Foam-born Aphrodite

To say that this has been a long time in the making would be a perilous understatement. Key and I have teased and hinted at this undertaking for over half a year, at various points ruminating on if it was the right time or not to release our offerings into the world, and at each turn being rejected swiftly in divination. The spirits that have guided our hands and hearts have continually asked for more—the Venusian increase, the love-struck outpouring, the tremendous and awe-inspiring chorus of muses lilting in heart-song—reminding us to never shy or shrink away from the importance of our toiling. What began as a decision born of serendipitous chance had, after all, become a sacred pilgrimage; and what we brought back from those shores was an experience that fundamentally reconstituted us at our cores.

For our thirtieth episode of The Frightful Howls You May Hear, Salt interviews Key and I about what it was like travel to the Sanctuary of Aphrodite Paphia—the single most holy site of Aphrodite in the world, being a place of pilgrimage for countless cultures across centuries—as well as the Petra tou Romiou or “Aphrodite’s Rock,” being the place of her legendary birth within the foam. Even as we could only share but a fraction of the full experience—the rest being subject to the taboos of secrecy placed upon us by the spirits we encountered—we were utterly delighted to at last unveil a portion of what made this pilgrimage so special. Far from a simple touristic joust, our experience of the Heavenly Queen transformed us beyond every measure, elated us to tears, humbled us to our knees, and pacted us to a worship that will endure for the rest of our days. While Key and I are no strangers to visiting sacred sites and places of power—having spent the last several years being ready travel companions as best friends across countries—we have never hesitated once over the past six months to declare to ourselves and others that this was the single most illuminating and transformative experience across all our adventures.

The blessed rain that purified us, the hymns we sang at her Sanctuary, the museum guard witnessing the manifestation of the Goddess through the light of the clouds parting and celebrating with us that “She had come,” the voices we heard within the airs swirling her Baetyl, the second physical manifestation at the beach, and everything that occurred in between—all this, to our capability under the necessity of secrecy and privacy as directed by spirits, we go into at various points throughout the episode. If you’re interested in hearing us attempt to even begin to grasp at the significance of what this was for us, we kindly invite you to give the episode a listen. It contains our usual mischief and humour as we process a story we’ve told many friends and ritual elders over the past half year, but also a lot of vulnerability at the humbling manifestations that we bore witness to, and the deep sense of honour and privilege we feel in being able to share a portion of this experience with our kind listeners and supporters.

Those on our Patreon (and especially our Patreon’s new Discord server) have seen plenty of hints and previews over the past little while of the collection Key and I have been toiling over ceaselessly since we returned to our homes last year. Every Friday of every month since the mid-fall, he and I have given of ourselves our fullest effort to a series of offerings to share with the world a distillation of that experience. One of our many agreements we forged with the spirit intercessors and intermediaries we encountered was to share the love of our friendship, love of this experience, love for this Goddess, and Love as the force which binds all together as the rapturous intrusion and fermentation of reality; that while some aspects must be kept sub rosa by necessity and by design, the nature of beauty and love is to unfold as the rose does. These violent blossoms must yet germinate their delights within the maws of desire, enfleshed in promise and fulfilled in need.

While the frenzied touch of the Goddess of Love and Beauty kept us restless, pushing us onward to continue perfecting formulas and negotiating pacts, the spirits that guided us throughout this journey (including those who returned home with us from those shores) kept a steady beat to our toiling. The three of us—Salt, Key, and I all—have intimately shared with each other the aspects of the most transformative and incredible spirit-experiences we’ve encountered across our traditions and the stories of our lives, especially as we’ve deepened the immense friendship between us. Yet so rarely are even a portion of these stories allowed to be public in any capacity. At the same time, it also struck us as only appropriate that, in cultivating this burgeoning veneration of Aphrodite in light of all that She had wrought for us on this journey—so suddenly and remarkably cleaving into our lives and reaching into the pits of our natures to wrestle forth our deepest desires to the forefront—it was only appropriate that we allow for some of that vulnerability to be shared beyond words, even beyond writing: but in offerings of the spiritual essence itself.

