In honour of the holiday season, and the continual procession of some of the most important feasts and saint days shared in common by all three of our cultural backgrounds and magical services, we’re pleased to announce a special candle service held by Sfinga and B. Key on the Serbian Orthodox slava of Nikoljdan: St. Nicholas’ Day.
Recently on our podcast, The Frightful Howls You May Hear, myself and Key interviewed their Tata in Quimbanda de Angola, Tata Apokan (Jesse Hathaway Diaz), on the ins and outs of initiation, priesthood, and what it means to commit to a lifelong study in an oral tradition, especially in matters of co-creating community alongside elders and spirits alike. This was an exceptionally special episode to the both of our hearts and we’re absolutely delighted to continue having our Tata back on the podcast for many more to come! With the winter season fast approaching, and our temple in need of a new furnace, we wanted to contribute to our Cabula and our beautiful community at The Frightful Howls alike by offering our very first candle service fundraiser, in honour of an important saint at the heart of all of our practices.
By donating to this candle service, you will receive two workings performed on your behalf, or on the behalf of the person you wish to name: a prosperity ritual from myself, Sfinga, steeped in the association of Sveti Nikola as the Gospodar Vukova (Master of the Wolves), drawing on Serbian folk magical techniques, and a road opening and insight ritual from B. Key, drawing on Dutch folk magic and sailing lore. Combined under the auspices of the Serbian Orthodox slava of Nikoljdan on December 19th, both rites will be cast for you to bring fortune, as well as the clarity and vision to acquire and maintain it.
With St. Nicholas being perhaps the most important and celebrated slava in Serbia, it is no surprise that his cult inherited many of the qualities of the pre-Christian Dabog, the chthonic deity of healing, magic, death, wolves, mining, watermills, agriculture, and far more. Just as St. George, St. Michael, St. Sava, and St. Demetrius inherited many of the same qualities of Dabog through the cult of the Master of the Wolves, so too did St. Nicholas most prominently, as explored by the great ethnologist Veselin Čajkanović in his important work O srpskom vrhovnom Bogu. His cult is well-known throughout the Balkans and across its many religions, heralding reflections on divination, prosperity, travel, and seafaring.
It is these aspects that will be highlighted and honoured in my portion of the service. Each donation will allow you to submit your own name or the name of a loved one to the ritual, which will comprise of an offering of koljivo, slava bread, and red wine presented to the saint in the traditional manner of a Krsna slava, and a pure beeswax candle anointed with holy oil, prosperity oil, and protection oil. Each name will be added to the group petition and burned down into ash, which will be added to a charm of Thursday salt, holy bread, dirts from various Orthodox and Catholic churches of St. Nicholas from across the Balkans, and key powders prepared for this purpose. Once completed, the bundle will be taken to a mass for further blessing and then interred safely in one of three potential places of power, as bean divination performed on the feast proper will elect.
Key will draw on his own knowledge of Dutch folk magic and seafaring magics to open the roads to that same prosperity and grant the insight and divinatory ability to capture, retain, and protect the blessings to come in the New Year. Each name will be etched into candles fumigated with and asperged by an aromatic wash of citrus, clove, anise, holy water, world currencies, and other herbs for insight and security of received boons, blessed with prayers and recited formulas for the same purpose. Each candle will be presented to the shrine alongside an offering of citrus fruit to recollect the gold St. Nicholas so famously distributed in order to avert an unlucky future, and various grains associated with prosperity, diversion of misfortune, and a gentle nourishment of the senses, as to match the provisions of his journey by sea and to strengthen his guiding horse before travelling the road ahead. All of the edible components will then be donated to a nearby food bank in his name to continue this charity and distribute this enchantment to the world.
An Instagram post containing pictures and our reflections on the ritual will go live in the days following the feast so that all who participate may have a record of its completion.
All proceeds will go directly to our Cabula. We hope that this intersection of our traditions and communities serves you well in your New Year’s petitions and plans, and provides an ample boost to all you seek to grow and harvest in the coming months!
Our sincerest, heartfelt thanks to everyone who donated to this fundraiser! We not only met but exceeded our initial goal by double! A follow up post on the ritual as it was executed will be posted in the coming days. We’re so grateful to each and every one of you who contributed to this first group offering.
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 Baetyl of Aphrodite: the aniconic site of her cultic worship in Paphos.
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.
Aphrodite’s Rock, illuminated by the sun. We took this photograph after having collected our seventh hagstone.
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.
The view of the beach and Aphrodite’s Rock from atop the slope.
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.
The first and largest of the stones.
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.
The hagstone cairn that is our private Baetyl of the Goddess, looking over the Eyes of Nepherieri.
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.
One Eye among the many.
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.
Forty-nine garnets by forty-nine prayers, kissing the womb that unites them.
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.
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
The Oil receiving its final consecration.
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.
