The Raven’s Crucible
Musings on magic, divination, and the occult.
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Materia: Echinacea – Echinacea spp.
Overview Of all the plant medicines in my home, a tincture of echinacea is perhaps the most used. When I wake up with the beginnings of a scratchy throat, or notice that my lymph nodes are swollen, echinacea is the first thing I reach for. It is a plant of resilience and fortification, standing as…
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How Does Magic Work? Five Models of the Occult
A large source of friction in occult communities is the lack of consensus on how magic works. Even at a basic, fundamental level. Throughout history, different communities have posited different theories about the mechanics of magic, but every individual practitioner ultimately comes to their own conclusions about what they believe, in response to the results…
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Spagyric Alchemy III: Bringing It All Together
Over the course of the last couple posts, we’ve been discussing the field of alchemical spagyics: the application of alchemical principles to create plant-based medicines. In the first post, we talked about the high level theory of alchemy – solve et coagula – and different theoretical models for how that separation can be effected in…
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Spagyric Alchemy II: The Selection of Ingredients
In last week’s post, we talked about the general theory of alchemy – solve et coagula – and how it relates to the vegetable kingdom in the form of spagyric alchemy. We covered a number of different theoretical frameworks for how alchemical separation can be effected, but stopped short of actually delving into the specifics…
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Spagyric Alchemy I: Theory of Herbal Transformation
For centuries, alchemy has been seen as a transformative art – a mystical science wherein base lead is turned into gold, the mundane elevated into the extraordinary. While the scope of alchemy as a whole is huge and sprawling, many texts recommend students start first with spagyric alchemy: the application of alchemical principles to extract…
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Materia: Lemon Balm – Melissa Officinalis
Overview Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) is an herb of gentle power, offering profound rejuvenation to body and spirit alike. Its cooling, drying energetics, combined with its uplifting nervine properties, make it a soothing remedy in times of turbulence. It calms the anxious mind, brightens melancholy, and eases digestive discomfort born of stress, embodying the nurturing…
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Divination for Beginners: A Practical Guide to Getting Started
I’ve previously discussed the importance of divination. It’s a great entry point into the occult arts for a number of reasons. First, it’s a phenomenal way of generating spooky coincidences; if you’re just starting out and trying to figure out whether there’s anything worthwhile to be pursued here, it can help quickly answer that question.…
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On the Role of Grimoiric Traditionalism
I’ve encountered a couple folks recently asking what are essentially variations on the same core question: “I’m reading grimoire X, and there are a lot of heavy-handed Christian elements that seem excessive or make me uncomfortable. Can I modify these bits or take them out?” It’s a great question, and the answer (as with most…
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Ink Making I: Vine Black Ink
In the last post I discussed something of the theory of ink and ink making. Since then (while taking several weeks hiatus from new posts for the holiday season), I’ve started experimenting with ink making in actual practice. For a first attempt, I wanted to take a shot at preparing one of the oldest and…
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On Ink and Ink Making
In a previous post I wrote about my fascination with writing as it pertains to magic. An important part of this practice is the creation and use of magical inks. Up to this point, that has involved taking commercial inks and adding my own materia and consecrations to them as appropriate.1 But recently I’ve gotten…