The Raven’s Crucible
Musings on magic, divination, and the occult.
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Invocation to the Creative Genius
Since I started the Raven’s Crucible, I’ve been spending a lot more time writing, which has given me more of a chance to observe my own creative process. The more time I spend with it, the less credit I feel I can take. The ancient Romans had the concept of a personal Genius – a…
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Glossary of Herbal Preparations
This post is a counterpart to the Glossary of Herbal Actions, found here. In a previous post, we covered herbal actions, this one covers standard herbal preparations. These herbal preparations offer a range of methods for using plants to support health and magical practice. Just as different herbs hold unique properties, the ways we prepare…
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Framing Questions for Divination
In a previous post I discussed the power and utility of divination as a tool for both esoteric practice and life more broadly. One of the most fundamental, and most overlooked, skills required for effective divination is learning how to ask useful questions. A well-formed question leads to a clear, actionable reading – providing the…
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What They Meant Was…
One of my biggest pet peeves with modern analyses of historical texts is when an author states – with authoritative confidence – they have decoded the true meaning of a text, and that it is something only tenuously implied by the text itself. And this happens all the time with magic and occult topics. Things…
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Glossary of Herbal Actions
This post is a counterpart to the Glossary of Herbal Preparations, found here. In addition to my work with magic, I’ve spent some time studying herbalism – a practice I find complements natural magic wonderfully. Herbs not only provide a source for a wide range of medicinal remedies, they also have a long history of…
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On the Importance of Divination
Occult author Jason Miller has said that if he had to keep a single thing from his esoteric practice, while giving up everything else, he would keep meditation. While I appreciate meditation and have seen notable benefits from it, if posed the same question the one practice I would keep would instead be divination. What…
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A Long and Winding Path: part 2
This post is part of a two part series. You can find the first part here. Last time I talked about how I first got into magic. When we left off, I had just discovered ritual magic in the style of the Golden Dawn. I spent the next several years practicing meditation, divination, and banishing…
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A Long and Winding Path: part 1
I often hear magicians and occultists speak about how they first got into magic: how they led a childhood filled with paranormal encounters, or regularly talked to the ghosts of their dead ancestors. I’m frankly sort of envious when I hear about these experiences; they could not be further from my own. I grew up…
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Into That Darkling Fire
I’m about fifteen years too late to start a magical blog. A quick perusal of any list of blogs that once covered magic and occult topics – such as those that participated in Deb Castellano’s New Year, New You project – reveals a collection of dead links, abandoned spaces, and dried-up husks of forgotten passions,…