Ritual Design Notebook: Orphic Hymns Solstice Vigil

If you work with the Orphic Hymns (herein shortened to OH) often, at some point you will probably run across the idea that the OH might have been recited in order as an all-night vigil.1 If you have a group of ritual enthusiasts with a tight venn diagram of classics nerds, magical experimentation junkies, and ordeal rite masochists, you might think “YEAH, and let’s do it at the absolute busiest time of the year!”

I have no regrets.


Altar of antique trunks, topped with candles, labeled incense bowls, wine jug, and book of hymns on a book stand. To the left, a tripod holding an incense burner, to the right, a bowl for libations. In the background, other altars and windows looking out on the dark night. The room is lit a deep blue and the candles and holiday lights shine warm and golden shading to pink glows.
Our altar for the OH vigil, with incense tripod to the left and libation bowl to the right.

While we’re all still simmering in the afterglow and taking notes of what effects we’re feeling and contemplating how (or if) we might do things next time, I thought I’d share our process and how we went about this, in case others are interested.

We met up about a month beforehand to talk through our ideas and started getting organized. We aimed to start in the evening after dark because some folks would be coming after work, and decided to space out the hymns so we would be reciting the hymn to Eos at our local time of sunrise.

We decided to read the hymns in Attic Greek simultaneously as the hymn was being read in English, mostly for aesthetic vibes and nerdcore euphoria, but also because there’s a kind of magic that happens during dual-voice overlap, especially where one is in a language that is only barely understood, that creates a trance-induction atmosphere and keeps the talking-brain busy and confused enough to let the magic rise. I love it as a ritual technique and have used it to great effect in many rituals.

We also pulled brief phrases from each hymn to use as a responsive line, something like “Come, with hearts full of joy” for the opening instructional hymn, “Send us nourishing rains” for the Clouds, or “Magnify the sacred light” for Dawn. The reader in English would find a few places to pause and raise their hands in a signal, and we would all (except the person concentrating on reading the Greek) respond with the chosen line, so we could all participate more deeply and personally with each hymn. (These responsive lines sort of make a meta-hymn, which now I want to play with…)

One of the most helpful things we did was we built a spreadsheet to organize our plan and divide the hymns into blocks of time so we could go at a steady pace through the night and take turns in different roles: who would be reading the Greek text, who would be reading the English text, who would be managing the incense/offering/libations (and writing the response phrase on a whiteboard), and who would be on kitchen duty keeping the coffee stocked, the soup and snacks bar refreshed, and remind us all to stay hydrated. Also, setting up the incenses and offerings in neatly labelled bowls on the altar kept things tidy (note: put candleholder on a drip tray from the start of the ritual, not after it begins to melt wax into the myrrh).

Closeup of the ritual alter in the morning after, showing the line of labelled incense bowls.
An all-you-can-eat buffet bar for the Gods

As we got into our groove, we would do about 6-7 hymns at the top of the hour, then have about a 30-40 minute break for snacks, refills, bathroom, and smoking for those who do so. So even though we did this on the longest night of the year, it could definitely be accomplished even at midsummer — we could probably do it in a 7 hour stretch with fewer and shorter breaks, but this 13.5 hour potluck-with-ritual- every-hour felt just right for a midwinter social event among friends.

Other things we did that I can recommend:
– Mood music was provided by a huge Spotify playlist of ancient Greek and Roman music, only a very few tracks of which devolved into whale songs, dueling trumpets, or experimental early jazz. Blessed be the Skip Song Button.
– Candles, candles, candles, and mood lighting. (We considered the candles to be the substitution for torches called for in the hymn to Nyx.)
– Good ventilation is necessary, because this is a lot of incense.
– Slow Cookers make having hot food at the snack table possible, safe, and easy to manage.
– Purification rites beforehand were encouraged and left up to each individual’s discretion.
– Most people took the day after off work, which seemed wise.
– While we had wine for ritual libations and to partake in, we were careful to practice moderation because we knew it was going to be a long night.

