the winged, the bull and the scales

“From a golden broom pluck five long straws, Light them as tapers at the fire; Carry them through the house, and cause Their subtle smoke to thicken the air– Then summon good fortune with this spell:

Wraiths of the house, Take heart and live: To every chamber This light I give, To every corner This breath I send– Approve and favor My willing hand

The Fountain of Diana (Fontaine de Diane), also known as the Diana of Anet (Diane d'Anet) and Diana with a Stag (Diane au cerf), is a marble Mannerist sculpture of the goddess Diana, representing Diane de Poitiers.

Created c. 1550 to be the central ornament of a grand fountain in a courtyard of Diane de Poitier's Château d'Anet, but today is in the Louvre, Room 214 on the ground floor of the Richelieu Wing. The Louvre has retitled it Diane appuyée sur un cerf ("Diana leaning on a deer").

Cats in folklore and magic are both Saturnine and Mercurial. Cats have been used in folk magic over the years for invisibility, luck, pacts with the devil, gaining the powers of witchcraft, invincibility, and obtaining spirit sight. In superstition, black cats are often considered unlucky, attracting death and the evil eye. I’ve listed a few historical workings below for your perusal. As you can see, many many historical grimoires have uses for cats or cat body parts. 

 From the Epistle of Rehoboam: 

 “The herb of Mercury is the cinquefoil. Uproot it at the hour of Mercury, while reciting the proper incovation and the names. Take the flowers and the seed, wrap them in the heart of a black male or female cat, and carry them upon you. You will be invisible.” 

 From MS Sloane 3851 is a Working To Go Invisible: 

 “At such time as Men sow Beans. Take a Bean and but it into the heart of a black cat being ready roasted. Then bury it in a dunghill or in alio loco saturnaliter and when they be ripe carry one about thee and thou shalt be invisible.” 

 From the Egyptian Secrets of Albertus Magnus - To See What Others Cannot See:

“Take a cat’s eye, lay it in salt water, let it remain there for three days, and then for six days into the rays of the sun, after this have it set in silver, and hang it around your neck.” 

 From the Black Books of Elverum, For Invisibility: 

 “Poke out the eyes of a bat and put them in your pocket. Smear yourself with bat’s blood. Then take the eye of a black cat, cook it in sweet milk. After eating drinking this, you’ll be invisible for nine hours,” 

 Again. I am not endorsing the eating of cat’s eyes, simply presenting some folk magic/grimoire uses for cat parts. 

 The Opuscula Cypriani lists a few variants on recipes to create a perfume for Saturday, citing the Petit Albert as the source: 

 Perfume for Saturday or perfume of Saturn - Add seeds from black poppies, henbane, mandrake root, asbestos powder and myrrh. Make all of these elements into a powder and incorporate them with blood from a mole and the brain of a black cat, form a paste, divide it and let it dry. 

Of course, there are many methods of raising and calling power that don't involve cardinal directions at all. The bullroarer mentioned above, for example, is calling on the spirits that are already present in the land-- I'm not necessarily building roads to fetch them from the Other. (That's my interpretation, anyway.) I do like the tech and concept of compass-laying, I just need to find a way to make it interesting for me.

I wish I could get it through people's heads that it does serve an incredibly important purpose, and that purpose is to define a shared cultural identity. It's a way to say "this is what we're like," "those people share our lore, they're like us," and "those people have a different lore, they're not like us."

| Fractured relief of a lioness goddess (Sekhmet) embracing the Pharaoh Sneferu, breathing divine life into him |