Black Poppy, Flower of Ease, Opium Poppy, Papaver somniferum

This flower of the night-ways only blooms for a short while before turning into a bulbous ovary upon a stem full of bitter, white blood, characterizing its Lunar properties. This blood can be cultivated for its vision inducing properties. She is the Maiden in the Field, the Severed Head of St John, the Queen of Nightly Visions. 

Black poppy (the picture shown is a variety of black poppy from my own garden) was in pagan Greece and Rome associated with more Chthonic deities, such as Hekate, Hypnos, Nix, Thanatos, and Somnus (from which we get the word somniferum). The drug which is extracted from Poppy, Opium (as well as other narcotics, such as morphine and codeine) has a narcotic, stupefying effect akin to a dreaming sleep. Opium became a very popular drug prior to the first World War. A tea made from the dried flowers was used to suppress coughs, and the pods were sometimes made into a tea as a mild alternative to smoking the opium tears. 

We know that humans have been using Opium for its medicinal effects for a very long time, evinced of the fact that the Greeks would make it into a potent wine, Vinum opii, as well as as a suppository and fumigant, but there is evidence that it was cultivated as far back as the Neolithic era. The Ebers Papyrus (1550 BCE) lists its use as “Remedy to prevent the excessive crying of children”. It was also used to ease the pangs of childbirth, a very early anesthetic. It was also used, naturally, for its more recreational uses. Opium is a powerful (and highly addictive) psychoactive, and has been used as a visionary plant for both ritual and mundane use for ages. There is evidence that the juice of the plant was used in recipes for flying ointment along with hemlock, belladonna, and the feared mandrake. 

A Tuscan Divination

Place poppy leaves on hot coals and read the flames. 

Scatter poppy seeds on burning coals, and listen for the voice of prophecy. 

As a Lunar plant, the plant is sacred to Our Lady of the Night Ways, such as Hekate, Lilith, Black Anna, and Diana. Cakes sprinkled with the toasted seeds of Poppy may be offered unto Her and Her host of night flying beings. The seeds can also be ground up into an incense and combined with other herbs such as myrrh, mullein, red sandalwood as an offering to the Witchmother. The plant can also be used in dream work. Harold Roth gives an excellent use of the dried pods to make into little “charm bags”. The pods dry naturally on the Poppy’s long stalks, and can then be plucked therefrom (the seeds may be saved, and toasted for cooking, or scattered about for the next crop, or saved for magical work; Schulke lists that the seeds can be scattered upon the enemy’s property to cause confusion) and anointed with various oils and filled with fragrant herbs according to the spell made. If one were making a dreaming bag, one may use Chamomile, Clary Sage, Mugwort, and Hops. The flowers might also be steeped in wine, along with Cinnamon and Cloves, and taken as a tincture (a few drops only).

A Poppy Spell

This Italian spell can be adapted to any type of prophetic dream, not merely one concerned with matters of love. 

Make a hole in a poppy pod and empty out the seeds. Now fold up a small piece of paper with the question you want answered written on it, insert it in the pod, and place it under your pillow last thing at night, saying these words:

‘In nome del cielo, delle stelle, della luna! Fate mi face il sogno secondo…’

‘In the name of heaven, the stars, and the moon May I dream, and that full soon,  If this I see [name your wish].’

If you dream of your wish, it’s sure to come true.  ~(Mastering Witchcraft, Huson)

As Poppy has these chthonic connections with gods of the dead, such as Thanatos, and Hekate, the flowers can also be used to honor the dead. We see this today in Canada where a Red Poppy Flower is the symbol of Memorial Day. We get this tradition from the poem “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.

The flowers and seeds may be burned, or offered in some other way to the spirits of the dead. Harold Roth in his book  The Witching Herbs gives a recipe for Chthonic Cakes for the dead which are not to be consumed by the living, but rather burned on coals like an incense. 

Papaver Chthonios Cakes for the Dead

4 oz ground myrrh A few tablespoons of dark red wine ¼ cup dark honey 1 oz black poppy seeds

Dampen the myrrh with some red wine and let sit in a closed jar overnight. Boil the honey to remove the water. The honey will foam, so don’t let it overboil, it’s terrible to clean up. Add the poppy seeds. Cook the honey and seeds for a bit, then pour over the myrrh and mix well. Before the mixture cools too much, form the mix into little crescent moons. Dry on a low heat, but not in the sun. Burn them on a charcoal tab as an offering to the dead. 

I don’t believe everything I think. It’s a rule I follow for myself. I was well-trained by a powerful and wise man, however human he was, he was certainly filled with gnosis and power, and this is one of things he taught me. This is a part of dis-identification with the ego, that is detachment from identity with our waking mindstream.

I see traditional witchcraft as having a kind of internal spirit-science, in line with the admonishment from Victor Anderson to “perceive first, then decide what to believe.” That power of discernment, the power of the Witches’ Knife, of the keen razor-edge of fire-forged will, is integral to how we have an epistemology in the Craft, a theory of how we gain true gnosis. It is Luciferian, for certain.

Anyway, I do believe these things, having interrogated my experiences over and over:

1. The gods—spirits (I use them interchangeably a lot these days, on purpose)—are real. They are intersubjectively real, meaning they can be sensed and interacted with and don’t just exist or manifest through our subjective imaginations. They manifest in phenomena, as all things numinous do, being that matter and spirit aren’t distinct or separate.