This was always our heartfelt desire with this Foam-born Aphrodite collection, named in tribute to She who made it possible. While we will certainly create many more offerings in the future with respect to Aphrodite, the spirits of the Tuba Veneris, the angel Anael, and all the powers under the All and Many that is Venus Herself, this gathering here is made both limited and special in the truest senses of the words through the pilgrimage and its theophanies. Key was in charge of the majority of the creations and carried out his work with the diligence and attention to detail of a master artisan. My chief role was to bring about the circumstances that would allow a troupe of Venusian daimones to become bonded to a series of hagstones as their desired vessels, such that some of the very nymphs in service to the Goddess may become familiars to those most in need of their service and companionship.

Locals we spoke to in Paphos continually emphasized that when Aphrodite arose, fully-formed, from the foam of the sea, she was carried to the coast by myriad nymph beings that guided her from her rock to the beach. We continued to find stones in the shape of slippers amidst the waters as we swam, which a number of locals told us were the “shoes” of these spirits. After making our offerings, singing to the Goddess, saluting the many spirits of shorelines and beaches we already hold pacts with, and completing the end of our pilgrimage by swimming three times around the Rock itself (said to grant blessings of long-life, beauty, and love upon all who embark on this venture), we fell into deep trance, encountering some of these spirits that guided us back towards the beach as we swam.

What awaited us at the coast was, without exaggeration, as startling as the sight of the clouds parting to the light of a woman’s form before us and the guard in the Sanctuary. Once we returned to where we had left our offerings under the large boulder on the edge, we were approached by an otherworldly beautiful woman with dark, curly hair and a splendorous garnet-red dress. This was one of those encounters which no description could do justice. Everything about her appearance, gait, composure, and ominous gaze—penetrating yet distant, awe-inspiring yet familiar, ferocious yet docile—left the both of us so speechless we were unable to even muster a polite greeting. Her bare feet appeared to effortlessly glide across the pebbles, undisturbed by their rough edges, until she was just a step away from embracing me. My voice was so caught in my throat that I could not even manage the simplest utterance. Instead, she suddenly grasped my hand and impressed in it a stone—the same deep garnet-red as her dress. She did not respond to my breathless attempts to thank her in Greek and in English, physically vanishing around the bend of the stones as Key and I attempted to follow her. Only upon closer inspection later did I realize that its shape physically resembles the coastline from the Sanctuary to the beach itself.

It was after this encounter that Key and I collected the seven smooth, flat hagstones that would become our own “Baetyl”. While there are no shortage of excellent statues of Aphrodite across Cyprus’ many beautiful shops, we were so moved by the aniconic representation of the Goddess at her Sanctuary that as soon as we found seven (and no more, at that, than her sacred number) hagstones, we knew that this would be our shared representation of Her for the rest of our days. Even their holes perfectly overlap each other, allowing water to flow freely through the cairn. Throughout our pacing along the beach, the nymphs that guided us continually inoculated us with their designs; that some wished to accompany us as daimones and intercessory oracles for the Goddess and her pact, while others sought to pass through our hands and into the company of others still.

We took this charge sincerely and with extreme conviction. Even on our breathless ride back to the capital where we were staying, Key and I could not help ourselves but begin to urgently brainstorm how to begin to share some of this bounty with other devotees and sorcerers as we had been directed to.

In our bags I had carried with us a number of hagstones we had collected from our journey. Cyprus was not our first destination, nor would it be our last during this month of travel, and while our reasons for going together were more for work than for pleasure, after this crucial point we began to finally grasp back towards the hands of the spirits that had guided us along the way, with the serpents’ eggs of these holed stones being vital points of germination on the path. The spirits tasked us with bathing the set they had selected from amongst the whole within the very waters between the boulder and the Rock as the first of many steps which would come to dominate my own life over the next half year; a love letter written in wooing desire to bring those same delicate feet over countless many shores home.

