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There was a great opportunity for more Jupiter work this past Thursday afternoon, so I took it. I chose two talismans. One of them is the Fifth Pentacle of Jupiter, which “hath great power. It serveth for assured visions. Jacob being armed with this pentacle beheld the ladder which reached unto heaven.”
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I did this version of the Fifth Pentacle of Jupiter a week or so ago based on the King of Solomon version that’s on Joseph Peterson’s wonderful Esoteric Archives site. He’s included pentacles from other manuscripts of the KoS. I really like how delicate and graceful these hand-drawn penctacles are compared to the printed ones, which are more graphic and geometrical. This is Figure 22 from manuscript M276. In the original, the versicle running around the edge of the circle was in Latin, not Hebrew. I considered that a talisman using Hebrew letters and names of God for magical purposes should quote a Hebrew text in Hebrew; it’s the last five words of the first line of Ezekiel: “the heavens opened and I saw visions of God.” I thought the shape inside the circle was something like “Moorish” designs I’ve seen and could picture it in blue and gold. I thought I’d do something a little more ornamental with it in the future. The ink here is Noodler’s Ink Aquamarine, which I think is more like the tekhelet color than Baystate Blue is. |
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The one I did Thursday hasn’t been cleaned up yet; you can still see pencil marks and a couple of blobs.I got this one from the Internet Sacred Text Archive. It’s from the 1888 printing of Mathers’ Key of Solomon the King. In the preface, he says that he used a number of different manuscripts for the pentacles, because the Hebrew was mangled. I found that to be true in the first one I did–I could not tell if the letter in the lower right-hand corner of the talisman was intended to be a bet or a kof. This talisman included the whole of the first verse of Ezekiel instead of just the last five words. I liked the last five words better, and of course that’s when I realized that this was the same talisman as the one I’d already done. Now I figure that kof/bet was a resh or a very elongated nun; it can’t be a kof if what Mathers says is true–that what is inside the circle is a magical anagram of the versicle. And I think Mathers is exactly right. Btw, all of these use the same mixture of silver and gold Dr. Ph. Martin’s ink for the circles and decoration. |
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I did another talisman as well. This is the Second Pentacle of Jupiter, which is “for acquiring glory, honours, dignities, riches, and all kinds of good, together with great tranquillity of mind; also to discover Treasures and chase away the Spirits who preside over them. It should be written upon virgin paper or parchment, with the pen of the swallow and the blood of the screech-owl.” Sounds handy, but I didn’t have any screech-owls or swallows around:), so I used a nice resin nib and some Noodler’s Ink in Bay State Blue on on kidskin parchment. I’ve used up the last of my kidskin with this one. I will have to make a decision now whether I would like to continue making talismans on skin or switch to handmade parchment paper (I’ve got some nice stuff I haven’t tried yet). This one still needs cleaning up as well.The versicle is from Psalm 112:3: “Wealth and riches are in his house, and his beneficence lasts forever.” Even though I am no longer consider myself a worshipper of YHVH, I still feel most comfortable with Hebrew texts for magic. That’s probably always going to be true. |
I’ve been pleased with the way these are turning out, although I still need practice with the lettering and some with the layout. I have had results already from the Saturn talismans I’ve made. I haven’t charged the Jupiter talismans yet. I look forward especially to trying the Fifth Pentacle. Next up, Moon and Venus pentacles at the end of this month. I will have to have new materials to make the talismans on by that time.
 Yesterday during an astrologically auspicious time, according to my Planetary Magic calculator, I made a Jupiter talisman for luck at games of chance. This talisman comes from The Veritable Key of Solomon. I decided to use a combination of silver and gold for the ink (which looks white here but is actually a very pale gold, and the background is cream, not gray); “Sapphire, of sky blue, of dark green, of silver mixed with gold and other brilliant colours” (p. 184) are mentioned in this work as possible choices associated with Jupiter. I have not previously considered Jupiter to be involved in games of chance, but according to the book, “Jupiter governs all sorts of riches” (p. 177), which makes sense. My mistake was not remembering that the date was coming up (despite it being in ReminderFox) and so not practicing the talisman before tackling it in the alloted time (about 20 minutes). As a result, I hurried a bit and made a spelling error on “adversus.” This gives me a chance to go back and correct the text using a razor to scrape off the ink. More times auspicious for Jupiter are coming up on January 28 and Feburary 4, so I will be able to repair the talisman then.
