An Amulet and a Magic Potion for Oggún

A friend gifted me with a macuto, which is an odd-looking amulet connecting with the powers of a specific orisha. The one that I got of course is a macuto of Oggún, one my favorite great spirits.  I love the smell of witchcraft in the morning.  (The macuto is the green and black object with a cowrie shell.) Amulets need to feed to be alive. So as food for the amulet I made a potion from herbs related to Oggún to anoint it with every Tuesday, Oggún's sacred day. I also reserved a bottle for anointing the altar image in my devotionals. It's really been quite a while since I made some herbal stuff, I forgot how fun and delightfully messy it is. I was expecting the tincture to smell horribly because of the cumin and pepper, but...

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Finding Fairies

The sea-serpent Bakunawa rises from the sea.  Ink and colored pencil on Moleskine. A block away from our house, there used to be an abandoned lot overgrown with grasses and bushes where there was a small hollow mound of shrubs that I could fit just right into. As a little kid, it was my secret sanctuary where I spend the early afternoons before my mother comes out to call me home for my siesta. I believed my little sanctuary was a doorway between the magic fairy kingdom and our world. I never saw the fairies, but I knew they were there, protecting me from the evil monster (that stray mongrel that roams the bushes) and watching over me while I have my moments of sweet, silent, childhood happiness. There is a garment factory...

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Tiocobrextio: An Autumnal Equinox Feast

The spirit of the north wind. This is my first high-day ritual incorporating the Gaul hearth culture. One of the great challenges was to find the Gaulish equivalent for Mabon. There is no clear evidence as to whether the Gauls celebrate the Automnal Equinox. In fact, it isn't very clear either whether there's a Gaulish word for "autumn". Scholars suggest the words uogiamos ("before winter"), or messus ("harvest"), but being in the Pacific tropics I wanted a less season-related word. I may be worshiping Gaulish gods but I'd like to keep my rituals relevant to the spirit of the land. In the ADF dedicant manual, the Gaulish fall equinox festival is called Diocomrextios. I could hardly find any resources as to the origin...

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On Praying to the Ancestors

My ancestor shrine, inspired by the colorful egun'gun tradition of West Africa and Lucumi religion. It's also my first work on clay. The nine masks represent the collective spirits of my ancestors. Nine is the number of the orisha Oya, guardian of the dead. The pattern around the frame represents the river of life force (ashé) to which our spirits are bound to return. Having come from the Llewellyn-Wicca variant of neopaganism, the idea of ancestor worship was unfamiliar to me when I first got introduced to it via a group of friends practicing African traditional religions. Nevertheless I have made it a part of my practice as well. I felt that there is something important to it other than the obvious purpose of giving respect to the elders,...

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The Four Rules of a Magician

Because photo quotes are so in these days... ...

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Holy Death

I have given up on the idea of karma, heaven, and a glorified afterlife a long time ago. I don't think I have any need of those in order to live righteously. I would rather that I do good things in this world simply for the sake of being human or for the pleasure of being kind, and not for the sake of some cosmic reward. Religion doesn't have to sugarcoat death for me anymore. I've already seen her behind that make-up - and she doesn't  look very pretty. I have seen her for what she is and I embrace her existence. And it is precisely my pagan understanding of death that inspires me to live this life to the full and as virtuously as possible. I think life has felt more meaningful once I got free from those wishful thoughts of immortality....

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On Saturday Afternoons

One of my favorite hangout spots is that branch of Bo's Café inside the Powerbooks store in Greenbelt 4. Surrounded by books and the smell of coffee, it becomes my own little slice of paradise on many Saturday afternoons. With a book on one hand and a warm porcelain mug on the other - that, or an oatmeal cookie - I let myself get lost into my inner worlds for many hours as I cozily sit on the wooden chair. (When I'm lucky, I get the sofa).  On some occasions I would bring my notebook and a pencil to leisurely work on some artful sketches. I'm not very good in drawing, but nonetheless I find a special joy in it - as I always had since I was a wee little toddler. I think everybody loved making art when they were little, most people...

