Conjuring the Angel of…what? Really?

Damnit, Kalagni.  From my twitterfeed, I see him post this:

“Haha, I don’t know, maybe one of your angels could help with my sex life.” “Doubt it, I don’t work with Viagrael.” “You’re an ass Kal.”

Well, Wikipedia’s page for sildenafil (the proper name for Viagra) has the title of Viagra in Hebrew, which is ויאגרה.  This would make the proper theophoric name of this hypothetical angel Viagrahel (ויאגרהאל).  I doubt there’s a preexisting sigil or seal for such an angel, but by using the Rose Cross Hebrew sigil wheel, a valid sigil to conjure him would look something like this:

So, given that, what do you think a good time would be for conjuring such an angel?  Mars hour on a Venus day, or vice versa?  Would it even matter?  Meh, anytime’s good so long as it’s sexytime.

The angel’s name, using gematria, adds to 256, which shares the same value with the phrases “Tidings” (amirah, אמירה), “Sons of the Righteous” (b’nei tzedeq, בני צדק), and “Spirit of the Mother” (ruach ama, רוח אמא ).  Looking at the individual letters themselves, we have vav (archetype of masculinity and male fertilization), yod (existence as it is, as well as the first sound of the Cosmos, the essential climax of creation), aleph (all existence, potential and realized), gimel (continuity of movement, form, and contained existence), heh (the female fertility of existence, that which envelops and nurtures), aleph again, and lamed (the ox-goad or shepherd’s staff, the link combining intent with action).  The name decomposed into its letters sounds sexy, to be sure, but its connotations through gematria seem a little…stiff, and not in the way intended here.  That is, unless you’re saying hello to someone in Japan and you’re either a MILF-lover or a shotacon fan, of course, but let’s not go too far down that road.

May as well give it a shot.  What’s the worst that could happen?  Besides the obvious, I mean.

Shewstone-side Chats

I conjured the angel of Jupiter, Tzadqiel, last night.  He gave me a brief metaphor I thought I’d share with you all.  I asked him for his advice and teaching in my life, and he seemed to nod and point up and behind me to the stars in the night sky.

You see those stars?  They’re kings, just like the Sun here.  They rule over their parts of the sky, their worlds.  They are small and distant, however, and they are not kings here.  As they travel their light to other places, they cease to become kings and become equals or even less to the places they travel.  They rule only over what they rule, and no more.  Just so do you rule only what you rule, and you do not rule over everything, even though you may think you do.  You will one day become as a star, but even stars are outshone by the ones higher and brighter than them, especially the highest Light.

Humility is a virtue even in the greatest kings.  Humility is the beginning of greatness.

Happily for my tired self, this metaphor doesn’t need much more unpacking.  Leading a full work life and trying to maintain a proper magical practice can be a pain, indeed, but being a magician is all about being a king, and being a king is all about knowing what you have and how to use it.  For now, imma use my bed.

Follical Oppression

This was a post I made long ago back when I had a Facebook account, and then a Tumblr account.  I don’t have the original text anymore, so I rewrote it, but it’s among my better pieces of writing and thought.  I just felt like writing and getting this off my chest, but chew on this for a bit, if you like.

Imagine that you’re a brunette.  You were born that way, but it’s natural and it looks good on you.  The thing is, though, that you’re the only brunette you know: everyone else around you, everyone you’ve ever seen, is blonde.  Growing up, all your family members were blonde, as were your friends and teachers.  It’s all you ever saw, and once you developed a sense of self-awareness, you began to feel self-conscious about it; when your schoolmates developed a sense of meanness, they started making fun of you, calling you “poophead” or “dirty hair”.  Sometimes, you’d feel so bad about yourself that you’d run home crying from school, or you’d develop a fear of hanging out with anyone, wary that they’d judge you for something as stupid as your hair color.

Your parents hoped it was just a phase that you’d grow out of and become blonde once you grew up a bit.  Your friends generally lost interest in hanging out with you, not wanting to be associated with someone so stand-out weird.  The more you look at the world, the more you see how pervasive blondeness is: all the movies, television shows, and music videos you’ve ever seen have blonde people; all the people in the government or positions of power have blonde hair (when they have hair left, that is); all the ads you see in magazines or on the roadsides all feature blonde people.  It gets to you, and makes you feel less and less accepted over time.  It’s like everything is geared towards blonde people, leaving you with a feeling of isolation.  It wasn’t your fault that you were born a brunette, though; that’s just how you are.  

