (a good symbol for Sun, over which night triumphs). He generally holds poppy pods or a
horn of poppy juice/poppy tincture in oil that he is known to pour over the eyelids of sleepers. He is often
depicted with a lizard or reptile (chthonic animals) beneath him. But once again, we see that the poppy’s
association is not so simple as plain death; there’s a connection back to agriculture. The deities who rule over
death also rule over the wealth that comes from the earth, be that wealth in the form of crops or of minerals
and metals. Perhaps this is why in European cultures, death is often pictured as a reaper. And like wealth
buried underground, the true nature of death is hidden from us. In this case, the winged creature’s horn is
echoed in the fruit-filled cornucopia Hades is sometimes shown holding or even emptying on the ground.
The agriculture-connected deity Demeter also rules over the Eleusinian mysteries, which were said to help
initiates triumph over death or learn about the afterlife. So the agriculture/death/Underworld connection
is very strong, and this is without even touching upon the mythology associated with Persephone, Demeter’s
daughter.
But since we have mentioned Persephone, consider the pomegranate. I’ve often by struck by similarity
in shape between the pomegranate fruit and a ripe poppy pod. It’s interesting that Demeter, who rules
agriculture, holds poppy pods and her daughter, Persephone, is associated with a pomegranate, six seeds
of which she ate—either by the trickery of Hades or perhaps willingly, in order to be “forced” to remain
free of her mother’s rule and to have time to exert her own power as co-ruler of the Underworld4. The
pomegranate’s rind and seed capsules are blood red, the color of life, and full of juice; seeds (and “blood”)
of white poppies tend to be whitish and dry. What if we think of the poppy not as a unified image but as
at least a dualistic one, signifying not only the fertility and thus life of its many seeds but the death possible
due to the ingestion of its latex and in contrast to the rejuvenating quality of red, blood-like pomegranate
juice? Then it is quite interesting that Hades is associated with the poppy pod and Persephone with the
pomegranate, a kind of version of the poppy pod (a dry globular husk with pointed recurved tips at one end,

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containing many seeds). Just as the blood of menstruation fits the red juice of the pomegranate, the male
semen fits the white latex of the poppy.
Opium poppy has the reputation of being ruled by the Moon. Certainly the products of this plant are
conducive to sleep and thereby dreaming (or even visions—poppy has very euphoric properties and is much
overlooked as a shamanistic plant5). But now we need to go outside and examine the plant itself. If we do,
we can see some Moon aspects. The entire plant has a white “bloom”—the bluish green color of the leaves,
stems, and pods have a whitish outer layer, and white is associated with Moon. Further, if you snap off a
leaf, you will see the white latex--the Moon-filtered blood of the plant--ooze from the wound. And of course
the preferred poppy variety in Europe for medicinal purposes had white petals marked with purple blotches,
much as the silvery white Moon is marked with grayish purple shapes.
What does how the plant grows tell us about possible magical uses? I don’t think you need to be able to
hear the voices of plants, and frankly, I am not sure the spirits of plants even have voices as we think of them.
Really, why should they? They are not animals. They communicate with each other primarily on the level of
molecules—substances they release to let other plants let them know they are there, to attract pollinators, to
kill off competitors, and so forth. So when I see writers advising magical workers to listen to plants, I cringe
a little. I think the listening must take another form. In my own sphere of reference, I see it as something
like what the Kabbalists describe Ein Sof doing at the beginning of the universe; the deity pulled back and
made room for the universe to exist. This is called Tzimtzum. I think this same pulling back and allowing
space for the other to be is essential when dealing with plants magically (and animals too, for that matter).
You have to quit thinking about what it’s going to do for you and just open yourself around it, be still with it.
This doesn’t have to be a big deal. It can be done when you are simply working with the plant as any gardener
would. In my opinion, this is precisely how magical knowledge of plants is gained.
For instance, if you start poppies from seeds
you transplant into the garden (which I would
recommend with named varieties), then when you
pot them up, you will see that the plant forms a
taproot (like a carrot) as opposed to a lot of small
fibrous roots, which most plants do. Taproots tend
to extend more deeply and directly straight down
than other types of roots. This indicates a stronger
connection to what is beneath the ground and to
what is hidden more deeply than we might find in
a lot of other plants. Poppy then reaches deep and
pulls up what it finds hidden to the upper regions,
those we can see. A good hint there. As the taproot
reaches down, the upper part of the plant forms
a “rosette,” as it is called, of leaves. These leaves
spread out in a circle around the taproot of the
plant, lying close to the ground, as if demonstrating
this plant’s affinity with what lies beneath. When
the plant has grown a sufficient number of leaves
to support flowering and fruiting, the leaves begin to extend upwards, away from the ground. The leaves are
almost like hands pushing up the stalks6. What this says to me is that it is this part of the plant that might
prove amenable to communication with humans; we are creatures of air, not the underground. When the
hairy7 stalks begin to rise from the center of the plant, the buds point downward, as if still drawing strength
from what is below the ground. They rise, but they point downwards, indicating the source of their strength
and knowledge. Only when the bud is ready to open does it point upward. Then the flower exudes the
fragrance of—earth. The flower has four (or eight) petals surrounding a thick ring of stamens. I have seen
bees joyously dragging themselves around this ring to get as much pollen as possible on themselves, and I
have often wondered whether it is the purple blotches that attract them (bees have a special fondness for
blue/purple markings on flowers) or whether the scent of earth has something to do with it. Bees do use
their sense of smell to distinguish various flowers8, and they are certainly a highly chthonic animal. I do
think that the work that bees do is responsible for the number of sections in any individual pod, because it

