Author: admin

Egyptian Deities

Posted on by admin

The following are a number of helpful Egptian Deties that very helpful, some of which I’ve worked, others maybe sometime and in no particular order other then thats when I thought of them.

I will tidy this list up as I go and put links and bits on here so come back once in a while please.

  • Selket – Obvious really!
  • Isis
  • Nephtys
  • Neith
  • Nun
  • Osiris
  • Anubis
  • Maat
  • Sehsat
  • Thoth
  • Horus

Use Of Names In Rituals

Posted on by admin



Sometimes through familiarity, we can loose the sense of the meaning, power and risk in the names we use to call to our Gods and Goddesses, and for those of us who cast spells or direct any kind of magic at or in the name of a person, the significance of that mortal name hides magical symbolism which needs to be taken into account and respected.

This session will look at what names have been used for, are still used for and why you should be careful when calling a name.

Importance of names

  • To the ancient Egyptian, to preserve the name will allow that personal to live for ever.
  • The ancient Egyptian magicians task was to know the names of the Gods so that they could be used to lend their power to their magic. Similar views were also held across many other paths to know the names of Gods and Goddesses to either control or use their power.
  • Medieval grimoire texts that use Christian magic to know the names of God, the Angels and the Demons for binding.
  • More modern uses of correspondences, not names as we know them but ways of linking and identifying a particular force or deity can be seen in a similar way to identify.
  • Various societies through time have used important stages of life such as gaining adulthood a reason to take on a new ‘personal’ name.
  • What about modern Western uses of names? Although everyone has their given name, many still chose something more suitable for daily life with their given name for formal use, and those in the craft also tend to pick secret names for their own use or that of the group. Even differing names for various social and professional settings.

Names are important, they define or reflect our personalities, our most obvious attributes or just something that sounds right in various situations. And then what about the phase He doesn’t look like a Jack’? The works of Oscar Wilde includes the marvellously funny play the Importance Of Being Ernest which revolves around this strange stereotype of names possessing certain characteristics. Perhaps it’s a recent association but it’s quite marked. Does the name define the person or the person describe the name?

There is something about a name and how its attached or linked between the person and their label, that is more intuitive than a given. Although they are intangible, powerful and magical they are still very definite.

What about their use? To know a name provides the user of that knowledge with power over the named, perhaps more than that, perhaps their very existence as the name defines their whole being. To know someone’s name is to know every aspect of them, which echoes back to ancient Egyptian times.

In ancient and modern times they can be used to gain the power of the deities for protection, to take vengeance, grant good luck and all of the usual things that people tend to want magical help with. There are even tells of the gods trying to find out the names of other gods to gain control over them thats how important they were and still are.

Some uses however don’t quite fit comfortably with modern paths and thats in attacking or an aggressive use but I will still describe common situations.

Negative uses

  • There are many texts for using names to bind spirit by summoning – obviously doing this really upsets whatever it is you are trying to bind. And it will try and break the binding. This is a major problem should the bound spirit be particularly strong will resent the disruption it causes to their activities and do whatever they can to subvert it and perhaps even exert their own punishment on the caster for their impudence.

Positive uses

  • Binding a spirit – now this already appears in the negative section, but in some situations it can be useful and relatively tolerable. The main use would be for a localized protection, to bind a protective force, be it an elemental, thought form or some other minor spirit to an item or place. Which ever being is chosen it is best and highly advisable to only bind for a limited length of time, no more than a year. Perpetual servitude would have much the same effect as mentioned above. And once the task is complete dissolve the binding and give thanks for the service given. A bit of good will could be repaid by more cooperation next time!
  • Empowerment through invocation, multiple deities and this can be for any ritual task you may want where you need knowledge, strength of influence thats attributed to the divine being you are invoking.
  • Any process where you need to make contact with another person for healing, sending a psychic message, thought or emotion (e.g. think about the times you’ve thought of someone that you need to phone, put to one side for a moment and at shortly thereafter they phone you? Thats sort of thing I’m referring to) or locating them.
  • Of course the classic use is to make them a target for a particular spell, such as luck or protection, etc.

However, in using people names you many see a flaw in using just a name, in that even for the most uncommon name you will quite likely not have a unique name. Try it in an Internet Search engine, and see how many instances of your name pop up. Its quite amazing really. Documented spirit names do tend to be unique so you can be fairly sure that you will get the correct one, but as spellings change slightly due to age and methods of translation over time, you still need to research the name to be certain you have the correct one. A mistake summoning the wrong spirit could lead to unexpected situations to say the least.

For dealings with people, the common examples where some kind of spell is placed one someone, you will find that a combination of methods are used to locate the correct individual. For example, the classic wax doll for good or bad, tends to combine the name and personal items and/or hair/nail clippings to make a connection, although in some ways this makes use of contagious magic concepts where contact with someone remains, so it’s important to be aware that the use of other symbolism is important to locate and fix the target. Just think of it as fine tuning the address of the spells destination by adding a postal code.

