ceremonialmagic101

[ceremonialmagic101]

The three-ring binder is the apex of book technology, by the way. All the advantages of a codex, plus you can add, remove, and reorder pages at will - pages which you can furthermore protect from damage in transparent sleeves, and store commentaries, notes, and other paratextual addenda behind them without obscuring the primary content. Truly the queen of codices. Reblog if you love the three-ring binder.

[ceremonialmagic101]

Sun in Capricorn III - The Throne

The Sun enters Capricorn III The Throne, on January 9, 2025 at 7:18 pm EST. The Sun will travel through the four dodeks of Capricorn III, recapitulating Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius as he does so, arriving at 0° Aquarius on January 19, 2025 at 3:00 pm EST — making nine days, nineteen hours, and 42 minutes. The Throne, though in a sign ruled by Saturn, is a decan administered by the Sun…

[ceremonialmagic101]

Poem for Herbs

Basil in the garden grows brings money and luck into your own Witches drink it before flight and take off swift into the night

Peppermint in the garden grows reminds the mind of what it knows Can purify, can illness heal, may bring sleep in full appeal

Lavender in the garden grows, allows energy to lay low Brings a witch to sleep and calm and protects the home from outside harm

Pepper in the garden grows little flakes that itch your nose Cast out spirits, cast out strangers, aggressively repels most dangers

Sage in the garden grows, cleansing hearth and cleansing home Repels strange spirits but take heed it does pretty much smell like weed

Bay in the garden grows a tree of leaves through wind does blow Cast your wish, let it burn through your inner power is restored anew

[ceremonialmagic101]

Thanks for getting me off my butt to publish my Hymn to Asclepius:

-- @abwatt

“Asklepios, lord Paian, healer of all, you charm away the pains of [those] who suffer. Come, mighty and soothing, bring health, put an end to sickness, then to the harsh fate of death. O blessed spirit of joyful growth, O helper, you ward off evil, honored and mighty son of Phoibos Apollon. Enemy of disease, consort of Hygieia the blameless, come as savior, O blessed one, bring life to a good end.”

— Orphic Hymn to Asklepios (tr. Apostolos N. Athanassakis)

[ceremonialmagic101]

Hey hi! I saw your post about Capricorn season & Akephalos and you mentioned Asklepios. May I ask if you could please explain the association? I don't know anything about the topic and I feel really dumb asking for this.

Thank you if you'll answer, and have a great 2025!

Sure.

I'm going to have to go into a lot of detail here on the astronomy that underlies the astrology.

You may have seen some bits and bobs from time to time about how "NASA says the astrologers are wrong because there are thirteen signs in the Zodiac! They forgot Ophiuchus!" And that's bullshit, because there are — and always have been — only twelve signs.

But signs and constellations are not the same thing. Signs are zones of abstract latitude in the sky, while constellations are mappings of star-groups. It may be helpful to think of signs as sectors of 30° units of latitude — which, is, say, the east-west distance from London to Estonia, or New York City to western Nebraska, or from say, Sydney Australia to Singapore. Note that I'm not talking about the north-south axis at all or the diagonal "as the crow flies" distance... just the "width" on the map, as it were. So that's signs.

Constellations, on the other hand, are more like countries with fixed borders. And it is true that there are more constellations in the Zodiac than there are signs. I think there are fifteen? — the twelve constellations for which the signs are named, plus Ophiuchus, Orion, and Cetus... and while Ophiuchus DEFINITELY crosses the line of the Ecliptic (the Sun's apparent path across the sky month to month), Orion and Cetus just-just touch it, although I'm not an expert on exactly how astronomers draw the sector lines of the 88 official constellations, and when it comes to the little corners and edges of Orion and Cetus, they might touch the line of the Ecliptic in some years and in other years they might not. And I don't know if they drew the constellation lines for rational reasons, or if it was more like for politically charged reasons like drawing the Radcliffe Line separating India from Pakistan in 1947...

Anyway.

We're left with one constellation that DOES cross the Ecliptic, but IS NOT a sign: Ophiuchus.

Now, Ophiuchus is "the snake handler". And a large number of ancient sources agree that the snake-handler in question is Asklepios or Asclepius the physician-god of ancient Greece (and sometimes called "Paion" because that's the name of the healer with the Achaean army in Homer's Iliad). The ancient astronomer/astrologer Marcus Manilius associates 'the bright star of Ophiuchus" with poisons, with medicines, and with protection from illness; and other ancient texts, some by anonymous authors, credit the star Ras Alhague (sometimes one word, Rasalhague, also α Ophiuchi, the brightest star of Ophiuchus... all the same thing ) with the profession ιατρων, (Latinized to iatron)... that is "healer" or "physician" or "doctor" (a doctor who uses astrology in their practice is called an ιατρωμαθεματκοσ, iatromathimatikos, or "healer who uses [star-]math").