2. The gods, while dissolved of their edges in ways that we as particulate forms of consciousness have trouble seeing about ourselves in the fog of our human confusion, have their own agency. At least as much as we do. “God is self and self is god and god is a person like myself,” another saying from Victor.

Spirits aren’t just amorphous forms to be “tapped into” by us. And they don’t need our minds to have agency. That’s so ego-centered. We can certainly ally with them, but the witch-gods as I know them are Powers and Forces of the Wild, and have their own agency and agendas.

I have a theory that gods, being that they are dissolved of their edges and existing on the “inside” of reality—the Depths and Heights, the Underworld and the Upperworld, Infernal and Supernal Realms—are more cognizant of their wholeness, and have even *more* agency than we do. Their anchoring in the perpetuity and timelessness of the Vertical axis of reality shows this, whereas we are anchored in the Horizontal, and move from birth to death just as the sun travels from rise to set.

But a witch, a technician of the the sacred, the Art of Arts, can gain access to the Vertical through the spiritual Flight of the Soul, “to die before you die.” This requires uniting the Breath Soul and the Fetch into an intently laden purpose, to extend from the flesh-body, and get caught up in the Mill of Stars, the “Lathe of Heaven.” This is where witchcraft happens to the witch as much as being something we perform. We become agents of Fate.

In doing this as a religion (what some of us call the “Faerie Faith” or the “Orphic Mysteries”, they are cognate), we can become masterful; we can become gods, the mighty dead, when we die. And you always have to die, dissolving the edges.

As the body goes into the grave (whether burnt or buried), the Fetch goes into the Depths where Fateful Forces dwell and toil. If we follow our passions and unite all the “opposites” within us into the mantic third-road of being, we win true gnosis, and perhaps if the Faery Queen deeds it, the so-called Gift of Immortality. This is apotheosis that is born from the henosis we craft by uniting our souls and calling down the Daimon. In Truth, Love, and Wisdom we do this. This is another playing out of the same Story of our sorcerous origins, just as the stars fell from heaven into the Land.

@superalpacamama @introfuckingvert

 Navigate the web of your soul across the ends of this earth or, if you’re determined enough, beyond it.

This has to be one of my oldest rituals and as such, has quite a bit of history attached to it. It’s conception was all based around my desperation to completely leave my hometown and cut myself out of my own toxic narrative/everyone else’s narrative about me. I tried to leave my hometown for other towns and cities across the United States to no avail. I’d always end up worse for wear, back in Napa California, with all the old dogmas of the people who dwell in that town breathing down my throat. Telling me that nothing ever changes for people born in Napa and nobody will ever leave until they’re six feet in the ground. They said it was a curse that all people born in Napa must burden under. This frustration built up and fermented inside of my mind. Such was my hatred and determination to prove them wrong, cut myself out of the historical path, and paradigm of that town that I petitioned Hekate, She Who Stands at the Crossroads, for guidance. Because I felt truly lost on how to break my chains even if they were just inside my own mind like a million people told me.

It was the spirit of Hekate with dual torches blazing in the darkness that illuminated my mind outside of the box to assemble this ritual. It did not come immediately and was through a process of trial and error which I experimented with/applied my hypothesis. And even now there are still layers on this technique I have yet to uncover. Using this paradigm, with this technique, may you be granted freedom of movement. It was the desire for freedom that inspired this “Verse Shifting” ritual, after all. So if you’re desperate and stuck standing still…if you’d give anything to just leave the world you’re in for a new one of your own creation, keep reading.

—

Verse Shifting is your freedom’s wings. And much like Icarus, this one urges caution lest you fly too close to the sun. It will allow you to move through all your possible time lines that you can imagine, focus in on, and create/articulate in your mind prior to using “Verse Shifting”. You are bigger than your body. Your body is small, a node in a complex web which is your complete overall soul. The only barrier is your mind which is housed within your body (and all articulations of it across time lines). Verse Shifting dislodges the mind to allow you to direct your current ego to overlap any node in the web of your soul so that you become the you that you imagined, living in the set of circumstances that you have designed. For if you can think of a version of you and the life they live in, it exists. It becomes true and accessible. It is/becomes the world you now dwell in.

The Earth and the creations that live upon it are always moving through different possible time lines. Unaware. When a major or even tiny change happens in your life or the world at large, it is due to a shift in the web of both the individual and collective time lines of this planet. When you can become fully aware of these time lines shifting and the warning signs pre-shift, you will become aware of how to move with/through/in-between/around/against them and into different sets of probabilities you might not have had access to if you remained casually drifting.

This is why Verse Shifting comes with a warning.

Once you start this ritual, once you begin to travel through your time lines, here be nightmares and dreams! Choose to create your circumstances/time lines wisely. You will ultimately have to live within them. Some time lines may offer no door out until all functions fueling it dissipate. Different time lines shifting are always heralded before and after by great unpredictable change. If you Verse Shift instead of following the regular currents of the time blindly there is no telling what your wings will carry you to or where. Or what will be the sacrifice. Fly with purpose.

