I have been increasingly considering the nature of pacts, that is, those agreements we make with the spirits with whom we traffic. Pacts are, on the face of it, a natural arrangement of dealing with any sort of being (material or immaterial) with whom no preexisting trust has developed. A contract that stipulates the services required and those that will in turn be rendered as payment.

Recently I have done a bit of work in the striking of a bargain and have found myself in a precarious position, one in which my dealings with regular humanity have chaffed against the more important, and considerably private, parts of my life. The terms of the pact having been well laid out there is little recourse I have been afforded by my own undertaking. The path ahead, though uncertain, is still well laid out before me.

Given the nature of our dealings with spirits, we must consider the way in which a pact is to be reinforced. The power of the spirit as a threat is ultimately the damocles sword that drives the need to fulfill our end of the bargain. Yet what recourse does the magician have in dealings with wayward spirits to whom no appeal or previous threat have been successful?

This depends in the main on the nature of the spirit itself. If it is of a goetic character, finding itself listed among the tables of the grimoires, it will likely have rulers to whom it answers, or kings to which you can apply to straighten out the wayward demon. An hierarchy is good to have, one to which you can appeal in particular.

If, on the other hand, the spirit is of the land, called sidhe or fae, mouros and many other names, the path of control is likely outlined in the historic character of the being. Folklore leads a path toward the dealings of each landscape spirit, the necessary tools and offerings that can implore a spirit to stick to its end of the deal found in the likely sources (such as Dalyell, Crofton Croker, Briggs, et al).

When the spirit is that of the ancestors, a horse rider, lwa, spectre, barrow wight or other deceased persons to whom the magician calls on for aide, the ability to have them keep their word is in the main the domain of one’s own trustworthiness. If the magician is honest, and sticks to their end of the deal, there is little chance of an ancestor spirit not doing as agreed. Failure of the spirt is invariably a failure of the conjuror in heart or intent.

The agreement itself, the pact, is more often than not actually written down on a virgin piece of paper. Though it can be simply an oral agreement I find those are about as solid in the spirit world as they are in the judiciary of mankind, i.e. not at all. In my opinion the best pact is one written and signed by all concerned parties, bound in sigil and seal and hermetically sealed into some container. Jars, boxes, bells, skulls, bones, gourds, all have been brought to this purpose the world over.

In the written pact one should be sure to include all of the demands of both sides, much in the way one would write a mundane contract. But like a music contract beware that the terms themselves limit the range or scope of the true intention of the magician. The pact should be simple and concise, the more words it contains the more likelihood of mistaken intention.

As in the regular world you would not sign a contract with a person you had just met. Take your time in developing a relationship with those spirits with whom a pact may eventually lead. Get to know them, their desires and whims, their moods and powers, before you come to any arrangement with them. A spirit is of a necessarily transient and shifting nature. What you bind is often not exactly what you wished to conjure.

There are those beings who linger on the edge of the Veil, waiting for you to poke a hole in its gossamer membrane, that they may slip into materialization on the back of your work. They will claim an identity, conforming to your desires in appearance and character. Seeming to perform the tasks you wish all while undermining your goals. Learn to know with whom you traffic, to recognize their true voice as you would an old friend. Be sure to cleanse one’s space of undesirable elements before and after any work is done. Always assign a license to depart.

Total Lunar Eclipses:

31 Jan 2018 - West North America, Asia, Australia, Pacific

27 Jul 2018 - Africa, South America, Asia, Australia, Europe

21 Jan 2019 - Africa, Americas, Europe, Central Pacific

26 May 2021 - Americas, East Asia, Australia, Pacific

16 May 2022 - Africa, Americas, Europe

08 Nov 2022 - Americas, Asia, Australia, Pacific

14 Mar 2025 - West Africa, Americas, West Europe, Pacific

07 Sep 2025 - Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe

03 Mar 2026 - Americas, East Asia, Australia, Pacific 

Lunar Eclipse Magic:

Lunar Eclipse Water by @lunaesteria

Eclipse Magick by @phaesphore

Solar & Lunar Eclipse Magick by @lunaesteria

I don’t know how many tumblr witches know, this could be old news, but I found that this is the best place to get jars/bottles to feed my obsession! They have a bunch of different colors, but most of them are clear. They have different shapes and such, and they’re very very cheap, even the jugs !! In their FAQ they said it’s fine to even order just 1 bottle at a time, even though most people order a bunch at once. It’s honestly the best deal on high quality bottles and jars that I’ve found so far! I would honestly skip Amazon and go straight here. 10/10!