576
varies. I would think that the number of pod sections would be related to the number of petals, but no. Right
now in my garden I have poppy pods with 7 sections all the way up to 13 sections. All of these poppies had
four petals, as is typical for a “single-petalled” poppy.
All of this information points to a couple of possibilities for
working with poppy. One is in the context of agriculture; the
other with death and the Underworld. I decided to focus on
the latter. But in doing so, I would prefer not to travel to that
place without the possibility of returning. Certainly if we were
careless about our freedom and our health, we could just slit
some poppy pods, harvest and dry the latex, and consume it.
This approach is in keeping with a lot of what I see going on in
relationship to popular entheogens; it’s all about the alkaloids.
I believe this comes partly from the perspective of allopathic
medicine, which is concerned with “active ingredients” and
generally rejects a holistic or contextual approach. In the case of
poppy (and a number of other baneful plants), such an approach
can be very dangerous. The latex, which is present throughout
the plant with the exception of the seeds (although they can
be coated with latex), causes not only sleep but affects the
respiration center; you can suffocate, especially if you fall asleep.
As far as slitting poppy pods is concerned, this is equivalent to
manufacturing a controlled substance in the US. But by focusing on the context of this plant rather than on
the active ingredients, we can find ways to work with it without risking our health or freedom. The poppy
offers us a couple of ways to approach it. In many poisonous plants, the seeds are just as deadly—perhaps
even more so—than the rest of the plant, but in the case of poppy, the seeds are not dangerous at all. We can
also make use of its scent.
I stumbled upon an excellent instrument for using the seeds. In Fairbanks9, I happened upon a description
of rites dedicated to Hades and Persephone, Hermes in his role as conductor of souls of the dead, Hecate, and
the Eumenides. He describes how in difficult times or problematic situations, certain especially implacable
gods were worshipped by the sacrifice of black animals that were killed not at altars but on low mounds of
earth, the blood being allowed to seep into the ground, since these more truculent gods typically lived in
the Underworld. But people also made cakes of honey, “meal,” and sometimes poppy seeds, which were not
eaten but simply burned as a sacrifice. I thought such a cake offered a good opportunity to work with poppy
safely, and in terms of the Underworld, turning poppy into Papaver Chthonios, which keeps true to the
plant’s nature and to its ancient uses. First, I worked out a recipe for cakes to be eaten. I knew already that in
India, a chutney of poppy seeds is made and eaten on a cracker before going to bed to promote sleep. That
implied that cakes made of the seeds could have usefulness as an instrument in dreamwork.

Papaver Chthonios Cakes for the Living

1 1/3 cup/300 ml almond10 flour

¼ lb/125 g butter
1/8 cup/ 25 ml honey
½ cup/ 125 ml poppy seeds (try white seeds for use during waxing of Full Moon, black for use during
Waning or New Moon)
greased cookie sheet or one lined with baking parchment

Preheat oven to 325F/160C. Melt the butter and honey together in a small pot (not too hot—you don’t
want to boil the honey or let the butter brown). Pour in the poppy seeds and gently warm and soften them.
Then add the almond flour and mix well. If using any incantations, now is the time to say them. Roll the
delicate dough into balls and flatten them into Moon shapes on the baking sheet that has been greased with
coconut oil or lined with baking parchment. Bake 10 minutes or until the edges just begin to turn golden
(baking too long makes them taste burned). Let cool on the cookie sheet; they’re very delicate. Eat a couple

577
before bed on an empty stomach. The effects are subtle but useful for dreamwork.
Another way to work with baneful plants like poppy is through their scent. This needn’t be the actual
distilled essential oils or tinctured petals, which can be problematic with plants that contain alkaloids in
their petals and even their scent (such as daturas or brugmansias). Instead, a replica or a fragrant evocation
of the plant’s spirit can serve very well. I knew from growing poppies that the actual flower smells like fresh
soil (another reference to its Underworld connections, to my mind), so a few years ago when I first read
a formula of a “poppy” perfume that was popular in the 1920s, I laughed aloud; it was centered around
rose and ylang ylang combined with moss and musk. Not only would this perfume not smell at all like a
poppy flower, but it would not bring to mind the capabilities of the plant. Without trying to make an exact
duplicate, we can with some mundane knowledge in terms of scent-making and the use of essential oils
construct an anointing oil useful in working with the Underworld because it does evoke the nature as well
as the scent of Papaver Chthonios.

Papaver Chthonios Anointing Oil – makes about 2 ml

9 drops geranium absolute 10% dilution for its moist, crunchy leafiness
3 drops oakmoss absolute 10% dilution, which goes well with earthy scents and adds a wateriness
appropriate to poppy, a Moon plant
3 drops bay leaf essential oil, sort of waxy, like the waxiness of the leaves of poppy
9 drops gardenia absolute 10% dilution, a white narcotic flowery night scent to me evocative of poppy’s
nightside powers
3 drops galbanum essential oil smells just like dirt!
6 drops labdanum absolute (incense type) 10% dilution to evoke the flowery/incense scent of burning
opium
6 drops guaiacwood essential oil gives a nice rosy incense smokiness to the opium reference
6 drops of pomegranate seed oil in honor of Persephone’s stay in the Underworld; for purely magical
purposes, as pomegranate seed oil has not got much scent, if any

If you are simply anointing the cakes for the dead with this oil, you can use it straight. However, if you
intend to anoint yourself with this, first dilute it with three times as much jojoba or oil11—poppy seed oil
would be great if you can get it. Try using the oil before sleeping (after eating one of the Cakes for the Living,
for instance), before engaging in trancework, or for honoring chthonic deities.
I like using both oils and incenses, because the latter gives the option of smoke. Since burning meal
smells a lot like burnt toast and so has many (to me) distracting associations, I changed the recipe Fairbanks
mentioned for the cakes that were burned to appease difficult deities of the Underworld by substituting
myrrh for the meal. This resin has long played a part in preparing the dead—it was, for instance, the favored
tool for mummification and for preserving corpses generally and thus represents one way the living can
honor the dead (by not mistreating the body) and also hints at immortality (the mummification connection).
Also, to me myrrh smells like the void12.