To dislodge your mind and gain the wings/movement like angels, Verse Shifting utilizes “doorways”. Areas that feel “thin” or distorted usually house doors…however, that isn’t always the case. Doors are tricky in that they can be anywhere an in-between/liminal space is present. Like sources of water, carnival rides, crossroads, celestial events like an eclipse, the midnight hour/noon hour. Some “doorways” are fixed in one spot. Some doorways move/are only present under particular conditions. Doorways are not always physical places so keep your eyes open for anything that could be considered a liminal space. It could be as special as a birthday party or as mundane as the last/first day of a fresh new month. Doorway locations serve as channels that the invisible worlds of spirit can touch the physical world. They are axis points that they gears of the web of existence turn upon. This is why they are prime locations to use Verse Shifting on. Some doorways naturally connect to certain time lines despite programming your key (mind) on where you will yourself to go to. All doorways have their gatekeepers. Be prepared to face them. Especially on the bigger doors or when Verse Shifting more than one person. Gatekeepers will always show up if you alert their notice and try to get you to stop or leave. Oftentimes, they work through ordinary people. Do well to have a back-up plan handy in case a door is actively guarded by a gatekeeper.

Verse Shifting is dedicated to the Goddess of the Crossroads, Mistress of Magick, Keeper of Keys…who shows the past, present, and future…and is a lantern in the night for the lost: Hekate. She is often accompanied by the presence of dogs. This personal tradition is inspired from her.

Verse Shifting requires offerings. These offerings, if freely given in the manner expounded, will grant you favor from Hekate and if accepted by the Ghost Queen…safe and unfettered passage through the door shall be yours. Proper offerings are as follows: garlic, bread (particularly in the form of old-fashioned loaves), honey, dragon’s blood incense, onion, raw fish steaks like tuna or salmon, milk, red wine, and pomegranate. Offerings of the heart, if genuinely given, trump food offerings. If not given genuinely, there will be consequences. The Goddess of Crossroads does not take false offerings lightly.

Verse sShifting is best done on New Years (December 31/Jan 1) and Chinese New Year. Or on a new moon, strictly during exact noon, or midnight. This tradition calls for the cover of darkness which is the realm of Hekate and the hour of midnight.

But the actual ritual doesn’t begin on the night it’s performed. The ritual begins at the very moment the idea of leaving your time line blossoms in your head. From that moment of conception it is heavily advised that you spend as much time as possible fleshing that idea of your new time line out inside of your imagination. Imagine every detail, from the entire spectrum of significance, and lock on to the feeling/energy of it. More to the point, give the new time line life inside of your imagination, and a set of scenarios that must play out within it. Do whatever you can to ground the concept of that world inside your head into your subconscious. I would recommend you spend an unhealthy amount of time doing this as it secures your passageway to the desired time line. The process of dreaming up that time line not only secures it’s foundation in the sea of infinite possibility, builds your bridge to that time line, but is essential to avoiding a collapsing time line.

A time line can begin to collapse when the set of dreams/actions used to manifest it runs out of fuel. This is why the dreaming process is very critical to this work. With no set of commands from the dreamer, not including the dreams of others, a time line cannot sustain itself.

There are two limitations to Verse Shifting. Moving into a time line that the mind cannot viscerally and fully believe in is, as of to my experience, nigh impossible without sacrificing a certain level of  physical or mental functionality. Moving beyond time lines that aren’t connected to your infinite self/tied to earth/consensus reality is asking for your sanity to be ripped from you. The other limitation, or rather just the consequence of Verse Shifting, lies in the fact that variables change with each Verse Shift. It may be small details. It might be the disappearance of a favorite town park or as important as your middle school. It could even manifest as a retro-active change that everyone agrees/remembered happened…except you. Because “you” have overlapped the “you” that they remember. “You” are from a different time line, after all. It could even be the casual introduction of something new, as if it had always been. It will only be new to you. There are many different ways that this consequence can play out and is in no way predictable. Nor can it be fully bartered with. It can only be fully accepted and expected. As the old saying goes: you got what you wanted but you lost what you had. If you cannot let go of what you have for what you COULD have…do not Verse Shift.

There is a trick that comes into play with Verse Shifting that I have tested with some success. You can bend the variables a little in your favor and how they play out by taking objects (assigned to aspects or people in your life that you want to keep in present play) with you during a Verse Shift. These objects could be as simple as a toothpick or a T-shirt. But it must serve as a reminder of what you want to bring over from the time line you leave to where you are going. For further effectiveness, you can enchant these chosen objects, or simply hold them/be near them during the dreaming process prior to the Verse Shift. These totems will serve as hooks in the possibility fish you’re attempting to reel in. They are threads connected to whatever it is that you can’t let go of. In order for this to work, you must have these objects on your person during the Verse Shift ritual! After the ritual, take special care not to lose the objects or have them break lest you run the risk of loosing the hook and what is attached to it. These objects have a tendency of vanishing. Keep in contained storage, out of sight to anyone else but you. The reason being is that said object could drive someone insane with dual-memories or worse (hypothetically) if it is closely linked to them in any way. I theorize that the reason this works is the distortion these now-out-of-place objects have on reality. Their presence alone twists what consensus reality holds true. Totems work because the time line you enter must compensate for the anomaly and create a history for the object. This usually follows the path of least resistance a.k.a. your memories/experiences of it, regardless of what it’s true history was prior to the Verse Shift.

