dragon – With Cunning & Command

Making an aspect of my work with dragon beings available publicly requires an alignment between difficult circumstances and irritable spirits—a confluence which yesterday’s eclipse finally allowed to converge. My work with the star serpent lords and their earthly kin is the primary influence of my witchcraft, necessitating a great deal of caution in its delicate nature. As much as I delight in speaking on magic in its myriad forms, sharing about my primary initiations and traditions, which themselves draw not only on secrecy, but on transfers of power that can only ever take place once—is generally an impossibility.

Yet this year has given way to new shifts and the shedding of old skins once thought too tight too lose. Certain spirits have stepped forward and asked to be nurtured and fed through the sharing of their gifts with others. Even as they hold fast to their own taboos of the three tongues of illumination—silence, serpent speech, and the nemušti jezik—their hissing takes hold in the form of other heads still yet being born. In skin. In root. In valour.

In gold.

In honour of these guiding influences, and in the names of the zmajevi who made this work possible, I’m honoured to unveil this brood of serpent eggs: a set of charms made of and for the harnessing of crowned serpents and their power. Their outer forms were crafted from eel leather painted gold on the outside—a key animal for the star serpents that are my closest allies. Adorning them on the outside is a thread of lava rock, clear quartz, and pyrite beads. Within is a core of holy bread loaves prayed over and birthed throughout the course of the “fiery saints” of July to August, from Sveti Prokopije to Sveti Pantelija, and fully invoked on Ognjena Marija, Ilija Gromovnik, and Blaga Marija. My personal Hydra powder and Draco powder were mixed into this center and enchanted into their proper alignment against each other, then wrapped in serpent skin fragments that had spent seven full years adorning my primary nest-shrine to my zmajevi. To this additional stellar powders were added under the direction and attunement of the zmajevi who blessed this work, including Alcyone, Regulus, Spica, and Aldebaran, as well as myriad herbal allies such as tarragon, calendula, and eucalyptus among many more. The powder was prepared using only tools made of lightning-struck oak, and given two doves in honour of its two primary patron spirits as their combined eyes on this last new moon eclipse.

I do not know when I will next be able to make dragon charms for the public. My hope is that other opportunities will arise in time, but for now these mark a very limited release. Through the embers of the Fiery Saints of Ognjena Marija (St. Marina of Antioch), Ilija Gromovnik (St. Elijah the Prophet), and Blaga Marija (St. Mary Magdalene) commingled with the golden tears of old drakes, these charms are loci of dragon power, providing protection, wealth, victory, and spiritual mastery and authority. In addition to these virtues, they are especially attuned to mediating contact with serpents of land and stars, attuning to prophetic visions, and allowing for easier spirit flight and shapeshifting. They are mystery teachers, providing in mediation, divination, and dream deeper penetration into the heart of what we call sorcery, mantic trance, and transformation. They are charms of witchcraft for witches, guiding the thorn of the heart-bramble and sharpening the knife-point of the mind into ever cleaving new discoveries of spirit contact, sorcerous possibility, and escape from the tangled skins of self-restraint.

Put more simply, these charms allow for deeper ingress into land and star mysteries. Their forked tongues provide a rooted sympathy to dragons of sky and of land, allowing for their whispered oracles to descend on wind’s spine, lightning’s tail, and meteor’s heart within the oneiric and ritual space alike. Their presence acts as a kind of radio, continually translating knowledge, mysteries, correspondences, insights into how to better arrange the home and its shrines, interact with the land, the dead, and the non-human beings beyond its reach, and sudden somatic knowing for how to most effectively carry out rituals and enchantments for the embodiment of witch power. They allow for the more physical manifestation of spirits conjured into practice through the intercession of local land serpents, which these charms nourish and communicate with passively simply by being offered to. They may be offered dragon’s blood, frankincense, or benzoin incense monthly, especially on new moons, as well as milk or cream with honey next to it if a significant boost is needed.

Keep them next to the primary working altar or by the bedside table and continue to speak with them what you wish to learn, and hear them respond in the body and breath, in sudden knowing placed within the mind, in hissing, in licking, in dream ingress, and in spontaneously louder communication from your own spirits now amplified. Petition them for money, authority, and protection by writing your desire on paper and burning it to ash, passing the charm over the smoke and calling to it to mobilize its forces and your own spirits to bring it to fruition. In addition to empowering spirit manifestations, they also amplify the efficacy of other charms and amulets. Welcome the tears into your home with incense and feed t hem your ambitions, your wildest goals, your most audacious desires. A dragon’s pride ever rises from the farthest horizon, its hunger slowly pulling reality towards its gradual approach.

These are truly some of my most tender offerings yet, born of my heart, adoration, and frenzied devotion. Some of my prized powders from my witchcraft went into these and I am so grateful to be able to offer them with the permission of my dearest tutelary spirits.

All orders will be shipped within seven business days of purchase.

May you ever slough off what no longer serves you and ascend to the highest stars.

Pre-Ritual Notes

One of the experiments I decided to perform from the Cunning Man’s Grimoire was the operation to conjure a “horrible great dragon to appeare in the ayre”. This ritual is to be performed when the Moon is in the 11^th Mansion (though one of the authors of the text mentions it’s likely supposed to be the 12^th due to the imagery of the that Mansion actually including a dragon) and is a fascinating example of a blending of ritual magic, folk magic and astrological image magic together into one single operation.