For incense to burn while making the talisman and then for censing it afterward, I used a sample of high quality aloeswood I had, and when that was finished, my own Lightning Dance incense (which is heavy on the white sage–I think I’m going to crank up the copal on the recipe). It didn’t photograph to show this well, but the pale gold on the cream background reminds me of celebratory candles in Catholic churches; I think this color combo might be better for other tasks for that reason, like for gaining the favor of judges. I didn’t have any appropriate blue ink, so I sent off for two–one that is near to the color(s) of the tekhelet, because that to me fits well with Jupiter. The Hebrew Bible prescribes this dye for coloring the “fringes” that are tied at the four corners of a person’s garment to remind them of YHVH. That deity’s color is definitely blue. The color is compared to the color of the sky, although it looks turquoise to me; I bought a light royal blue and a turquoise ink to use for the talismans coming up. Another possibility would be to use the silver/gold on a blue background.
For the upcoming dates, I’ll be doing talismans from The Key of Solomon on the Esotericarchives site. I’m especially interested in making the Fifth Pentacle of Jupiter shown there, which “hath great power. It serveth for assured visions. Jacob being armed with this pentacle beheld the ladder which reached unto heaven.” Sounds interesting. I think the blue inks are tailor-made for such a talisman, but I’m also going to try making this one a little more decorative. The decoration can be put on before or after the talisman is made.
If you haven’t tried making talismans this way, check it out. It is very enjoyable. I should also say that so far I have definitely had positive results from the Saturn talismans I made.
 Or gardeners never learn.
Once again I am going to try growing Atropanthe sinensis or Chinese belladonna. I’ve tried growing this twice three times in the past. The first time the seeds grew great but then I left them outside in their pots during a frost. The next two times I could not get the seeds to germinate, although they did not rot, so I knew they were alive, just “recalcitrant,” as the saying goes in the seed world. I love that expression for seeds. And once again I am getting them from the same wonderfully quirky German seed shop, rareplants.de. Whoever runs this shop has got a soft spot for Solanaceae. They have a number of species of Atropa and a whole crowd of Solanums. This is also the only place that I have found at present that is selling seeds of Papaver setigerum, the supposed wild form of P. somniferum. They even have two subspecies available, one from Cyprus and one from Sardinia. I’m going to try those again also. I’ve tried growing them several times as well, but I bought the seeds from other companies, and each time I have gotten weak seeds. I did get some germination each time, but the plants just sickly and died before they even got out of seedling stage.
Why do I want to grow these plants so much? They don’t have any special magical cache. They don’t have gorgeous flowers or enormous rarity. It’s just one of those things, like a splinter you can’t get out of your skin.
I’ve been ordering from this place for several years and so far, no evil eye, have not had any problems with the stuff coming into the US. Nowadays, I think Customs has more important things to do than to watch out for the interests of the big US seed companies.
 I moved the mandrakes into the basement when it got too cold, intending to harvest them for their roots. I’ve been busy and haven’t gotten to it, and out of sight, out of mind. I think I mentioned that one of them had a whole bunch of buds. Well, turns out it flowered in the basement. This is one of the few Turkmen mandrakes I have left. I grew them from seeds that had been treated with gibberellic acid, and I think because of that treatment, most of the resulting plants were weak. But three of them were robust, and this is one of them. I cleaned them up and have got them under lights now. I doubt I will get any fruits from this plant–it was too stressed–but the flowers are beautiful. The leaves of the Turkmen mandrake seem to be much more crimped along the edges, and the flowers are longer and more spotted than merely colored purple, like the black mandrake.
Friday someone asked me if I could make a “Fast Luck” oil. I said no, that I don’t make Hoodoo oils, because there are already plenty of sources for those and I don’t do Hoodoo as a practice myself, so what’s the point. I said I created original oils drawing on my own magical knowledge. That’s true, but my reaction to this request–I was absolutely sure that not only did I not want to make a “Fast Luck” oil but that I never would want to–got me thinking. It rattled around my brain all weekend. Why was my reaction to this request so strong?
I often get requests for particular Hoodoo oils–which have now lost a lot of their cultural identity and been sucked up into “Wiccan” practice (I’m using quotation marks to indicate a sort of stripped-down, pop version of Wicca). I made one such oil at a customer request–High Altar–because I knew that I could produce something useful with that moniker. But I have resisted doing any others. It wouldn’t feel right.
I thought maybe it was just the merchant in me because Hoodoo oils have such a reputation for being inexpensive. I don’t want to attract the kind of customer who values cheap above all. My stuff is not about cheap. That said, I do think there is a real market out there for premium Hoodoo oils–not a big one, but a market nevertheless–and yet I am not interested in that, either. Just not my thing, right? But why?