But even this trick cannot fully guarantee anything. There are many aspects regarding the outcomes that one cannot circumvent. Some things in the world are truly mysterious.

Bringing others with you on a Verse Shift is complex in application and potentially a disaster of entangled collapsing time lines. If your partner/s haven’t the vision, determination, faith in self, and where they’ll end up, or discipline to dream in synchronization to your own dreaming…or if they’re inherently on a different mental wavelength, you run the risk of time line division at the very least. One is very vulnerable on the last stages of a Verse Shift and a week post-shift. An unstable time line that lacks an appropriate amount of dreaming prior usually falls apart in a week. Having another person attached to this only makes this worse. At it’s best, strongly synchronized with a partner/s can result in a flawless Verse Shift. If you must choose to bring someone with you, bring only someone who truly shows that they love you. You and your partner must trust in each other implicitly.

I suppose the last bit of advice before we move on to the ritual particulars is what has been underlying in the last two pages…say goodbye. Say goodbye to everything you knew. Once you leave a time line there is no physical way to go back. You can only replicate past time lines going forward.

Verse Shifting is the art of surrender.

The dangers of Verse Shifting are many but if you are unswayed, if you are truly done with your life as you know it, then you must apply this ritual. Follow it to the letter. Timing is everything. This ritual must be done on the midnight hour on a doorway during a new moon under the cover of rain or just before/after it. It must be done completely alone.

The day of Verse Shifting must be spent completely alone and divorced from all social activity in reverence, contemplation, and focus upon the time line you want to go to. This solitude creates a space where this time line’s influence/the will’s of other people are lessened. Throw yourself a party in this space. Meditate on what time line you’ve been dreaming of. Celebrate where you’ve been and where you’re going. Gather up items from this time line that hold you back to offer to Hekate or, if you must socialize, use the day of the Verse Shifting to cut off stagnant connections/people, places, situations that no longer serve your progress into the new time line. Like the dreaming process, which is your foundation, the day of the Verse Shift is the foundation of the ensured success of the ritual. Spend the day dissolving your cumbersome past and fine-tuning the vision of your chosen time line/the “you” that you will overlap. This closure solidifies the ritual.

Spend the day enchanting totems for the journey. When the sun sets, your life as it currently is has ended. This ritual is ready to be acted out physically. Practical and appropriate dress for this ritual is a traveler’s garb. Bring a back pack. Put your totems in the back pack and the offerings for Hekate. A side note about offerings: If you can’t manage everything  on the list, a simple red apple with honey on it will do. Also add in old objects that no longer serve you. Additionally, you will need a Road Opening candle, roses of your choosing (they may be any color) and a source of copper like pennies. Don’t forget the lighter.

At 11:30 P.M. you’ll want to approach the doorway/liminal spot. Place offerings somewhere in the liminal spot and pray/petition Hekate to open/reveal the correct path to travel on for your desired time line shift. Immediately after finishing prayers and giving offerings (include old things you don’t want anymore if you have them), turn your back on them. Do not look upon them again. This is very important. Looking at the offerings can undo the entire ritual. At this point, with your back turned away or your eyes averted, take time to listen. Meditate. Focus on the time line that you want to go to and all the circumstances that make up that time line (example: I want a time line where I have more friends, a better job, a life in a new town)

At 11:40 P.M. to 11: 50 PM, you’ll want to focus HARDER on that link that you’ve made to the time line you want to go to. Also, and I cannot stress this enough:

YOU CANNOT LEAVE THE DOORWAY/LIMINAL SPACE UNTIL THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT. I REPEAT DO NOT LEAVE THE LIMINAL SPACE UNTIL MIDNIGHT. DO NOT LEAVE IT. DO NOT.

Use these crucial last minutes to focus solely on that desired time line (that dreaming process I described in the very beginning) Sprinkle some rose petals on your feet. And some pennies. The rose petals at your feet will help your journey into a new time line as they hold the energies of cycles from life to death and rebirth. Add in the copper/pennies at the stroke of midnight and light the Road Opener candle. For one minute, try to visualize that time line and BELIEVE that when you wake up tomorrow, you’ll be where you need to be. Who you need to be. Living in the world you need to be living in.

(Part three of the Talismans, Pentacles, and Sigils series)

In the last post I gave general instructions on making planetary talismans. Here’s what making a specific talisman looks like. Please note that while you should feel free to adapt this methodology to suit your practice, you should operate within the Abrahamic paradigm for the duration of the construction. Swapping out Abrahamic godnames and symbols for pagan ones likely will cause malfunctioning (if it functions at all) as Abrahamic entities rarely play nice with entities from other paradigms. If you’d like to make a pagan or atheistic version, I recommend you design your pentacle from the ground up.

1. Pick a pentacle that matches your goal. My husband has been quite sick lately so for this post we will be making a healing talisman using the 2nd pentacle of Mars from the Greater Key of Solomon.

Figure 26. The Second Pentacle of Mars. – This Pentacle serveth with great success against all kinds of diseases, if it be applied unto the afflicted part. Editor’s Note.– The letter Hé, in the angles of the Hexagram. Within the same the Names IHVH, IHShVH Yeheshuah (the mystic Hebrew Name for Joshua or Jesus, formed of the ordinary IHVH with the letter Sh placed therein as emblematical of the Spirit), and Elohim. Around it is the sentence, John i. 4:– “In Him was life, and the life was the light of man.” This may be adduced as an argument of the greater antiquity of the first few mystical verses of the Gospel of St. John.