Things we learned or are contemplating changing if we do it again:
– Taking the day before off work to have more time and less stress for preparation and setup might have been a good idea.
– I had my family Yule the night before, which is also an all-night vigil. I can wholeheartedly recommend getting a full night’s sleep before doing this, though that’s pure speculation on my part, because I did not. LFMF.
– Pre-recording the Greek hymns because that’s a lot of time face-planted in a book struggling to sound out a language I don’t know well enough to really understand.
– Actually check how much of each incense you have in your stash before setup. We did have enough frankincense to get through all the OHs, but we did have a moment of “do we need to run to the store or is this going to work”

And we’re going to meet up after New Year’s to compare notes and aftereffects and talk through other ideas… movement? dancing? games? more ritual framework? outdoors? actual torches? doing this at a different time of year? more breaks? fewer? more participation? making a powerpoint instead of using the whiteboard? making it an annual tradition? horsing around with translations (we used Dunn for the nice facing-page format, I love the clean and literal approach to his translation, and we had 3-4 copies among the group). I have a hunch that we’re going to do this again and that it’s going to develop into a new living tradition for our group.

May you new years be merry and bright with the light of all the Gods!

A picture of one of the hosts' cats, a grey tabby with white socks and green eyes, snuggled in blankets on top of an armchair with holiday lights in the background.
Dr Watson, having hung out and napped in the room with us for the entire ritual process, might now be considered and Orphic Initiate in his own right.

  1. Fritz Graf, “Serious Singing: The Orphic Hymns as Religious Texts”, Kernos [Online], 22 | 2009, Online since 26 October 2012, connection on 24 December 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/kernos/1784; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/kernos.1784

Sorcerous Challenge: 30 Days of Re-Enchantment

In this time of COVID-19 and social isolation, we thought that we should do our part to give people something to do other than focus on the panic. Though we discussed many options (some more politically charged, perhaps involving lead tablets), what we decided would be most useful and helpful would be an actionable challenge, accessible to all levels of practitioners.

You may be working or learning from home, or, as many are, without work at all right now. This challenge is meant to be done with the supplies you have on hand, while you’re stuck at home. We pulled from our own to-do lists here, and we’ll be doing the challenge along with you. If you’re finding this on day 10 or day 20, though, feel free to jump in where we are or start at the beginning. Don’t worry if you miss a day or if a particular idea doesn’t speak to you. The point is the work, not the speed at which you do it. Let’s take advantage of this time, try to keep each other (relatively) sane, and make some magic!

If you’re feeling up to it, please post your results and share with the hashtag #Enchanted30 !

30 Days of Sorcerous Arts Challenge

  1. Tidy, reorganize, or create a new altar.
  2. Start reading a spiritual/magical/occult book that you’ve been meaning to read.
  3. Reorganize your herbs, oils, books, whatever’s been getting dusty or disheveled.
  4. Enchant or bless your soap.
  5. Listen to a spiritual/magical/occult podcast.
  6. Take a magically charged bath.
  7. Reach out on social media and thank an author or teacher you appreciate.
  8. Get in touch with your ancestors or land spirits.
  9. Reinforce your house protections.
  10. Do a gratitude ritual.
  11. Clean, oil, and sharpen your blades – magical and practical.
  12. Practice a ritual skill, like drumming, singing, writing, leading meditation, sight-reading barbarous words.
  13. Cook a meal as a magical act.
  14. Finish that ritual craft project that you started…or start a new one.
  15. Make a playlist for a deity or a magical theme.
  16. Do a candle spell.
  17. Try a guided meditation.
  18. Do magic on behalf of a friend or a loved one (with consent).
  19. Share a piece of artwork (properly credited) depicting your favorite god or spirit.
  20. Practice sitting meditation.
  21. Research a deity you’ve been interested in.
  22. Perform a ritual to the deity you researched yesterday.
  23. Take a walk in nature or spend time on your patio, listen to birds and squirrels and notice how the season is changing.
  24. Make a piece of magical or devotional art
  25. Do a purification rite.
  26. Launch a sigil.
  27. Try a magical technique you have been putting off.
  28. Write an invocation, hymn, or poem for/about a deity or spirit.
  29. Cast a spell using items from your junk drawer
  30. Try your hand at dream incubation and journal when you wake up.