Papaver Chthonios Cakes for the Dead

4 oz. ground myrrh

1 oz. black poppy seeds
¼ cup honey

Optional anointing oil for cakes – 6 drops per cake (use oil straight)

The combination of honey and powdered resin can be very difficult to remove, so either have 95%
alcohol on hand for cleaning afterward or use utensils and vessels where permanent stickiness won’t matter.
Boil the honey to remove some of the water (the cakes will get moldy otherwise). Add the poppy seeds. Cook
a bit, and then pour into the ground myrrh and mix up. Turn out before the mixture cools too much and
form into New Moons about the size of the last joint of the thumb. Dry on low heat in a dehydrator or on

578
a rack if your climate is dry (not in the sun). When they are dry, anoint each cake with six drops of the
anointing oil (or any oil you like that is dedicated to the dead or the Underworld). You can also just leave
the cakes plain; the other ingredients are plenty. Store in a tin or jar but use soon; even with drying, the
poppy seeds will have a tendency to decay (how appropriate!). To use, light a couple charcoal tabs and place
the cake over them. This incense is good for honoring the dead or those deities who rules over them or work
with them.
There is a great deal more to be learned from poppy—the significance, for instance, of the four petals, of
the fact that it is born and dies in one year, that its ovary is vast in comparison to its general size, and much
more—but I think you see a place to start. I hope this article has shown how it’s possible to combine the
ordinary study of mundane texts on the history of pagan religions and writings on plants from the perspective
of horticulture and ethnobotany with a personal orientation to the plant itself to create a contemporary
magical use of plant material that is as valid as any ancient magical use. I see a great deal of baloney in the
magical world in relationship to plants and what they are supposed to do or be like; I think part of this
comes from just not working with real, living plants but also is the result of a rejection of ordinary study of
mundane texts. In my experience, you do not need an initiation into an organization to work with plants
on a very deep level. Many plants have chosen to live with human beings and thereby thrown in their lots
with ours. They have trusted us that far and we can trust them to teach us if we open ourselves to them.
However, any approach to plants, baneful ones in particular, requires having a good, solid knowledge of their
mundane selves. You cannot expect to have a clue about Keter if you have no idea about Malkuth.

579
 1
I have seen a number of references to these pods as those of corn poppy (P. rhoeas) instead of opium
poppy (P. somniferum). The problem is that the pods of corn poppy are very small in comparison to those
of opium poppy. In terms of the size of these decorations, they should be opium poppy pods. Also, the seeds
of the latter plant have a long history of being eaten as a source of fat both by humans and animal and also
pressed into oil. The same cannot be said for corn poppy, the primary useful part of which is the petals,
which make a colorant sensitive to acidity and alkalinity. Also, although the variety might be unfamiliar to
these scholars, there are indeed P. somniferum that have red petals and thus would be the same color as the
typical corn poppy. For these reasons, I believe that Demeter is holding pods of P. somniferum.
2
Or maybe we should consider death to be a necessary prerequisite to fertility.
3
Heraklitos wrote that Hades and Dionysos were the same deity, and indeed one of Dionysos’s monikers
is Dionysos Mêkônikos or Dionysos of the Poppies. Just as Plouton (Pluto) is shown with a cornucopia,
Dionysos is often depicted with a drinking horn. Perhaps a significant parallel, perhaps not.
4
According to Christopher Faraone (Ancient Greek Love Magic [Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1999],
in ancient Greek culture, bride kidnapping was often a way for a couple to marry each other when their
social positions or families would not allow it. As long as the bride maintained the fiction that she was
taken against her will, the family’s “honor” was not damaged and the marriage was considered good. Thus,
couples could secretly determine that the bride would be kidnapped. Also, consider that these two deities
are referred to generally in the Homeric poems as “mighty Hades and dread Persephone.” “Dread” is not a
term usually applied to a helpless victim.
5
Some scholars argue that the poppy was indeed a shamanistic plant in Crete, the very place where
Demeter apparently originated. There, a goddess crowned with three slit poppy pods—the slitting necessary
to release the latex that when dried, is opium—was worshipped and, according to some, opium was consumed
as part of her rites. See Eds. Jose Carlos Diz, Avelino Franco, Douglas R. Bacon, J. Rupreht, and Julian
Alvarez, The History of Anesthesia: Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on the History of
Anesthesia, Santiago, Spain 19-23 September 2001, ICS 1242 (Amsterdam: Elsevier Science BV, 2002), p.
26. Opiates have strong capabilities of causing hallucinations at high (dangerous) doses.
6
Up until this point, the poppy’s growing structure is very similar to that of the Underworld plant
extraordinaire, the mandrake. The difference is that the mandrake does not ever form lengthy stalks for its
flowers. They are almost stalkless, demonstrating thereby the plant’s greater affinity for the Underworld.
7
In some poppy species, these hairs are thorns. In P. somniferum, however, Mars is clearly overcome by
Moon.
8
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2006, October 27). Honey Bee Chemoreceptors Found
For Smell And Taste. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 3, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com¬
releases/2006/10/061025181706.htm
9
Arthur Fairbanks, A Handbook of Greek Religion (New York: American Book Co., 1910), p. 106-107.
10
Almond is a Moon plant, the flour is not to difficult to find, and this plant would be in keeping with
the ancient origins of this cake. Butter is also Moon. Honey of course is not Moon, but it has that great bee
connection, bees being messengers from the Underworld and in some cultures, considered to be the souls
of the dead.
11
Essential oils should never be more than 25% of an anointing oil for health reasons.
12
Myrrh also makes a nice symmetry with the honey of the Cakes for the Living: both of them are
considered Mars.

