Here we are; astrological talismans and their creation by a rank amateur with no business calling forth the ancient and immensely powerful spirits of entire fucking planets. That’s right, if the glassy-eyed freak who freely admits to having a crush on David Bowie, and suggests that adding one’s own unique flair to the masturbatory process is a noble raison d’etre can create effective astrological talismans out of a hastily thrown together charm bag and some poorly drawn paper talismans, anyone can.
    First off, the election: an astrological election is a time elected by an astrologer because of specific planetary and stellar alignments. Essentially, it’s a birthchart for the creation of an object or event and like a birthchart it dictates, to some degree, the general vibes of said person, place, or thing. For those of you interested in learning more from folks who know what the fuck it is they're doing here’s a link to Chris Brennan and Leisa Scheim talking for nearly three hours about electional astrology and all the other things that tie in with that. I have learned a whole truckload of super valuable and useful astrology things from The Astrology Podcast and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to learn about astrology for free plus how could you not enjoy a podcast hosted by this guy.

    Fair warning, Chris’ voice hovers somewhere in between robotic monotone, partially reanimated corpse, exasperated emo teenager, and that teacher from Ferris Beuller’s Day Off; Ben Stein. For more magically inclined astrological podcastery check out the biannual astrology episodes of Rune Soup featuring the inimitable Austin Coppock, and Austin’s own podcast: Eavesdropping at Midnight.
    The timing for my talismans fell, quite effortlessly, into my lap through forces I will never fully comprehend. Here’s the chart for the Venus talisman which, oddly enough, was so good that the brilliant Coppock’s who run Sphere and Sundry used it as well. Check it!. That said, they used the election to much greater effect and called in a total of 5 planetary spirits during their ritual and lined up the houses better than I did. All in all, though, for a first crack at astro-magic I’d say I did pretty well.
    For those of you looking for solid elections this year, the Astrology Podcast gives away a free election every month with their astrology-of-the-month-ahead show and, if you become a patron at a certain tier they give you around 5 elections a month. Looking at those elections and the ones posted on Sphere and Sundry has been an incredibly valuable, free learning tool for me. Other options for finding elections include r/planetarymagic and various other forums dedicated to astro-magic. There are more classes available than I care to count, I believe Chris Warnock, co-author/translator of the Picatrix, still offers classes and astrological talismans at Renaissance Astrology and Austin Coppock has some prerecorded classes on his site. I’ve heard that starting with talismans of the lunar mansions, as outlined in The Picatrix, can be a decent intro to talismanic astro-magic though, as is my wont, I chose to forgo the intro and leap headfirst into the deep end. One could also make daily or weekly prayers and offerings of candles or incense to the planetary or stellar spirits one is looking to work with and see what happens. I have done this with spirits of many varieties and it works a treat.
    Speaking of prayers, finding examples of traditional prayers to the spirit you wish to petition and using those as a template, or cribbing whole sections, and adding your own personal flair and language has worked superbly well for me. Also, being comfortable enough with the gist of the prayer to go totally off-book and freestyle if the mood strikes has yielded outstanding results in my own practice. Speaking from the heart seems to be a key factor in successful evocations. As Aleister Crowley said: “The whole secret may be summarized in these four words: “Inflame thyself in praying.”

    This is easier than it may seem: It’s acting. Giving yourself completely to the words on the page, or in your heart, and feeling them “inflame” you creates a potent spiritual and magical environment conducive to inter-dimensional diplomacy and the achievement of magical goals.