Ritual Design Notebook: Rite of the Great Bear – an Ursa Major group working

About the tag: if you’re interested, here’s a look inside the ritual design process and how it went from bare concept to finished ritual in a recent instance. We might do this from time to time to showcase our different thought processes and to highlight that there’s many ways to develop interesting and potent rituals for group work.

The seeds of this ritual started when Jeffrey had noticed some recurring coincidences and “notice this” nudges with the Big Dipper. Audrey had seen a blog post on the Mystic Dream Academy about a Great Bear Lammas rite and how the astrology of Ursa Major ties in to early-August astrological timing. From there we started following internet search rabbit holes and kicking around some ideas about different ways a Great Bear ritual could go. I think I found a face wash company and thought the botanical notes would make a great incense, we discussed sigils and body paint and how Family Constellation work might be raided for tech to be used in a way more witchy context — we were all over the board with the notes but most of us were agreeing that we were getting that little tingle that it was coming together even if we couldn’t see the bigger picture yet.

Over the next few days I started getting ideas and pinged the group to see if they’d be game with me taking point as the primary ritualist for the evening. Audrey and Jeffrey had been in charge for the last few in a row, and Sean wasn’t going to be able to make it, so they let me take the reins.

One of the first things I did was to hop onto Wikipedia and just skimmed the article about the constellation — the names of the stars and their linguistic origins, major stars versus minor stars, history and world associations…

By IAU and Sky & Telescope magazine (Roger Sinnott & Rick Fienberg) – http://www.iau.org/public/themes/constellations/#uma, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15412501

Here were some of my thoughts as I read through the article and thought about ritual design…

The Great Bear is an ancient and vital aid to navigation – it’s a very bright and recognizable constellation that points to the North Star (and to Arcturus, and between those helps a stargazer orient to the rest of the sky) — this makes the constellation a Guide in a very literal sense – it shows the way. It’s an ancient ally of humanity in that sense.

While we have a lot of familiarity with Greco-Roman names in our group, most of these stars have Arabic names which we wouldn’t be familiar with. If the ritual had a point where a chant of “barbarous words” could help us shift our mental and energetic states, perhaps we could recite the names of the 7 main stars, invoking them as Names of the subordinate spirits that serve and act as an intermediary with the Great Bear.

I started to think about the kind of ritual container we wanted to build — did we want to build on a Hellenic style outline, or more Wiccan, or build from scratch? Did we need to cast a formal circle of some kind, and if so, what might that look like? What if… we called upon the Dome of Heaven as the sphere around us for the work? If we did that, what aspects of the elements or quarters could we call upon to serve our goals, which would probably involve creating sigils and drawing them on our body to empower and charge them, if we stuck with the original concept…

Then I thought, okay, what are the Quarters around the Great Bear? Are there constellations roughly corresponding to the cardinal directions around the Great Bear, and are they constellations that were evocative?

To the North is Draco, the Dragon, which we had worked with once or twice in some star and constellation work previously. Draco is an intense and interesting constellation and spirit to work with. To the East is Boötes, the Herdsman or Ploughman — in traditions where the Big Dipper / Great Bear constellation is seen as a Great Plow, Boötes is the ox-herder guiding the plow. To the South is Leo the Lion, and with the sun entering 15* Leo just before this Full Moon ritual, there would be some connections there. And to the West is Auriga, the Charioteer — and Audrey had been getting some “I think this will tie into the Tarot card of the Chariot and I’m not sure how yet” feelings when we’d done our first bit of brainstorming. That coming back up confirmed that this was a good match for the work; these four could definitely work as quarter guardians/watchers/allies.