580
 Spirit Houses in Thailand
Alex Dally MacFarlane

(photography by Alex Dally MacFarlane & Penny Walkaden)

According to a popular myth, the nine Phra Phum – spirits of the land – are the sons of King Thotsarat
and Queen Santhathuk. This king ruled over the land of Krungpali. However, he did not live in righteousness,
and this caused unhappiness among his people.
One day, a visitor arrived at the palace, asking the king for a plot of land only three steps wide so that
he could perform a ceremony. King Thotsarat did not hesitate to give his permission and to solemnise this
he poured udakadhara.
As soon as the water flowed, the visitor revealed his true, immensely powerful form and took his steps,
covering the world and dispossessing King Thotsarat.
Afterwards, the nine sons approached this visitor – one of the former Buddhas – and begged him to
give them a place of their own. The Buddha assented and allotted to each of the sons the guardianship of a
realm. Chayyamonkhon obtained the guardianship of all residences and homes, and therefore all persons
who build a house must make an offering to this power.
(Adapted from The Spirit Houses of Thailand by Peter A Reichart & Pathawee Khongkhuntian, White
Lotus Press, 2007. pp14-15.)

Spi r it hou se s a re a c ommon sight i n T h a i l a nd: a

mi n i at ure, br ight ly c oloure d st r uc t ure, more l i ke a
temple t h a n a hou se, w it h a ver a nd a h where p e ople
h ave set of fer i ng s of jo s s st ick s, ga rl a nd s, food,
f ig ur i ne s a nd more. A r a nge of bui ldi ng s, f rom
temple s to m a l l s, hou se s to re st aur a nt s, h ave one of
t he se ne a rby. Even sh a nt y hou se s b e side t he c a n a l s
i n Ba n gkok might h ave a br ight blue spi r it hou se,
wel l- g if te d a nd cle a n.
T he t r adit ion I he a rd wh i le t r avel l i ng t here i s
t h at when you bui ld a prop er t y, you h ave di spl ac e d
t he spi r it l iv i n g on t h at l a nd. If t h i s spi r it i s not
g iven a ne w home, it c a n c au se t rouble for t he fa mi ly.
T herefore it i s impor t a nt to prov ide a l it t le hou se
for t he spi r it a nd reg u l a rly m a ke of fer i ng s. (ph ot o b y
A DM)

The history of the spirit houses is uncertain.

Evidence for them in the texts of visitors to
Thailand does not date back many centuries,
giving rise to uncertainty about the age of the
practice. It is possible that, in the past, a village
might have had a single spirit house, instead of
one to every building. Alternatively, the older
spirit houses were too simple to receive remark.
Terracotta miniature temples or palaces from the
Ayutthaya period may have served similar roles to
spirit houses, although no written documentation
exists to confirm this.
In the present day, some people have adapted
the practice to modern forms of dwelling with
a spirit house for their individual apartment.
(photo by ADM)

581
 Spirit houses range in
appearance. Big buildings, like
an apartment block or a shopping
mall, have larger, grander spirit
houses than individual houses.
This picture also illustrates a
modern trend of giving some
less traditional offerings, such as
bottles of water or soda. (photo by
ADM)

Temples, too, have grander spirit houses, such

as this beautiful one from a temple in the northern
city of Chiang Mai. This spirit house is large enough
for a child to crawl inside; some, such as the one at
Suvarnabhumi airport, could fit an adult. (photo by
ADM)

This spirit house, on the edge of Chatuchak Market

in Bangkok, shows another style. (photo by ADM)

582
 Most modern spirit houses are gaudy, like temples, brightly
coloured with gold detail, and features like multi-tiered roofs or a
prang or finials. Some older, simpler spirit houses remain. Sadly,
the one in this photo appears to be in rare – if any – use, fallen out
of favour to the newer design nearby. (photo by PW)

According to The Spirit Houses

of Thailand by Peter A. Reichart
& Pathawee Khongkhunthian,
there are certain traditions
concerning the correct offerings.
Fresh flowers, cooked rice, seven
joss sticks and four candles are
acceptable gifts. Tuberose or
cape marigold flowers, meaty or
fishy food should not be given;
neither should people attach
gold leaf to the image of the
shrine, or extinguish joss sticks
by blowing them out or waving
the hand. I often saw animal and
human figurines, in traditional
and modern designs, which are
given to keep the spirit company.
(photo by ADM)

Garlands always remain popular.

(photo by ADM)

583
 The book talks about the spirits’ changeable form and the offerings appropriate each month – give
him raw minced beef and spicy fish salad during December and January, when he is in the form of a large
dragon, but do not give him raw food in June and July when he becomes an old man. Then, a white cloth is
appropriate. Other traditions dictate different forms and offerings.
As some of this contradicts the offerings in other traditions mentioned in the book, the wide variation
in traditions is evident.
While we were in Thailand, a guide in Ayutthaya told us that spirits are often attributed individual (and
constant) personalities. The spirit house pictured is for the spirit at Wat Yai Chai Mongkol, a childish spirit
who likes the cuddly toys gifted by the monks. (photo by PW)

When disposing of a spirit house, you

cannot just put it with the household waste.
One appropriate place to leave them is under
the sacred banyan tree, as shown here. The
banyan’s status comes from Buddha achieving
enlightenment while sitting under one. Behind
this old wall, I saw several more old spirit houses.
Mountain passes and sympathetic temples are
also acceptable sites.
This photograph also shows a Chinese
design of spirit house. The practice takes place
in many countries, including Laos, Cambodia
and Burma. (photo by ADM)

