Embrace Change

sometimes reverence for land starts very simply:

learning the names of local plants. noticing where water gathers. thanking a tree before taking from it. picking up trash. leaving a place better than you found it. sitting quietly long enough to feel the mood of the land.

animism is not always spectacle.

When the sky still felt close enough to touch,

and gods were simply neighbors we carved into stone so we wouldn’t forget them.

Money has to come to you through very specific channels because that is how it works. You can find money, you can make money, you can be given money, you can win money, you can inherit money - I'm sure there are more that I haven't thought of right now.

While books have associated with magic pretty much since their invention, they were not always an accoutrement to that archetypical Magician. In the 1st century all the mages wrote shit on Steles and Papyri and whatnot.

The book as essential magical paraphernalia probably emerged around the medieval era, where most magical texts were transmitted in a clerical context; i.e. by poorly paid semi-literate church employees. Richard Keichefer proposes that this social class formed a sort of informal underground magical text trade. I have my doubts as to how provable this is. But suffice to say that medieval magic was transferred by being looted from arabs or produced by scribes.

In the context of the Corpus Hermeticum, the Ogdoad (literally translates as something like eight-ness or eightfold, but in this case it's often translated as The Eighth) refers to the vault of the heavens, and the procession of the constellations. The hermetics believed that the earth is administered by a series of arch-spirits corresponding to the seven classical planets. Beyond these seven celestial spirits is the eighth spiritual realm; the Ogdoad, which corresponds to the zodiac. Beyond the Ogdoad is the Ennead, the ninth rank, or ninth sphere.

More than any other occult topic, studying Hermeticism is like edging. The Hermetic Corpus is soo similar to so many other greco-roman religious movements, but the scholarship always zags at the last second.

"You might the Hermetics were low level Egyptian priests, like with Zosimos of Panopolis and the birth of alchemy. It makes sense, they were both occult movements centered around scholars in Roman egypt, But there is no actual evidence. Bitch."

"You might think a lot of the stranger elements of Hermetica are syncretism with Egyptian religion right? All this shit was written in Egypt. It even explicitly claims to come from Egyptian gods. But basically all of the language is greco-judaic. They're Platonists. Bitch."

"Maybe theyre an initatory cult? There's that bit in Ennead Reveals the Odgdoad where the master calls down spirits so the student can see? That seems initatory? But that's just one instance. A lot of the supporting evidence is based on interpretation, and has good arguments against Hermeticism being a literal mystery tradition. It's one argument among many. Bitch."

I’ve never seen this name— granted, I’m not actively hunting books either. But heads up.

Incantation used to ward off a specific group of malevolent, vampire-like spirits known as the Seven Utukku (or Seven Evil Spirits).