 Today I got to writing in my magical diary. One issue that has become important for me during this Abramelin operation I am dragging my ass through is paying attention to aspects of my life that have been separated or poorly connected, like creativity and magic. In the past I have not directly addressed how to meld those things. But over and over in this operation, when I have read my cards, Art–the alchemical hermaphrodite in the Thoth deck–has turned up in an important place. And that, as far as I am concerned, is for me about combining magic and creativity.
I was sure that the card indicated the importance for me of combining magic and writing, but I also think that it refers to becoming more aware of melding scent and magic in terms of the incense and oils I create for Alchemy Works (thereby combining work and magic as well). Making these tools for magical work is my primary magical practice. The Abramelin operation seems to be poitning to the importance of recognizing those two things and weaving them together to make some new whole, as is done with separate and distinct elements in alchemy.
When the fellow asked for a “Fast Luck” oil, I said I could probably come up with something that related to Hermes and to propitiating him in some way, because he rules over games of chance and cutting sharp corners. Later, I began to think about creating an oil that focused on lavender as a means for honoring him and thus attaining his good graces luckwise. And it occurred to me that this held the kernel of why I did not want to make “Fast Luck” or other such oils. They do not have a spiritual dimension. They are tools only, objects that work instead of subjects that teach. They are a means to an end and could never be an end in themselves. In contrast, I intended the oil I make to be a path, a means to approach a god–to ask for favor, yes, but still, to go outside of oneself, to become more than a simple wielder of tools.
This is not to denigrate Hoodoo or to be snotty about how my path is “higher.” One of the things I like most about Hoodoo is that it is very practical and doesn’t gussy up desire with a lot of philosophizing or moralizing; it is about doing, not judging and is therefore fundamentally honest. It also lays the responsibility for action on the operator without giving any guidance or imposing any judgments about those actions. IOW, it offers an opportunity to examine one’s will and take responsibility for one’s choices, but it doesn’t force the operator to take responsibility or indicate possible paths, and I suspect most users kind of brush those issues aside. The tools it uses are not going to be concerned with teaching but just with doing. They focus on the goal, not the getting there.
I want more from my magic than blunt, goal-oriented action. I want to learn from what I make, from the means rather than from the end (or my desire for that end). So for instance, with the oil I’m working on, which I think will be called “Hermes’ Favor,” I want to learn about which scents please that particular aspect of the divine and how those scents feed my soul (and the god’s). I want that oil to do more than just bring the user some luck. I want it to open a spiritual door through its scent.
The Kabbalah says that the only spiritual sustenance that originates on the material plane is scent. And according to the Zohar, the attention of angels is drawn to the Earth through fragrance. So from that perspective, scent has the possibility to nourish us spiritually and to aid in communication with what is beyond us in addition to acting as a tool. It seems important, then, to take advantage of scent’s capabilities and not allow it to act like a mere screwdriver. I think this is a way of enriching one’s magical practice and of strengthening one’s spirit. For me, it fits well with not just selling seeds and herbs but learning to work with the spirits of those plants, to be open to what those herbs can teach. I guess I would call it “deep witchcraft,” because it is more than just an attempted manipulation of the energies in the world. It is about transforming one’s own spirit as well.
You know, every time that I think that I have already gotten most of what I will be getting out of the Abramelin operation and that I should have chosen to go with the six-month operation instead of the 18-month jobber, I get more. I don’t know exactly how it works, but somehow it can make a person just be more open to insights about magic and spirituality.
I will no longer be selling poison hemlock seeds. The last straw came just now in an email from someone who claimed that she had bought the seeds in order to kill her cat, which has cancer. She had fed the cat some of the seeds, but it wasn’t dead yet. Therefore, she said, my seeds must be no good. She just wanted me to know. I only hope this person burns in the hell that Christians imagine. If only the world were that just.
This on top of the individual who supposedly bought them belladonna seeds in order to commit suicide on Xmas day.
I feel strongly that people should not be babied, that responsibility should be demanded of them. But I see now that I was completely wrong. Way too many people should be fricking locked up because they are a danger to themselves and others.
Disgusted with my fellow ape right now. Real disgusted.
I resolved to work on Growing the Witching Herbs every day, even if only a small part. I finished chapter three (on yarrow) today. I went over the rest of the book outline and deleted stuff I’d just taken off my site to use as placeholders. That still leaves me with 89 pages written, about half of which is notes. I still need to do a little more research–either I misplaced most of the info I collected on belladonna or didn’t collect much. I need to do more research on rue as well. But for the other eleven, I’ve got tons of new, interesting stuff.