584
 Spirit houses are not only for the spirits of the land displaced by a human building. Features of the
landscape – mountains, rivers, trees – also harbour spirits, and a house might be built so that passersby can
give offerings to that spirit, to ease the passage through that area or to pay respect. This spirit house sat by a
tree near the square moat of Chiang Mai. (photo by ADM)

There are other Thai spirit

traditions, one regarding the
spirits of trees. If a monk
blesses the tree, and ties fabric
around its trunk, that tree is
sacred – the home to a spirit
– and must not be cut down.
(photo by PW)

ef

[editor’s note: One of the reasons this issue has been so exciting to put together is because it contains
a wealth of information regarding living, spiritual traditions. While this photo essay does not offer the
magician any practical measures by which one might build and maintain a Spirit House, it does give
us a glimpse into one of the ways in which the spiritual is incorporated into the physical act of living.
Here we find that no question exists as to the reality of the unseen world – its inhabitants are accepted
and appeased as part of one’s daily routine, like brushing one’s teeth or making coffee in the morning.
It is precisely this kind of living tradition that we have attempted to reveal and promote in this issue
of the BjoT. We believe that these images serve as an important reminder that spirit traditions thrive
across the globe.]

585
 93 Currents
Thelema All,

It i s of ten sa id: “Rememb er. Nat a l a st rolog y i s dif ferent f rom Ele c t ion a l
A st rolog y.”
How so? A st rolog y i s A st rolog y. We u se t he sa me r u ler s, e x a lt at ion s, t he sa me
a sp e c t s i n Ele c t ion a l a s we do i n Nat a l, so why i s one r u le so impor t a nt i n Ele c t ion a l
A st rolog y, yet none x i stent i n Nat a l. O ne c a n say Ele c t ion a l A st rolog y i s a br a nch of
A st rolog y, a nd t h at Babylon i a n O men A st rolog y w a s t he forefat her of A st rolog y, but
Ele c t ion a l A st rolog y i sn’t Babylon i a n O men A st rolog y a nd re a l ly i sn’t dif ferent to
Nat a l A st rolog y, i n fac t wh at dif ferenc e s we f i nd a re m a n-m ade.
O ne c ou ld say a n at a l ch a r t i s not cho sen by a n A st rologer, henc e it i sn’t a n ele c t ion.
Howe ver, a f ter re adi ng t hou sa nd s of n at a l ch a r t s you b eg i n to se e m ac roc o smic a nd
mic ro c o smic pat ter n s e volve e ver y where, e sp e ci a l ly i n rel at ion sh ip to t he pa rent s of t he
n at a l ch a r t . T he se pat ter n s re a l ly m a ke you t h i n k t here m ay not b e a hum a n A st rologer
c re at i n g Nat a l ch a r t s, but t h at t here i s c er t a i n ly a Un iver sa l A st rolog y out t here where
si mi l a r r u le s shou ld apply to a ny de c ent Ele c t ion one i s t r y i ng to work .
S o, wh at a re t he se suppo se d big dif ferenc e s b et we en Nat a l a nd Ele c t ion a l a st rolog y?
Ele c t ion a l A st rolog y h a s a bunch of r u le s t h at ju st don’t h app en i n Nat a l A st rolog y,
or i n n at ure, i f one put s t hem to a te st . Ele c t ion a l A st rolog y, for e x a mple, c on sider s
c a z i mi to b e st ron g a nd c ombu st to b e we a k . Yet t h i s i s not t r ue of n at a l A st rolog y.
Ver y fe w k id s a re bor n w it h c a z imi pl a net s, a nd t ho se who a re, ne ver re a l ly c ome to
much. At t he sa me t ime, m a ny, m a ny p e ople, bot h fa mou s a nd di st i ng ui she d h ave
c ombu st pl a net s. Addit ion a l ly, if you put c a z imi to t he te st a nd work w it h c a z imi a nd
c ombu st Ele c t ion a l ch a r t s, you w i l l se e t h at c a z imi i s a m a n-m ade p er fe c t ion t h at h a s
l it t le to do w it h un iver se a round u s.
Ele c t ion a l A st rolog y w i l l a l so avoid t he u se of oppo sit ion s a nd squa re s; wh i l st yet
a g a i n, n at a l ch a r t s w it h oppo sit ion s a nd squa re s of ten ut i l i z e t he se h a rd a sp e c t s for
wh at t hey a re: st rong a nd power f u l, a nd m a ny t ime s to g re at ef fe c t . Ta ke a look at
Ba r ack Oba m a a nd Wi n ston Church i l l: bot h renow ne d pol it ic a l or ator s, yet bot h w it h
a Merc ur y-Jupiter oppo sit ion.
We h ave to rememb er t h at a s A st rolog y e volve d i n t he Hel len i st ic world it enc ap su l ate d
t wo for m s of t hought : My t ho s a nd L ogo s. L ogo s i s re a son; i.e. h a rd a nd fa st r u le s.
W h i l st My t ho s i s b el ief; i.e. m a l le able ide a s. Neit her of t he se t wo shou ld b e mi xe d
toget her or one t a ken for t he ot her. For e x a mple, if a ch i ld die s a doc tor c a n tel l you
t he c au se of t he de at h: t h i s i s L ogo s. Howe ver, L ogo s doe sn’t help some one to g r ie ve
a nd c ome to ter m s w it h t he ch i ld ’s de at h. O n ly My t ho s c a n do t h i s.
A s I sl a mic a nd Ren a i s sa nc e A st rologer s e x p er imente d w it h A st rolog y, t hey for me d
m a ny of t he r u le s we h ave tod ay w it h Ele c t ion a l A st rolog y, a nd b ega n to ch a nge t he
My t ho s side of A st rolog y i nto L ogo s. W h at h ad b e en My t h ic ide a s b e c a me h a rd a nd
fa st log i st ic s i n a n Ele c t ion a l ch a r t . O n t he ot her h a nd, much of Moder n A st rolog y i s
re volt i n g a g a i n st t h i s over re a sone d t y p e of A st rolog y a nd i s t r y i ng ( bl i nd ly i n m a ny
c a se s) to put t he My t ho s back .

