In honor of a lunar eclipse on the far side of the earth I decided to deepen my magical practice.
Lunar eclipses are particularly useful for surfacing things that have been hidden or repressed.
I began by doing a museomancy session casting on my crystal ball to “Love Reign O’Er Me” by The Who.
In this particular case the orb guided me with some rather disturbing visions, telling me that I should seek the guidance of the demon Philotanus you might remember from The Art of Tea.
So I did a tea ceremony and the guidance was for me to study alchemy formally, beginning on the next new moon. I’d been expecting some alchemical study ever since I put Alchemy of the Soul in the Satan’s Warrior spiral, so this was not particularly suprising in and of itself.
What actually suprised me about this alchemy was the form in which it was expressed, I found a vintage porn image of a beefcake model trapped in a perfume bottle and posted it to my Bluesky:
I skeeted “If I had a fragrance it’d be called “Tahoe” and it would smell like Sage, Vanilla, Juniper and Pine; with just a hint of musk and earth. A lake Tahoe custom perfume.” and I began an almost obsessive study of perfumery as a form of alchemy.
I also resolved to do a ritual on the upcoming black moon to make a spell jar for my acolyte. The jar would contain pine oil, vanilla, juniper berries, and juniper leaves.
Ever since the experience that converted him in Satanic Prayers in San Francisco, I’ve been quite close.
In thanks for him getting me some of my very first materials in physical spellcraft, I made this jar for him.
Philotanus being a powerful demon for revealing what has been hidden, my acolyte and I both got major messages out of me making this particular spell jar.
In my acolyte’s case this led to powerful visions about his own acolyte and his destiny, but for me the reveal was a rather more personally “hidden thing” the realization that I’d gained 50lbs in 6 months.
I know you guys are thinking “you’re naked on camera all the time, how could you not notice” and I’ll simply say that denial is a powerful drug indeed. But as I’ve said, don’t do the ritual unless you’re willing to be transformed by it; so I took everything I learned to heart.
I immediately realized that my lifestyle of constant travel has been weighing on me, and that getting Jackson Browne’s “Running On Empty” months ago was more prophecy than I’d realized.
So I decided to sit still for a month in Las Vegas, downloaded a calorie counting app and a step tracking app, and traded in stress eating for health induced anorexia.
And I immediately began prowling the night like a demon again, looking for trouble.
Now I’m planning to lose 50lbs in 52 weeks, and training to cruise the distant parks.
In summary I sent back the unwanted obesity that my stress eating and traveling had summoned, and I recieved an interest in alchemy via the art of perfumery in return. Funny what you can get if you use magic.