So now I had our primary Power: Ursa Major, a circle casting, quarters, and I knew in the body of the ritual we were going to make sigils and paint them on our bodies and chant the names of the stars of the constellation to charge them. The overarching intention of the ritual was to develop and empower those sigils, the style was shaping up to have one foot in mainstream Wicca and one foot in intuition, inspiration, and experimentation, the mood looked like it was going to pretty feral and witchy with the body paint and the trance-y chanting, and the theme was constellations and star magic. At this point I felt like I had enough of the map for the territory sketched out that I could focus on some of the details.

So I looked up that face wash again, and the botanical notes definitely looked like they’d be the base of a good incense. I pulled out my tools and ingredients and let my hands and nose and experience take the wheel as I ground resins and herbs: Big Sur forest resins to evoke a primeval forest, mugwort for trance and visionary work of seeking the sigils, dragon’s blood for power, sage and sweetgrass for the land we work on, and sandalwood because it needed more wood and sandalwood powder is my go-to incense base. I blended oils of cedar, juniper, and musk – notes of crackling underbrush in the forest as a large animal passes through, and lime and mint for the clarity and brightness of the stars on a clear night. I blended the oils with the powder, labeled it, and packed my ritual supplies for the evening.

I also printed off a few copies of my rough bullet-point outline and the constellation map for the group for our pre-ritual conspiracy over dinner. “Ritual Conspiracy” is a term I picked up at Diana’s Grove Mystery School, and it’s a term of art for the ritual pre-game explanations – a chance to agree on expectations and boundaries, teach some fundamentals of technique or chant or praxis to make sure everyone is ready for the work, flesh out the bones of the ritual based on the needs of the group in attendance, to bring in all the participants into the ritual co-creation process, so we all breathe together — con + spire — and with our shared breath of communication breathe life into the ritual we are about to experience.

We did our individual preparations, queued up a soundtrack of drums, and our hosts filled a basin of water for us to purify by hand-washing. We cast the circle together, visualizing the great dome of the heavens encircling our space. We called to the constellations surrounding Ursa Major in the quarters, speaking from our hearts as we were moved to with what we associated with the constellation and what we wanted to invoke into the space from that quadrant. We sprinkled the incense on the charcoal and called to the Great Bear, the Big Dipper, the Great Plow, The Wagon, the seven stars dancing over the three leaps of the gazelle, the navigator’s friend, again calling into the circle as we were inspired and letting the organic, immediate, creative energy that was building guide our words and our ideas.

And the Great Bear came.

I can’t speak to everyone’s experience, but for me the Great Bear came as a titanic force, primal, ancient, large, heavy, wild, female?, powerful… and she was watching to see what we would do next.

I led a light trance-y guidance to identify a need and to develop a sigil to manifest it, starting with an invocation to the stars within ourselves and calling on our birthright as children of earth and starry heaven. I filled a mortar with blackberries, honey, powdered green clay, and a pinch of the incense I’d made and began pounding it into a paste. We passed it around in the darkness and all took a turn grinding and crushing this mixture together while we spent some time drawing and refining the sigils.

We drew the sigils on paper, then painted them on ourselves with our fingers dipped into the dark red clotted paste. We sealed the images on the paper with the paste from our hands and gathered ourselves and the papers around the altar (there were only a small handful of us in attendance that night, so I let go of the idea that we might all stand in the positions of the seven major stars). We lit more of the incense and chanted the names of the stars several times until we’d raised enough energy to empower the sigils and fire them off, into our bodies and out into the heavens surrounding us, with the breath of the Great Bear a presence in the room around us.

The air was thick with incense and magic, and the end of the evening is a little blurry for me. I know we thanked all our allies and opened the circle. Some people chose to wash off the remains of the paste right after ritual, some let it dry as long as it wanted to stay on the skin and then rubbed and brushed off the flakes. (The paste was, accidentally, an excellent treatment that left my skin feeling nicer than most fancy spa-style masks or serums.)

The ritual was potent and worth revisiting next August, or whenever we have need to call upon the Great Bear again.

Painting, Ursa Major by Julie Dillon
Painting, “Ursa Major” by Julie Dillon

What Do Your Ancestors Deserve?