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 O ne c a n get a t remendou s a mount of good stel l a r lore on how pl a net s ac t a nd re ac t
i n Ele c t ion a l A st rolog y by look i ng at p e ople’s n at a l ch a r t s. For e x a mple, if you w a nt
a n Ele c t ion a l for m a k i n g money, t hen look at ch a r t s of p e ople who h ave m ade a lot of
money. Wa r ren Buf fet , for e x a mple. Hi s ch a r t i s a l l squa re s a nd oppo sit ion s, but wh at
he do e s h ave i s t wo pl a net s i n t hei r r u ler sh ip a nd one i n e x a lt at ion. I h ave a f r iend
who ow n s mu lt iple hou se s a nd found oi l for a l iv i ng, a ga i n h i s a sp e c t s a ren’t so g re at ,
but he h a s four pl a net s i n t hei r r u ler sh ip. It se em s to me t hen, t h at for a good ele c t ion
to m a ke money, one wou ld b e b et ter of f get t i ng a s m a ny pl a net s i n t hei r ow n domici le
or e x a lt at ion a nd bug ger wh at a sp e c t s t hey m a ke, a f ter a l l oppo sit ion s a re ju st a s
st ron g a s c onjunc t ion s a nd if one h a s t wo pl a net s i n oppo sit ion t h at a re i n t hei r ow n
sig n or sig n of e x a lt at ion, t hen one h a s t wo power f u l pl a net s i n a ch a r t , not ju st one.
T he t r ick i s to u se t he My t h ic to work for you, r at her t h a n fa l l i nto t he log i st ic mi nd set
t h at a l l oppo sit ion s a re bad.
Ver y so on, we’ l l b e get t i ng Jupiter i n Pi sc e s a nd S at ur n i n Libr a . It shou ld b e
e a s y enough to get some of t he fa ster pl a net s i n t hei r home s too. A Merc ur y i n Vi rgo
oppo site Jupiter or Merc ur y i n Gemi n i t r i ne S at ur n but squa re Jupiter wou ld do quite
n ic ely for a st rong monet a r y sp el l. T here’ l l b e some up set s, some t r i a l s, but t hen t he
g re ate st heroe s of ten h ave t he h a rde st jour ney s, b e set w it h dif f ic u lt ie s, but i n t he end
at t a i n t he g re ate st re w a rd s.
Ele c t ion a l A st rolog y g re w f rom Nat a l A st rolog y, but not t he hy p e d-up, over
c ompl ic ate d, m a n-m ade t he oret ic a l (r at her t h a n ob ser v at ion a l) Ele c t ion a l A st rolog y of
I sl a m a nd t he Ren a i s sa nc e. E a rly Ele c t ion a l A st rolog y w a s ver y clo se to Nat a l A st rolog y
i n so much a s Nat a l A st rolog y w a s simply a n Ele c t ion dr aw n by t he He aven s t hem selve s
a nd not by m a n. Don’t b e a f r a id of u si ng h a rd a sp e c t s l i ke oppo sit ion s i n ele c t ion s,
t he Un iver se doe s so over a nd over a ga i n. Rememb er t h at oppo site s at t r ac t i n n at ure
a nd c re ate a lot of energ y. Simply u se My t ho s to blend t he energ ie s a nd c re ate p ower f u l
Ma g ick a l c re at ion s.

Wi l l
L ove
A LWay s

S c a rlet

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 BOOK REV IEWS
Grimoire Publishing
‘Goetia is the new black’ – Sorita de Este

The above quote neatly encapsulates our thrust in this review: the grimoires are back, if indeed they ever
went away. Modern radicals may ask whether these old texts have anything to teach us, given that magic
transforms from one era to the next. The simple answer is yes, since constantly reinventing the wheel is
not a feature of this evolution. Granted that Re-examination and re-evaluation is more effective than blind
emulation, the grimoires have much to teach us, as does an understanding of their origins, rather than the
fictions bequeathed us by past orthodoxies. Research into these older sources of magic - preceding the Golden
Dawn and Saint Ed, let alone Wicca, ‘Chaos Magic’ etc. – is enjoying renewed interest and experiment. Blind
modernism aside, this is a very welcome and productive development. Like other ‘adolescents’ of course the
Occult Revival goes through phases, and this interest may pass in a few years. However a new high water
mark has been reached in the meantime and the occult world is much richer for it. There is an explosion of
well researched editions of the grimoires, plus well informed and diverse studies of the genre. Our collective
impression of the grimoires will never be the same again.
To illustrate this – following on from the review of Aaron Leitch’s excellent Secrets of the Magical Grimoires
in our last issue – other examples of this phenomenon are here surveyed in an integrated mass review:
Howlings. Various contributors. Scarlet Imprint.
Grimoires - A History of Magic Books. Owen Davies. Oxford University Press.
The Veritable Key of Solomon. Stephen Skinner and David Rankine. Trade edition from Llewellyn, deluxe editions from
Golden Hoard.
Both Sides of Heaven. Various contributors. Avalonia Press
Guides to the Underworld Series. Various authors. Hadean Press.

