Nine-Tailed Fox on the Loose?

Here's an odd story out of Japan. An ancient stone that is said to have contained the spirit of a kitsume, a nine-tailed fox spirit, has cracked in half. Some have speculated that the breaking of the rock may have released the kitsume, which I guess would have then run off to do whatever nine-tailed fox things happen to be. Kitsumes are not exactly "demons" in the Western sense, but they are known to be tricksters and according to folklore this particular one is said to have attempted to kill the 12th-century Japanese emperor Toba.

A large volcanic rock said to immediately kill anyone that touches it, the Sessho-seki stone, is deeply embedded in Japanese mythology and is said to be the transformed corpse of the mythological Tamamo-no-Mae. Tamamo-no-Mae was supposedly a beautiful woman whose spirit was possessed by the nine-tailed fox, or kitsune, a demon spirit known for trickery and deception using disguise. Known to answer any question asked of her, Tamamo-no-Mae was part of a plot to seduce and kill Emperor Toba, who fell sick as a result. The fox spirit was exposed and hunted by two mythological warriors, and the spirit embedded itself into the Sessho-seki stone as a last resort, which released a poisonous gas that killed anyone who touched it.

The spirit supposedly haunted the rock, which was registered as a local historical site in 1957, until a Buddhist priest performed rituals to finally make the spirit rest. Now, it has been reported that the killing stone has split in two, likely as a result of natural erosion. According to the Guardian, the volcanic rock had been observed with cracks in several years ago, likely allowing water in, which helped erode it from the inside. That hasn’t stopped superstitions running wild, with tourists that have flocked to the demonic rock saying they "feel like they have seen something they shouldn't".

So I guess the question here would be, did they? Spirits can endure for long periods of time within objects, but without knowing more about the Buddhist ritual that put the spirit to rest it's hard to say whether it would still be present and/or dangerous. It is true that often when a object containing a spirit or spirit instance breaks the enchantment will break as well, and if this stone was truly magically containing the spirit, it might actually be on the loose. I will point out, though, that a crack through the object is usually sufficient to break the magick, so the kitsume could have in fact been released years ago when they were first noticed.

The world has been pretty messed up for the last few years. Could a thousand-year-old escaped trickster kitsune have anything to do with it?

Ritual Night Talk for March 1st

Here is the video of Tuesday's Ritual Night Talk, on the Star Sapphire. The Star Sapphire article link is here and the donation link is here.

The Star Sapphire is Aleister Crowley's "improved ritual of the hexagram." It works roughly the same way as the Lesser Invoking Ritual of the Hexagram with a couple of additional steps. Like the LRH, it is a general macrocosmic ritual and as such works well for daily practice in conjunction with the Star Ruby. It also can include a eucharistic component suitable for daily practice if a material basis for the sacrament is employed.

Enjoy!

Ritual Night Talk for February 23rd

Here is the video of the latest Ritual Night Talk, on the Star Ruby. The Star Ruby article link is here and the donation link is here.

The Star Ruby is Aleister Crowley's "improved ritual of the pentagram." It works in roughly the same way as the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, but with Thelemic godnames and a couple of additional steps. Like the LRP it is a general microcosmic ritual and as such works well for daily practice in conjunction with the Star Sapphire, Crowley's corresponding general hexagram ritual. As the Star Ruby is a banishing ritual and the Star Sapphire is an invoking ritual, the combination of the two represents prior usage of a structure matching that of the operant field that I write about here on Augoeides.

Enjoy!

This Occult Cold Case Also Wasn't

Vice posted an article last week on one of the most influential cold cases in British history that was attributed to "witchcraft" and somehow went on to fuel a pop culture sensation. In 1945, a 74-year-old farm worker named Charles Walton was found murdered outside the town of Lower Quinton in England. Because his body was found in an odd position, police decided that occultism had to be involved - and the media ran with it. Let's just say that the United States in the 1980's and 1990's wasn't the only place where law enforcement liked to connect anything remotely weird at a crime scene with witchcraft, magick, satanism, or whatever the paranormal flavor of the day happened to be.