Oil of Nepherieri
1 fluid ounce / 30 milliliter amber glass dropper bottle, draped in red cloth and secured as a devotional object of ritual use. Created by B. Key.
$220.00
Balm of Eros
Tins poured in submission and in domination.
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.
Balm of Eros is sold out! Thank you for your patronage!
Tincture of Agape
A small vial of the tincture, gold as honey.
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.
Tincture of Agape
1 fluid ounce / 30 millilitre amber glass dropper bottle, crafted with utmost devotion, created by B. Key.
$150.00
Oil of Philia
Where there is one, may there be many.
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.
Oil of Philia is sold out! Thank you for your patronage!
Star of Aphrodite Incense
An offering among offerings, to Her on High.
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.
Star of Aphrodite Incense is sold out! Thank you for your patronage!
Pigment of Venus
The hue of her embrace.
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.
Pigment of Venus is sold out! Thank you for your patronage!
Stele of Aphrodite
The famous Stele from the PGM.
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
Sherds gathered from the pilgrimage.
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!
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.
By the red cape of the soldier-martyr, By the red wings of the adversary underfoot, By the red-drenched spear piercing its maw,
The Charms of the Victory-bearer are born, baptized, and bled.
The charms at the foot of a pacted tree.
These potent bundles were first birthed on May 6th, the Orthodox feast of St. George, which this year happened to be the day immediately following Easter. I’ve much joked with friends about how much “longer” Lent felt this year in light of Easter being May 5th, but this too came with its own advantages. That the eve of Đurđevdan (St. George’s Day) was itself Easter provided the perfect folkloric confluence for a number of the key ingredients which went into crafting these sorcerous allies—fleetfooted, valiant, and unrelenting as the martyr himself.
Having collected the necessary herbs either on the eve or at dawn on the feast proper, retrieving each with the appropriate offering left in turn and through the auspices of a bajalica or basma (oral charm) specifically used on St. George’s Day for those very plants themselves, I began the core powder within the first hours of the feast. The shell of first red egg of Easter—a prized ingredient within the Balkan folk tradition—was crumbled and left to soak among the blood clots of an offered rooster, consecrated with the Jesus Prayer and given veneration through Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday all. On the martyr’s day proper, I baked the kravaj or kravajče, a solar bread intended to mimic the wreaths which would crown cattle for protection, the first sacrificial lamb for protection, and the milk buckets that would receive the first milking of St. George’s Day for fertility. Across numerous villages, and most famously recorded in Vrtovac—a village in Serbia that has been much-studied for its detailed St. George’s Day customs of sacrifice and fertility magic—this bread would be wrapped in geranium, sprinkled with salt, and placed by the nearest river as an offering; or alternatively divided up amongst anthills so that the ants themselves may “lock up” the fertility gathered to protect it from negativity and the Evil Eye.
At the same time, bread baked specifically for a saint’s feast is itself a powerful fetish to be used in the creation of charms. I was trained to add a little piece to each charm I make (a ritual bread that was prayed over for many hours was a key component in the Master of the Wolves charms we released last year), and this case was no different. The rest of the kravaj was divided up between spirits, friends, anthills, tree hollows, the dead, and a river, each with a corresponding oral charm spoken over the piece as Thursday Salt was sprinkled over its resting place, tied to its post with white horse’s hair.
As an additional offering to the martyr and the spirits of his entourage, I cooked belmuž—a sheep’s cheese cornmeal porridge—and gave portions to each of my assisting familiars and to the holy saint himself. The banquet was laid over a red cloth that was consecrated as his cape, fumigated in red Orthodox St. George’s incense I brought back with me from my last trip to Greece, and sprinkled with wine, rooster blood, sheep’s milk, and holy water with sprigs of basil and plantain. When the time came to make the charms themselves, it was this cloth that was divided into the 21 squares that would host the cores birthed on his feast.
The feast given unto St. George.
Herbal materia, both freshly gathered and dried from previous corresponding saint feasts, were combined within a vessel along with personal fixed star powders made in my tradition, specific dirts corresponding with the nature of these charms, and the first red egg of Easter, which had itself undergone numerous rituals upon Christ’s rebirth. As the serpents of Aldebaran and Regulus were massaged for their dew, so too were the armies of St. George supplicated, in memory of his eternal triumph over the aždaja and his folkloric allyship with the zmaj. Propitiating the saint and the gods he masks alike, the raw powder was left incubate within the kravaj, veiled by his bloodied cloak against the glare of any stars not pacted to this working.