You graduate high school, and now that you’re a little older and trying to be accepted in the world and get into a good job or college, you’ve tried making over your image.  You tried cutting off your hair to pull the bald look, but that only got frustrating with how much maintenance that required, and people would continue to look at you funny but for less-mean reasons.  You tried wearing a hat, which covered up your hair and what eventually became your shame.  That worked even less well than buzzing it all off, since people would still be able to see it peek through under the brim or when you’d take it off.

You once tried dying your hair blonde, and that worked well.  People who didn’t know you before took a liking to you without question, and those who did know you instantly became more friendly.  People started accepting you because of such an easy trick, but it bothered you.  Blonde hair didn’t really match you or your look, and it was hard to get used to.  Plus, you had to keep redying your hair to make sure nobody saw the roots.  It wasn’t a permanent fix, though, and you knew that as soon as you cut off the illusion, people would go back to turning their back on you.  Dying your hair was costly, both in terms of money and mental health: to have to keep up the illusion, set up in utter privacy, around everyone in public, without letting anybody know, for an extended period of time is no easy thing.

Eventually, you hear of some blonde-purist groups who insist that anyone who isn’t blonde is, well, unacceptable to put it mildly.  They claim that brunettes and redheads (another rare color that you’ve only ever seen about in mocking jokes) are despicable people, only barely better than those freaks who dread their hair, dye it crazy colors, or decorate it with beads or extensions.  They absolutely hate anyone who isn’t blonde like them; although most people don’t associate with those purist guys, they don’t necessarily disagree with them either, or at least keep silent about their own views.  Still, even if you kept dying your hair every day to be blonde, your blood would always run cold when you see shirts or logos of those kinds of groups.  The fear that some people would find out about your secret sometimes has you curled up in bed at night, crying or trembling out of terror, hoping that nobody saw your roots that you only just noticed when you got home.

You know that some of your friends support the existence of brunettes, so long as they don’t try to dye their or others’ children’s hair, and some of your friends just don’t care or even like to keep brunettes and the like among their friends.  However, you’re often too scared to let anybody know about your secret, which shouldn’t really matter since it’s just hair color, but you know that there are people potentially surrounding you that would gladly hurt you for being what you are: alive and different.  One of your friends revealed to you that he’s also a brunette, but he just keeps his head shaven; still, you kinda admire the guy for even admitting it to you, even though you’re still too scared to reveal it to anyone else.  Your parents know, but they don’t mention it to anybody, and your old friends from school, if any were actually friends after the bullying, are all moved away and far removed from your current life.  As far as anyone around you knows, you’re blonde, and it’s killing you to keep that up, but you’re too scared that it might kill you worse if you don’t.

Now, replace every reference to blonde hair with straight, and brunette with gay or queer, and now you know what it can be like for a queer person to live in the world.  There’s so much discrimination going on against people based on their sexuality, sexual orientation, and sexual identity when it’s all really bullshit.  It’s no more a choice than it is what color your hair is: you can feign asexuality, keep it all a secret, or stay in the closet and pretend to be straight, but if you’re queer, you’re queer.  That’s really all there is to it.  Thinking some people are worse for liking who they like or dressing how they feel proper is about as ridiculous as wanting to hurt someone for being a different hair color.  Two cases in point: Kick a Ginger Day, and Aryan Pride.  Neither are cool, kids.  Don’t participate in either.

Plus, with there being so much in the social sphere oriented towards the straight crowd, it really is easy to just pass over the queer crowd and ignore their existence, needs, and dreams.  They’re still human, and desire human things, true, and I’m not suggesting that we have a queer-content quota for the media, but making the assumption that someone’s straight or gay off the bat isn’t helpful; that’s heteronormativity, and should be consciously toned down whenever possible around strangers until you actually know about them.

Ring of Solomon +2

I went to a party back in January to celebrate Thor conquering the ice giants to drive back winter.  Fantastic party, and it’s held every year by one of my Nordic pagan friends who brews his own mead.  I lost a few hours of that night, but otherwise it was SO awesome.  Well, I ended up meeting someone particularly interesting at that party who knows the host through several different scenes in the area.  I noticed the tattoo sleeve on her arm, which incorporates alchemical symbols; I asked about them, and she replied with the four Powers of the Sphynx (to know, to dare, to will, to keep silent).  Immediately I knew I was talking to someone genuine, and heavens above and hells below she’s awesome.  Spagyrist, Mesoamerican occultist, stonecarver, and silversmith.  She knows her shit and has been at it for a long time.