Following on, and connected with the issue of miss spellings, is the pronunication of the names. This becomes more of a problem when the name is not in the casters native language and the adaption or lack of understanding of the vocalisation of the sounds could have an impact. Now, for me this is a big problem as my Egptian path does have the added complication that the language has not had a native speaker for a couple of thousand years. We have no idea how the sounds were vocalisated and what with the added impact of miss spellings, translation, transliteration errors I’m walking a mine field of potientially summoning the wrong deity every time.

There are however a couple of ways around this for me and for anyone who is in a simliar situation. The most obvious is use a name connected with the deity in a language you can pronouce correctly and has been known to work. For example Isis most of people have heard of, but that’s a Greek name, her native Egptian name is Aset. Then again there may be older ones and alternative spellings so where do you stop? If you pick one thats established then you have a good chance of calling the right one.

Another option that I go with is to make use of other connections to the name (as I mentioned above about fine tuning the address). Using the same example again of Isis, I could say that name (or Aset) while also picturing an image of her, holding one of her amulets, touching or addressing a statue of her. Any or all of these things will help in locating the subject.

In summary, we perhaps take for granted the use of names and how we use them during rituals. Whenever you use name just think of what it means and what you are calling for, they may not come but they are listening (or something is if you have the wrong one), it’s their choice to come freely unless you force them and that’s never a good thing. Or at the very least you’ve alerted them to your presence and that mayperk their interest in you. For the rest of us mortals, the name is as important as our souls, to use names is to play with another’s existence, do so with care and respect.

Dog Of Defense Spell

Posted on by admin

The following except from Ritual Magic Workbook by Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki I have sucsessfully used for many years and recommend it for any protective use.

The Dog of Defense
By now you should have chosen your Temple guardian and named it. There is an invocation known as ‘Raising the Dog of Defense’. It was taught to me by W.E. Butler, and he got it from Dion Fortune who learned of it when she was a member of the Golden Dawn. It appears to have been an adaptation of an Egyptian spell to set a guardian before the door of a tomb. It is still powerful after many centuries and can be used to place your guardian if you adapt the words. Here is the original:
Arise Dog of Defence that I may instruct thee in thy duties. Be thou ever watchful to the North and the South, the East and the West, behind thee and above thee, and below thee and around thee. Take thy watch from the setting of the Sun to the coming of the dawn, and stand guard as I have instructed thee.
The adaptation for the temple might go like this:
Arise…..of defence that I may instruct thee in the guarding of this sacred place. Look to the East and the South, to the West and the North, above thee and below thee and from whatever quarter evil may strike. Thy standing is for a year and a day from the setting of the Sun to the rising of the Sun. When thy time is done depart to thine own place and may you be blessed with the amount due to thee.
A guardian is normally an elemental whose shape has been changed by your intention into whatever shape you decide upon. No elemental should ever be forced into perpetual work of any kind, hence the time limit of a year and a day. After that you erect a new guardian. You can use the Dog of Defence if you are away from home and feel the need for protection of some kind. It is highly effective, and if you happen to be even a latent materializing medium, you can end up with something very tangible.

Introduction To Ritual Workings On The Planes

Posted on by admin

Introduction To Ritual Workings On The Planes

This article follows on from my previous article on visualisation, in that I see this as a natural progression, it is for me at least.

Although I’ve had a long time to play out there, to be honest, I’ve not really gone exploring. It does not serve my purpose to go off playing with the various inhabitants or travelling to amazing places. They are there, I know that, but my purpose there was, and still is to create and maintain a safe place to work which removes the need to require physical rituals. It is that on subject I will focus on in this article.

I chose this way of working a long time ago for a number of reasons:

  • I’m highly creative therefore I find it easy to work with my mind

  • It’s physically more convenient for me as I can be anywhere and if I feel in the need to do something its just a jump with the mind away.

  • As I’ve moved deeper into the Egyptian path I’ve taken on more of the traditional forms, but they require some fairly serious physical changes such as shaved body hair, constant purification of the body, various make-up and odd costumes which are difficult things to maintain along side a contemporary life style. Through this method I can drastically change my appearance with minimal effort by jumping into another ‘body’ on that plane.

  • Most importantly my Goddess wanted me to as it suits her better, and those reasons why will become clearer further on.

What Is The Astral or Other Planes?

Before we get to far into what I will be talking about, a little step back to discuss the location where we will be going.

There are so many books on the subject, many with wildly differing interpretations, but some of the more common themes I will now discuss.

The first is that outside this physical plane that some call the Material Plane, there are set of planes of varying energy levels, many books will list names for them, and include describing various areas and their inhabitants. There is also a frequent referral to seeing a silvery thread that links you with the material plane which you should endeavour to keep safe from breaking. In a lot of books there is a morbid fear of this line breaking or being broken by mischievous things to stop you getting back to your body. There are a so few as to be considered no examples of someone not getting back. I can’t honestly say if it’s there has ever been a silvery thread attached to me, and I’ve stopped noticing it, its never been there or I’ve modified my environment so much that it’s no longer visible. May just be a part of folk history.