Finally, once the raw bundles passed their requisite three omens of manifestation—that they were indeed alive and bringing victory unto their bearers—I was given license by my spirits to bind them still. All three of us at With Cunning & Command and The Frightful Howls You May Hear take efficacy and results extremely seriously; nothing we offer to the world can be sold before it has succeeded in its tests of fealty and power. The trials these cores underwent were in line with their intended use: the overcoming of obstacles, the germination of fertility, the destruction of nightmares, the evil eye, and any other such spiritual malady, and the ultimate triumph of their carrier in matters of competition. Be they deployed for the protection of fertility (in matters of one’s own, those of animals and plants, or even those of other magical workings so that they may bear fruit), the defeat of enemies in matters where only one may prevail, or the destruction of jealous gazes, lingering spirits with ill intentions, or stray miasma and malefica brought home underfoot, the Charms of the Victory-bearer are the white-hot flash of the spear, the crack of the celestial whip, the hooves of the thundering hero-steed crushing each viper before it ever slinks across the threshold.
The base mixture includes allies such as basil, linden, geranium, nettle, chamomile, plantain, dandelion, and many other potent herbs collected in the dark such that they cannot be named. Dirts from the graves of 23 soldiers, 23 anthills, and 23 crossroads, as well as dirt from the village Başköy/Potamia where St. George was said to have been born, are combined with powders of Aldebaran and Regulus created in a manner taught to me in my tradition, as well as a more conventional Sun in Aries powder elected by Salt. Serpent bone, St. George incense, white beans from a chart that approved these charms with the most blessed omen of the Three Stars, and many more implements made their way into the bundles, which were then tied with red thread, a piece of carnelian, and a small pocket icon of St. George, finally bound over with white waxed linen thread. Each knot had the appropriate oral charm breathed into it, an offering of air bestowed as the final gift before they were once again perfumed in incense and left to breathe the sunlight for the first time since the feast.
Having received countless prayers, rich offerings, and diligent attention to omens, auguries, and folkloric expressions of St. George’s might in nature, these charms are finally available for purchase. They may be kept in one’s backpack or purse, nestled in their place of work, placed by the hearth or on appropriate shrines, or hung by the main door to your home. Give them a candle (white, red, or beeswax) and a shot of vodka, brandy, or whiskey once a month, preferably on the full moon to keep them refreshed and spry. These are workhorses and soldiers, aggressively targeting areas of weakness and conquering obstacles in your path. If you have an enemy you need to triumph over, or are looking to be the victor selected from among a pool of candidates, place the charm with a lit candle over a copy of your application with your petition written over it in red. Tuck the charm by your pillow or hang it over your bed to protect against nightmares and vampiric spirits, or to assist in conception and sexual virility. Gift the bundle to your protective spirits to act as arms for them, becoming a battery of power for them to wield against disease, poverty, malefica, and loss in the pursuit of securing steadfast agency.
If you’d like to purchase one for yourself, please click the link below. Shipping is included within the price. They will be mailed out within a week of purchase and a tracking code will be e-mailed to the PayPal address used to buy them.
All St. George’s Charms of the Victory-bearer are sold out. Thank you for your patronage!
It is not my hand that cuts these cords, but the hand of St. George upon his holiest day. Amen, amen, amen.
After so much prodding and teasing from dear friends who have been (generously!) boosting my work despite my complete lack of social media, I’ve finally been conjured by the Tetra-instagram-maton to go more public, and also to offer a full spectrum of services.
I’ve been quietly coaching a cohort of mentees in scrying, mediumship, spirit work, and sorcery, stewarding the growth of their abilities to take charge of their own craft and identify and commune with their spirit courts ever more deeply. Now, thanks to the generous support and encouragement of our supporters and listeners, I’m ready to open my books to wider array of clients.
I’m happy to offer divination, spell work services, mentorship, and custom talismans, charms, oils, and wares to suit your needs, informed by spirit augury and confirmed with divination, to better assist the flourishing of your sorcerous agency on your terms. You can find a full list of all my services at our link [HERE]. I’ll be posting more on Instagram over the next little while of my previous work as well as current projects, and debuting some important new collections over the coming months. I’m greatly looking forward to taking in a wider array of clients full time, and building on the great work already accomplished with my current mentees in the cultivation of further freedom and agency through magic.
Blessed Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary to all on the Gregorian Calendar, and Happy Feast of St. Stephen the Protomartyr for those on the Julian! In my neck of the woods, today is Sveti Stefan Vetroviti, as our nickname for St. Stephen is “the Windy” or “the Windswept”, in thanks to his continued syncretism with the god of wind, Stribog. This is a powerful feast of the zduhać, vertovnjak, oblačar, gradobranitelj, and zmajevit čovek class of weather-manipulating healers and sorcerers, given Stribog’s enduring patronage of their arts, through his fatherhood of the Vjetreni Vojvoda spirits and his own fights against the ala, hala, german, and aždaja. Moreover, it is a day not only associated with the collection of hagstones, but their deployment in charms for knotting the wind, protecting livestock, and providing homes for spirits.
