Podcast: The Frightful Howls You May Hear!

Happy Walpurgisnacht! The three of us at With Cunning & Command have been working on a secret project we’ve waited for this very witch’s night to finally release out into the darksome wilderness of the hunt: our blog’s brand new companion podcast! The Frightful Howls You May Hear, whose title is an homage to the Grand Grimoire, is a bi-weekly podcast about all manner of magic, occultism, and folklore, from learned traditions of grimoires and astrology to the folkways of traditional witchcraft and herbalism around the globe. Finally putting the voices to our psuedonyms, the three of us will be uploading a new episode every two weeks, ranging from investigative deep-dives into an area of magical and folkloric research to workshopping sorcery, scrying, mediumship, and all sorts of actionable pursuits.

One of our major goals for this podcast, as we go into in our introductory episode, is to put out more content in a more casual manner. We’ve developed a particular tone in our writings on this blog which, while being authentic to our writing styles, is very much a product of both the perfectionism with which we approach what we share, as well as the constraints of privacy and secrecy enforced by our spirits and traditions. As such, what we do write on and explore here are the sorcerous results, field experiments, and magico-religious musings we can reveal, being only a small slice of what we actually get up to on a regular basis. With the podcast, we not only hope to discuss a bit more casually some of our adventures and experiments, but also connect with our beloved readers on a more personable level. We are so continually humbled by all the e-mails our readers send in, reports of your own attempts at some of the grimoiric and folk magical techniques we’ve discussed, and all the love and excitement you’ve shown our talismans, oils, readings, and other product launches (many more of these coming in the future!). The Frightful Howls is both a labour of love and a show of appreciation for your thoughtful engagement, and we hope to be able to learn together with you all on many more folkloric and sorcerous topics as we explore them in a far more casual, light-hearted setting.

We have one (and a half!) new episodes uploaded already:

Episode 0: On the Eve of the Great Enterprise: A short introduction to the podcast, what our plans are, and what to look forward to.

Episode 1: Toadmen, Horse Jading, and Leapers Between: An exploration of the toad bone rite, horse jading, toadmanry, self-initiations into witchcraft, and the Society of the Horseman’s Grip and Word. Lots of memes and laughs are had, Key wrestles with his past Chumbley phase, Salt delights us with his accents, and I lead the charge on the research while somehow bringing it all back to dragons once again.

If you’d like to give it a listen, head on over to the podcast site or our own blog’s page to see the new episodes. If you’d like to help us further expand the podcast, fund bonus episodes between weeks (available to all), and get access to some cool bonuses, please consider checking out our Patreon! By subscribing to our one (and only!) tier, you get access to our show notes and citations, exclusive monthly Q&As, Salt’s monthly astrological almanac, our herbal lore and magic of the month, and the ability to suggest and vote on future episode topics. Every patron helps us so much and we are so deeply grateful to each and every one of you!

Follow us on Twitter for updates and be sure to check back every two weeks for a new episode.

Consultations and Casebooks, now open again!

Hey folks, this is Salt. I wanted to make a brief post to let you know that I am open for consultations again, after a particularly busy period of time (preparing materials, translations, and research for my astrological practice and shifting towards more formal teaching, working on other writing projects, and building language skills amongst many other things that we’ll leave for another time). Most importantly, during all this studying, I was able to finalize my visa and move countries to, at long last, live with Sfinga into our very own home! We’ve been so excited, setting up shrines and a dedicated spirit room, offering to our spirits together, making incense, cooking, working out at the local gym, practicing sorcery, and getting used to our new house. These have truly been some of the most blissful, joyous, and productive days of our lives, and we’ve never been happier and healthier in our practices and social/work lives. We are especially thankful to all our spirits for their incredible manifestations, and our close friends for their unending support, love, and true companionship. A special shout out to B. Key, who flew out to visit us both just a week after I immigrated to spend time together, do an incredible amount of practical magic, and cook us some truly incredible food!

With that exciting update, we return to the topic at hand! As much as I love doing astrological work, my approach is quite laborious and takes some time, demanding a great deal of attention and focus, and thus it was necessary to take a step back temporarily from offering my services in order to attend to these other matters, my own studies, and the immigration process. I am happy to announce that I am now available for consultations once more, with new options, offerings, and pricing schemes.

