Category: magic

Deer Antler Ritual Mjolnir

Troll Blood, Deer Antler Ritual Mjolnir

Troll Blood is a craftsman for Bear Claw Handcraft, who works with antler, bone, leather, hides, wood and metal. Mjolnir is the name for the god Thor’s hammer. Though most famous for as a weapon, Mjolnir played a role in Norse religious practices and rituals, used in formal ceremonies to bless marriages, births and funerals, as described in the Old Norse 13th century work of literature “Snorra Edda”. This work is ascribed to the Icelandic scholar and historian Snorri Sturluson.

The Fak Hongs

Artist Unknown,  Circa-1930 Stone lLthograph for the Magician Troupe  “The Fak Hongs”

In the first decades of the twentieth-century, a type of magic show known as the “Oriental Magician” was very popular. The early exploration of China at the turn of the century by Europeans provided material for practicing magicians to incorporate into their performances. A type of magic show known as the “Oriental Magician”, in which Western magicians donned stereotypical oriental attire, became very popular throughout Europe. 

One of these was the magician Fak Hong, a European who performed in Japanese robes and haircut similar to those of samurai warriors. Renowned throughout Europe during the 1920s and 1930s, his troupe, the Fak-Hongs”, dressed as Asian mystics and performed such magic as levitation and cutting women in half. 

Due to his show’s popularity, Fak Hong formed a second troupe which was led by the illusionist Chang, the stage name of Juan José Pablo Jesorum, a native of Panama. The two groups, now known collectively as “Chang and Fak-Hong’s United Magicians” successfully toured Europe, America, and South America. Several of their performances highlighted illusions such as “Invisible Man”, “Hari-Kari”, “Noah’s Ark”, and “Night in Tokyo”.

Djinn

Artists Unknown, Djinn

According to pre-Islamic lore, the djinn are born of smokeless fire (which in modern terms could be plasma). They live very long lives but they are not immortal.  According to some accounts, they live with other supernatural beings in the Kaf, a mythical range of emerald mountains that encircles the Earth.  In modern terms, they live in a parallel dimension.

The djinn like to roam the deserts and wilderness and inhabit caves. They are usually invisible, but have the power to shape-shift to any form, be it insect, animal, human, or entity. They have long been regarded as malicious and dangerous, capable of bringing bad luck, illness, disaster and death. Even when granting favors, they have a trickster nature and can twist events for the worse.

Though the djinn can be conjured in magical rites, they are difficult to control. One individual said to have complete power over the djinn was the legendary Biblical King Solomon. God gave Solomon a copper and iron magic ring that enabled him to subdue djinn, and which protected him from their powers. In some accounts, the ring was inscribed with a pentacle, and in other accounts it was set with a gem, probably a diamond, that had a living force of its own. With the ring, Solomon branded the necks of the djinn as his slaves and set them to working building the first Temple of Jerusalem and even the entire city of Jerusalem.

Major General JFC Fuller

The Portal Paintings by

Top Image: “The Portal of the First Order- Building of the Pyramid”, 1909

Bottom Image: “The Portal of the Second Order- Knowledge and Conversation”

Major-General John Frederick Charles Fuller was a British Army officer, military historian, and strategist, notable as an early theorist of modern armoured warfare, including categorizing principles of warfare. With 45 books and many articles,, he was a highly prolific author whose ideas reached army officers and the interested public. He explored the business of fighting, in terms of the relationship between warfare and social, political, and economic factors in the civilian sector.

Fuller had an occultist side that oddly mixed with his military side. He was an early disciple of English poet and magician Aleister Crowley, and was very familiar with his and other forms of magick and mysticism. During this period of his life, he wrote “The Treasure House of Images”, edited early sections of Crowley’s magical autobiography “The Temple of Solomon the King” and produced highly regarded paintings dealing with A∴A∴ teachings: these paintings have been used in recent years as the covers of the journal’s revival, “The Equinox, Volume IV”.

Scrying

Scrying

Scrying, from the Old English word descry meaning “ to make out dimly”, is the divination of distant or future events based on an analysis of reflections in water, on polished metal, or on precious stones. This was practiced by early humans, who probably interpreted these phenomena as a vision of the spirit world. Scrying became widespread by the 5th century AD and was later condemned by the medieval Christian church as the work of the devil.

One of the earliest written works of scrying comes from The Shahnameh, a historical epic work written in the late 10th century. Used in pre-Islamic Persia the epic gives a description of the Cup of Jamshid or Jaam-e Jam, as a cup of divination which, according to mythology, was long possessed by the rulers of ancient Greater Iran. The cup was filled with an elixir of immortality and was used for scrying. Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda explains that one could observe all the seven heavens of the universe by looking into the elixir and the whole world was reflected in it. In popular stories such as The Heroic Legend of Arslan, the cup is depicted as a crystal ball. Helen Zimmern’s English translation of the Shahnameh uses the term “crystal globe”.

In 1958, Classical Greek archaeologist, Sotiris Dakaris discovered a scrying center near the Dodona oracle. This temple was described by Homer and Herodotus, as a place where people would sit in complete darkness while awaiting their turn in front of the oracle. An extensive maze led to a long hallway where the ‘gazing’ would take place. Dakaris found the remnants of a bronze cauldron ringed with a banister which made it appear that people stand around the cauldron and gaze into it’s contents for enlightenment or visions.

Sigils

Sigils

The term sigil derives from the Latin sigillum, meaning “seal”, though it may also be related to the Hebrew סגולה (segula meaning “word, action, or item of spiritual effect, talisman”). The current use of the term is derived from Renaissance magic, which was in turn inspired by the magical traditions of antiquity.

In medieval ceremonial magic, the term sigil was commonly used to refer to occult signs which represented various angels and demons which the magician might summon. The magical training books called grimoires often listed pages of such sigils.  Such sigils were considered to be the equivalent of the true name of the spirit and thus granted the magician a supposed measure of control over the beings.

A common method of creating the sigils of certain spirits was to use kameas (magic squares) — the names of the spirits were converted to numbers, which were then located on the magic square. The locations were then connected by lines, forming an abstract figure.

The use of symbols for magical or cultic purposes has been widespread since at least the Neolithic era. Some examples from other cultures include the yantra from Hindu tantra, historical runic magic among the Germanic peoples, or the use of veves in Voudon.

The Fascinus

 

The Fascinus

In ancient Rome, the fascinus was the embodiment of the divine phallus, with the effigy or amulet in the shape of a penis known as a fascinum. From the Latin word ‘fascinum’ and the related verb ‘fascinare’ comes the English word ‘fascinate’, meaning to enchant or bewitch using the power of the fascinus. It was believed in ancient Rome that a hostile look or evil eye would bring a curse or misfortune; envy was thought to bring ill fortune to the person envied.

The humorous fascinus was believed to work as a ‘medicus invidiae’ or ‘doctor of envy’ by making people laugh and thus preventing any jealous or malicious glances towards the person who held or wore the amulet. The phallus amulet is often winged or enlarged in appearance. Representations of ithe amulet’s effect on the evil eye’s potency can be seen in ancient Roman artworks. A first=century terracotta sculpture shows two phalluses with arms and legs working together to saw an eyeball in half.