    Here are some examples of the the basic ritual shape and prayers I used to petition Mars and to empower my talismans.
    - Purification by bathing and reading Psalm 51, especially verses 7-12.
    - Calling of Personal Daimon from PGM
    - Consecration of ground, and consecration of fire and incense from Drawing Spirits Into Crystals by psedo-Trithemius in Barret’s The Magus
    - Prayer: Oh Mars, you who are an honored lord and are dry and hot, mighty, weighty, unshakable of nerve, firm of heart, spiller of blood. You are strong and hardy, acute, daring, shining, agile, skillful. The lord of battle who has no fear or contemplation of anything, who strikes by instinct and trained skill at the perfect moment both on the anvil and on the battlefield. Sole helper in all your effects and in investigations thereof, strong in calculation and will to conquer, indomitable of will and drive and endlessly seeking fortune. Cause of lawsuits and battles, doer of evil to weak and strong, lover of the sons of battle and vindicator of wicked people. King of the forge and the purifying fire, hot as molten rock and sturdy as the anvil. Harnesser of destruction, channeling explosions into pure forward drive. Inexorable progress, mowing down any and all who stand in your way. I ask of you and conjure you by your names and your qualities that exist in heaven; by your fire and progress, by your drive and purification and also by your petitions to the Lord God who placed power and strength in you, gathering them in you and separating them from other planets that you might have strength and power and victory over all with great vigor.
    - Orphic Hymn to Mars
    - Conjuration: I conjure you by all your names which are in Arabic Mirrih, in Latin Mars, in Persian Bahram, in Roman and Greek Aries, in Indian Angara, in Etruscan Maris, in Babylonian Nergal, in Vedic Mangal.
    - Conjuration: I conjure you by the high God of the universe that you hear my prayer and attend to my petition and furthermore see my humility in the presence of your holy might and fill my petition. I conjure you by Samael who is the angel whom God set beside you to complete your effects and affairs.    
    - Conjuration: Mars I conjure you also by your spirit with which you have strength and potency in your works, I conjure you by your light and your radiance, by the red glow of your light and by the heart of the strong burning fire. You who are the embodiment of purification through fire and force of will, pure determination, the action and implementation of universal power, the bearer of wellfare and action through exploration and protection. Mars who is of the nature of the ardent flame, igniter of passion and reveler in battle. Commander of the forces of strength, drive, purification, protection, defending borders and expanding them through force, I conjure you by the High Throne of God and in the name of Tetragrammaton that you head my prayer in this your degree of exaltation and grant my petition and dedicate, bless, consecrate, and empower the items on this altar. Fill them with the might of your power in this your degree of exaltation and the height of your strength.
    - Talisman Prep: Draw Mars symbols on paper or parchment or cloth or rocks, compound oils or waters or tinctures.
    - Charm Bag: Draw Mars glyphs on bag and fill with plants and minerals sympathetic to Mars. Check Agrippa or Skinner or think about the qualities of Mars and what materials share those qualities: personal meaning adds a lot to these workings.
    - Talisman Consecration and Empowerment: I conjure you mighty spirit of Mars and glorious archangel Samael, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to, with the indefatigable spirit of Mars, consecrate, bless, dedicate, and empower these talismans that they may shine forth with the glow of the forge and power of the hammer of Mars in his degree of exaltation. That they radiate the pure victorious drive and unstoppable courage, the inevitable success, heightened instincts and awareness, the indefatigable energy and iron will and flaming heart of Mars at his best, the right use of universal power and action through exploration. Fill them with the calculated, tactical striking power and purifying heat of the forge so that all those who hold them shall know victory and success, and that they may stand, solid as a block of iron, as a testament to your steadfast strength and power and serve as an everlasting tribute to your implementation of universal power without bringing any harm or unnecessary stress to the lives of those who hold them or the people within their spheres of influence.
    - Talisman Enlivening: At this point I was about full to bursting of indescribable Martial power. My skin was hot and it felt like I had molten fire ants with jetpacks and rocket pants coursing through my veins instead of blood. My whole body was shaking with the raw power of this ancient, explosive power. I took a deep breath and focused all the power blasting through the room and my body into my core and lungs and hands, picked up my charm bag and pushed the glorious, fulminating, cataclysmic creative force into the bag with a forceful exhale, intending, all the while, to use the energy to enliven and empower the talisman. It was very obvious that it “woke up” immediately so I tied the bag closed with five knots and moved on to enliven the paper talismans.
    - License to Depart: Thanking God and all the spirits who attended for their aid,  requesting as they came in peace and power that they depart in the same fashion and return when called.

Image by Matthew Trupia

    Wowzers! I got jittery and Martially (or Marshally) amped up to 11 just transcribing these prayers from my ritual notebook. Which makes sense considering that it was on or near the altar throughout the working and is likely a talisman in its own right.
    For those of you thinking that Mars was a rather reckless first entity to petition for a talisman, you are right. That said, while Mars in it's degree of exaltation in Capricorn is more powerful, it is also much more stable. The whole thing came together rather quickly when, while making my standard Tuesday Mars prayers, I was struck with a massive surge of energy and the certainty that making a talisman was both within my power and a magical necessity. The surge of energy lasted from that Tuesday until the following Sunday providing more than enough maddening Martial motivation and energy to propel me, sleepless, through five straight days of research, magic, and ritual preparation.

    That's all I've got for y'all this week. Let me know in the comments what you think and if you have had any interesting experiences with astrological magic, or magical magpie-ism, or anything else on your mind.
    See y'all next time.