One of our recent episodes on our podcast, The Frightful Howls You May Hear, featured an overview of some of the basic lore around hagstones from the British, Germanic, and Slavic contexts. We’ve been so overwhelmed by the outpouring of support, love, and engagement on the podcast from so many of you; the warm reception and incredible feedback we’ve received has truly nourished us in our creativity and excitement to share more. We are so deeply grateful to everyone who has sent in comments, shared their thoughts on the episodes, and signed up to support our Patreon where we post bonus content such as our show notes, Salt’s incredible monthly astrological almanac, our Q&As, and far more! Over the next few weeks, we hope to share with our readers here on the blog not only a little of what we’ve been up to behind the scenes, but also new offerings to come in the form of courses, mentorships, readings, charms, and far more. It’s truly been a blast for the three of us to share more regularly, via our bi-weekly episodes, aspects of folkloric and magical research we’ve been up to, as well as tidbits of our personal adventures and sorcerous journeys.
The Hagstone episode (also adding the YouTube link since we only made the channel a few episodes after the launch, and most of our viewers are on Spotify and Apple Music—so for those of you who prefer YT, we’re finally live!) came about while the three of us were scattered over the past two months, travelling for work, spiritual training, conferences, and everything in between. Even on my travels, I had been collecting them where I could see (or, in the case of their hissing, hear) them, and asked Salt and Key if they’d be interested in contributing some German and English sources to an introductory episode on these most reliable of magical companions.
One of several hagstones I found at the Colombia River Gorge recently.
I thought it might be helpful to share some of what we went over in the episode here as well, in honour of Sveti Stefan Vetroviti. While we covered a great many names that holed stones have been referred to across Europe, “hagstone” is the name we’ve all used with each other in English from the beginning, and it’s certainly the one that’s stuck in our common parlance, as well as across occult spaces. That being said, while the list of names is especially long, a sample of our favourites from the episode include mare stones, bitch daughter stones, witch stones, and adder stones in English; Lochsteine, Trutensteine, Schratensteine (see our episode on the Schrat for more on this one!), and Hühnergott in German; and a great many coming from the South Slavic dialects, of which I’ll provide below with their translations from Serbian:
Chicken god (pileći bog)
Identical in meaning to Hühnergott, which itself is believed to be a German neologism form Slavic languages, referring to their use in the protection of livestock and especially chickens by being hung over their coops
Dog’s heart (psećim srcem)
Dog’s god (psećim bogom)
Dog’s luck (pasja sreća)
These dog-related motifs are a reference to Veles, lord of cattle, wolves, agriculture, the wilderness, magic, the chthonic world, and far more
Perun’s arrow (Perunovom strijelom)
Thunderbolt (gromovnikom)
Thunderstone (gromovnički kamen or kamen groma)
These three come from the belief that these stones are formed when Perun, the god of thunder, order, and the heavenly realms, strikes the holes through with his furious lightning
Serpent stone (zmijski kamen)
from the belief that holed stones are black eggs from which basilisks are hatched
Snake’s poison (zmijski otrov)
Serpent’s egg (zmijsko jaje)
Witch’s stone (kamen veštica)
God’s eye (božje oko)
An example collected from a beach.
The uses for holey stones are all but endless. They protect livestock from curses, witches, and being ridden to the point of exhaustion by fairies, heal toothaches, headaches, and all manner of illnesses (in the Balkans, a common technique is to sandwich the afflicted area with a hagstone on either side, and conjure them to pass the pain through them and away, so that they may be disposed of later), ward against nightmares, and allow for the seating and ensoulment of spirits (in my tradition, this is typically done with seven-holed hagstones, which are especially prized). Some cultures recognize classifications of hagstones and their abilities and proclivities based on number of holes (with each having their own uses), whether they are seen as belonging to fire or water (based on their shape and hardness), whether they are male or female (less commonly used, but often having to do with roundness and pointedness), and in which location and weather conditions they were found. I went over a few variations from Slavic speaking countries with regards to these in the episode, though these classifications can become so detailed and so varied that they could take up their own chapbook!
One of our favourite charms that we shared, coming from Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft, is the famous “Man of Might” rhyme:
Tha mon o´ micht, he rade o´nicht wi´ neither swerd ne ferd ne licht. He socht tha mare, he fond tha mare, he bond tha mare wi´ her ain hare. Ond gared her swar by midder-micht she wolde nae mair rid o´ nicht whar ance he rade, thot mon o´ micht.
With the modern English being:
The man of might, he rode all night with neither sword, nor army, nor light. He sought the mare, he found the mare, he bound the mare with her own hair. He made her swear by mothers might that no more would she ride at night where once he, rode that man of might.
A common charm one can make from this cantrip is to braid horse hair (especially white horse hair, given that the “man of might” is none other than St. George in many understandings) through a hagstone while repeatedly uttering the verse, making an offering to your spirits and the good saint immediately after in thanks to empowering this anti-nightmare ward. I’ve made several of these for friends, family, and especially children’s cribs and found them to be exceptionally useful. The one which hangs over my and Salt’s bed is a two-holed hagstone, with the horsehair looping through the topmost hole, and the other being used to assist me to return to my body in dream and spirit flight.