Those of you familiar with planetary magick are probably scratching your head over using Mars for healing as it’s a pretty unusual choice. It threw me for a loop too until @kab-niel pointed out that the Mars talismans deal with protecting the magician from harm and illness can be viewed as a type of harm. Fair enough - still seems a bit weird to me but let’s roll with it. 

2. Timing. I’m going to admit straight up I fudged this a bit.  Ideally planetary talismans should be constructed on the day ruled by their planet (ie. Mars talismans should be made on Tuesdays) but since my husband was pretty sick, I opted to do it sooner rather than later. There is some lenience on the day but you should be sure to begin construction in the correct planetary hour. As you can see here, we are beginning in the hour of Mars:

3. Pentacle construction. This step is pretty easy but a bit tedious. Note that it can be difficult to find a clean, legible version of your pentacle so just do the best you can with what you can find. As should be obvious from my terrible Hebrew, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Be sure to use a fresh (”virgin”) sheet of paper and to give yourself some space away from the edges because we will be tearing them off.

4. Sigilize your desire. I went kind of a weird route with this one and you absolutely do not need to do the sigil step this way. A more standard version of this step would be sigilizing “[NAME] is healthy” but I wanted to start developing an idea I’ve had rolling around in my head.

My train of thought was that since Psalms have a long history of use in Abrahamic magick, using a healing psalm would make a nice addition to the talisman particularly because I plan on saving this one for general healing in the future. Since Psalms are something I use fairly often in magick, I want to start developing a Biblical alphabet of desire using common phrases that can be combined into unique phrases. Below is my first attempt. I tried to keep the symbols more representational than I typically would use in sigil magick (monad symbol for God, Ouranus for the magician etc) to assist in remembering the alphabet well enough to use it regularly. 

5. Putting it together. Draw your sigils and any other symbols you’re using in a pleasing manner around your pentacle and ink everything in the color associated with your planet (in this case red for Mars). Here I’ve added the name EL SHADDAI (a name of God associated with nourishment and blessings) and the symbol of Mars. Tear (not cut) off the edges - only cut if the pentacle is being used against an enemy. I chose to tear it five times because five the number of Mars.

6. If you’re using powdered herbs, add them now. For this one I’m using ginger, tumeric, and St. John’s Wort as they’re all healing herbs and used to drive away “evil spirits”. My husband and I both crave curry when we’re sick and as a result I tend to associate curry spices with healing from illness so tumeric and ginger are kind of playing double duty here. You may have correctly noted that St. John’s is a solar herb rather than a Martial one however Mars and the Sun play very nicely together, the Sun has some pleasant healing aspects, and St. John’s is good for minor joint pain which unfortunately my husband was experiencing.  Use whatever makes sense to you and if you have to wander a bit outside your planet that’s fine as long as you avoid conflicts (don’t combine Jupiter and Saturn etc.)

Fold the paper around the herbs, folding towards you to draw, folding away to remove, and bind with an appropriately colored thread. I didn’t take a photo of this step but I bound it with five knots.

7. Activation. This generally involves launching your sigil, reading the Bible verse associated with the pentacle, and a consecration. If you have a process for consecrating tools, do it now but I recommend avoiding calling on deities other than the Abrahamic god. The one exception to this is using the Orphic hymns of the planets as rather than deities, the planets can be viewed as emanations from the Godhead. Traditions that have syncretized with Abrahamic religions obviously are the other big exception.

 If you do not have a process, follow this procedure:

Place your talisman on your altar/working space, light a candle, incense, and pour a shot of whiskey. 

Recite the following prayer or the Orphic Hymn to the planet being utilized:

O ADONAI most powerful, EL most strong, AGLA most holy, ON most righteous, the ALPHA and the OMEGA, the Beginning and the End; thou who hast established all things in thy Wisdom; thou who has chosen Abraham thy faithful servant, and hast promised that in his seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed, which seed thou hast multiplied as the stars of Heaven; thou who hast appeared unto thy servant Moses in flame in the midst of the Burning Bush, and hast made him walk with dry feet through the Red Sea; thou who gavest the Law to him upon Mount Sinai; thou who hast granted unto Solomon thy Servant these pentacles by thy great Mercy, for the preservation of Soul and of Body; we most humbly implore and supplicate thy Holy Majesty, that these pentacles may be consecrated by thy power, and prepared in such manner that they may obtain virtue and strength against all spirits, through thee, O Most Holy ADONAI, whose Kingdom, Empire, and principality, remaineth and endureth without end. 

Read the Bible verse associated with your pentacle over it. In this case we are using John 1:4:

In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 

Feed your talisman a few drops of whiskey, then leave it on your altar until the candles burn out.

The Alphabet of Desire refers to a specific magical system created by Austin Osman Spare. Spare’s Alphabet of Desire is meant to distil desire (will) down to it’s purest essence and implant it within the subconscious mind. The method for doing so is to write the desire down, cross out all repeating letters, and then reassemble the remaining letters into a new form which does not resemble the original sentence at all. This is the most basic way of creating sigils and quite frankly the chaotes most powerful tool (In my humble opinion.) For more about the process I do have an article here about sigil making. These sigils are them placed on a talisman, the talisman is then charged and burned into the subconscious mind with the intention of being forgotten by the conscious mind, thus bringing the desire to fruition. As a magical tool, it works beautifully; it also manifests reality in ways that will sometimes surprise and change us.