The Eyes of Nepherieri

It is no exaggeration for me to say that I spent every Friday toiling over these since I returned home. I had such designs in my own mind for how the shape they could take. The spirits insisted that the hagstones had to be their true seats, outlining for me an entire regimen of how to enliven them as their hearts. In my eagerness, I imagined charm bags wrapped in animal skins and adorned with feathers and beads, only to be swiftly redirected in divination and in dream alike to what they unveiled and insisted upon: prayer ropes. The more I attempted to negotiate the aesthetics I had in mind, the more they insisted upon simple luxury: garnets the colour of the stone the woman gave me (and the colour the hagstones themselves would turn after consecration), mother of pearl in honour of the shell protecting Aphrodite’s feet, and carnelian for her fire, her light, her sighs, her kisses. Seven by seven, her number, and the number which continually revealed itself to us along each stretch of our pilgrimage. Firm in the weight of the beads yet light in their manipulation—these spirits wish to be prayed with to the Goddess, to send each intonation of vowels, each gasp of joy, each tear of grief and longing, each prayer for liberation and recognition in the arms and gaze of Another through their circuit and back through the hole that is the womb of possibility. To be wrapped around the wrist and pressed into the palm, to have yearnings hissed through the gaps and folded directly over spells, to be draped over statues, candles, and workings to empower them with not only the bonds they will forge with their eventual keepers, but everything we were able to pour of ourselves from our experience into their grasps.

Deceptively simple as their designs ended up being, the process of ensouling these fetish-vessels was anything but. Named the Eyes of Nepherieri in tribute to the secret name given in PGM IV. 1265–74, to be intoned internally seven times in order to instill love in another, they were the sole focus of my spiritual labours every Friday for the last two seasons.

It is difficult for me to even begin to illustrate how much effort went into their consecration. With many details having to be kept private for the sake of the spirits involved, what I can reveal is that they received such attention and reverence that they consumed a full calendar month’s worth of continuous effort. They were fed white doves, sat within the blood within a copper vessel until they were dyed red, then macerated in additional red wine, sorcerous oils capturing a Venus Rising in Pisces election that Salt had procured for us, tears shed during declarations of love, dirts collected from famous lovers who were buried together as well as serpent holes within the Sanctuary, and pomegranate seeds collected from the pilgrimage. Each had to be hung upon the branches of seven different trees, all divined upon and associated with the worlds of nymphs, faery beings, and otherworldly passage, and buried under seven different holy mounds and mountains chosen for their own historic importance to the same across the Balkans, Mediterranean, and North America. Each tree and place of power was placated with regular offerings, and, once the stones were retrieved, presented with a communal meal which was then also shared with those in need.

Their final gasping breath of life was given to them through a commingling of sea water collected from Aphrodite’s beach and holy spring water from a mountain dedicated to St. Petka, each poured through the seven hagstones of the main cairn and into their individual mouths. As the water passed through the gates, it was impressed upon me a notion I was all too familiar with from my own work with the Libellus Veneri Nigro Sacer: that the Queen of All claims ultimate victory over every planet and every sphere. Just as light travels from Saturn to Luna to Terra, so Venus claims her rulership over all of germination, placing herself as regent of every sphere of the chain of being. I am genuinely proud of these and feel so humbled and moved that I am able to share them with those who would claim them. Their spirits have passed every “check” of manifestation, ability, and fealty I have asked of them with flying colours, giving unto me individual nicknames that I will provide with those who will take them in; their true names will be revealed only directly from spirit to sorcerer once they are in their destined hands. They will be sent nestled within red velvet pouches filled with rose petals and bits of the Venus Rising in Pisces powder I crafted with Salt’s erudite election, along with instructions sent electronically on how to care for them and work with these incredible allies.