A charm made in this manner using a hagstone I found while travelling.
Indeed, a very similar charm comes to us from the mid-16th century, as recorded by Thomas Blundeville of Norfolk in his The Order of Curing Horses Diseases (1566):
In nomine patris, &c. —-Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti Saint George our Ladyes knight, He walked day so did he night, Until he her founde, He her beate and he her bounde, Till truly her trouth she hym plight, That she would not come with the night, There as Saynt George our Ladyes knight Named was three tymes, Saint George.
Holed flint stones were typically hung, like iron, to ward people and horses alike from being ridden by night-mares—in the case of the latter, they could be placed around the manger or the neck of the animal. Blundeville considered this to be a “foolishe charme” that was to be written down while hanging a “flynte stone that hath a hole of his owne”, which was naught but a silly way to con money out of “playne folks purses”. Yet, much like Reginald Scot, in his very disdain he ultimately preserved for us this oral charm in writing, allowing us to make good use of it even now.
Another dreaming protection amulet, made from a hagstone, an iron key, crossed rabbit’s legs, and mandrake root.
While hagstones require no special ritual to make them “work” or to activate their virtues, there exists plenty of folklore with regards to how they should be acquired. J. Geoffrey Dent’s article “The Holed Stone Amulet and Its Uses” (1965) tells us that there is evidence from the South of England of beliefs that hagstones should be received as gifts, or, even better, stolen. Generational stones, that is, those which had been passed on throughout successive owners within a family, all used for the same purpose, are perhaps the most powerful through their repeated victorious efficacies, and presumably all the more potent if stolen. Yet in the Balkans, we repeatedly encounter the lore that hagstones indeed will only properly “activate” and bond with their owner if they are deliberately found within nature by them. I shared a few charms for how to actually go about and acquire them in this way, both with regards to luring them to you, such that spirits reveal their places and that you stumble upon them naturally, as well as how to seize their fortune once they are found in the episode.
Regardless of what you choose to say out loud (for ultimately many of these “charms” are oral prayers passed on that someone may have at some point invented, or, in the case of bajalice, received from a spirit), a good way to hunt them is to take off your left shoe, and walk barefoot along the shore or river while dropping one millet seed from your closed left fist into the ground at each step and repetition of your prayer. In this way, the spirits of the land are petitioned to receive your blessing of fertility, and accept your alm in exchange for revealing your prize.
A collection Salt and I brought home from a trip to Brighton Beach together.
Many of the oral charms we shared ultimately serve the purpose of bonding a stone to you, especially if they are not already claimed by one of your spirits. The three of us have often had the shared experience of bringing home a great many hagstones from a hunt only to find that 2/3rds of them had been immediately spoken for by our spirits, who wanted them for their own ends, vessels, and amulets. I’ve often had to string them in groups of seven, nine, thirteen, or twenty-one as soon as I’ve brought them through my door as a saint or house spirit immediately wanted them placed over an important threshold. In cases in which I’ve bought hagstones over Etsy, specifically because I was searching for particular numbers of holes that a spirit requested, I’ve left them before my spirits in small bird’s nests that I’ve collected for them, such that they can incubate, receive the rays of the sun, and lubricate their hissing through the maws of their gates.
If you listen closely for their hissing, the serpents below may even lead you to them by sidewalks in the cities.
While different aspects of lore disagree on whether or not the thread which hagstones are hung on should be knotted or not, the notion that they should be strung up with natural material (such as wool, linen, or hemp) is fairly universal. If I’m about to use mine to scry, I will often make use of a fairly well-known technique across the Balkans to whisper through the whole what I wish to see while moving it around my left palm with my right index finger. Afterwards, I will breathe through the whole, and place it to my right eye while closing the left, and then scry for the augury—or directly at the sky in the morning to witness the rising star, that it may be captured later within that very stone.
There’s so much more that could be said on their collection, uses, and enchantments, such that we’re already planning the next edition of our hagstone episode series. If there’s anything in particular any of our readers are curious about or would like to be included, please feel free to write to us below, and we’ll do our best to include some tips and folklore on each matter in the next installment! For now, happy hunting, and thank you all so deeply for supporting our podcast!
This offering has been a long time coming. Painstakingly birthed, laid to rest, and rebirthed over numerous Orthodox feasts, Balkan folk magical holy days, and stellar confluences; dragged clawing through the star-fallen chthonic and sun-devouring ouranic spheres; armed in teeth that have tasted fish, mammal, and bird; and nourished with the vital Red of communion and sacrifice alike—these charms are an expression of gratitude, and a fervent howling of further ingress, unto the mysteries of the Great Wolf Shepherd himself.