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The Nihil SIgil

Speaking of paper talismans, here is one that has been particularly useful for me these days. Well, techically it's not a sigil but heck, the name's got a nice ring to it. I also call it the Triangle of Negation, or the "pigil" sigil ("pigil" being Tagalog for the word "prevent"). It's based on the classic ABRACADABRA charm. Unlike my other talismans, the words written on it are pretty obvious and straightforward. It's three sides nicely accentuates its correspondence to Saturn, whose number is three. In classical Western magic, Saturn is the planetary sphere to work with for purposes of banishment and destruction. I admit, this was originally designed for 'evil' purposes, but actually it's doing me more good than harm. Want...

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Three Other Things a Witch Can Do with Herbs

As a modern (and lazy) witch, I just buy my magical herbs from the magical grocery store. The problem I get with this is that I end up buying about a cupful of herbs, use a teaspoonful or two for oils, tinctures, and gris-gris bags, and then the remaining herbs would be left on stock for seemingly eternity. It's probably just me being O.C. but I couldn't stand seeing jars of spices and herbs sitting around doing nothing, so I had to think of other stuff to use them for. 1. Herb-Powered Paper talismans. While I don't make herbal oils and charms that often, I do make talismans a lot. To prepare the paper to be used in making talismans, I simply make an infusion or tea of the appropriate herb(s) and soak the paper in it...

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Iroko: The Serpent Oshumare Climbs the Tree of Orishas

This is what happens when you put your hands into too many mystical systems. This is simply my attempt to place the orishas into the cosmic file cabinet of the Kabbalistic tree of life. I'm sure there are kabbalists and orisha worshippers who'd get sick of the idea, but this my personal belief. I study and practice both traditions on their own but sometimes I find it interesting to mix things up a bit, like making fusion food. Olodumare is Kether, which is depicted here as the sun that gives life to the tree. His sphere is separate from the rest to illustrate that he can only be felt but not known. The 24 sun drops is an allusion to the pre-genesis story of the Philippine folk magic tradition ("lihim na karunungan"). It is implied...

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Kabbalistic Correspondences of the 16 Geomantic Signs

I made these diagrams as reference cards for my Geomantic divination flash program, Geomania. I unfortunately lost the code before completing it due to a stupid hard drive problem. The unfinished program was working already working well enough when I was able to release the executable on the net for a short period. If, for some reason, you have a copy of the compiled program, please be so kind to send a copy to me, and I would happily sell my soul to you. Anyway, I figure these images might be of use for those who are using the geomantic signs in magic.  The design is made in the 2008 Murmur style, which is modernly simple, colorful and cutesy. These days I'm more into the traditional occutlish look. Sephirotic ...

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The Tetragrammaton of the Illuminati

In reading Peter Carroll's "Psyber Magic", I came across an interesting diagram in which he divides psychopolitical programmes into four interesting groups. For some reason, this has stuck with me for years. I was trying to come up with a design on the lid of a wooden box for keeping my tarot cards in, and what I end up with is a 'sigilized' version of said diagram. I'm not sure how this relates to the tarot but I'm gonna go with it. The tridents represent chaotic while the crosses represent lawful. Hebrew letters above are YHSVH ("Jesus"), and below are YHVH ("Jehova"), which are the nice and naughty polarity of the lawful alignment. On the left is the Hebrew STN ("Satan"), and on the right is the Latin LVX ("Lucifer"),...

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Greeting the Year of the Dragon in Hong Kong

What better place to greet the year of the dragon than in the land of the dragon itself? The Chinese New Year's celebrations actually take a week long, but the main events happen around the first three days. It's actually a very quiet and solemn period, and many of the shops in the cities are closed - much like the Holy Week period in the Philippines. The only firecrackers I ever heard and saw was the fireworks display at Victoria Harbor at the second day of the New Year - and what a display it was! I had to camp by harbor at the Tsim Sha Tsui side for more than 4 hours, despite heavy rain and cold, just to get a nice view of the fireworks. The fireworks start at 8PM, but both sides of Victoria Bay were already jam-packed early in the afternoon. It...

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