Today, Ras Alhague is usually assigned to 22° Sagittarius in the tropical Zodiac — which is to say that for astrological purposes, we're ignoring the fact that it's considerably north of the ecliptic, and we're pretending it's on the ecliptic. The Sun will usually be at 22° Sagittarius on or about the 14-15th of December each year, and that means that the Sun and Rasalhague will rise at about dawn, together.

But of course, any star that is conjunct the Sun at dawn will be invisible.

It takes about 10 to 12 days from that conjunction for Ras Alhague to be visible, just above the horizon, just before dawn, in the Northern Hemisphere, which means around the time that the Sun reaches 5° Capricorn, the middle of Capricorn I (which runs 0° Cap 00' to 9° Cap 59').

It also takes the Sun about ten days (sometimes nine, sometimes eleven, usually about ten) to travel a distance of 10°. By the 2nd century AD, at least, the Greek-speaking population of Alexandria had come to associate every ten-day period in the year with a deity that helped people on Earth, and usually included a celebration or festival of that deity during that ten day period.

And so, sometime between the Winter Solstice (December 21) and the modern New Year (January 1), keen-eyed skywatchers would have seen Ras Alhague rise in the east — the head of Ophiuchus the snake-charmer, the god Asklepios — and would know that it was time for the physician-god festival.

A few days later — roughly January 1 to January 10 — almost all of the constellation of Ophiuchus will be above the horizon before the Sun rises. And this is associated with Hygeia, the goddess of Health. Some myths call her the wife of Asclepius, some call her his daughter, some call her his mother. Either way, they're a pair — and they ruled over the twenty-day period between the Winter Solstice and the rough mid-point of January. Among the 36 minor deities of Greek religion that ruled the 36 decans of ancient astrology, they're one of just two pairs of husbands-and-wives that are consecutive (the other is Hades and Persephone, who rule from the Spring Equinox to about April 10).

Now... I'll dive into a little UPG here, and add that I've found that working with Asklepios and Hygeia on health and healing matters has been very helpful, but hasn't turned me into a doctor (or even an iatromathimatikos). Watching their healing power go out into the world today feels a bit like reiki, but a) it's not the same thing, although it's similar, and b) it's definitely not coming from me. I've also found that it's very snake-y or serpent-y... that is, it winds and coils rather than moving along straight or diagonal lines; and it has lots of whorls and eddies in it. It also has a very specific color associations, which I'll not reveal here, but which serves as a 'key' if you will, to when you've made 'contact' with the same thing I see.

Your mileage may vary.

How to work with this? Wait for a planet to be conjunct 22° Sagittarius, or wait for a planet to be in 0°-9°59' Capricorn, or wait for either position/region to be on or about the Ascendant (eastern horizon) or at the MC (midheaven) of an astrological chart. And then reach out, respectfully, with prayer and meditation, to see if Asclepius will speak with you about a health matter.

Be cautious about following the advice that arises here.

[ceremonialmagic101]

The season of Capricorn I (from the winter solstice when the Sun is at 0° Capricorn 00' on or about December 20-22, until the Sun passes from 9° Capricorn 59' to 10° Capricorn 00' on or about December 30-January 2) is called the Headless Body, and it's associated with a deity of the Hellenistic era — Akephalos, or the Headless One.

(It's also associated with Asklepios, the god of healing, but that's not what I'm about, here).

Akephalos, the Headless One, is associated with the constellation we know today as Orion, which was associated with Osoronophris, more frequently known as Osiris today — an ancient Egyptian ruler of the underworld and the realms of the dead.

Why might this be?

Well, the constellation of Orion famously has shoulders, waist, knees, a club, a sword or dagger dangling from that belt... but only three dim stars where the head should be, and they're clustered together so tightly from our point of view that they look more like an ear, or a curl of hair, than a head.

BUT... just above that shoulder line is the ecliptic, the line that the Sun traces across the sky over the course of the year. So every summer, around 4-6 days before the summer solstice, the Sun is on the shoulders of the constellation of Orion... and Orion has a head. However, at the winter solstice, Orion is headless except for a few hours when the full moon is on the constellation Orion's shoulders, which could happen up to thirty days before the winter solstice occurs.