While little-known outside of the oral folk lineages in which his crooked gait wanders, the spirit known varyingly as the Lord or Master of the Wolves (in my first language, Gospodar Vukova), Wolf Herdsman, or the Wolf Shepherd, is an enduring figure across many parts of Central and Eastern Europe. My own pacts and understandings are grounded firmly within the Balkan context, most especially Serbian, though the pulse of his chthonic heart can be traced from Greece all the way up through Scandinavia. A dear mentor in Balkan traditional witchcraft was the first to introduce me to this enigmatic lord, who emphasized an approach that peers through the crossroads-pole masks of Veles, Dažbog, and numerous key Thracian cultic inheritances. He passed on his pact, through the wolf-saint he venerated the Master through, and in the capacity by which I have license, I’ve instructed our dear Key in similar ways.
His myths and stories are many, as are his myriad incarnations and forms. Much like the god Veles himself, the Master of the Wolves’ tales are retold and aspected through numerous chthonic saints, which include in the Balkans: St. Andrew, St. Demetrios, St. Sava, St. Michael the Archangel, St. Christopher, St. Blaise, St. Martin, St. George, St. Nicholas, and many more. Animal, man, god, and all between and beyond, he appears as a lame white wolf accompanying St. George, a lame old shepherd, an old white wolf, and various instantiations of each who shapeshift into the other. Ally to the Forest Mother and her spirits, wandering the landscapes as a poor shepherd, punishing oath-breakers and transforming the unfortunate into hungry wolves forced into his retinue (or in some instances, cursing a passerby to assume the office of the “Lord of Wolves” for seven years), and guardian of seventh and/or tenth-born sons; he is both the head of the furious horde and patron of the werewolf (vukodlak) sorcerers who make up his restless retinue. Even when he is not referred to by any particular honorific, the respect for this mercurial figure can still be felt in his abstract titles, common to the majority of his lands, including Latvia, Moldavia, Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and more: “The Old One”, “The One From Above”, “Lame Devil”, “The Unmentionable One”, “The Unclean (or Pagan) One,” “The One Made of Stone,” “The Hairy One”, “Old Grandfather”, and often only by “He”.
While the notion of a Master or Lord of Animals is well-attested across numerous Mediterranean and more broadly European sources, the Wolf Herdsman specifically is especially prevalent in the Slavic sources. In the Balkans, and especially in Serbia, Macedonia, and Bulgaria, he is most prevalently featured among the various customs surrounding the “wolf holidays”, varyingly located across the later months surrounding key saint feasts during which the dawning of the winter agricultural cycle is ever accompanied by a deepening respect for the threat of wolves. While the precise saint he is associated with will vary from village to village depending on the local custom, the practices are often largely similar. During these times, it is generally inappropriate to even mention the word “wolf” out loud, and they should be similarly described through titles such as “they” or “they from above [the mountains]”. Offerings, especially the first lamb or pig of the season, should be left out for the wolves at the far boundaries of the village, or at the first crossroads, in order to pay them off such that they do not threaten the precious livestock of the community. Should a wolf be killed for any reason, including defense of the self or one’s animals, the body should be carried from dwelling to dwelling in the village, apologized to, offered alcohol, milk, honey, and a meal, crowned in a wreath and mourned with the wailing of a child’s funeral, and then finally interred with utmost respect, such that the Master does not come to take vengeance for his child. It is also during these days that, in some parts of the Balkans, the Master is said to roam with his wild and hairy troupe, recruiting lost and restless dead into the fold and transforming them into wolves themselves, drumming up his shapeshifting sorcerers to go once more into the night and hunt down and punish any breakers of oaths. As such, much like St. Theodore’s Saturday, this is a period in which the settling of debts is of utmost importance; even the mildest broken promise should be rectified, lest a witch or wolf-sorcerer come to settle it on another’s behalf.
Yet this is also a time for his allied witches and sorcerers to enchant his tools. Indeed, anything which closes its “jaws” around sheep is intimately linked with him and with wolves themselves, including all manner of implements from sheep shears to barn doors and gates. The particular formulas and oral charms I have been passed down include those already documented in anthropological works, but the vast majority are those preserved by my mentor’s lineage. These charms, which you see before you, are born of much of that magic, personal ingress and devotion, and a deep love of this spirit, his associated masks, the deific forces his legends emerged from, and even his distant links to Hekate and Artemis via Hellenic and Thracian sources, especially in their preservation of the Great White Wolf Mother cult.
The ten charms at rest, crossed with sheep shears and a wolf’s jawbone blade.
The charms emerged out of a number of mutual explorations Key and I undertook in the past year, and took almost the whole year to fully create. As the visions came and the materia needed was confirmed with divination, the first roots began to sprout on the Orthodox herb-picking Midsummer feast of Sveti Jovan Biljober, when the birthing powders were made. Further materia was divined on and cultivated through the blessings and permissions of Ilija Gromovnik, Ognjena Marija, and Blaga Marija, a trinity of saints-as-Slavic-gods integral to the overseeing of spirit-ensoulments in the Balkan witchcraft tradition as I’ve been taught it. Following their summer feasts, and the collection of some of the rarer materia out in nature, we proceeded to construct the bulk of the charms upon Key’s visit in October, in anticipation of the particular Wolf Holidays I adhere to culturally: those cold days following the Mitrovdan feast with the honouring of the Mitrovske Zadušnice. The final—and in many ways, most important—of the four Zadušnice ancestral celebrations. Many of the wolf taboos emerge here as well, including the importance of caring for livestock through the oncoming winter, for women to not spin wool (and the Fates to not be invoked thereby), and for children to not venture out past nightfall.
