I first learned about Solomonicum from a random post on the Facebook Group Solomonic - Secrets of the Magickal Grimoires. Someone posted some theories about some of the writing on the Grand Pentacle of Solomon (if you have access to this closed group, [this] is the post I’m talking about) and Aaron Leitch commented with an image from The Virga Aurea showing the letters of the Solomonicum alphabet.
I found a much clearer illustration of the alphabet in a PDF of a French paper by Pierre Manoury (found [here]) titled, Cours de Haute Magie de Sorcellerie Pratique & de Voyance - Volume 1. My piecemeal google translation of the title is something like, “A course in high magic and the practice of witchcraft and clairvoyance” or.. something along those lines.. maybe?
While it is clear Solomonicum follows the standard esoteric pattern of being modeled after the structure of Hebrew, I have only been able to find very few references to it by name, so I’m not even sure how prevalent it really is within the grimoire tradition.
The Alchemy Site has a very nice page dedicated to The Virga Aurea (which it then also links to the Kircher Shemhamphorash diagram, which I thought was neat), which you can find [here] (and archived [here]). The bit from The Virga Aurea which shows Solomonicum looks like this:
And the figure from the Manoury paper looks like this:
I noticed that the original PDF link to
Manoury’s Cours de Haute Magie de Sorcellerie Pratique & de Voyance - Volume 1 was no longer working. I found it again and updated the URL in the link on the original post.
Working with the Cthulhu Mythos: A practical guide to Lovecraft’s lore
You likely have at least a passing familiarity with the Cthulhu Mythos. The image of a gigantic many-tentacled monstrosity pouring through a hole in space-time has, in the span of a few decades, risen from obscure out-of-print pulp fiction to become nearly archetypal. Yet I find that much of what has been written about the Cthulhu Mythos in a magical or spiritual context has been limited, not…
There are a million names for the devil, depending on which mask he wears when he leaves his home. Not even the devil’s gender is static, changing form as necessity dictates. He is all things, all potentialities, transgressions and taboos. A fiction we animate with the socially undesirable tendencies of mankind.
The role of the mask in humanity is ancient and beyond complex. It forms a centerpiece of the oldest magics, the tool through which the ancient practitioner could transform into other animal shapes, taking the role of that being in order to more fully understand its ways.
By the genesis of western civilization masks had been indelibly marked onto the conscious of humanity. Throughout the world, from African village to Chinese temples, from Icelandic longhouse to Amazonian forest the mask is present in the practice of ritual and the making of magic.
When we look closely at the ritual use of masks certain fundamentals appear. That the mask represents a being of the other is near universal. That said being is bound in some form to the practitioner and their lineage is commonplace. The mask as transformative tool in both group ritual and solitary spiritual practice finds its roots in the dawn of homo sapiens. The earliest rock carvings depicting humans in animal masks carbon dating to 30-50k years ago. A stone mask from the pre-ceramic neolithic period dates to circa 9000 BC and is likely the oldest mask in the world, held at the Musée de la Bible et de la Terre Sainte.
Over the past few centuries the use of masks has waned considerably in contemporary magic, though their presence in public and private ritual is found historically throughout Europe from Scottish Mummers and Guisers to Austrian Perchta and Krampus. The ancient Grecian Mystery schools utilized masks in their subterranean theaters, as many before them in conjunction with entheogenic substances. The Romans left behind masks used in their cult of Mithras from the 3rd century.
But what is a mask to a contemporary magician/folkwitch? How do these tools help us in our practice? By the same methods they have for countless millennia. They allow us to change our physical characteristics outwardly so that we may become a better vessel for that which we desire to occupy us in our state of transcendence.
A mask is a personality, a role that we play, a spirit that rides us. Its place in ritual may have been forgotten but it remains an unassailable tool in the transformation of the psyche and the prosthetic transformation of the physical form we take.
The traditional nature of Hallowe'en is one where the mask we choose identifies us as belonging to a group of specific spirits and wights. We become the very goblins we intend to avoid, wreaking havoc on our neighbors in our anonymity, plying the public for bribes in order to stay our vengeful hand. Under bonfire lights, the air full of the scent of autumn decay, the mask provides danger at that peak moment when the Veil has almost lifted. We may guess at the identity of the wearer, but what lurks behind those eyes we can not truly know.
Whether solitary or in groups the practice of mask wearing during ritual is a useful tool that can transform us, giving us that push into the Beyond we need in order to become that Other that we seek. Yet it is important to choose one’s masks wisely, for what we become when they are donned is often not as we expect and the ride we are taken on by the spirits that guide us may lead to roads we had no intention of exploring.
~Traditional Witchcraft, Gemma Gary
The Red Serpent of the East Road
The White Hare of the South Road
The Grey Toad of the West Road
The Black Crow of the North Road
Pick up the deck of your choice and think of a question. Pick a question that means something to you. Something where the answer could honestly scare or disappoint you.
Then pick the card that you’re most afraid of getting. You may not know that one right off the top of your head. Go through your deck. You’ll likely know it when you see it by the pang of fear it strikes into your heart. You might even have two or more.
Put your selection in front of you, as your reading. It’s time to pretend the worst has happened. Acknowledge what that would mean for you. How that would look, how you would feel. You don’t have to live through it, or even feel it at all, you just have to understand what this outcome would mean for you.
So the question is: now what?
Ask yourself – and the cards – follow up questions like:
What can I do to prevent this outcome?
What can I do to change direction if this comes to pass?
How will I feel in this situation?
How can I make the most of these circumstances?
What other options do I have?
The actual questions may depend on your situation and cards, but I think these are pretty broad enough to get started with.
So here’s the fun part – you can do this any time. You’re pretending now, but you don’t have to be afraid to see those cards in a real spread, because you know that getting them isn’t the end of the reading.