    Sorry for the lateness of this post, it would have been posted last week on Wednesday only, a giant kingfisher pecked me into my duvet cover and then a frog stole my shoes. I’ve only just managed to wriggle out the bottom of my bed, tearing my last clean pair of jodhpurs on a magic hedgehog. Luckily the frog left me my slippers and a life in which shoes and jodhpurs optional.
    To make up for my fecklessness I present to you part one of a long as post about astrological magic and magical magpie-ism. So circle up you miniaturized mercurial manta rays, you pulchritudinous potato poems for another journey through time and space...

    A little less than a year ago in late March just as we in the USA were realizing that the shut down of the entire world also included us, I was called, quite loudly, to begin researching and preparing to make some astrological talismans in the style of The Picatrix. Astrological talismans and talismanic materia have been on my radar for a few years now thanks to Handsome Man-strologer Austin Coppock and his brilliant astro-sorceress wife Caitlin who run Sphere and Sundry. Making said talismans and materia had crossed my mind but, given my complete lack of astrology training and limited understanding of the ensorcelling required for the ritual, I figured it would have to be a project that some future-Tyler would sort out after present-Tyler did a whole shit-ton more research and learning. Not the case. As usual, going with my gut and studying the things I was nudged/called to study totally worked out because, as you will see below, I “randomly” stumbled on to an amazing magical election. Using the prayer and praxis from the Picatrix and some prayers and TEK from Drawing Spirits Into Crystals, and borrowing some of the beautiful wording from Jyotish planetary prayers I called forth, invoked, and petitioned the spirits of Mars and Venus as well as the angels and intelligences of their spheres and had them empower some talismans.

    David Bowie, Marc Bolan, The Glitter Twins: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Sir William Blake, Greg Traw, Sarah Eisenlohr, The Avalanches, Daft Punk, Justice, and Beck. These are all excellent examples of humans who borrow shiny bits and pieces from the world at large and recombine them into something completely new, something greater than the sum of its parts. A beautiful chimera, unique and futuristic, cobbled together from the glittering refuse of the past. These masterful, majestic magpies unmake and take apart the world we take for granted, they strip it down to its component parts and then they take the bits that speak to them and create the Frankenstein monster of the motherfucking future from the bombastic bones of the past.

Greg Traw's psychedelic magic masterpiece the Dracxiodos Tarot

    All this is to say that while I appreciate the skills stances of grimoire purism and reconstructionism just as I appreciate the skills and stances of classical musicians; there is certainly value in traditionalism and reconstructing the rituals, and or concerts, of the past. It’s just not the way I roll. My whole life has been spent experimenting with what the different combinations of skittles in the packet taste like, adding brown gravy to my kalbi ribs and mac salad, and bravely combining drugs to test for synergy in the test tube that serves as my brain.

    David Bowie has been a roll model/crush/idle/idol of mine for way longer than is appropriate. So it stands to reason that I would end up a musical, masticatory, and magical magpie as well. Magic is a living tradition and one of my favorite parts of being alive is innovation and finding what works for us as individuals, taking what we need and leaving the rest. Developing our own unique ways of being true to ourselves in whatever we do: magic, music, filing TPS reports, writing, delivering mail, dancing, eating, cooking, or masturbating seems like as noble a reason for living as any other.
    Alright, in typical Myrrhkwood fashion, we started down a path headed for a clear and easily reachable destination and have become waylaid by the shiny fairy lights. That is, however, the very nature of the forest and Myrrhkwood is about as foresty as a forest can be: it may in fact be the forestyest forest that ever did forest… Damn it’s dark. Where did that trail go?
  
    To be continued…

    Well hello there my Microscopic Messianic Morris Days, my Breviloquent Bacterial Buddhas, my Lilliputian Light Bringers, and my Exiguous Enlightened ones. How’s everybody's 2021 going? Feeling that shift from the stability of the Earth cycle into the chaos of the Air cycle? Even I, atop my favorite tree in a densely wooded nature preserve surrounded by small mammals, the queen of the forest, and the crowned king of all birds, can feel the shift. Things are loosening, possibilities are blooming, chaos is here, and I am here for it. It’s been all over the news so I shan’t belabor the point but I don’t think a bunch of the rowdiest members of either party have stormed the capitol since they used to beat each other with canes and challenge one another to duels during senate debates. I’m pretty sure the whole thing was staged but even still; I don’t think that sort of political theater could have taken place in the era of dry, rigid Earth.
    Things have become more fluid and flexible, fickly fluctuating forcibly faster as we move into the new mercurial mutability of the actual age of Aquarius. I am well aware that astrologically Aquarius is neither a mutable sign nor under the rulership Mercury and that Saturn is still in charge. That said, compared to Capricorn, Aquarius is the absolute avatar of all things airy and the exquisite emperor of electric exchange.
    One of the most noticeable shifts I have experienced is a loosening of linear time. Time has always been fairly malleable around me and I’ve never been even partially sold on the idea of linear time. I have for most of my life been that asshole who’s excuse for being late is, “calm down; time is an illusion”.