In Liber Null Peter Carroll talks about the Alphabet of Deisre and created his own “infographic.” The basis of Carrolls alphabet is that every emotion has a dual pattern. Learning to ride your emotions by exploring the alphabet allows a magician to be in control of these emotions rather than at their mercy. It one of the methods associated with deconstruction and shadow work (more on these subjects later.)

The main forms of duality are as followed: Sex/Death, Love/Hate, Desire/Fear, Pleasure/Pain, Elation, Depression. Peter gives each of these twenty on principles a picture (glyph) and a brief textual description, along with some correspondences.

I do have a link in this blog to a PDF copy of Liber Null, you should check it out.

A worksheet for making the first 18/19 letters of your alphabet of desire using the Peter Carrol method. It is important that all the letters you create in the blanks have a distinct top and bottom (cannot be vertically symmetrical) and are simple enough to use as letters. The 19th letter or glyph for laughter can be symmetrical because laughter is its own opposite/has no opposite and could in the center. You can also put a symbol of your tradition in the middle. Peter Carroll’s has the chaos sign.

Chaos magic is interesting because it sources a good portion of its influences from old witchcraft.

The alphabet of desire is originally transmitted by Austin Osman Spare who also credits old style witchcraft as a large influence. In addition to being thought of as the major influence on chaos magic, he also is a major influence on traditional witchcraft and he interacted with Robert Cochrane and Doreen Valiente, major players in the traditional witchcraft movement.

The Underworld is a place where the dead reside. It is a place of shadows, illusions, and great treasure. It is where witches go to untie knots, release pent up spirits, bind demons, and heal their ancestral line, and the lines of the Land. However, like the volcanos of the Land, those knots released can send up a fiery explosion of energy that can devastate the witch’s life, but usually all for the better.

This is why the gentler approach to spiritual cleansing is better than the often soul ravaging approach of say a shamanic death and rebirth ritual. This being said, of course, there are many witches and sorcerers who have experienced very similar rituals in spirit trance, and have survived these experiences just fine, if not a bit shaken. It is my belief that such experiences in our modern culture are still rather mild compared to the experiences of our ancestral shamans of Siberia, American Indigenous, or African magical traditions. We do not have the cultural, mythological, or societal foundation anymore to be able to help our sorcerers go through these experiences. However, I have found that the more an individual sorcerer reads the myths that they are drawn to, they may have similar experiences in certain trance states. The iconography of such myths seeps into our spirits, and calls the right spirits to do what they need to do. In most magical traditions this is the case: some sort of initiating point between being a mortal person and something more, something Other.

The issue is, there are some who go down this path, but do not have an awareness of their own mental health. That’s when complications can arise. Sometimes something big has to move, and this can cause an emotion and mental spiral down. It is our responsibility to heal ourselves, or to seek out another witch to heal us. Since most witches and sorcerers do not have the background required for this, we need to go to the next best thing to modern spirit healers: a psychologist.

Magic is not a replacement for mental health treatment, and can often exacerbate many symptoms of a mental illness. This is what makes Underworld work so dangerous. We are dealing with deep seated emotions that, if dislodged, can sometimes be too much for us to deal with, especially if we are already vulnerable from a mental illness, such as depression, or bi-polar disorder. Cognitive therapy and Underworld workings are not that dissimilar, and can work together very well.

How do we approach this work in a gentler manner?

I have written often of purifying the Salt of the spirit. In Alchemy, the Salt is the Body of the materia. So for a plant, this would be the stems, leaves, roots, and flowers. This is burned slowly in a process called Calcination. It is important in Alchemy to do this slowly within a suitable crucible. Too much heat, and too quick of a fire will burn up all the useful parts of the Salt; too low and the Salt will not purify quickly enough. We can also take the almost purified Salt and mix it with water, and filter it over and over until we get the valuable Salts needed to make a complete tincture. This is the basic starting point of Alchemy. We can also purify the Mercury (alcohol of a plant) and the Sulfur (oil of a plant) to perfected states, and mix those back together to create a Quintessence, or an Ens. And so it is with us as sorcerers.

Our method of Calcination is through spiritual cleansings. Draja Mickaharic has an excellent book on this subject which I highly recommend to everyone (Spiritual Cleansing). His methods consist of baths, head scrubs, certain meditations, and the like. I have incorporated these as well as a few other methods I am aware of to create a spiritual cleaning regimen for myself.

But, we must bring spirit to form, and do the physical work as well.

How are you eating? How do you present yourself to the world around you? What makes you “shine”? What are your values and ethics? These are things to look at as well, because if those are corrupted or inflexible, this also affects our Salt. Salt absorbs very well, so what are you absorbing? The Underworld pulls things into it: what are you pulling into your Underworld, into your roots?

One method that I particularly love is the bath. The bath should be taken in the morning, just at dawn. If it is possible for you, collect some running water from a nearby river, or if there is a sacred lake or well nearby, obtain water from these places in the usual way. Or, even better, bathe in the natural location! Have with you certain herbs and oils that are pleasing to you, and have a “clean” feeling to them. Beer is also a traditional cleansing medium, and if you can get an oat based beer (such as a dark beer), it is also very good for your skin. Have with you also two white candles.