This article was written for and originally published in the Fall Equinox issue of The Center Spiral Magazine and is cross-posted at xir personal blog, Journey Through the Obsidian Dream.

Ancestor veneration has always been a thing. It has been central to many indigenous practices for millennia; it has been a part of diasporic traditions for centuries; it is arguably the basis of saint cults. I even knew of academically minded neo-Pagans doing it in the 1990s. Watching the meteoric rise of ancestor worship among white neo-Pagans over the five years, though, has been a trip.

I can’t get on the train. I keep having to ask myself, “Who are these ancestors?” As far as I can tell, for most people that question seems to conjure first an image of their beloved grandparents, and then of their fantasies of Iron Age warriors and Neolithic wanderers, with little thought of the centuries in between.

I too, think of my grandparents and great-grandparents. I think of the racist jokes they told. Of the way they treated my mother and my sister. Of how they always had a justification for police brutality. Of how they ignored the AIDS crisis. How they opposed the Civil Rights movement. How they may or may not have fought in the World Wars, but certainly did not oppose the US genocides and apartheid state that inspired Hitler and the Nazis. How they fought to preserve slavery in the Civil War. I do not find these deeds worthy of veneration. Do you?

White people whose ancestors came to the United States before the Civil War have even less to be proud of. How complicit were they in displacing the indigenous population? Did they own slaves? Were they a part of the original, most guilty, colonizing forces?

As a white person, when relating to other white people, I always find a more-than-academic interest in ancestry to be a giant red flag. That territory is rife with phrases like “Christian civilization”, “heritage not hate”, “demographic twilight”, and “Jews will not replace us”. Other gems include, “the Irish were slaves, too” and “well, sure, but the Natives weren’t really using the land”.

Any white person interested in ancestor work of any kind needs to grapple with some basic facts of history. The very category of whiteness was invented to justify colonizing the New World: prior to that ambition, the only pan-European identity that existed was Christendom, and the wars of the Protestant Reformation will tell you exactly how unified that identity was. Slavery existed before white people, but one of the very first things “whiteness” did was to invent the most horrific form of slavery to ever be conceived or implemented. White people implemented brutal and murderous empires on a scale unknown in prior history. White people invented scientific racism. White people continue to reap the benefits of this rapine and murderous history, continue to hold the majority of the globe in abject subjugation.

Any white person interested in ancestor work also needs to look to the present and grapple with the reality of which white people share their interest in ancestry. Mormons, colonizing the dead through posthumous baptism. Confederate sympathizers. Neo-liberal and neo-conservative apologists who hide their racism behind “but our accomplishments”. White identitarians. White supremacists.

White identity and white nationalist groups surged in popularity following the 2008 election of Barrak Obama, the first Black President of the United States. That surge included a new vigor in neo-Pagan fascist groups like Odinism and the Asatru Folk Association. From where I sit, the renewed interest in ancestor worship by “apolitical” and “mainstream” New Agers and Pagans that I first saw in 2012/13 looks a lot like those ideas filtering from the extreme toward the middle.

I’m not accusing every white person interested in ancestor work of being a crypto-fascist. I’m saying that white people interested in ancestor work cannot just handwave history away. I’m saying that white people – white Pagans – cannot simply just jump from their “sweet old (probably racist, homophobic, and imperialist) grandma” to their Iron Age progenitors without dealing with everything in between. I’m saying that white people working with their ancestors must address the crimes of our ancestors, and the ill-gotten-gains that define our lives.

We must ask ourselves, “What do our ancestors truly deserve?”

White people who wish to venerate our ancestors must begin by determining which ancestors are worthy of veneration. This is the work of history. Of education.

When we make offerings to those who came before us, we must name the deeds that make them worthy. The inventors. The scholars. The plumbers and mechanics and crafters. The healers and care-takers.

And when we make offerings to those who came before us, we must condemn the deeds that make them unworthy. The colonizers. The slave traders. The slave holders. The rapists and murderers. The racists, the misogynists, and the homophobes. The status quo warriors of prior ages.