     Insert perfect segue here...

    Since I was very small I have been able to dream the future. Never anything life shattering or even interesting; mostly they are dreams of totally mundane activities featuring people I have yet to meet and places I have yet to go. The common features are that upon waking I am very aware that I just had a “special” or prophetic dream, which is then stored very securely in my mind-tank, that I am completely astounded, and that official reality is outright obliterated for a time upon the fulfillment of said dream. This speaks directly to the malleability of time or at the very least our natural ability to move around in the current.
    Speaking of skinny dipping in the streams of seconds and sometimes, here's a tiny piece of TEK from the sewage of the new age movement that I find super useful and which has become even more powerful since the grand conjunction. Praying or sending good energy to your past and future selves. This sounds super lame and cheesy but I promise it works and it takes 5 minutes. I try to stick to a set time every day to build up some thickness around the practice but any time you think of it is great. Just sit quietly and pray for your past self for a few minutes. You can think of a specific challenging time from your past, or a specific year or period in your life, or you can just shower all of your past selves with love and joy and comfort. The important part is really feeling the love, joy, comfort, or whatever you think past-you could use. Then spend a few minutes doing the same for your future-self. If you turn this into a daily practice then you can be sure that at any given moment your past and future selves are blasting you with love, joy, comfort, or whatever you’re into.
    A great way to get a visceral feel for the obsolescence and utter nonsensical balderdashery of the notion of linear time is to take psychedelics. (I am in no way advocating the illegal purchase and consumption of any drug… I am, however strongly advocating the use of psychedelics as a whole so find a state, province, or country in which you can safely and legally do that).
    I recently had the opportunity to participate in my third ayahuasca ceremony and the ludicrousness of linear time was one of the main things I was shown (that I could wrap my tiny mind around). Specifically, this irrationality was illustrated by elucidating the fact that everything is happening all at once by showing me what “time” was by removing me from it and folding the flimsy, static cube in on itself until it had shifted from a cube crawling with the unfathomable shifting patterns of life into a toroidal shape shimmering in the regalia of the Eternal Now.

This is a Torus

    There is only one ceremony, and it’s always happening. During this most recent ceremony I was shown that it was inextricably linked to my first ceremony in September. I would open my eyes and be experiencing my first ceremony through/as my past-self in September. This experience connected with and made sense of some of the more obscure visions I had last year apparently because I was experiencing parts of my January ceremony in September.
    Brain broken yet? Are you feeling the presence of the infinite cactus-bird king and the divine love of Ayahuasca? Can you feel its giant eye gazing upon your limited view of the world with boundless compassion? Have you given up all hope of understanding a fucking thing in this rambling, drug-addled, boondoggle of a blog post? Well let me bail you out by amending to the ending of this post which is a-wending through the time that we are spending and the veils which I am rending a small review of a book that is a-trending within the magical community I’m attending.
    Nailed it.

    Aiden Wachter’s latest book “Weaving Fate” is exactly the right book for this moment in what we’re misapprehending as linear time. Published 08/31/2020, Weaving Fate outlines three or four practices which, with all of the chaos the air cycle is set to unleash, seem invaluable at this moment. This book seems geared toward beginners in that there are a lot of definitions of fairly basic words and concepts like “liminality” and explaining in great detail why the stories we tell ourselves about our past impact our present and future, which I must admit annoyed the absolute shit out of me when I first picked it up. Full disclosure, I had done a fairly involved Mars working earlier that day and it seems likely, if not certain, that my annoyance could be attributed to the god of war and short fuses. Even with my mounting Martial malcontentment I soldiered on, spurred forward by the scads of glowing reviews from the magical community. And I’m so glad I did. The TEK in this book is well worth the asking price. Basically, Weaving Fate is a step by step manual on creating a better life by fucking with time! This is achieved mainly through a dedicated hypersigil journal (The Black Book) in which we write about future events as if they had just happened, a “visualization” or journeying process (The Corridor) in which we visit our past selves and alter the past by providing love and support and advice or sometimes just a different perspective on, or reaction to, the things which hurt us, and another journeying practice in which we uncover traumas from our past and transmute and reclaim the energy that got stuck there (The Fever Stone). My only real issue with this book is that, because of how fucked up I made my life, I already knew a lot of the practices he outlines for dealing with past trauma. Said another way, this book wasn’t written specifically for me and because I was all maxed out on Mars Milk I got annoyed (boo-hoo). Even  the heat of the Forge Master himself wasn’t enough to dissuade me from reading through the whole book in one sitting. Weaving Fate is a well written, informative, massively useful, infinitely accessible, magic book that I highly recommend to practitioners of any skill level or cosmology. Aiden Wachter’s instructions are clear and easy to follow, there is no dogma nor any specific deities necessary to this work, it comes jailbroken for the reader to insert whichever spirits or energies with whom they have an existing relationship. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I read it before this latest ceremony through a series of nudges from my guides and, as always it was the perfect thing for right now. We have an amazing opportunity in this moment of chaos and fluidity to change our past, change our present, and change our future and Aiden Wachter’s Weaving Fate has everything we need to get started.
    I truly love magic books and books on magic, especially ones in which you can actually taste that magic is present, and as such I will likely be including more reviews of my favorites as the year unfolds.
    