For the other book I’m working on, which is a novel, I wrote to a librarian at Cornell for some info about that library in 1870–how accessible was it, did they have much on plants, and so forth. I’d like to have my main character have access to it. I went over the outline to the novel and filled in some spots, but I still need to resolve some problems and add a few events. I’ve been reading all sorts of stuff about that time period–when a reaction to Reconstruction set in, kind of a meanness that reminds me a lot of today. Spiritualism is a big part of the novel, so I’ve been reading everything I can get my hands on about that. It’s great fun.
Meanwhile, I also put up a few new products, including an incense for Papa Legba and another for evocation. Yesterday I finally finished an oil for Saturn, and I like that a lot. I wanted to avoid the typical approach to that planet’s energy in terms of scent, which is to put together unpleasant smells like asafoetida and so forth. I think that’s a very narrow perspective on that influence. So I combined typical “dark” stuff like cypress, opoponax, and myrrh with a reference to the sweet berries of belladonna, the rich smell of tobacco, a tinge of tomato leaf to remind us that Saturn can be very nourishing, and hemp, as a tribute to how Saturn can be kind and even have a sense of humor. I really like the way this came out. I love the smell of tobacco, for one thing, but this is also one of those oils that changes as it warms on you.
Today Alchemy Works was designated in the Top Five of herb seed suppliers by the large gardening site Dave’s Garden. It’s nice to get the recognition. I used to spend a lot of time on their forums and had to quit doing that so I could get some work done.:) Their Plant Files are very helpful, and you can check ratings of seed and plant companies on Garden Watchdog.
 Well, after a month and a half of working only on orders and such, I am back to writing the Witching Herbs book. I thought I had collected all the notes I needed from trolling the databases up at Cornell University library, but it appears that I have lost the info I gathered on belladonna.:( Perhaps I will come across those notes in the next few days, but I might have to redo that bit. Several hours lost there, but nothing major.
On the other hand, I found some old notes I made about the Hand of Glory article I hope to write. That was a LOT of work, and it was wonderful to find them underneath a cat bed. I had entered them into my old computer, which died abruptly. I had (I thought) everything on it backed up, but apparently not that file. It was great to find the notebook full of handwritten notes on that topic.
Resolution for New Year: Finish Witching Herbs so I can start on the next book!
 Selling baneful seeds and herbs means that sooner or later, someone is going to use them to do something violent to themselves or others. About three years ago, a customer ordered some belladonna. Before I had time to send it out, she called to ask about the order and in the course of the conversation, said she wanted it to “kill a rat.” Right then the alarm bells went off and I said I couldn’t sell it to her. “If you want to kill a rat, get a rat trap,” I said, although I had a feeling that the rat she had in mind might have two feet instead of four. Well, that turned out to be true. I got a phone call some months later from a homicide detective in her area. She had tried to kill her ex using cyanide she bought on the internet. They’d searched her computer then and found the email copy of her order for belladonna from me.
A few years before, I got an email from someone wanting info about a customer who’d bought hemlock seeds six months before. It was weird, and finally I questioned the person. Turned out her brother, my customer, had been found dead, and she wanted to know if perhaps what he had bought from me had been his weapon (poison hemlock). I spoke to the police, and apparently, he had–his body had been found by a creek months after he’d killed himself at least partially due to swallowing a large quantity of poison hemlock seeds (he’d done something with them first to increase their potency). That was when I decreased the packet size and began limiting the number of packs per customer to one.
I was reminded of all this because this morning I got a call from someone who said a relative had ordered belladonna from me in order to do themselves in. Although I finally caught up on all orders last week, I hadn’t sent this one out yet because I had to pack more belladonna. I was able to just cancel the order. I don’t know what the whole story is, but I don’t really want to know.
One thing people should realize who would use baneful herbs as a weapon–these plants are not guns, knives, or even a length of rope. Those are dead tools; these are live spirits. Belladonna, for instance, is famous for being variable in its action. Leaves picked on the same day from the same plant and used by the same person can have little effect one day and a very powerful effect the next. That’s one reason why belladonna never became popular for ingestion–too unpredictable. But what’s more, this is not an herb that will give you the red carpet treatment on your one-way ticket to the Underworld. Instead, it will kick your ass all over town first. Take a read, especially the Train Wrecks category:
http://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Belladonna.shtml
People talk about trickster gods and then act like Loki or Exu or whomever is their best pal. Whatever fantasy floats your boat. But trickster plants like belladonna don’t need no stinkin’ devotees. Belladonna will fuck you up just because it feels like it. Or not–just because today is Monday. Understand: there is no rhyme or reason to this plant. Baneful.