Lower Quinton subsequently gained a new level of media attention, and the newspapers relished in turning the story of Walton’s death into an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery about backward-thinking, sun god-worshipping rural folk. Salacious headlines about human sacrifice were abound, and the local Coventry Telegraph referred to the case as a “whodunnit witchcraft murder”.

“The then 87-year-old Margaret Murray [author of the popular but much maligned The Witch-Cult in Western Europe: A Study in Anthropology] believed the Walton murder was likely a ritual act, performed with the purpose of replenishing the soil,” explains Darren Charles, a historian from the Folk Horror Revival project. Touching on some of the wilder rumours that circulated, he says: “Apparently the year before Walton’s death proved to be a difficult harvest and the beer brewed from those crops was undrinkable. Walton was seen as an unusual fellow, who had bred Natterjack toads in his garden and tamed wild dogs with just his voice.”

Although this might all sound far fetched as a motive for murder, Charles says it was much more logical in the context of the time; of a remote region re-connecting with its ancient superstitions amid the dread and fears of World War II. To some locals, unsure of the future, looking backwards, and outside of the Christian church for philosophical guidance, was far more appealing. “Near [to where Walton’s body was found] is the Rollright Stones [an ancient stone monument] and the Burhill Iron Age Hill Fort, which give the whole region a sense of being ancient, magical, and strange,” adds Charles.

The crime remains unsolved, giving it a certain mystique to filmmakers, and arguably acting as a nucleus for the booming folk horror genre. David Pinner’s 1967 novel Ritual was loosely based on the Walton murder. When it was adapted into 1973 cult classic The Wicker Man, the idea of a rural town harbouring pagan beliefs and merrily sacrificing dissenters solidified itself as a narrative device in horror cinema, with a through line that can be traced all of the way to Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019) and Ben Wheatley’s In The Earth (2021).

And here's the thing - it's very unlikely that Walton's murder had anything to do with magick or witchcraft, just like the also-famous and also non-occult murder of Jeannette DePalma that took place in the United States in 1972. As in the DePalma case, police looked at the Walton crime scene and decided that there had to be a sinister occult motive behind the crime. This was because he was killed with farm implements (that he might have just been carrying with him, since he was a farm worker) and had a mark like a cross in his chest (when any two intersecting cuts form a cross).

Aquarius Elixir Rite for 2022

Here is the video of Tuesday's Aquarius Elixir Rite. The donation link is here.

The sign Aquarius is attributed to the Star card in the Tarot, and to "Astrology" in Liber 777. This includes learning about the practice and significance of astrology, and also working with and directing astrological forces. The latter is a very broad and general power that can be used for many different applications. Finally, Aquarius rules the qualities that you will find related to the sign in any book on astrology. Those sorts of intentions should work fine with this ritual as well.

Enjoy!

Baptism Fail

I often have noted here on Augoeides that religions who claim to be opposed to magick use magick themselves, all the time. The simple act of praying for a particular outcome is exactly the same as what we do when we call on deities to accomplish particular things, and in some situations that can involve intercessory entities like saints and/or angels. That's magick, and as far as I can tell the only reason religions are opposed to magick is that they want to uphold their monopoly on it.

But here's a really weird story out of Phoenix, Arizona. Apparently, Roman Catholic ritual isn't just magick, it's basically Harry Potter magick. That is, one wrong word and it doesn't work. I have noted on a number of occasions that this isn't true at all about ceremonial magick, horror movie tropes notwithstanding, so it's surprising to find it in the Catholic system.

A Catholic priest has resigned after a church investigation found he performed invalid baptisms throughout most of his more than 20-year career, according to Bishop Thomas Olmsted of the Diocese of Phoenix. Father Andres Arango, who performed thousands of baptisms, would say, "We baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." But Olmsted explained the words "We baptize" should have been "I baptize" instead.

"The issue with using 'We' is that it is not the community that baptizes a person, rather, it is Christ, and Him alone, who presides at all of the sacraments, and so it is Christ Jesus who baptizes," Olmsted wrote in a message to parishioners posted last month. The error also means that because baptism is the first of the sacraments, some people will need to repeat other sacraments, according to the diocese webpage for frequently asked questions. CNN has reached out to the diocese for comment on other sacraments.