Set these candles up in a way so you can walk between them as you get into the bath. Run the bath, and stir in the herbs and oils to let them steep. Light the candles, and call to your gods and spirits, your ancestors, the spirits of the waters, to cleanse your spirits, and make you bright and shining. If you use any psalms in your tradition, now would be the time to say them. Or perhaps you pull something from the Carmina Gadelica. In either case, bring yourself into the bath, stepping between the two candles.

Lay in the bath, and let all your cares steep into the water, flowing out of your pores and into the water. See your spirit glowing bright and shining, like a star, for that is what it is. Throughout this visualization, submerge your head three times. You should stay in the bath for about ten minutes at least. Then pull the plug on the bath, and watch the waters recede into the drain. See it all flow away, and ask the Land spirits to devour this, and transform it through their special alchemy into something useful, like refuse into compost. Get out of the bath, and extinguish your candles in your usual manner. Pat dry yourself, and try to let any oils or herbs stay on your skin. You can wash them off later, if you need to.

Cleanliness is next to godliness.

You can also work directly with the ancestors to cleanse and guide you on your journey, and in turn you make them brighter and more shining so they can guide your descendants. Give them offerings of water and light, and objects and gifts that they enjoyed in life. Remembering them will make them brighter.

Another method of this type of inner cleansing is a bit more advanced, and not a practice that I personally do, but do know some magicians that make use of it. This is meditating on your own death. Perhaps you take yourself to a graveyard, and ritually dig a grave for yourself, put into this hole an icon of yourself, and then meditate on the nature of death, and the cycle of renewal. You die, and resurrect yourself.

Dying is a bit traumatic.

Going to the Sabbat is also a form of this spiritual cleansing and Underworld work, as the very nature of the Sabbat brings us back to the point of One, and back out again. We die and are renewed in one ritual through trance, dancing, and entheogens. When you consummate the rite at the end with the wine and the bread, you are making yourself a little less human and a little more spirit, and that is refinement.

That is what you’re doing: different levels of refinement of the spirit, of the Self. But sometimes there is a smudge that is really hard to get out. It is okay to ask for help in this, and you don’t have to let your psychologist know that you are a working magician. That being said, there are counsellors out there who work specifically with pagans and magical workers. Make yourself flexible enough to take in the help of others, while still walking your own individual path.

In magic self care is so important. We must seek our demons, befriend them, be one with them. We must make love to them. This is the difficult work, the real Work, my friends. We will be better people because of the work, and able to work more clearly in our communities.

In 906, Regino of Prüm writes in his instructions to the bishops (that later will become the Canon Episcopi), the following:

“This also is not to be omitted, that certain wicked women, turned back toward Satan, seduced by demonic illusions and phantasms, believe of themselves and profess to ride upon certain beasts in the nighttime hours, with Diana, the Goddess of the Pagans, (or with Herodias) and an innumerable multitude of women, and to traverse great spaces of earth in the silence of the dead of night, and to be subject to her laws as of a Lady, and on fixed nights be called to her service.”

This cult, as we said several times, from the Franco-Germanic area will extend throughout the Continent, becoming so a pan-European phenomenon, characterized by nocturnal flights, transformations in animals, processions of spirits and witches gatherings. At the beginning of the history of Traditional Witchcraft, TradCraft has almost entirely been a “dream cult”, and only later somebody physically emulated it. The essence of witchcraft is not physical, it’s a nocturnal experience, it’s oneiric, in 906 physical meetings are not yet present as it will happen later.

Initially, witches fly or shapeshift into animals to participate in a spiritual procession, a cortège that proceeds from house to house eating and drinking the banquets that people prepared as an offering near their hearth, blessing, in turn, the inhabitants of the home: this is the procession of “the good women who go forth at night” or Dominae Nocturnae.

Gradually this horde of spirits ceases to move from house to house, and begins to gather in one single place. Even here, however, they eat, drink and make love. The Procession, the Cortège, becomes the Sabbath. Finally, the sabbath will be “ostented”, i.e. emulated, imitated in the physical realm.

But the essence of the Sabbath, its origin, is and remains oneiric. The sabbath represents the world of the spirits, the dead and the fairies. Not surprisingly, the Queen of Fairies is often also the patron of witches: there are numerous trials in Scotland where the accused claim to have visited the Court of Fairies, their kingdom, Elphame, and to have also seen some well-knownly deceased human beings.

Also the dead, moreover, often proceed like a cortège: we are talking about the Procession of the Dead or Wild Hunt, led by the Wild Hunter or corresponding female characters who are also leaders of the Procession of the Dominae Nocturnae.

The dead and the witches are also connected to the Spirit Battles or Night Battles, oneiric fights between witchcraft practitioners (like the Mazzeri of Corsica), in which each witch represented their own village, and the loser of these fights caused more deaths for their own village, while the winner a minor number.  At other times, instead, they fought for the fertility of the fields, and it was thought that those who could participate in these battles could also see the dead and their processions (as in the case of the Benandanti of Friuli).