Consultations now take two forms. The first is a general consultation, including various options to append different services, and gradually scaling in complexity. These general consults are not limited solely to astrology but also include various other methods, including sorcerous prescriptions and geomancy.

The second is intended to reward long term clients, and is the closest that we come towards a “general astrological reading”: the opening of a personal casebook. These casebooks essentially act as a repository of astrological readings and judgements for the patron, making it easier to refer to them. They are also beautifully illustrated with various woodcuts and images from various sources throughout. Below is an example casebook, showing what one can expect in terms of quality, length, and content:

Each one includes the observations on the “general features” of the nativity and some fundamental information and delineations mostly according to the methods of Hellenistic, Byzantine and Arabic astrologers. The second section of each case file is then made up from the various cases themselves, whether geomantic questions or horary, or more detailed examinations of the nativity (such as marriage, the year ahead for the native, etc.). The third and final section also includes a small section of prescriptions and magical remedies, usually of a fairly simple nature such as charms for protection, purification, prosperity, or un-witching, depending on the particular needs of patrons as indicated in the nativity or other forms of consultation. This third section will essentially resemble a miniature book of magic, or book of secrets in a similar vein as the writings of Pseudo-Albertus Magnus, usually with an emphasis on natural magic unless otherwise stated. This is because moving the souls of minerals, animals and plants, and the use of incantations and written charms, as done in natural magic, is somewhat more accessible than recommending conjurations of unfamiliar spirits to people who have no reason to approach them — these are all forces that surround us to begin with, after all.

As a result of these changes, my consultations are now far more accessible, lowering the price to represent the shift in gears and adjustments to my approach. I think this new approach will be appealing to many, and in particular seeks to reward long-term clients. I take pride in the amount of work I put into each one of my consultations, and my goal is to help you meet your needs to the best of my ability.

To take a look at our services, see [HERE] or click the consultation page above. It would be my honour and privilege to be your astrologer for whatever questions and needs you may have.

Hail and Welcome

Welcome to With Cunning & Command, a blog about magic, occultism, grimoires, spirit work, folk lore, and esoteric scholarship. We are magicians, karcists, necromancers, and diviners working with diverse Old and New World traditions, grimoires, and spirit courts joined by common goals, loves, and approaches to the hidden. Here, on our new website, we hope to host book reviews, snippets of ritual procedures, reflections on sorcerous practices, and a miscellany of other related writings. Our work is invested in ever furthering the transformation of the magician as a magical being herself, while concurrently deepening levels of spirit communion and mastery using the twin-forked prongs of knowledge and strength, insight and power—with sagacious cunning and authoritative command.

This blog is run by two authors, partners Sfinga and Salt:

Sfinga is a traditional witch, diviner, and spirit-worker from the Balkans. Born in Serbia, her magic is rooted in the oral traditions of zduhać and zmajevit lineages, especially surrounding ingress with dragon (zmaj) spirits. Fascinated with folk magic, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Old Slavic folklore and mythology, and various ways of working both devils and saints, she strives towards ever refining new cunning with old wisdom. An alumna of many of Jason Miller’s courses, including Strategic Sorcery, Sorcery of Hekate, and Black School of St. Cyprian, she is also trained in rootwork and is an initiate of Quimbanda through Tata Apokan of the Cabula Mavile Kitulu kia Njila. St. Cyprian of Antioch is one of the most significant spiritual allies in her court both within Quimbanda and in her other practices. She can be most easily reached through this blog or her Instagram.

Salt (also known as Khamaiyinepu) is a magician in the vein of early modern English folk and ritual magic practices, ever cultivating relationships with local land wights while contacting angelic and demonic powers through various grimoires. He also practices Faustian magic following the German ritual praxis of the Magia Naturalis et Innaturalis. Passionate about Ancient Egyptian religion and sorcery, he is a fervent reader of all things pertaining to Kemetic ritual practices. A geomancer and student of Traditional Astrology and Scholastic Image Magic, he has recently begun to delve into the various techniques of the Picatrix. He is the author of the Hadean Press pamphlet, The Devil’s Bestiary: The Magpie.

We thank you for stopping by our new corner of the web! We’ll be updating this space with plenty of new posts in the near future, and we hope that you stay with us as we continue to write about our wanderings along the crooked roads.