Lux Lucis Quod Umbra

I just wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

This is very cool. Christopher Warnock is using one of the elections I calculated to cast talismans. I’ll post more on this soon as I want to do something using this elections myself, but the page for the talisman on Chris’s site is HERE and his blog post about the election is HERE.

I’ve been a bit under the weather as of late. As a result I missed today’s Saturn election. I figured in influx of Saturn energy in combination with an illness was probably NOT a good idea.

Just a heads up that I will be casting Saturn planetary kamea in lead, the metal of Saturn, this month. I may do a few to sell if I get sufficient interest, so please contact me if you’d be interested. Size will probably be 3″ x 3″. Cost is undetermined. According to Agrippa this talisman:

” They say that this table being with a fortunate Saturn engraved on a plate of lead, doth help to bring forth, or birth, and to make a man safe, and powerfull, and to cause success of petitions with princes, and powers”
- Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy Bk II, Chapter 22

If you are an author selling copies of your own book and you smoke STORE YOUR BOOKS SOMEWHERE THEY WON’T SMELL LIKE AN ASHTRAY. I received a copy of a new version of the Necronomicon and a companion book today that I bought from the author off of Ebay, and the books absolutely reek. To the point I had to go wash my hands after unpacking them because my fingers smelled. I’ll probably post more commentary in a couple of days after they’ve aired out and I can handle them.

Apologies for the recent down time, the company that hosts the site experienced a DDoS attack and had to relocate the server. Things should be back to normal now, if anyone notices any problems please let me know.

I wanted to take a moment and talk about what I do magically on a daily basis. The short version is not much lol. My daily practice currently consists of a simple single point meditation focused on my breathing and an invocation of my Genius Daimon.

The single point meditation practice is fairly simple in theory, although hard to do in practice. The goal is to still all of your thoughts and focus on one thing to the exclusion of all else, in this case breathing. When the mind wanders you dismiss the distracting thought and return to focus on breathing. The breathing technique itself is also simple and not hard to do. Inhale slowly and evenly filling the diaphragm first then the lungs, hold the breath for a moment, then exhale. There’s no particular pattern, just comfortable even breaths.

The invocation of my Genius Daimon is also straight forward. The Genius’s name was calculated from my birth chart using the Daimon Name Calculator. I personally use the Greek form of the name. I have a single white candle that has been consecrated as described in this Candle Consecration post. The candle has the Genius’s name inscribed into the wax using the burin. The candle is lit and the Genius’s name is chanted three times, followed by a brief invocation that is repeated three times, followed by again chanting the Genius’s name three times.

I plan to add daily planetary invocations as well in the foreseeable future.

There’s a great post over on Jason Miller’s Take Back Your Mind blog about meditation. I’ve actually been struggling to maintain a basic daily meditation practice, so it’s very appropriate to what I’ve been dealing with. I basically haven’t been at it long and literally just catch mental distractions and try to return to my focus. Continuously. As in that’s ALL I DO. It was good to read that this is completely normal and is one of the points of the practice. On an intellectual level I already knew this, but it’s always nice to see somebody else with more experience confirm it.

Take Back Your Mind: You Cannot Suck At Meditation

I now have all of the plants I wanted to get growing this summer for my Solomonic garden planted. I grabbed an Italian Sweet Basil plant from my local grocery store, so I now have all the herbs for an Aspergillum growing, as well as two Hazel saplings that will become the shaft of the Aspergillum and a wand, and an Almond sapling that will also become a wand. I’m hoping the saplings will be large enough to harvest by the end of the summer.

I’ve almost got everything I wanted to get planted growing now. Two Hazel trees, one to become a wand and one an aspergillum, check. One Almond tree to become a wand ala Abarmelin, check. Vervain, Fennel, Lavender, Sage, Valerian, Oregano, and Rosemary: check, check, check, check, check, check, and check. The only thing I still need to track down is Basil. We’ve got some Thai Basil, but I think something along the lines of Italian Sweet Basil would be more appropriate.

In addition as part of our normal plants in flower beds / around the house we have Periwinkle, St. John’s Wart, and Violets (the last were an unexpected bonus, as we had some growing in pots last year but the seeds must have blown around as we have a bunch of them coming up in various places on their own).

I’ll probably go out and spend an hour or so this evening weeding and mulching as we still have a lot to get done.