    Alright y’all, we did it. That’s all for this week. Stay healthy, stay joyful, and go out and fuck with every bit of time and space that you can get your spirit-fingers on. I’m pretty sure we’re here to have a good time and explore and experience this crazy universe or universe-simulator or whatever-the-fuck this is so, I dunno, go eat some (legal) psychedelics and see what you can do.

This is a Taurus Torus

    2020 just couldn’t let us leave it behind without one last fuck you. One last slashing of the tires, brick through the window, flaming pile of dogshit in the passenger seat, a small man reported missing then left bound and gagged in the trunk while it trained a bird to shit on the bridge of your nose, and called your mother and told her that you actually missed thanksgiving to get high with your friends. 2020 ruined the times square ball drop with the fierceness and panache of a lion in platform high heels winning RuPauls drag race by eating half the contestants with its dick tucked.

    I’ve never really cared about the NYC NYE nonsense. My early new years eves were spent with my family trying to stay awake while watching the disney channel’s NYE programming and, after I had discovered the blessed anesthesia of drugs, my adolescent and adult New Year’s plans usually consisted of experimenting with said anesthetics. The juxtaposition of wholesome Disney childhood and train spotting adulthood is a solid representation of my life as a whole: my two favorite movies being The Princess Bride and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I was told once that being able to hold two diametrically opposed thoughts in one’s head at the same time was an indication of intelligence or he might have said it was an indication of a chemical imbalance. Who remembers?

    Moving on. If any of you missed the absolute Hindenburg that was NYE 2021 live coverage do yourself a favor and click this link and come back.
    Now that you’re back or, having already seen the most depressing thing ever because you watched it live, are in the process of setting your hair on fire to cleanse your brain of the nightmares it has induced, let me point out something that struck me as horrifying beyond all reason. There are more wacky-waving-inflatable-arm-flailing-tube-men celebrating in times square than there are living human beings. When our plastic alien overlords watch whatever footage of this night that survives the great, wiggly uprising they will mark NYE 2021 as the moment that the wacky-waving-inflatable-arm-flailing-tube-men began their takeover of the USA. Herding the humans into pens and making them wear large madhatter-esque top hats emblazoned with Planet Fitness logos to brand them the property of their capering captors, as the wacky-waving-inflatable-arm-flailing-tube-men danced, flailed, and jeered from the sidewalk creating an hilariously impenetrable border.

    The few people there were in that human zoo were forced to smile and dance to sad harmonica music and old standards as the cameras panned between a grand total of 25 people over the course of the 5 hours of live coverage from Time Square. Shunning the typical Jock-Jams associated with New Years Eve in fear of provoking their inflatable captors, the music played that night seemed to vacillate between psych-ward-sleepy-time music and a suicidally depressed robot learning to play the harmonica. When the ball dropped, the plastic poo-bahs amped things up by playing the classic Sinatra jam, New York New York, followed by Somewhere over the Rainbow by Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwoʻole.
    The prisoners in their little pens were constantly sprayed with experimental hallucinogens and anti depressants and military grade amphetamines from the wacky-waving-inflatable-arm-flailing-tube-gaurds to keep them placid, smiling, and dancing for the cameras. Which, again, had only 25 people to cut to.
    Thanks and praise be to our plastic Planet Fitness overlords and their wacky-waving-inflatable-arm-flailing-enforcers. All hail the Boneless Old Gods of Planet Fitness!
  
    Best. New Years. Ever.