“In Venus as Mother: to Soothe a Grieving Heart, Ivy Senna draws on Venus as the Great Mother, a ‘vital principle of the visible universe’, to offer a rite to soothe our grieving hearts, calling upon Socodiah through the usage of the First Pentacle of Venus as a vessel of communication, along with additional rites…

Inspired by Sfinga and Key (authors of withcunningandcommand.com), I decided to try my hand at PGM VII.505-28: Meeting With Your Own Daimon. The purpose of the rite is as the name says— it is a rite that allows you to meet your own personal daimon.  If there is something I wish I did before attempting…

For the past few weeks, I have been experimenting with several rites from the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM). The PGM can feel intimidating to a newcomer, especially if they lack knowledge of Greco-Egyptian myths and magic. However, I believe that everyone has to start from somewhere, and the PGM is as good a place as…

In the occult community, I tend to go by the name of ‘Ivy’. My dear friend Red has written about the significance of names in a prior post, so I won’t repeat what she said. Instead, I wish to contemplate on why I have chosen that name for myself and how the mask I wore…

Due to my own interest and the interests of several friends of mine, I have decided to share my personal translation a little Thai grimoire known in English as the “Book of Saiyasart” (ตำราไสยศาสตร์). When translating names of people mentioned in the book, I’ve attempted to make the transliteration as faithful to how it phonetically…

In present day Thailand, Varuna or Varun is called by the name of Phra Pirun (or occasionally, Virun). As a god dressed in kingly garbs, wielding a sword-staff in one hand and riding upon a naga, Lord Pirun is revered as a local god of rain and agriculture. For this reason, it is him who…

Rahu, in astrological terms, is known as the North Node. It is also called the Caput Draconis or the Head of the Dragon. Due to how its function is to externalize the deep-rooted faults within the individual, it is considered to be a malefic shadow planet. Rahu, and other similar shadow planets such as Ketu,…

For a very long time, I have understood the Mother — the All-Mother, the Great Mother, the Great Goddess, or simply the Mother — as Freya or Frau Holda. For those interested, Varga wrote an intriguing post on Freyja here. To me, however, she is the heaven and earth itself, a goddess whose appearance is…

Cosmology is often depicted in a form of duality: heaven and hell, the above and below, the chthonic and ouranic, and the sky and sea. Yet, throughout history, this has not always been the case. It is only after the popularization of Platonism did the distinction between the celestial and the chthonic, and between Theurgy…

The naga, revered and feared in Thai as the phaya nak or the nak, is a serpent with a variety of depictions ranging from a river serpent and bringer of rain to being a protector of Buddha or a benevolent deity. There are two main schools of thought that attempt to explain the origins of…