Arango resigned as pastor of the St. Gregory Parish in Phoenix as of February 1. "It saddens me to learn that I have performed invalid baptisms throughout my ministry as a priest by regularly using an incorrect formula. I deeply regret my error and how this has affected numerous people in your parish and elsewhere," Arango wrote in his own message on the site.

I guess he needed to say it levio-SAH, you know? This seems to me to be a pretty fine distinction. We-singular has been used by royalty for a very long time, and isn't Jesus supposed to be the King of Kings in the Christian system? That would certainly imply that the word doesn't necessarily have to connotate the community. "We" could also refer to Jesus doing the baptism and the priest making the motions. For example, I use "our" in the elixir rites even when it's just me working, because "our" still refers to myself and the conjured angel.

My guess is that this isn't actually a magical problem, but a bureaucratic one. I am highly confident that any Thelemic baptism I might perform would be an effective ritual even if a few of the words weren't the same as the official script. Real magick is actually pretty tolerant that way. Spirits can read surface thoughts, after all, and divine your intent, and this is just as true if not moreso with respect to deities. In fact, in the Christian system, Jesus as one member of the trinity is officially omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. So there's that.

This demonstrates a big problem with the idea of trying to standardize magick - and I say that as someone who has devoted a fair amount of time to developing modular templates and so forth for both Thelemic and Enochian magical work. As with anything, it's possible to go too far and the real test of any operation should be whether or not it works and how impressive the results are. While I do understand that "works" is a difficult thing to measure with a ritual like baptism, it seems to me that it's ridiculous for a single pronoun to negate the whole thing.

Via Solis Aquarius Elixir Rite - Year Five

Today's Magick Monday post is a full script for the Aquarius Elixir Rite that we will be performing tomorrow, February 15th, at the Tuesday ritual workshop starting around 8 PM CDT. I will also be posting a video of the ritual on the Leaping Laughter YouTube channel tomorrow evening, which can be found here.

0. The Temple

The ritual space is set up with an altar table in the center. The bell chime, banishing dagger, and invoking wand are placed on the altar. In the center of the altar is placed a cup of wine for creating the elixir, within the Table of Art corresponding to Aquarius. The sign Aquarius is attributed to the power of "Astrology." This includes both learning about astrology and astrological methods, and working directly with specific astrological forces, aspects, and the like. As such, this is a general power with many possible practical applications. The Via Solis Elixir Rites were written by Michele Montserrat in 2010 for the Comselh Ananael magical working group.

I. Opening

All stand surrounding the altar. Officiant inhales fully, placing the banishing dagger at his or her lips. The air is then expelled as the dagger is swept backwards.

Officiant: Bahlasti! Ompehda!

Officiant then performs the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. All rotate accordingly.

Officiant: We take refuge in Nuit, the blue-lidded daughter of sunset, the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night sky, as we issue the call to the awakened nature of all beings, for every man and every woman is a star.

All: MAKAShANaH

Officiant: We take refuge in Hadit, the secret flame that burns in every heart of man and in the core of every star, as we issue the call to our own awakened natures, arousing the coiled serpent about to spring.

All: ABRAHADABRA

Officiant: We take refuge in Heru-Ra-Ha, who wields the wand of double power, the wand of the force of Coph Nia, but whose left hand is empty for he has crushed an universe and naught remains, as we unite our awakened natures with those of all beings everywhere and everywhen, dissolving all obstacles and healing all suffering.

All: AUMGN

Officiant: For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.

All: All is pure and present are and has always been so, for existence is pure joy; all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass and done; but there is that which remains. To this realization we commit ourselves – pure and total presence. So mote it be.

Bell chime.

Ritual Night Talk for February 8th

Here is the video of Tuesday's Ritual Night Talk, on the Elevenfold Seal. The donation link is here.

The Elevenfold Seal is a ritual that is part of another ritual - it serves as the opening and closing for Liber V vel Reguli, the most elaborate of Aleister Crowley's pentagram rituals. Over the years I have adapted the Elevenfold Seal into my daily magical practice and use it kind of like a lot of magicians use the Middle Pillar Ritual. It can serve the same function, calling the energies and qualities of the divine into your body of light and facilitating identification with the divine.

Enjoy!