And so it's the season when we can live into the expectations of Akephalos in the world, perhaps — that we are eternal soul-beings temporarily enfleshed, and here to experience the joys and pleasures that the human world has to offer us: the gifts of snow and sun and wind and rain on our faces, the luxuries of sleep and snuggling with loved ones, the taste of delicious and rich foods and drinks, and the joy of comfortable clothes and familiar music and stories.

Don't neglect the sacredness of rest in the dark times.

This too is magic.

[ceremonialmagic101]

when i was a high school senior, there was a kid in my grade who wouldn't run the mile. everyone was required to run a timed mile to pass gym, and he wouldn't do it. the thing was, if he didn't pass gym, he wouldn't graduate. it was already spring.

it wasn't like he couldn't run a mile -- he was a football player, athletic. huge popular kid, boisterous, with a warm smile and a swarm of friends, who gave people nicknames. you know the kind of guy. for that matter, one could walk the mile if one wanted, you just had to do four laps at any pace. it didn't matter to him. he didn't say so, but it was a pride thing. it was demeaning. he was right, we all knew it and admired him for it, but like. he wasn't going to graduate over this.

this standoff went on for weeks. the principal was not going to allow it. this kid didn't come from a family where everybody graduated high school, and the principal wasn't going to let this kid be denied a diploma over something this stupid. but he was up against -- if i was informed correctly -- a state law. you had to run the mile to pass gym, and you had to pass gym to graduate.

the principal, who is a man i knew well, and still know, and admire, didn't make an exception for this kid. he also didn't force the kid or threaten him or even try to reason with him and wear him down. instead, he made the following deal.

"you and me," he said, "are going to run the mile together. we're gonna do it after school, so nobody is there but us, and your friends, if you want. and i will wear the stupidest, goofiest, ugliest tracksuit i can find, so nobody will be looking at you, they'll be looking at me. tell your friends to take pictures." and that is what they did. the track suit was cyan and magenta and yellow and purple and our principal looked like a goofy dumbass. the kid graduated a few months later.

i work with kids now and i think about this all the time, and why what the principal did worked. he could have cracked down. he could have said rules are rules. he could have said, ok that's your choice. he could have even had the idea, and dismissed it because of some notion about not undermining his own authority. but he didn't. he identified exactly what the actual problem was -- why won't this kid do this thing he clearly must do? because it hurts his pride. and instead of insisting, as so many adults do, that pride is a luxury that young people neither deserve nor can afford, he said ok. how can i fix that. and by making it seem, in a fun and harmless way, like the kid was humiliating him, he made the difference between the kid having a high school diploma and not. sometimes that's all it takes.

[ceremonialmagic101]

Communities Trial?

I'm trying something out.

Hi friends... Interested in joining Ceremonial Magic 102?

https://www.tumblr.com/communities/ceremonial-magic-102/post/769687361421557760/hello-world

[ceremonialmagic101]

Despite Sparta’s reputation for superior fighting, Spartan armies were as likely to lose battles as to win them, especially against peer opponents such as other Greek city-states. Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War—but only by accepting Persian money to do it, reopening the door to Persian influence in the Aegean, which Greek victories at Plataea and Salamis nearly a century early had closed. Famous Spartan victories at Plataea and Mantinea were matched by consequential defeats at Pylos, Arginusae, and ultimately Leuctra. That last defeat at Leuctra, delivered by Thebes a mere 33 years after Sparta’s triumph over Athens, broke the back of Spartan power permanently, reducing Sparta to the status of a second-class power from which it never recovered. Sparta was one of the largest Greek city-states in the classical period, yet it struggled to achieve meaningful political objectives; the result of Spartan arms abroad was mostly failure. Sparta was particularly poor at logistics; while Athens could maintain armies across the Eastern Mediterranean, Sparta repeatedly struggled to keep an army in the field even within Greece. Indeed, Sparta spent the entirety of the initial phase of the Peloponnesian War, the Archidamian War (431-421 B.C.), failing to solve the basic logistical problem of operating long term in Attica, less than 150 miles overland from Sparta and just a few days on foot from the nearest friendly major port and market, Corinth. The Spartans were at best tactically and strategically uncreative. Tactically, Sparta employed the phalanx, a close-order shield and spear formation. But while elements of the hoplite phalanx are often presented in popular culture as uniquely Spartan, the formation and its equipment were common among the Greeks from at least the early fifth century, if not earlier. And beyond the phalanx, the Spartans were not innovators, slow to experiment with new tactics, combined arms, and naval operations. Instead, Spartan leaders consistently tried to solve their military problems with pitched hoplite battles. Spartan efforts to compel friendship by hoplite battle were particularly unsuccessful, as with the failed Spartan efforts to compel Corinth to rejoin the Spartan-led Peloponnesian League by force during the Corinthian War. Sparta’s military mediocrity seems inexplicable given the city-state’s popular reputation as a highly militarized society, but modern scholarship has shown that this, too, is mostly a mirage. The agoge, Sparta’s rearing system for citizen boys, frequently represented in popular culture as akin to an intense military bootcamp, in fact included no arms training or military drills and was primarily designed to instill obedience and conformity rather than skill at arms or tactics. In order to instill that obedience, the older boys were encouraged to police the younger boys with violence, with the result that even in adulthood Spartan citizens were liable to settle disputes with their fists, a tendency that predictably made them poor diplomats. But while Sparta’s military performance was merely mediocre, no better or worse than its Greek neighbors, Spartan politics makes it an exceptionally bad example for citizens or soldiers in a modern free society. Modern scholars continue to debate the degree to which ancient Sparta exercised a unique tyranny of the state over the lives of individual Spartan citizens. However, the Spartan citizenry represented only a tiny minority of people in Sparta, likely never more than 15 percent, including women of citizen status (who could not vote or hold office). Instead, the vast majority of people in Sparta, between 65 and 85 percent, were enslaved helots. (The remainder of the population was confined to Sparta’s bewildering array of noncitizen underclasses.) The figure is staggering, far higher than any other ancient Mediterranean state or, for instance, the antebellum American South, rightly termed a slave society with a third of its people enslaved.

