The Raven's Crucible

A blind raven

The Raven’s Crucible

Musings on magic, divination, and the occult.

  • Solomonic Magic in Practice: Choosing a Spirit

    Let’s recap where we are in our Solomonic ritual. We’ve consecrated our tools, our spaces, and ourselves. We’ve drawn out our circle. We’ve invoked various powers (God, angels, intermediary spirits, patrons, directional guardians, etc.) to set the stage. Now we’re ready to actually summon the spirit we are trying to contact. Before we can get…

  • Solomonic Magic in Practice: Calling the Powers

    So far in our Solomonic magic series, we’ve covered the first step of our conjuration ritual framework: Consecratio Dei, the consecrations to God. We’ve talked about preconsecration of tools and materials, personal purification, and creation of ritual space. Now we’re ready to step into the circle and begin the actual ritual of conjuration. The next…

  • Solomonic Magic in Practice: Personal Purity

    We’re now several posts deep into an exploration of consecrations in the Solomonic tradition. We’ve discussed consecrations of tools and of physical space. There’s one final piece of the puzzle to talk about when it comes to consecration: consecration of the magician themselves. And this is one of the most important elements, as the thing…

  • Solomonic Magic in Practice: Drawing the Circle

    Over the last few weeks we’ve explored the idea of consecrations in the Solomonic tradition. That everything brought into the ritual space is exorcised and blessed ahead of time, to give the magician a spiritually clean environment in which to work. There are two final pieces we haven’t talked about yet: the purification of space,…

  • Solomonic Magic in Practice: Blessings and Consecrations

    In the last post we talked about the first step in consecrating Solomonic tools and materials: exorcism of any unwanted influences that might be present to start with. But there is a second stage required for a consecration. We need to bring those influences or psychic impressions we do want into the item as well.…

  • Solomonic Magic in Practice: Exorcism and a Clean Slate

    Last week we talked about some high-level theoretical frameworks of Solomonic magic. This week we’re going to be diving into the details of putting them into practice. Starting with the first step in nearly every Solomonic operation: consecrations. Why are tools and materials in Solomonic traditions consecrated prior to an operation? There are a couple…

  • Solomonic Magic In Practice: A General Framework for Conjuration

    I’d like to start a series of posts that dig deeper into the practical aspects of Solomonic magic. It’s a form of magic that seems to be frequently mischaracterized in some modern circles, as needlessly adversarial or coercive towards spirits. I find that view to be somewhat shallow. Solomonic magic has a tremendous amount to…

  • Belief & Magic: A Skeptic’s Guide

    I often see questions come up around the role of faith versus skepticism in occult practice. Do you need to believe in your results for them to manifest? How do you know any of this is real, rather than all in your head? I’ve personally struggled with this question for decades. A huge part of…

  • Closed Practices: Initiation, Secrecy, and Context

    I recently saw some discussion around the idea of “closed practices” – those spiritual methods that are not generally available to the public. It’s an idea that is regularly misused or misunderstood, so it seemed worth exploring more deeply. Generally, closed practices fall into one of two categories: those that include an initiatic lineage, or…

  • Ink Making III: India Ink

    This week I continued my experiments in ink making with India ink. India ink is an extension of the carbon black inks that I have made in previous experiments. It is traditionally made using soot or lampblack as a pigment and shellac as a binder. Because shellac is more challenging to work with than gum…