Sometimes I think maybe I should not be selling any of these plant materials, because there are too many people out there who want to involve perfect strangers in their violence. But I wouldn’t want to live in a child-proof world. And there has to come a point when a person takes responsibility for what they themselves elect to do. It’s not about those around us enabling us; it’s about us taking power over our own choices. Taking power involves taking responsibility.
I should say that as far as I know, the individuals who have used banefuls that I sell to do violence have not been magic workers. They’ve been average Joes and Janes who found my shop through a search engine. So that’s a positive. But these are just the people I know about.
In terms of magic, though, my point here is about the idea of banefulness. A relationship to a baneful should, IMO, involve a healthy dose of dread. Yes, dread. An unpopular emotion nowadays, when we all fancy ourselves pirates and gunslingers and badasses of every stripe. But dread is the truly spiritual and sorcerous emotion to feel towards a lot of banefuls (and baneful/trickster type entities). Dread and awe. I think these two emotions can do more to bring home the deep realization of the true power of magic than anything else in the world.
I will write more about it. Just now I am ready for bed after a long, long day. On a mundane note, I have been working on many new oils and incenses that I’ll be posting about here. I hope to be posting more regularly now that I’ve got a number of things squared away.
Meanwhile, just maybe take the concept of dread into your hand and turn it over and back, examining it from a safe distance. Consider it. And let me know what you think of it as an engine of power.
 As a way to further encourage myself with the whole Abramelin /prayer thing, I decided to see what sort of approach Hasidism takes to prayer. That happened because of reading the book mentioned in the previous post, which is to some extent influenced by Hasidism or perhaps more exactly, Neohasidism. Back in the seventies I read a number of mystical stories by R. Nachman of Bratislav. I had little understanding of those stories’ mystical meaning, but I loved them because they made me feel wonder, made me see the possibility of a mystical universe (at the time I was a thorough-going atheist). And I could feel through the stories the presence of someone who knew about kindness. Almost 40 years later, I’ve been reminded of those stories through reading the book Hasidic Prayer by Louis Jacobs. This is a small, rather old-fashioned book about the topic that outlines some of the ways various Hasidic groups approach prayer. I’d read Hasidic stories about simpletons who, for instance, not knowing any prayers, just recited the Hebrew alphabet and that this was considered a very sacred prayer. But it turns out that is a bit of hooey. From the beginning, the various Hasidic groups used written prayers, whether from the standard Ashkenazi prayer book or from the mystical Lurianic prayer book. The way I understand it, the latter emphasized meditation and connections between individual words and prayers with particular aspects of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. It contained various types of meditation that should be done with particular prayers and which were expected to have an actual effect on the state of God, or more exactly, the relationship between God and Shekhinah, God’s female, earth-bound “half.” Do the right prayers the right way, and you could reunite them and thus heal the universe. At any rate, meditation/contemplation became very important in the Hasidic approach to prayer. One of the chapters in the Jacobs book describes the trouble caused because some Hasidim did not pay any attention to when a prayer should be said, opting instead to start prayers when they felt the most able to heartily devote their spirit to praying. For instance, they would start the afternoon prayers after the stars had come out at night. I like the idea of waiting until the spirit is ready to pray, but for me, this would just mean putting it off indefinitely.
Something that Rabbi Nachman recommended that appealed to me was going out alone at night to pray, preferably in nature. He said that a person could not help but notice how even the blades of grass sang to the divine. He also reommended that a person spend one hour of every day talking to God as if God were a friend, using not written prayer or even a sacred language like Hebrew but ordinary conversational language. It is weird to me how this coincides with the Abramelin instructions. Rabbi Nachman was not even born until 1772, so there is no way his ideas could have influenced Abramelin, the earliest version of which is from 1608. I decided to try Rabbi Nachman’s recommendation last night. I was able to pray longer than I had ever done before outside of a synagogue. It felt strange, but I will try it for a while and see how it goes.
 I’ve ordered some new translations of Rabbi Nachman’s stories, done by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, whom many magicians know from his work translating various Kabbalistic works, like the Sefer Yetsirah. He’s also got a couple of good books on meditation in Judaism. He was strongly influenced by the Breslov Hasidic movement, which Rabbi Nachman founded. One of the things I like about that movement is that it doesn’t have a rabbinical “dynasty.” In fact, its followers are called “Dead Hasidim” because Rabbi Nachman is their rabbi, and he’s been dead for hundreds of years. However, like any religious group, they have their fair share of kookiness and reactionary crap too. For now, though, I am learning about prayer from their approach.
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