[ceremonialmagic101]

Looks good!

Consecration of my shiny new set of Mars pentacles (day and hour of Mars, plus a waning Moon, which I feel is very helpful for the sort of malefic work these pentacles are used for) plus a little extra spellwork.

Huson’s Mars incense for works of wrath and chastisement smells vile, by the way.

I had Holst’s ‘Mars, the Bringer of War’ playing on repeat while I did the working and it ended just as I finished the ritual and closed the Circle. I love when stuff like that happens.

[ceremonialmagic101]

Sun in Libra III - Gyroscope (Oct. 12-22, 2024)

The Sun enters Libra III The Gyroscope (as named by Austin Coppock) at 4:24 pm EDT on 12 October 2024 — and remains there until 22 October 2024 at 6:15 pm EDT, making 10 days, one hour and 15 minutes. T. Susan Chang called it The Widening Gyre, referencing a poem by William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming” — which itself wonders at how fruitless it is to stand against the frightening terrors of…

[ceremonialmagic101]

The union busting firms are scared

[ceremonialmagic101]

Someone, somewhere on the internet: Both sides are the same!

Trump, meanwhile: We haven’t had a good Kristallnacht in a while, have we folks? Why don’t we do a nice little Kristallnacht, the most perfect Kristallnacht.

[ceremonialmagic101]

Sun in Libra I - The Erinyes

The Sun reaches the point of the autumnal equinox at 8:44 am EDT on 22 September 2024. It's the season of the Furies... are you living in right relationship with Five (maybe Six?) key Relationships? Maybe it's time to check.

The Sun enters Libra I, called The Blindfold and the Sword, at the moment of the Autumnal Equinox on 22 September 2024, which is 8:44 am EDT. He’ll pass through the first ten degrees of Libra in 10 days, 4 hours, and 33 minutes, arriving at Libra II on 2 October 2024 at 1:17 pm EDT. Austin Coppock developed the naming system I use, but T. Susan Chang calls this decan Blind Equilibrium, since it’s…

[ceremonialmagic101]

Do cultures that use a base twelve number system have an equivalent term to "decade" to denote twelve years?

[ceremonialmagic101]

Sun in Virgo III - 12 to 22 Sept 2024

Hestia rules Virgo III, from 12-22 September 2024. In matters of lineage, cooking, and inheritance, she reigns supreme. What mysterious dish is she preparing to serve you?

The Sun enters Virgo III The Sarcophagus (according to Austin Coppock‘s naming conventions from 36 Faces) on 12 September 2024 at 2:40 am EDT, and remains there until 22 September 2024 at 8:44 am EDT. This decan is associated with the 10 of Pentacles, showing a wealthy old man surrounded by the fruitful material benefits of his intentional wealth-building, and T. Susan Chang called this decan…

[ceremonialmagic101]

Class: Intro to Astrology

I’ve decided to teach a 10-week course in astrology, beginning October 1. The class will meet on Tuesdays at 7:00 pm. The price? $400 — although my Patreon subscribers and others are getting various discounts off of that, up to $100 in some cases. You can sign up…