It is on this day that we hear of many of the legends surrounding the wolves having their annual meeting with their Lord—in the guise of whichever regional saint is most associated with him—and then dispersing to carry out their orders. Some families also make a česnica, a ceremonial Christmas loaf made on Christmas Eve (January 6th for me, given the Julian calendar), and offer it directly to the wolves as a gesture of peace during this time. In my training, a meal is offered for the wolf spirits (in my mentor’s village, this includes the very physical wolves who stalk the mountains surrounding his home!) at the edge of your farm, at the first crossroads out of the village, and at a place where the devils gather: the nearest threshing floor, watermill, garbage dump, or cave. We carried out our offerings, baked a česnica, poured out koljivo and wine, and fed our spirits well. Calling upon the Master and his wolf, vukodlak, and devil brethren alike, we created the next most important powder, and ensouled the fossilized wolf bones which would animate as one under the auspices of their tutelary Mother.
The intention of these charms, constructed by the Master’s watchful eye, is to house a group of his warrior-wolves to defend their allied sorcerers against malefica. These are immensely protective charms, bearing the souls of wild and cunning assassins, a set of spies in the dark and a silent dagger in the shadow. They investigate and overturn plots before they congeal into reality, stalk the dreams of those who slander, break oaths, and lie while asleep, and repay insult, evil eye, and curse with adamantine force. Ultimately, their chief abilities lie in protection and anti-malefica, though it is crucial to note that each leather bag holds within it the pulsing heart of its own spirit—for those they protect and watch over, these are fully enspirited allies that may be petitioned, worked with, sent out to do their bidding, gather intelligence, and watch over the rest of one’s existing spiritual court as another layer of guardianship. The importance of protecting one’s magic and spirits, especially by secrecy and taboo, cannot be overstated, and so these wolves are themselves an excellent addition to the front line of defense for one’s existing pacts as well, hiding and obscuring workings and alliances from being scryed and divined on, and purposefully feeding false information to those who would attempt to peer beyond what is permitted.
Each wolf was selected and enthroned by my and Key’s efforts through a rigorous divinatory process that took place over the entirety of the Wolf Holidays. The spirits were tended to and more deeply incarnated over the feasts of Dimitrije (Demetrius of Thessaloniki) Kozma i Damjan (Cosmos and Damian), Arhanđel Mihailo (Archangel Michael), and Nikola (Nicholas). Once constructed, the bags were interred and rebirthed, and unchained briefly to hunt down and swallow the sun on Winter Solstice. Their final offering was given on Orthodox Christmas Eve: one last taste of freshly-made česnica, and a full bottle of a favourite drink for the Master.
Ten were made in all, though only nine will be available for on here, as the very “Master” of this group will remain on our own joint shrine to the Master of the Wolves as familiar and mother to the pack. These spirits were chosen for their compatibility, loyalty, sense of justice, and verified power; each having been tested individually in the carrying out of tasks and the successful manifestation of results. If you are interested in taking in one of these warriors, we ask that you keep in mind that these are very much living spirits. They can be carried with you for protection, or left at home on a compatible shrine to assist you remotely. Speak to them with respect, offer them a candle, a shot of strong brandy, vodka, or gin, and invite them to assist you in what ails you, either preventatively or actively. If you have a store or are public in any way about being a sorcerer, they would be an excellent ally to set over your business, and to patrol the boundaries of your public image to best shield you from the Eye.
One among the fold, resting over an icon of St. Nicholas.
If you already work with one of the saints mentioned above, it would be appropriate to keep the charm by their icon or statue. They may share a space with other chthonic spirits, provided that your personal divinations do not reveal any potential conflicts. Veles, Apollo, Artemis, Odin, Hyrrokkin, Hekate, and many other such deities are a welcome and natural ally. We recommend a weekly offering of at least a glass of water and a candle, asking that any omens may be filtered and expressed through the bubbles and flame. Allow the spirit to warn you ahead of time of dangers, and divine with them if these are already resolved and do not need to be addressed further, are on the horizon and require additional magical support to unmake, or are already present and are being dealt with. Ask if additional offerings are needed, or if the wolf warrior advises for a different approach. If they request through divination that other spirits in your court be called upon to assist, provide offerings for them as well, and allow the wolf to lead the charge and organize the defense on your behalf.