If you are interested in welcoming one of these unparalleled spirits into your court, I ask that you divine first with whatever method is most appropriate—even a simple nature augury—to see if this would be welcomed by your spirits. They are priced similarly to astrologically elected talismanic jewelry on the advice of many kind astrologer-magicians, not only a reflection of the work that went into ensouling them, but also because the experience they capture beyond the translation of a pact between daimon and sorcerer is not one that we can reproduce in any meaningful way again, even if we ever find the time and ability to embark on a similar pilgrimage in the future. Our dear friend Sasha Ravitch had this to say in our Patreon Discord recently, which touched Key and I profoundly to have our efforts be witnessed so nakedly by another seer and companion of the Others:

One of the things I am struck by is how nothing like this series, nor any item in this series, has ever existed before, nor will ever exist again. It cannot be replicated – not just the creation of the materia and the devotions, but also the literal pilgrimage, the literal appearance of the goddess, the availability at the site of the materia that was to be collected and utilized. This surpasses any astrological magical Venus election. It bypasses all need for those boundaries or rules because the Goddess herself gave her flesh to the work.

Sasha Ravitch

If one of these nymphs calls to you, it would be my sincerest honour to assist you in facilitating this pact. May their gentle hands and fleet-footed gait empower you to the fullest experiences of a relationship with the Goddess Herself, and enchant every relationship and expression of love henceforth.

All Eyes of Nepherieri are sold out. Thank you for your patronage!

The Oil of Nepherieri

This is Key’s flagship offering for our bounty, an oil he has described on numerous occasions as an attempt to create a liquid personification of the blessings he bore witness to at Her holy site. Structured around historically attested offerings to Aphrodite, this oil also draws additional inspiration from Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy, especially Book One, Chapter 28: What things are under the power of Venus, and are called Venereal.

Built off a foundation of apples and pomegranates gathered from her Sanctuary in Paphos, then dried, reduced to powder, and infused (some hot and some cold depending on the need of the spirits), this oil is itself a living spirit. It may be spoken to, prayed with, and used in any manner as befits the Queen on High. Its birth required immense attention and care, from the ways in which each herbal ally was freshly harvested by hand and by copper, to how each rose and myrtle bush was offered to and sung with. A powder made of the white doves given to the Goddess was added alongside countless other ingredients which must remain unnamed. The vessel of this oil was treated with just as much care as the contents, joining body and spirit in the sighs of incarnation and the joy of life. It was clothed with red and affixed with stones gathered from the temple as a calling to Aphrodite as Kythere (“the red one”), as attested in PGM IV. 2891–2942, and as Kythira; a purported birthplace of the goddess or alternative destination the nymphs carried her to in her most heavenly form. The red cloth itself was extensively consecrated, having seven feasts laid upon it and seven forms of love graced into its folds before it was ready to wrap the mother bottle in its embrace. Countless votive acts were performed to the bottle to ensure it was prepared to contain the essence of Key’s reflection upon his own devotion and experience at the temple.

The bottle you receive should be enshrined and treated as a cultic object of its own. It will be wrapped in its own cloth and act as its own mother bottle, an offering of the liquid form of the Goddess’ blessing. Use it in any manner of working you can imagine, to cultivate Her presence, to anoint your body and the bodies of others, to give unto spirits and to forge their pacts under Her gaze. This is not an oil designed only for the usual reasons of love, sex, beauty, fertility, and so on—there are incredible astrological elections and traditional recipes and formulas across the traditions we are initiated and trained in that can produce oils that work brilliantly for these goals instead. Rather, it is an offering of the Goddess unto the Goddess, forging a relationship between user and spirit directly. Include it in your own fetish vessels and add it to ropes that will tie together the pacts you will forge with even the most capricious of spirits. If you would like to use it for the everyday needs of sorcery and conjure, we recommend that you add seven drops to olive oil you pray Her hymns over to create a new mother bottle specifically for more regular engagement with practical magic.

Balm of Eros

The first of a trinity of offerings Key created in honour of the three most famous forms of love: Eros, Agape, and Philia. The Balm of Eros uses the Oil of Nepherieri as its main oil base, to which were added rose petals and thorns alike, lavender, red clover, damiana, kava, ashwagandha, skullcap, vanilla, a small portion of the dove powder, and dyer’s alkanet to turn the beeswax pink. There is a dream-like, opium haze to its kiss, liberating inhibitions and indulging the smooth, passionate glide of stripping silk, unveiled prowess, coy submission, and lurid command.