Well, the silversmithing bit caught my interest.  Although I’m decent with wood and pyrography, the metal stuff she makes is fantastic (she showed me several impressive rings and a pendant-knife she made “out of boredom”).  This stuff is well beyond my capability to make, and for some of the more detailed items I need, I’d rather have something professionally and nicely made by someone who knows what their doing (required purification, occult virtues, planetary timing, etc.). I commissioned her for a Solomonic ring based on the one I was currently using.  That one was made of hematite worn on the pinkie, and the design was the one based off on this post at The Occult and Magic: a Star of David, Michael, and Tzabaoth written on the outside and the Tetragrammaton written on the inside.  I interpreted the three-circle design of the Ring of Solomon from the Lemegeton to be representative of using the outer, top, and inner sides of the ring, instead of a circular plate on the ring.  I used a dremel tool to engrave the letters in.  It was passable.  She noticed it and complimented its power (she said it had a distinct “back the fuck off” note), but the material used for it and the energy didn’t quite match up.

All the more reason, then, to get a new and better ring.  The design was to look mostly the same: the Tetragrammaton on the inside of the ring, with the names Tzabaoth and Michael on the outside with a Star of David which, if possible, would be circumscribed with a circle and a dot in the middle.  If she wanted to be fancy, I suggested she could engrave the Star of David on a topaz and set that on the ring.  Graphically, the design looks like this:

And, given that, this is what I ended up with:

This.  Is.  Incredible.  A silver band with Hebrew letters and a beautiful clear sunstone, with a dotted hexagram underneath it.  Very, very nice touch.  Since she understands the significance and importance of timing, we were originally going to go with a particularly powerful solar election back on March 25th, but we both dropped the ball on that, so she was going to try and get it done during a Sunday on a solar hour.  My assumption is that the ring is a solar instrument of magic, hence the timing.

Well, instead, this past weekend, she was kicked out of bed on Sunday with something telling her to get the ring done at noon that day, and she did; by the time she finished, it had a definite warmth that almost burned her skin.  She told me it was finished, and I was somewhat confused about the timing: the day of the solar eclipse? Sun conjunct balsamic moon?  Sun conjunct Algol?  Sun peregrine?  For a solar talisman of protection, it seemed that she couldn’t've picked a worse election.  I had my doubts, but was going to keep the ring either way: if the election defeated the defensive purpose of the ring, then I was going to keep it as a Trojan Horse-esque gift for someone I particularly dislike; if it worked, or if I could get the proper powers to make it work, I would keep it and use it as it’s meant to be used.  After all, what good is a line of defense if it’ll just buckle or, worse, backfire?

However, upon putting the ring into my hand, it felt positively comforting and strong, like a welcomed last gasp of air or a bright light at the end of the tunnel to see everything with.  And, upon wearing it (a perfect fit!), I felt a strong presence wrap around me, and my friend said that I went positively glowing.  Since this isn’t the kind of power my friend normally interacts with, and the fact that she was pretty much made to do it as a matter of capital-letter Inspiration, I’m pretty sure this ring is good to go.  Besides, what else is magic for, if not to bypass and surpass the natural circumstances and mechanics of the cosmos to Get Shit Done?  Of course, I’m still going to run a few tests, readings, and analyses on the thing to make sure it’s good to go, and if so, have it undergo a proper solar consecration of its own (probably using a dab of Abramelin oil and a wash of Goldschläger); she left it intentionally “unsealed” so I could work my own magic on the thing, which was kind of her.  I’m very confident that this thing will become a fast friend of mine, in terms of ritual tools and generally cool things to have.

I mean, come on.  I HAVE A FUCKING MAGIC RING.  I am officially living in an RPG.

The silversmith, Raven Orthaevelve, is always interested in furthering her business and skills and is willing to take commissions, especially with magical, occult, or other ritual items.  Her prices are very affordable, especially considering the quality and skill she employs in making really detailed or difficult stuff.  You can contact her at orthaevelve@gmail.com if you’d like to ask her for something, or look at her Etsy page.  Really, she’s fabulous.  Plus, she’s practically dying to make jewelry, knives, and other tools specifically for magical use, and she really does know her shit.  Get in contact her and commission her for stuff; you won’t be disappointed.  Plus, if she gets enough commissions from magicians to pay for it, she’ll be able to get a set of Hebrew stamps for metalworking that’ll really make her stuff impressive for our kind of crowd.

Also, right after I commissioned her for the ring, I found this little thing on Amazon.  For those among us with a more Christian persuasion, this would be a perfect premade substitute for a Solomonic ring.  However, I’ve noticed with other rings that the material it’s made of (tungsten carbide) has some interesting effects in that it helps work as a natural shield for the wearer as well as a blinder on the wearer.  YMMV.