White people who wish to venerate our ancestors must work to atone for their crimes among the living. This is the work of feminism. Of anti-racism. Of anti-colonialism. Of anti-fascism.

If white people – white Pagans – are to venerate our ancestors, we must do so without nostalgia or sentimentality. Even as we lift up the heroes of previous generations, we must bind our evil ancestors to Tartaros. Or Hell. Or the Void. Anywhere but the mortal world where they can continue the works they began in life. And we must fight their unrepentant children who re-commit and deepen their crimes.

And we must beg forgiveness from the ghosts of those our ancestors wronged.

What do your ancestors deserve?

S. Patrick Manning Bio

I am Sean, one of the foundling members of the Kansas City Sorcerous Arts Collective. My writings can appear under S.P. Manning, S. Patrick Manning, or under the nom de plume Chirotus Infinitum. I have done academic work in history, creative writing, and religious studies, and I especially enjoy areas of overlap between these fields.

After many years as a solely technical magician, I have embraced devotional paganism, and am currently working with the Hekatean current that is becoming more emergent. I have a background in Hermetic ceremonial magick, chaos magic, tarot, and astrology. I seem to have a knack for elemental magic, talismans, wards and shields, and sigil magic. Tarot is constant in my work, and I enjoy collecting unusual, rare, or kitschy decks.

I was raised Roman Catholic, and though I was separated from the Irish and Italian folk traditions that should have been in my family background, I always felt the world was richer than it seemed. My involvement in the occult began in an effort to attract the favor of a girl (no, it didn’t work), and I just kept going deeper. I studied Crowley and Carroll, Regardie and Hine, explored the interconnected symbols of the tarot and astrology, and surveyed other forms of religious and non-religious witchcraft. Eventually I found myself in leadership roles, beginning with a college pagan group at the University of Kansas, until I found myself helping to organize a major pagan festival.  Over the years I have led workshops and classes on many topics, including tarot, basic astrology, chaos magic theory, sigil magic, and shielding.

My academic background has equipped me to find and evaluate sources and compare magical theories and techniques. Tracing traditions through history, and seeing what they have influenced or been influenced by, has proven a very powerful skill in bringing ideas and symbols together into new and interesting ritual expressions. As a scholar I can see what the sources have to offer relative to the task at hand, and as a chaos magician I am willing to experiment to see what can be adjusted or cut out to make the ritual experience more effective.

I still have issues with belonging and purpose in my life, and I hope to provide ritual experiences and practices that can help others find answers where I have not.

Audrey Hazzard Bio

Hi! I’m Audrey, one of the founding members of the Kansas City Sorcerous Arts Collective. I am a Scorpio (watch out, there are a lot of us around!), a feminist, and a nerd for sources.

Magically, I’m less concerned with whether something should work than whether or not it does. Chaos Magick, with its focus on results and flexibility of paradigm, has long been the foundation of my practice. There’s a Mercury sigil on my favorite lipstick and another on my phone. I make planetary offerings in my car on my lunch break, and have more than once yelled “I demand to see the oracle!” when a visionary experience wasn’t providing any clarity. (You should try that. It’s delightfully effective.)

I’ve taught classes in tarot, visionary techniques, energy work, and everyday vs emergency spellwork. Because of my corporate background, I am perhaps a little too dedicated to processes and standards, codes of conduct and spreadsheets. Yes, I have some Virgo in my chart.

I discovered the occult as a teenager through AOL message boards in the late 1990s. I was already reading everything pertaining to religion and spirituality that I could get my hands on, convinced that I could find some Truth outside of the default Christianity that surrounded me. I read the Bhagavad Gita and the Tao te Ching and The Zen Teachings of Huang Po instead of paying attention in Mass.

And then I found Liber Chaos at Border’s, and my quest became less about Truth and more about experiments. I started a coven in my Catholic high school, played around with spirit conjuration and energy work, built an altar in my locker and buried jars in the woods.