Therefore, the Oneiric Sabbath is not a monolith: it includes the Procession of the Dominae Nocturnae; the Sabbath; the Wild Hunt and the Night Battles. Quoting Peter Gray (a revivalist writer, not a reconstructionist one): “Initiation in dream is thus revealed as the birth rite of witchcraft. Our origin is embedded in the land of the dead and faery, concealed within the ringing hollow hills.”

Allright, now that we understand that the primordial Sabbath is oneiric, that all these possibilities exist … how to experience it? How did they experience it in the past? In the past people lived very differently from us: they slept together, they ate together, worked in the same place and gathered around the same hearth; they listened to the same storytellers, witnessed the same events and the same sermons. Sharing dreams was commonplace, while today it is almost a miracle if we remember a dream when we wake up. The world has changed, and the situational factors that led to a greater number of “witchcraft” dreams are not reproducible, if not perhaps among the Amish (but at that point it would be the Amish people to drive us out accusing us of witchcraft!).

Therefore the most useful techniques nowadays are the modern ones, which work to make us - humans of today - dream. Today we can no longer gather all around the fire to tell our dreams, and forcing our family to do so will not have the same effect of spontaneous sharing that occurred in the past. But there is no problem: we will use a notebook or a tape recorder instead. Today we no longer have storytellers telling us about the Sabbath, we can participate in storytelling events but today’s storytellers do not have the same impact on the psyche of those of the pre-television and pre-social media era. But even here, no problem, we will imagine - replacing the storytellers - the scene at the time of falling asleep and during the day.

So, schematizing, what should we do? 1 - Let’s think of the dream we want to do during the day, and let’s take some moments to imagine the scene we want to dream of at night. 2 - In the night, before falling asleep, let’s repeat the exercise but let’s totally lose ourselves in the imagination until we get into sleep without even realizing it. 3 - Upon awakening, let’s immediately report the dreams in a notebook that we will have left (together with a pen!) on the bedside table, or on a tape recorder. Even if we had not dreamed of anything, we will still have to write (or speak, in the case of the recorder), so as to deceive our mind, which will pay attention to the dream activity the following days and will allow us to remember our dreams the next times. So when we do not dream anything we will write: “Dear diary, today I haven’t dreamed of anything”.

Well, now that we understood the technique, we’ll apply it to the various Sabbath themes: a) - To the Cortège of the Good Women; b) - To the Oneiric Sabbath; c) - To Elphame/the Sybil’s Paradise, i.e. the Otherworld; d) - To the Wild Hunt; e) - I avoid reporting the Night Battles because they are too dangerous, but if you are reckless and irresponsible, it will be enough to understand the mechanism and apply it here too (at your own risk!); f) - Separate speeches will be: * the shared dream, that is to meet one’s “Company” or “Coven” in an oneiric state, and * the discovery of the Animal Familiar Spirit, which will be dealt with on other occasions.

# A: The Cortège of the Dominae Nocturnae

The scene that we will imagine will be that of a night sky, where we will fly - together with other people - riding a broom, on the back of our Animal Familiar Spirit (if it has already been discovered) or turning into him in shapeshifting. At the head of this cortège will be our own Patron Familiar Spirit. Let’s imagine, at this point, that the parade glide and land near a house. Here we will find everything neat, tidy and perfectly decorated. We will proceed all together towards the kitchen. Here we will find ourselves before a huge banquet. Everyone, therefore, starting from the Patron Major Spirit, will eat and drink something, and all together will dance in the house. Once this is done, the Major Spirit will pull out a wooden wand and, touching the house, the inhabitants sleeping in their beds and the pets, will bless them with his/her powers, making a golden light shine out in the house. Once everything is illuminated by this light, which came from the Spirit’s wand, the cortège will proceed again in the air to get to another house where to repeat everything.

# B: The Sabbath or Game of the Good Society (Ludus Bonae Societatis)

The scene to be imagined this time will be a dark forest, the top of a mountain or a hill. By putting the case that the forest has been chosen as landscape, we will imagine a multitude of people, completely naked, around a fire and surrounded by torches. Each of these people, ourselves included, will have a candle in their hands. In front of us there will be our own Patron Major Spirit, to which each person, in turn, will bow with the candle in their hand. Once done, everyone will sit down, eat and drink on the huge wooden tables near the bonfire, on which every wonderful food and beverage will be arranged. The candles that were previously held in hand will now rest on the table in front of us. Once finished to eat and drink, everybody will take their own candle again, and they will dance to form a dance of lights. At the end of the dance, everyone will try to extinguish the candle of the other, but will try to avoid turning off their own, and when all the candles have blown out they will make love in honor of the Major Spirit. The cock will then be heard to sing, the dawn appears on the horizon, and each person will bow again in front of the Major Spirit, before moving away and disappearing into the forest.

# C: The Otherworld or the Kingdom of the Fairies

The scene in this case will be that of a hill, which we will imagine hollow, with a small entry at the bottom. Once penetrated, let’s imagine going down a clumped ladder and continuing to descend, descend, descend, now let’s feel fall down and descend, descend, descend. At the end of the descent, we find a gate. Let’s cross it. It is possible to interrupt the visualization here or imagine to arrive, after the gate, in a royal court, captained by two enchanted characters sitting on their thrones, the King and the Queen of Elphame (we can even imagine a single throne, with Patron Major Spirit), and a lot of fairy courtesans and nobles, including also deceased humans.

# D: The Wild Hunt or the Procession of the Dead