The ritual prescribes the creation of a small, red copper ring, with a hollow space inside that would allow one to place parchment with names of power written upon it. Unfortunately, the original text is unclear about the precise creation of the ring; if it needs to be made during an astrological election of its respective mansion, or if it is enough to simply perform the ritual during the appropriate time. One argument for the latter case is that the majority of the rings required in the Mansion rituals given in the text are hollow copper rings. This indicates perhaps that the original author of the text was only using one ring for multiple rituals, exchanging the parchments within. This is just a guess, of course, and as such one of the purposes of this experiment was also to see if the ritual works with a copper ring forged outside of the Lunar Mansion—as well as, of course, to see if it really would summon a dragon spirit in the air.

For the creation of the ring, I decided to go with a plain copper band with the names Qerminat, Baralama, Canempria, and Coriet engraved on it, instead of a hollow one with the same words on parchment inside. As for the ritual’s timing itself, I decided that to be less strict than I would require for a Talismanic one, and opted instead to have the Moon be on the Ascendant at the time of the 11^th Mansion. The ceremony itself is relatively short; it simply involves a spoken prayer and a symbol to be etched on the ground using the ring.

Other additions to the experiment that were my own included bringing with me the Fifth Pentacle of Mars for protection, as well as the Scourging Rod from Magia Naturalis et Innaturalis with which I can quickly draw a circle about me in the dirt, should the spirit be malefic in nature. (This is, after all, a possibility, especially if it belongs to the 12^th Mansion considering that the 12^th shows a man and a dragon fighting).

I was quite excited to give this operation a try; past visions of dragons I’ve received through Sfinga in dreams have been utterly awe-inspiring, as has witnessing first-hand her Zmaj’s miraculous control over healing, destruction, and the weather. In light of the central role of Slavic zmaj lore and magic in her life, I was very eager to conjure this Lunar Mansion-derived dragon, especially as it might allow me to see a non-zmaj dragon by myself for the first time.

Post-Ritual Notes (First Attempt – 11^th Mansion)

The first attempt at performing this ritual was done during the 11^th Mansion. I prepared my tools and set out to a nearby dirt track along a large field. I drew the seal in the dirt and spoke the conjuration. Suddenly, I felt a surge of strength and vitality churn within me. With my spiritual sight, I saw a white serpent appear before me—on the ground, however, not in the air. Its spiritual form emerged physically in a translucent guise.

I greeted it, asking for its name, to which it first responded claimed to be Jazariel, the chief of the Tribal Spirits in the Faustian texts, and also the celestial ruler of the 13^th Mansion (it is notable he also appears as a white serpent). However, after I pressed the spirit, it quickly confessed to another name instead to replace the first. I continued by inquiring as to the obtaining of wealth and also of the nature of local British dragon spirits. I did not receive satisfactory answers from him, with the conversation moving in circles for the most part. Eventually, I dismissed him, not sure what to make of the operation. That is, until I returned home and researched the second name he had given me. While I won’t mention what it was, it is safe to say that I had been had. This first spirit who appeared had likely been some sort of trickster. I found this more amusing than frustrating though, and looked forward to performing the operation again during the 12^th Mansion the next day.

Post-Ritual Notes (Second attempt – 12^th Mansion)

This second operation was performed while the moon was in the mid-heaven. The conjuration went well—the clouds immediately darkened from what had previously been a considerably bright and sunny day by English standards. Even the sky became dark, with the exception of the South Eastern corner along the horizon where the daytime moon sat overlooking the earth. Recognizing that, this being a Lunar Mansion experiment, the dragon would likely be related somehow to the moon, I decided to gaze at it for a little while. As I did so, clouds began to form where previously the sky had been entirely clear. They covered the moon in the shape of a claw, grabbing it as a pearl. When I took note of this, an all-white dove flew past me through the trees.

Suddenly, my spiritual sight perceived very clearly a large drake looming in the sky, its form two-headed and pure white. Like a wyvern, it had only feet and no arms. I greeted it, only to be ignored. I conjured it by the ring on my finger, by the names of my spirits, the Holy Trinity, and finally one of the names of Sfinga’s Zmaj guardian that I have been allowed to know, to which it finally paid me attention. Its demeanor, however, still seemed disinterested (after all, it is not like I had her Zmaj near me to bind it—she is back in Canada at this time!). I greeted him once more, asked for his name, and promptly received one. I inquired as to his nature, to which he replied:

“I move the wind, I shake the waves, I break ships with my tail and swallow them. I cause fleets to sink and storms to fall upon my enemies.”

It seemed that the way to get him to talk was to ask about himself! As I learned through our short conversation, he was a fairly boastful spirit—something Sfinga had told me to expect from certain kinds of dragons. Much to my delight, shortly after the ritual, I re-read the description of the 12^th Lunar Mansion in various sources and saw that it has a malefic influence over ships and sea-men, confirming the spirit’s nature.

I received some advice from the spirit concerning how to further awaken the spiritual senses and utilize their discernment. Shortly afterwards, I thanked him and he departed. I was and remain greatly pleased that the experiment was not only successful, but that I was able to confirm for myself that the 12^th Mansion is the most appropriate for the conjuration of its lunar dragon. Since I have his name, I definitely plan on calling this particular spirit in future 12^th Mansions to ask further questions.