The demand for Howlings far outstripped the original limited edition, and braving the disapproval of
bibliophiles the Scarlets have re-released the title, and are soon to follow it up with another compilation,
entitled Diabolical. Among the many virtues of the former title, it is a useful place to begin this survey of
current interest, practice and research of the grimoires; consisting as it does of a collection of essays by
various magicians with varied interests and stances, and a diverse collection of magical texts.

The origins of the genre

The barrage opens with a wonderful piece on the Picatrix, very appropriately since this is the earliest of
the grimoires in widespread use. This is a beautifully written essay which places the Picatrix in the context of
the Hermetic search for Truth. While utterly traditional in source and inspiration, Hafiz Batin accomplishes
the remarkable feat of bringing this context into the post-modern world; a feat more genuinely radical than
mere dismissal of magic’s former manifestations.
The Hellenic sources of the Picatrix are indicative of the real roots of the entire genre. The form and
style of the grimoires were determined millennia in advance by magical texts in Greek. This far predated
the influx of Christianised Kabbalah into Western magic in the late 15th century; erroneously credited with
supplying the basis of Western occultism. The 19th century revival reinforced the latter assumption, which
is absurdly endorsed and perpetuated by prominent ‘Scientific Illuminists’ to this day. The overdue rise
of academic interest in magic combined with the current wave of interest in the grimoires may yet force a
reappraisal of the Greco-Roman inheritance. Of course it is patently ridiculous that the fountainheads of
Western civilisation have been consistently overlooked as sources of its occult traditions. The long delay
prior to the appearance of a definitive edition of the Magical Papyri (reviewed in the previous issue) is at
least partially to blame. The prejudices of earlier academics – unwilling to deconstruct the image of rational
Classicism - are just as blameworthy in this respect as the follies of occultists; whether in rejecting the past
or misinterpreting it.

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 The real origins of the grimoire genre are also evident in Skinner and Rankine’s superb Veritable Key of
Solomon which cites the Byzantine Nigromantia as a proto-key and illustrates a Roman talisman portraying
Hecate and Solomon. This last has been the subject of considerable interest among some aficionados, and is
mentioned on Joseph Peterson’s superb website: http://www.esotericarchives.com, the talisman itself can be
seen at http;://www.ostia-antica.org/vmuseum/small_2.htm

Global context and enduring relevance

On another tack, Owen Davies’ Grimoires is a wonderful academic study of the grimoires, and extremely
readable. As Ronald Hutton says on the blurb, it must become the classic work on the subject. Note well
that it completely explodes the notion that the grimoires are the exclusive preserve of white, straight, male
bibliophiles. In glorious accord with the New World section of my own True Grimoire Davies shows clearly
that the grimoire genre is rooted in worldwide popular culture, as relevant today as it has ever been. We
encounter mail-order conjure books in the Caribbean, Africa and downtown America. The place of the
grimoires in the ‘pulp genre’ is beautifully explored. Their importance and influence more than justifies the
inclusion in this review of the excellent line of pamphlets from Hadean Press.
Davies also shows us that grimoires are a vehicle of cultural exchange: ‘what links Chicago to Ancient
Egypt, Germany to Jamaica, and Norway to Bolivia? How did a Swede become the greatest wizard in America?
What did Rastafarians and Alpine farmers have in common? Who is the ‘Little Albert’ famed from Canada
to the Indian Ocean? And how did a poor crossing sweeper from Ohio become a feared mythical spirit in
the Carribean? Grimoires provide all the answers. They not only reflected the globalisation of the world but
helped shape it’.
In short, with impeccable scholarship Davies shows us how and why the grimoires have been and remain
important and central to the cultural role of magic past, present and future. The extent to which they have
effected the diffusion of magical thought is truly mind-blowing in its extent. If none of this sounds familiar
to you, all the more reason to read this book, it will transform your impression of the grimoires forever.

Accomplishments, limitations and obstacles

Turning to occult authors now, Skinner and Rankine’s Veritable Key is a prime example of the superbly
informed research, by practitioners rather than professional academics, which is transforming modern
occultism. There may be some minor instances, as I suspect there are in my own work, where their non-
scholastic background falters in its scrutiny. Identifying the characters on the Roman talisman as Celestial
Script is perhaps such an instance; they are just as likely ancient ‘characters’ associated with the 36 decans,
from which the Celestial alphabet was perhaps subsequently derived. Nevertheless this is a magnificent
book which completely transcends the incessant flow of dated reprints with which we are all too familiar.
Weighing in at 446 pp it delivers a huge chunk of Solomonic lore, no less than three 18th century texts of
the Key of Solomon, not to mention a very well researched commentary by practitioners at the forefront of
grimoire studies. It is also superbly illustrated, including reproductions of curious marginalia which are a
strong feature of the manuscript genre. One of the many gems is the use of talismans constructed identically
to the ‘rite time specific’ magic circles of the Heptameron. This provokes thought on the evolution and nature
of circles and perhaps elucidates the ‘standing on characters’ cited by Iamblichus in his Theurgy.
It is still all too common to see the word ‘goetic’ and its variants misapplied. All too often it is misused
as if it represented the spirits of a certain 17th century English conjure book which has been, to say the
least, over emphasised. This misuse has a major role in obscuring goetia as an important and ancient line
of magical tradition. It has also obscured or prevented our understanding manifestations of the grimoire
tradition outside the contemporary ‘Anglo-Saxon’ sphere.
The redundant and unthinking defence of such misuse, that it represents an ‘evolution’ of language, is
utterly fallacious given the emphasis placed by grimoire magicians on literary and historical sources. This
obviously requires an understanding of the terminology in its original sense. This misuse simply perpetuates
the devaluation and neglect of goetic magic. It also demonstrates the narrowness of many occultists research
and their over-dependence on commercial outlets. Properly understood goetia is the only continuous tradition
represented in the entire western revival of magic. It is also the oldest, having roots in the late Bronze Age.

