The Slippery Spirit

I have had a change of thinking. I would like to reexamine a couple of esoteric symbols thanks to some recent reading. In my post on the Witch's Pyramid , I wrote the following: It has come to my attention that, in recent years, the Witches Pyramid has had ascribed to it a fifth principle: "To Go." I believe this is happening from a misguided attempt to correlate the pyramid with the pentagram. The pentagram is a very different symbol and does not discuss the hermetic principle symbolized by the pyramid. The pentagram is a symbol of the unity of the five elements of the universe, not the principles employed by hermetic students to understand how to evolve the spirit. Though I'm fine with people developing whatever mnemonic device they feel is helpful, I do not agree with inventing something that never was while claiming that it did. The pyramid has older names including the "Hermetic Quaternary" and the "Four Powers of the Magus." Both of these...

This entry is a continuation of my last blog entry on planetary sigils and kamea . It is the entry with all the math and odd speculation that makes a blog entry boring. So if reading about investigation and the process of decoding puzzles isn’t your thing, feel free to skip over this one. But if you are the least bit curious about the Solomonic sigils, you might want to take a peek. First, let’s remember that there are sigils for both the planetary intelligences and the planetary spirits. We saw in the last blog entry how those two groups of sigils are created using numerology and names. But there are also sigils simply called “planetary seals.” Here are images from around the web of how each of the planetary sigils are traditionally drawn. I will note that the seal of Saturn is my own drawing because the web is currently circulating all sorts of non-traditional garbage for what is probably the easiest drawn seal in all of ceremonial magic. (Witches, please check your work!) Si...

Recently, I was working with sigils (again). I was reviewing the methods used by modern Hoodoo practitioners to make Key of Solomon-style sigils. It’s fascinating stuff, but there are some elements that are shortcut. I’ll explore sigils here in an attempt to provide connections between several very deep topics. I apologize in advance if something I write seems as if I’m being cursory. One could likely write a long book about all this. However, as this is only a blog, my goal is to show you the connections, so that you will better experience the wonder that I felt when all this began to become meaningful for me. Mankind began with sounds, which he modulated in the mouth. That led to an attempt to make symbols to represent the sounds – as stated in the movie, The Dark Crystal, “words that stay.” Writing was born. Let’s explore speech and writing separately. Since much of what comes down to us in the Western Mystery schools comes from the Kabbalah, we should start in the Anci...