🌼 Consider your pipe as an extension of your being & use it as a wand. Decorate it with crystals, feathers, embroideries or even enchant it.

🌼 Write down spells or a chant to say before you smoke to enlighten your high.

🌼 Save your stems & ash for black salts, rituals, potion bottle spells etc,.

🌼 Smoke before divination. For many people, it will calm you and help you tap into the spiritual realm.

If you mess up on a page or regret a page/no longer like what you put, take some parchment or any paper you’d like and scrap book over those pages.

Ok, hybris/húbris is not a translatable word, therefore its complexity. But by húbris we could understand: human arrogance, excessive pride, or human’s tendency to overstep the cosmic and divine limits of the world. 

For Ancient Greeks, the gods were superior beings that ruled over their lives. By hierarchy, humans are always below gods. Humans have a place and role in the world and the limits for their actions are set by the gods. Whenever a human exceeds those limits, we have húbris.

The best examples for this are the myths where humans get punished by the gods. I’ll give you 2 from Odyssey, and a general one.

- Example 1: When Odysseus blinds Polyphemus and mocks on him, Poseidon gets angry and spends years trying to punishing for that. Why it’s húbris? Because Odysseus was unnecessarily pride and arrogant. At first we would think: okay he was defending himself and his friends when he blinded Polyphemus, but what he does after that, laughing and mocking the Cyclope is what exceeds the limit. 

-Example 2: When Odysseus’ men eat the cows of Helios, that’s húbris again. Why? Because those cows were sacred to Helios, there is an stablished limit between divine-mortal world that Odysseus’ men overstepped. 

-Example 3: When a mortal claims to be better/prettier/smarter than a god that’s hybris again. Like the myth of Niobe who boasted that she gave birth to more or better sons than Leto (Artemis and Apollo’s mom). Why it’s húbris? Because that’s breaking the limit between the divine-human; by nature, a human cannot be better than a god.

Now, why I say it’s important to understand this. Because if we fail to understand this concept, we will think things like “Oh, the gods are so rude! They are so flawed, so evil!”. The entire interpretation of Greek Gods as “flawed beings”, so often found in mythology-books comes specially from people (mostly christians) that judge the Gods for this kind of myths without understanding the logic and context behind them.

Best example for this? What Ovid did mostly in his Metamorphoses. Instead of having myths were gods punish the mortals because they overstepped their limits, we get this depiction where gods are simply angry and punish mortals “because they can”.

Let’s take the so popular Medusa story, told by Ovid. For Ancient Greeks Medusa either was i) already a monster-gorgon with no background story; ii) a nymph that had consensual sex with Poseidon.

What did Ovid do? Give us a tale where i) Poseidon rapes Medusa in Athena’s temple; ii) Athenea gets angry and punishes Medusa. 

When you read Ovid’s tale, the only feeling you get is “wtf, why did Athena punish Medusa?! she is the victim, this makes no sense”. And it obviously makes no sense, because the Greek-fictional-device was “1) human hybris + 2) god punishes”. Ovid turned into some kind of “1) helpless human + 2) angry and unfair god” which doesn’t belong to Ancient Greek narrative.

A Greek parallel of Ovid’s tale would be when Ayax rapes Cassandra in Athena’s temple. That’s a huge display of húbris and at the end, depending on the version, Athena punishes Ayax and he dies, or Athena tries to punish Ayax and he manages to escape anyway but then Poseidon kills him. There you got the right structure: human hybris + god punishment.

So, my point is that, depriving myths from their context, inevitably leads to wrong interpretations and bad portrayals. Same happens to any myth of Zeus affair’s, Persephone’s abduction, etc. People get all the wrong ideas because they ignore Ancient-Greek-background ideas as aristocracy system, marriage rites, etc.

Having established a reputation as a player, he next wrote the Metamorphosis, a work probably intended to be humorous that depicted the gods as lustful and foolish. He probably finished it in exile, since the Emperor Augustus was so done with him that he banished him to Romania, either because Ovid’s books subverted Augustus’ laws promoting monogamy, or suspicion that Ovid had been involved in an attempted coup led by the husband of Augustus’ far-from-chaste grand-daughter.

me: is a happy fundamentalist Christian

Set: 

Ptah:

Heru:

Sekhmet:

Me: On the fence Atheist/Agnostic with an animism bent.

Monthu (after waiting for a solid 5 years for me to realise what was going on):

Two years later…

Me: I swear I locked that Door…

Sobek:

Set:

Djehuty:

Anubis:

Me: (Spends a few years trying to ignore it.)

Ra: 

Amun: (ever so patient with me for years)