While protection and curse-breaking are undoubtedly the main areas of expertise for these spirits, they are ultimately fully independent and realized familiars of their own. They can teach and guide their sorcerers in the cunning of shapeshifting, the donning of second skins, the mysteries of the Furious Horde, and the hunting and consumption of ghosts. If one is not already experienced in these matters by training in witchcraft, it goes without saying that each subject must be approached with the sincerest caution, and under the strictest guidance of one’s patron spirits, mentors, and divining arts. Given what we have already noted about the Master, it cannot be underemphasized that these are spirits who abhor oath-breakers, and cut out the tongues of those who blaspheme the truth, or worse, abusers who believe they speak truth out of their own ego-driven needs to remain righteously victimized, and justified in their behaviour thereby. Suffice to say, do not request petty revenge of them, or conflate one’s ego and desire to seem mighty and powerful with a call to study under the banner of the wolf spirits. These spirits demand a level of agency, accountability, and self-knowledge to exercise their protection, and have little patience for those who wish only to lord over some malformed desire to be venerated and feared without any effort or discipline to cultivate right relationship with spirits, and with the very love of learning magic itself. They will vacate their fetishes and return to their Lord if those to whom they are pacted attempt to harness them for a puerile end. In this way, while one does not need to necessarily always be in the throes of a devoted practice to work with them, they should at the very least be comfortable with spirit communication and divination in order to best work with these ferociously protective allies.
The materia that went into the construction of these homes numbers in the hundreds, ground down to small traces of powders incorporated into the main mass. They are housed in leather bags sourced from the Balkans after a similar design by a mentor of mine (so that they may be discretely carried or even worn by the belt during ritual) and adorned with a fossilized wolf paw each, dating back to around 20,000 B.C. These bones were found in a cave in Germany in the midst of a search for cave bear fossils, making this bear-turned-wolf hunt an excellent expression of the Master’s own close ally (and syncretized deific form), Veles. Some herbal and animal allies that join our wolves include goat, serpent, linden, and blackthorn; materia from our personal Sirius, Pleiades, Mars in Scorpio, and Mars in Capricorn blends as elected by Salt and vivified by my own stellar pacts through my witchcraft; the first blossoms of a pear tree grown by Salt in honour of the Master of the Wolves (pear being one of his holiest woods); special dews, honeys, incenses, and beeswax intended to court the favour of the djavoli (devils) and vile (fairies); pieces of a česnica baked with my personal 2022 Thursday Salt and the aforementioned vila honey, each stabbed through by a horseshoe nail rebirthed through the auspices of the Pleaides and Sirius, and additional exorcistic and goetic cunning with the aid of each of the Wolf Saints whose feasts we celebrated and nourished the charms with, in addition of course to the ever-wily St. Cyprian of Antioch. The forty-one beans used in divination to confirm their final ensoulment were also divided between the ten charms, a technique often used to remind the spirits the proof of what they consented to with respect to the pact of their working itself. Much in the same way, the bread, which accompanies in some form the majority of Balkan charms, recalls the joy of life, the rising of the unmade into the made with the yeast, and the fruition of promises and powers.
A bundle of rosemary was taken to the cemetery, with the appropriate guardians propitiated, and brought back to brush over and consecrate each aspect, named and unnamed, that would enter the bundle. Being fed the blood of communion and sacrifice alike, they are now awake and ready to stand guard over their new allies. While this list is only a small preview of all the work and materia that went inside, we hope it is sufficient to give an overview of the great work that went into their careful cultivation and ecstatic midwifing into this world. The Master being an important spirit to all of three of us, being a pact I have helped introduce through my cultural training and lineage that quickly became even more vibrant and rightly-feral in the hands of Salt and Key, we are truly proud that our first collaborative offering honours this enigmatic and darksome Lord in all his many faces.
If you are interested in taking in one of these spirits, and feel confident by your own discernment with your spirits that they would be appropriate to work with, you may purchase a charm for $300 USD below. You will receive additional information for the care and maintenance of this offering to your e-mail within a week of purchase, in addition to the tracking number for the shipping. Please ensure you specify your shipping address when purchasing. We hope that these spirits find deserving homes, where they may be honoured, their names uncovered through signs and omens, and a true relationship built in frenzied communion with the spirits of their new ecosystem.
All charms have been sold out as of January 11, 2023! Thank you all so much for your support!
Note: Much as with the majority of Balkan lore, it is rare to find genuine information about the Master of the Wolves outside of the languages in which he is revered. For those interested in learning a little more about this spirit in general, here are some we’ve found fruitful in English:
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 11th Mansion (though one of the authors of the text mentions it’s likely supposed to be the 12th 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 11th 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 12th Mansion considering that the 12th 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 – 11th Mansion)
The first attempt at performing this ritual was done during the 11th 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 13th 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 12th Mansion the next day.
Post-Ritual Notes (Second attempt – 12th 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 12th 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 spiritconcerning 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 12th 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 12th Mansions to ask further questions.
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.
With Cunning & Command 