If the outcome is your worst nightmare, then seeing it coming gives you the tools to deal with it, and possibly even alter it! Use the cards to face it head on, rather than hiding from it and letting it catch you unawares.
And if the worst happens and you can’t change it, then at least you’re able to prepare yourself, to make sure you’re in the best position you can be when it hits, and to already have a plan in place for the aftermath.
Practice doing this a few times, whether you follow it up with a real reading or not, and see if you can get more comfortable with the risk of a “bad” outcome!
Hidden like Viking gold under the landscape there is a rich body of nearly lost folkwitch tradition hiding in plain sight on the internet. Particularly in the 18th and 19th century antiquarians, folklorists and ethnologists documented the rural and occasionally urban folk beliefs of practically all of the UK and much of Europe. Organizations like the Folklore Society, founded in 1878, were created to help catalog and publish this body of collected ethnological data. A vast repository of a spectrum of witch and cunning craft practices.
Below are a list of links to various sources on the internet. The non Abramhamic roots of British folk traditions date from an era of Celtic settlers, and thus much of the spirit tradition concerns beings we now collectively call “fairies”, though their origins and nature differ greatly.
Books Available Online for free:
Folklore Society/Folk-Lore Journal:
Over 100 publications made by the Folk-Lore Society can be found on Archive.org. Unfortunately these are mostly unsorted, although they represent a massive amount of folkwitch information. Particularly in the realm of curses, hexes, salves, second sight, and boundary magic.
I will be launching a separate blog dedicated to delving into the contents of the Folklore Society’s publications in the next few weeks. In the meantime - Happy digging: Link to archive of FOLKLORE JOURNAL
Books whose content focuses on first-hand accounts of folk traditions, alpha by author. (* denotes particularly important titles)
Benjamin Thorpe
-Northern Mythology, Comprising the Principal Popular Traditions and Superstitions of Scandinavia, North Germany, and the Netherlands Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3
Lady Wilde
- Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland * Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3
This may seem out of left field but I'm just starting to get my feet wet when it comes to witchcraft and I was wondering if I can get your opinion on the "Traditional Witchcraft" genre of witchcraft. Not sure if genre is the right word here. any thoughts on this that might be helpful?
One thing I’d ask people, at least before they spent their money, is “what they’re looking for” when it comes to books on witchcraft?
When it comes to “traditional witchcraft” and the assorted books, if you’re hoping to find “accurate, factual witchcraft related practices just like they’d have been practiced in 1736 CE by Ol’ Grandma One-eye*” then you are probably going to be highly disappointed. Most books of the above mentioned genre are, at the very least, based on a few traditional elements long held to be associated with the practice of witchcraft, but they are not accurate representations of what people were probably doing back in the day when they were accused of witchcraft.** They’re more like a poetic expression put down by moderns to help capture the so-called “spirit of witchcraft.”
For example, Nigel Jackson’s Masks of Misrule and Call of the Horned Piper has excellent materials in it; references to mumming, visits to the Venusberg, and a number of other associations that are actually traditional. But none of the rituals therein predate this century - hell, I’d be surprised if they predated the last 50 years. But, unlike historically accurate texts written by actual historians, they have materials you can use, and they do manage to capture that aforementioned spirit to a certain degree.
Even if he made everything up, though? I still think Andrew Chumbley’s work is amazing, at least insofar as his art and ability to use archaic language goes. Schulke and a few others also get the same nod.
* Ol Grandma One-eye was made up for the purposes of this reponse and did not ever physically exist in this world.
** The question of how often the accused actually practiced what they were accused of is questionable in and of itself; without a doubt people cursed each other, got up to weird shit at the edges of their urban environments, etc. But not all of them, and sorting between the trials where evidence suggests something was occurring and the trials where someone was falsely accused and then tortured into confessing is a lot harder than it sounds. Thus, I mean really, all traditional witchcraft is somewhat (at least) questionable because we can’t actually claim a living, continued tradition of the practice of witchcraft exists from the past to today. Unless we mean the word tradition to refer to knowledge passed from mouth to ear between practitioners, in which case it need not be ‘living’.
‘On certain nights when their bruthain (bowers) are open and their lamps are lit, and the song and the dance are moving merrily, the fairies may be heard singing lightheartedly:–
Not of the seed of Adam are we, Nor is Abraham our father; But of the seed of the Proud Angel, Driven forth from Heaven.’
“Austin Osman Spare, a painter and draughtsman of great skill and originality, carried out researches in the sphere of occultism which have remained until now almost unknown to the world at large. On his death in 1956, however, a great quantity of material was discovered which throws much light on the psycho-magical philosophy which he expressed largely through the medium of his art.
I have presented the main points of this philosophy in a book which is nearing completion, but here are some of its essential features minus the large quantity of quotations drawn from unpublished material which Spare bequeathed to me at the time of his death.
When referring to himself in relation to his magical philosophy Spare usually identified himself with a concept which he named Zos, and he is alluded to as such throughout this essay.
He explained this concept in ‘The Book of Pleasure’ (1913) thus: “The body considered as a whole I call Zos”; it was the alembic through which he wrought the alchemy of his art as well as his no less individualistic mode of magic. The symbol complementary to this Zos concept he called the Kia or Atmospheric ‘I,’ which uses Zos as its special field of activity. The cult of the Zos and the Kia is the cult of the interplay of dynamic forces which are further symbolised anthropomorphically by the hand and the eye. These, in complete co-ordination, enable the artist-magician to summon hidden images which are latent in the storehouse of cosmic sub-consciousness. All-feeling Touch and all-seeing Vision are the instruments of that primal id, or desire, which Zos is ever seeking to reify in the raiment of flesh.”
Anonymous