Through a thriving Wiccan group in college, I experienced my first intense, intimate larger-group rituals. My vision of the power and possibilities of magic shifted when I saw how deep and transformative group work could be.

Along with other members of the Sorcerous Arts Collective, I’ve worked with/helped to start a few study-and-practice groups over the past 10 years. I spent a few years volunteering with a local festival, writing rituals and working on committees and learning a lot about cult toxic group dynamics.

My desire to continue to work with the people who have inspired and supported me, to do this work in, with, and for the community, pushes me forward. Long ago and far away, I wrote:

"I am inspired by a vision of community that supported and embraced me.... I am grateful to a lovely mixture of talented and spiritual people who came together, on purpose, to make magic, and I am restored in my wild hunger for community, for communion, and for an ideal of spiritual leadership that recognizes the core creative potential of each person, and the ways in which we are all teachers." 

That is the vision that inspires me still. I am grateful to have found people who share it, and I look forward to sharing it with you.

Carey’s Bio – Ritualist

Welcome! My name is Carey, and I’m glad to be joining the Sorcerous Arts Collective. I practice a feral sort of witchcraft influenced by the Feri tradition, and am a devoted Hellenic Polytheist. I specialize in ecstatic embodied ritual that comes from the current of Reclaiming, Diana’s Grove, and Gaia Community. I teach classes on devotional mysticism, practical craft, and ritual arts. As an artist, maker, and lover of languages, I’m finding how my skills can add to the cauldron of talents already assembled in the SAC.

My religious upbringing was a sort of benign unsupervision, so between my parents’ bookshelves and free rein at the school library, I fell deeply in love with Erica Jong’s Witches and Edith Hamilton’s Mythology. I was That Precocious Kid who brought Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs and a pack of tarot cards to school to do readings on the playground during recess. I never really grew out of it.

In middle school, I discovered this new thing called the internet, and Witchvox, and discovered there were more people like me out there and it seemed most of them were practicing Wicca. So I got some Cunningham and a copy of Bucky’s Big Blue Book, and signed petitions protesting the media circus and injustice around the West Memphis Three. Some highschool friends were experimenting with energy work, shielding, aura sensing, healing, and chakra work. Soon out of highschool I joined Gaia Community, and served there as a ritualist for many years. Through friends and relationships made there, I learned about other traditions, like ADF Druidry, Kemetic Orthodoxy, Algard British Traditional Wicca, Reclaiming, Huna, and Hellenic Polytheism. I expanded out to work with CUUPs and with the Diana’s Grove Mystery School. My Saturn Return called me to Feri Tradition, and I studied under T Thorn Coyle for two intense and amazing years at Diana’s Grove before they closed their doors.

A lifelong artist and creator, I’m poised between projects right now, waiting to see where the Muses take me next. Some of my art can be viewed on DeviantArt.

My goal is to present ritual experiences that weave the ancient myths with the deeply personal; to create accessible, welcoming, safe spaces to work magic and open to the divine; to develop processes and praxis that are in service to excellence, enchantment, and radical personal evolution; to dive deeply into the technology or ritual and magic and discover how many levels of engagement can be possible, and how to make these mysteries accessible, practical, inspiring, and relevant to modern seekers of ecstasy, wisdom, liberation, and empowerment.

Book Recommendations from JSG

Like most folks teaching or practicing magic publicly, we occasionally get asked for one-on-one teaching, apprenticeship, or book recommendations. None of us, unfortunately, are currently in a position to offer much in the way of individual instruction. Here, then, are my personal book recommendations for introductory and intermediate level practitioners.

Readers will immediately note that Andrieh Vitimus’ Hands-On Chaos Magick is listed twice. That is because working methodically through the book will take you from know-nothing to Gnosis and leave you having Seen Things and Done Shit.

Introductory Level

These books require little or no outside knowledge. Rituals and techniques are basic and effective, but not earth-shattering. Due to the vagaries of New Age publishing over the last decade, the histories presented in most of these texts must be vigorously disregarded.