Having received extensive consecration and laboratory testing, these balms may be used to strengthen sexual and romantic bonds through mutual anointing over the skin, enhance the sensitivity of skin to touch, allow for more pleasurable and physical experiences with spirit lovers, heal minor cuts and bruises incurred through rougher, passionate play, and much more. They are also especially designed to make the clients of sex workers more docile, pliable, obedient to directions, and swifter to part with money.

Tincture of Agape

A gift unto the gods, this tincture was crafted with a number of coalescing goals in mind: to instill a benevolent blessing of overwhelming purity and the sensation of divine presence, to improve the intellect, to heighten spirit communion, and to make oneself friendly to spirits (especially those that are the least friendly of all) chief among them. Many herbal pacts were forged on behalf of this tincture, including hand-foraged motherwort as the base, hyssop, lemon balm, lavender, and more. Each individual vial was blessed with a mouse’s paw—taken from one acquired by a spirit at a three-way crossroad—to be as the gentle hand which removes the needle from the lion’s paw, ensuring that one’s humanity has a less abrasive effect to those spirits to whom we smell foully towards, and securing immediate communion between what was once stranger to become now beloved friend. In this way, this is also an incredible ally in repairing broken pacts, frayed bonds, and in allowing forgiveness to give way to lasting harmony.

In creating this tincture, we were both reminded of how deeply it is that love and beauty and the delights of this Goddess—so profoundly worshipped and so deeply called out to even to this day in her many forms and faces—is quite literally the force which makes all the stars in the sky shine and the world itself rotate on its axis, yet it is tragically what we often feel most guilty about claiming for ourselves and owning our own desires for. Our spirits have reminded us that our relationship to being seen and held by love’s embrace—romantic, platonic, or otherwise—is as necessary as breathing, yet so often we are taught it is something to fight for to become worthy of. This tincture is also an offering unto the mysteries of healing, rectification, and right alignment with the reception of love into one’s life, and that perilous and frightening as that journey may be, we never truly walk it alone.

While Key is proud of all of his offerings, this one holds a special place in his retinue for how potent its effects were upon testing. Even the very motherwort that was freshly wild harvested for this tincture was found through the assistance of the Eye of Nepherieri’s nymphs, who led Key directly through a bath of newly-blooming blue flowers into a grove pregnant with the herb. Deploy to approach the distant, to bridge gaps of understanding, to forge new bonds in impossible circumstances, and to urge ephemeral and cautious spirits rush to be present in communion.

Oil of Philia

The Oil of Friendship was born of a desire to strengthen all forms of platonic love. This oil is especially adept at finding new friends and colleagues, repairing familial problems and rifts to create peaceful homes, bring like-minded people into your fold to become fast and immediate friends, and protect existing agreements between parties. The oil is heavily strained and kept as sterile as the olive oil in one’s kitchen, especially that a drop may be incorporated in cooking without anyone being the wiser. Rub on the body, add to food, anoint on mirrors, and use in any way directed by your spirits to find, keep, stoke, and promote lasting harmony and exhilarating, adventurous, flourishing love among found and originating family alike.

For the majority of this oil’s consecration, it was not a fluid that was being addressed, but an empty bottle; slowly filled with words, sighs, blessings, incense smoke, and washed with seven veils of enchanted waters. Expressions of gratitude and love to friends were whispered daily for half a year into its mouth, perfumed with incense and bathed in elected and captured stellar milk. Once the oil was added, the effect was immediate and undeniable, setting instantly into the cushion of affection laid within.

Star of Aphrodite Incense

This is an incense which Key laboured over for months until he managed to achieve a smell identical to the fragrance we caught at the Sanctuary. When the Goddess appeared before us, this was the scent which permeated the temple. The smell it releases is utterly remarkable; rich and lofty, sensuous and spellbinding, lurid and elevated. The recipe draws heavily on PGM IV. 2891–2942, the Love spell of attraction which includes an “offering to the star of Aphrodite” composed of white dove’s blood and fat, untreated myrrh, and parched wormwood. Many other floral and herbal notes were added to this base until the scent was exact.