589
 Reconstruction of authentic practice

A particularly important concept in ancient and modern grimoire practice is described by Stephen
Skinner in an essay in Both Sides of Heaven appropriately entitled The Thwarting Angels. Similarly Order and
Chaos (one of two essays by David Rankine in Howlings I) bears the subtitle The Use of Adversarial Angels
to Control Demons in the Grimoires. This concept is first encountered in the Testament of Solomon, where an
angelic name is listed for each of the spirits encountered (interestingly ‘Asteraoth’ is one of the former).
Thus, while perhaps these authors often rely a little too heavily on Dr. Rudd, the main thrust of their
argument is soundly based on an older tradition. Indeed Aaron Leitch (whose opus was reviewed in our
previous issue) follows and advocates a similar approach completely independently. Another aspect of our
authors’ researches adds to the picture. This is mentioned in conjunction with the conjuring of spirits in the
names of superior demons, particularly – in their source – ‘Lucifer, Beelzebub and Satan’.
In Skinner’s recent talk at Occulture this was mentioned as a distinct alternative rather than an adjunct to
the ‘adversarial angels’, while these essays apparently consider it alongside the adversarial angel approach. It
is interesting that a similar trinity is found in both Verum and the Grand Grimoire, namely Lucifer Belzebuth
and Astaroth. In my True Grimoire I show how this triad and the Four Kings rule the spirits from the later
two grimoires as well as Weir, Honorius and the Goetia; Skinner and Rankine come to similar conclusions
regarding Rudd’s trinity and the Four Kings. While traditional within the Solomonic genre adversarial
angels should not be considered indispensable or compulsory. As is fairly obvious they are out of place in
both pagan and Verum related work.
Rankine’s extraordinary erudition is represented twice in Howlings, his other contribution being Agrippa
and Magic Squares. This shows how Agrippa’s planetary sigils are less straightforward than appears in
conventional wisdom. For example they routinely employ the 11th square - rather than the 10th and 1st as
might be expected - to represent the letters Yod and Aleph. The exception appears to be when the A forms
part of the AL termination, so perhaps Agrippa considered IA to represent Yah. It is often little understood
how this construction of sigils connects to gematria; whose role is thus shown to more practically oriented
than is all too often assumed.

Paperbacks and pamphlets

Both Sides of Heaven is another compilation, with a most impressive list of contributors (including ardent
grimoirists Aaron Leitch, David Rankine, Stephen Skinner, plus Charlotte Rodgers and yours truly). There
is much of value here, and I mention but two personal favourites. Gifted academic and occult practitioner
Kim Huggens gives an excellent appraisal of the daemons intermediary role between gods and men in the
Hellenistic era. Maestro Nestor shares a personal account of his liberation from a truly demonic pact made
in his youth, which marked the beginning of his mature path as a grimoire traditionalist.
The pamphlets from Hadean Press are an ‘Anglo’ example of what Davies refers to as the ‘pulp’ genre;
more common in the Botanicas and Yerbarias of the New World tradition. They contain solid material in
an easily affordable format, aimed at enhancing the magic of popular tradition. Elelogap – Spirit of the Waters
is the first of a series, the goetic equivalent of the excellent Orisha series published by Original Publications.
The few lines devoted to individual spirits in the grimoires are paltry, whereas this booklet portrays one
of them as a rounded individual with a role in varied magical processes and in myth. Goetic Divination on
the other hand begins the task of fleshing out the current limited understanding of goetia, showing its role
across the spectrum of magical practice; in this case in divination through spirits.
Also from Hadean comes Liber Pyramidos, this is an affordable publication of an important Thelemic
ritual. The rite is rarely seen in print but is more important than many with more exposure. The Grimoire
of the Sixfold Star develops from EQ exegesis, involving 22 spirits encoded in the verse translation of the
Stele of Revealing, These correspond to the Tarot, and the pamphlet describes their method of conjuration.
More pamphlets are in preparation, but this line is already attracting worldwide interest and exemplifies an
important strand of the grimoire tradition.
All of these titles – and their publishers – deserve the attention of ‘hands on’ magicians.

590
 Witchcraft
Paganism
&
Folk lore

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T H E T RU E GR I MOI R E
b y Jak e St ra t t o n - K e nt

The Tr ue Gr imoire is a major cont r ibut ion to t he pract ice a nd st udy of

G oet ic ma g ic. T he neglected G r i mor iu m Ver u m has been restored to
its r i ght f u l pl ace as a potent a nd coherent system of G oet ic ma g ic. As
a pract ici n g Necroma ncer w it h 37 yea rs of ex per ience Ja ke St rat ton-
Kent ’s Tr ue Gr imoire is a clea r ex posit ion of how to cont act a nd bu i ld
a rel at ionsh ip w it h t he spi r its. Copiously i l lust rated w it h cha racters,
si g i ls, ma g ic squa res, d ia g ra ms a nd pontos r iscados.

The Tr ue Gr imoire is ava i l able i n bot h a st a nda rd a nd delu xe ed it ion.

w w w. s c a r l e t i mpr i nt .c o m

591
 Publisher’s Note

Thelema.

The spirits are restless.

ALWays,

Hadean Press

“ Mon st e r? We’re n ot m on st e r s.
We’re B r it i sh , yo u kn o w.”
D r. Wel l s, Hor ror E x pre s s

592