Hands-On Chaos Magick by Andrieh Vitimus

Inner Temple of Witchcraft by Christopher Penczak

Outer Temple of Witchcraft by Christopher Penczak

Grimoire of Shadows by Ed Finch

Intermediate Level

These books presume some degree of knowledge. Rituals and techniques may be conceptually or technically difficult, or may end in initiations.

Hands-On Chaos Magick by Andrieh Vitimus

The Sorcerer’s Secrets by Jason Miller

Seven Spheres by Rufus Opus

Condensed Chaos by Phil Hine

The Way of the Shaman by Michael Harner

Additional Sources

The New Age movement in general and Modern Neo-Pagan Witchcraft in particular have huge problems with history and scholarship. To correct this, please start here.

Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler

Triumph of the Moon by Ronald Hutton

The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination by Robert M Place

JS Groves Bio – Satyr and Magician

Good day!  I am JS Groves, one of your hosts. I practice an eclectic blend of modern neo-Pagan witchcraft, Chaos Magick, and ceremonial magic, and specialize in blending ancient and modern magical styles and techniques.  I teach classes on energy work, ritual design, and spirit conjuration.  I am a jeweler by trade, a published novelist, and the artist behind the majority of photos and graphic designs you’ll see on the site.

The beginnings of my magical career are less than dignified. Some come to magic and witchcraft as a calling – through love of a god, a spontaneous vision, or whatnot. Some come to the occult through ambition — the iconic trio of greed, lust, and/or revenge. Myself … well, I was young and dumb. At ten or twelve, I thought I could reproduce the magic of Bedknobs and Broomsticks. When the movie failed me, I turned to the novel. When that failed me, I turned to the rest of the library. It was around the age of thirteen that I found astrology and tarot and the Chariots of the Gods, and turned suddenly from idiot to prescient, and dedicated myself to studying magic, putting off practice until I was sixteen. The rest, as we say, is history.

I began with energy work. Tarot. The Simonomicon. Past life regression. Aura reading and energetic “tag” as I came into contact with more and more magical people. Played with Ouija boards a time or ten. Haunted graveyards and college dormitories. Dabbled in eclectic Wicca for most of a decade. Made a serious study of neo-shamanic visionary practices from ’08-2012. Did an intensive study of ceremonial and Chaos magics that started in 2010 and waned in 2014 but continues to this day. I tried my hand at public leadership with a major KC-area pagan festival from 2014-17. That last ended in burnout and bad feelings all around, but I suspect that’s common with one’s first forays into such public work.

In the meantime, I have been a jeweler and illustrator for twenty years, incorporating occult and magical themes into my work. I have acquired a Bachelors degree in Classical Studies, bringing Greek and Latin language and history to bear in my modern practice. I have published a novel, in and about the Pagan community in the late 1990s — and, you know, werewolves.

Now, I bring my twenty-two years of experience in art and magic to bear to this project: the Kansas City Sorcerous Arts Collective. My goal is to integrate my arts and academic backgrounds into my public magical practice, to use those skills to help teach excellence in ritual and magical techniques to the community. My knowledge is not endowed from on high, not divinely gifted; it is hard-won through research, trial, and error. I come to teach not from a place of high and enlightenment, but rather to share with the community my joy in the craft and practice of magic, that they might learn from my failures and successes, and that I might, in turn, learn from theirs.

The word of the Year is *INVICTVS*

2018 was a hell of a year. We all know it. We were there. We don’t need to rehash it again.

2019 will be a hell of a year as well. Saturn and the south node on the one hand. Jupiter in Sagitarius on the other. The end of one eclipse cycle and the beginning of another. Shit I can’t even name, let alone wrap my head around.

Life goes on. We set our goals. We strive toward them. We succeed or we fail, though chance as much as cunning.

The first goal I have set myself for 2019 CE, the last of the third decade of the third millennium of That One God or Demiurge, is a single word: INVICTVS. It’s Latin. An adjective. Unconquered. Unconquerable. Invincible.

INVICTVS.

I have my goals.

What are yours?