Fashion and other alterations of the appearance are mind-altering substances, for both the wearer and the witness. This is magnified in the context of magic, and magic itself is amplified through these.
Category: Physiognomy
The Secret Sciences
Restoring the Old Literary Canon for Magic
In order for us to understand the medieval and renaissance mindset, we have to understand what they were reading.
Trying to rebuild the assumptions and cultural context of the authors of books of magic is essential, and thus becoming well versed in the literary and scientific canon of those eras is helpful and perhaps mandatory.
At the very least, it is deeply beautiful and enriching.
Introduction To Traditional Astrology @ ConVocation
Clifford Hartleigh Low’s lecture on “Introduction To Tradtional Astrology” at ConVocation 2014. This lecture covers the core metaphors of Astrology, the metaphysical cosmology of Western Traditional Astrology, the differences between Modern and Traditional Astrology, the structure of the Horoscope chart, the basics of Traditional Horary Astrology, and much much more…
Jupiter For Weight Loss
Pro Tip: Contrary to what you may have heard, Jupiter talismans are fantastic for weight loss. Remember that Jupiter creates beauty moreso than Venus, and that Jupiter is a temperate planet and balances out all excesses and extremes. Even contemporary science reveals that symmetrical faces and bodies are deemed beautiful over unbalanced ones.Jupiter also governs exercise, and eases pain generally.
Marvelous Magics
Picatrix Rubeus page 128:
“The great sage Plato, however, wrote two books about magic, that is, the Greater and the Lesser. In the Greater he wrote about the effects of the figures of heaven, from which he described great marvels, such as walking upon water, and changing into the form of any animal you desire, or into some composite form never before heard of in this world, and calling down rain at times when it ought not to rain and preventing rain when it ought to rain, and making stars move and cast down rays out of their proper times, and burning down hostile cities as well as ships at sea and remote places that you wish to burn, and ascending into the air, and making stars appear at times incongruent for their appearance so that they seem to fall from heaven, and speaking with the dead, and making it appear as though the Sun and Moon were divided into many parts, and making ropes and spears appear to be serpents and dragons, eating anyone they encounter, and making long and short journeys pass in the blink of an eye.
“All the foregoing that we have described are brought about by the powers and virtues of figures and by the strong attraction of spirits that will be obedient to us, and by the strong composition of the bodies of the figures of materials brought together from this inferior world. From these come the spiritual motions that move all bodies, by which motions marvels are brought about, as well as works that are not done by human beings, but appear to belong almost to the category of miracles.”
This may be the most important passage in Picatrix, because it illustrates the most advanced forms of astrological magic and what once it was capable of, and perhaps someday again.
If you think it’s all preposterous, I can tell you I’ve seen some of those things happen– and if those are true, why not the others?