Use to manifest spirits tangibly, to call down divinities, to ensure intercessory spirits transmit your prayers to the ears of the Gods, to procure folkloric love, and call to the Mysteries.

Pigment of Venus

A pigment born of the kiss of copper, in honour of the relationship between the Goddess and this most sacred metal which harvested all the herbs of the collection. Key’s love of alchemy and his own background as a chemist led him to create a pigment replicating the colour of the waters themselves. Combine with oil to create a paint for sigils, seals, decorating statues, inscribing walls and pieces of art, and folding into the cracks of broken items to restore them anew.

Stele of Aphrodite

The Stele of Aphrodite from PGM VII. 215–18, for friendship, favour, and success. These were cut from tin-plated steel and engraved with a bronze stylus, then reinforced with an engraving tool. They are sturdier than regular tin and can be placed within a wallet for easy carrying. These are a more affordable choice of talisman for everyday wear and use. In addition to following the PGM faithfully, these have been consecrated using the Star of Aphrodite incense, Venus Rising in Pisces incense, and left under the care of the Eyes of Nepherieri for additional potency. They have been tested extensively and have generated luck, fortune, wealth, soothed anger, courted deeper friendship, and propelled forward a feeling of control and peace within the turbulence of changing fortunes, that luck ever be by one’s side.

Beyond carrying them in wallets or on one’s person, they can be put in the bottom of boxes and jars as the core to prosperity vessels, given to spirits that preside over your luck/fortune/money, placed over petitions or under them with a candle burning over the top to nurture the arrival of soul-mate like friends, tied up in string to business cards so that they can persuade a boss or hiring manager to adore you without becoming too obsessed or attached, and far more. We highly encourage experimentation with these as they are a truly “super-charged” version of this reliable charm!

All Steles of Aphrodite are sold out. Thank you for your patronage!

Shields of the Sanctuary

This famous and much-loved charm from PGM XXXVI. 256–64 protects against nightmares, spiritual assailants, curses/malefica, and physical harm. It is recommended that you hide these within your home or bury them somewhere on your property. What makes these amulets special beyond its usual formulation is that they are born of three-sided pot sherds gathered from crossroads that we found along the pilgrimage route around the Sanctuary. There are an incredibly limited amount of only seven sherds, each of which will be inscribed with your name in myrrh ink, consecrated before our shrines, perfumed in the Star of Aphrodite incense, and anointed with the Oil of Nepherieri. As such, these are especially precious and will be custom made for each individual client. If you claim one of these, please include in your notes if you would like your name to be different from the one on your purchase receipt.

All Shields of the Sanctuary are sold out. Thank you for your patronage!

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None of the recipes and items will ever be in stock again once they are out, as they required the unique combination of the pilgrimage and its blessings to craft. Key and I were privileged to see many ancient temples and cultic sites across Dalmatia and the Mediterranean, including in Greece itself along our dealings. It would be our privilege and hope to be able to embark on such a journey again one day, immeasurably so with Salt in our company as well when our busy schedules afford it. Yet it was specifically in Paphos that an experience of this magnitude bore itself to us. We would not dare suppose that anything similar might happen again if and when we next find ourselves on those incredible shores. It is the unique confluence of the witnessing of the Goddess, the blessings with unfolded, physical manifestations of the path, and omens which hounded us at every turn that led to this limited collection, born of our deepest devotions. It would be our utmost honour and privilege to share our love and the love of this work and its spirits with you.

All prices include shipping. If purchasing multiple items, please note that each will ship from the individual who had created them, so you will receive two packages if acquiring offerings from Sfinga and B. Key together. Please allow for seven business days to ship your orders, as each undergoes an additional blessing before being sent.

May the heavenly, illustrious, laughter-loving Queen illuminate futures of loves untold, of passion thought only to exist in stories, and of fulfilled desire for companionship to be born of true perception. As She crests over the horizon, may your fulfilment surge to meet Her.