The view or interpretation will depend on your particular path, or experiences as they may draw you to a particular location . The gist being that we are going to or already are somewhere other than the physical plane using our mind, whether you visual travel to a dark empty plane, an elemental plane or woodlands. That’s up to you, this is your workings and you have to find your own way, something that books tend to forget and take you down a particular road which can be quite distracting if you are not comfortable with it.

How Does Visualisation Help In Working On Planes?

All planes are essentially blank canvases, the appearance is subject to the will of those that inhabit it, and this goes for you too. Going to an ‘inhabited’ area will be problematic as their effect on their home plane obviously be greater than yours, choosing somewhere empty and there are lots of of it considering they are infinite, you will stand better luck in doing what you need to do.

As the environment is under your control obviously this is more convenient than the physical reality so whatever you find difficult in the physical world you can change here, and like I said, I need to apply a variety of physical changes to my own form. Too, if you work with deities or other worldly entities, then working on a non-material plane can benefit both sides as they will normally find it easier manifest there, so the experience can be a whole lot more intense than in this physical reality – so be warned! These as you might notice are two reasons why I chose this method and one happens to refer to deities. That’s why mine wanted me to use it.

So there are no limits? That is true, but there is also greater risk from the environment that is essentially chaotic in nature and from any thing that may be in the area. This is where we will go next in discussing forming safe environments against these external risks.

Forming You Own World

Building on all that experience and effort from creating convincing visualisations, this is where the most rewarding part comes in, it’s also the biggest is it takes time and effort to at least initially construct and maintain your environment there. Like general visualisation, and more specificity when you are trying to ‘wish’, its important to really keep it there, go there frequently to reinforce its existence and tweaking it so that you really can believe it and ensuring its real to you, otherwise this will will weaken its effect.

As an example I have placed my temple in the middle of an endless desert. When I go there I sense the heat on my skin, and the sand between my toes and it you know me well then you will know I hate sand between my toes. But I’m aware of it and it reinforces my awareness of and connection with the environment I have created, even if it’s an annoyance, but that’s what would happen in reality. I could change it to never happen but that would feel odd as I expect sand to be everywhere, and sometimes when go there sand is heaped against the closed door or its managed to work it’s way along the corridors, but a brief desire to clean it up is all that’s required.

This is why grasping visualisation skills are important, for analogy think about driving a car. At first its hard work understanding all the controls, getting them to work together, lots of thought is required to co-ordinate things over time you can actually have a conversation while working the pedals, all of it comes naturally in the end. So the same with visualisation. Frequent use builds up the skills and mental agility to keep the images in your mind without having to constantly think about it which will only distract you from any workings you do there.

If you are asking why I am repeating the same things from the visualisation article? Then my answer is that you may already be on other planes and depending on the environment you have created there is a chance that it’s gravitated towards a suitable planner location to house it’s self. But as it is self contained you may not reliases it. Create a door, go see what’s the other side?

Now something that’s occurred to me while analysing my workings for this article, and that’s the use of physical rituals and more specifically the use of protective circles. Some times I’ve cast them, sometimes not so my advice is that although I’ve not noticed any change in effect, you might have to experiment yourself. Whatever works is always good.

From your visualisation you may already be somewhere you feel you would like to set-up camp, that’s great, if not then go looking. If you feel you are getting no where, then perhaps you may already be there so you might have to make a little room, either way we are then ready to start making camp.

The area you want to construct will take some time to do. There are a few things that can really help with this:

  • Draw a picture – you don’t have to be a great artist but sketch out, artistically or technically as a plan, how ever you think you can then use to visualise it. The aim is to ensure that each time you are there you can keep the images of the area consistent. That will strengthen it’s existence in the place it’s in and in your mind.

  • Jot down words to describe it – think of the senses. If its a leafy glad, are the leaves on the ground dry or wet to your bare feet? Can you hear animals? Water? Wind? Is it warm or cold?

These things provide a rough model in your mind and as previously mentioned once you have something in your mind you can push it out to your subconscious where the real magic can begin.

Now how to apply that to where you end up in your visualisation? Depends on how much you really believe in this model or can handle with picturing it in your mind. The more creative people could perhaps find picturing it easy, so in their case maybe either picturing a door and when you walk through its into the area you’ve modelled, or you can just blank out what you see around you and replace it with the model.

If this is too much to keep in your mind, then what about changing it bit by bit. Add one small feature at a time. Think jigsaw puzzle. You can see lots of little bits that you collect over time and fit together to form the whole.

While building you will need to make a decision on how to get to it if you want it different to your normal visualisation workings. If you have placed it as a door off of your normal journey make a common entrance even if its to magically appear in a puff of smoke, as previously repeated, routine is key to successful progress.

Making It A Safe Place

So you have a room, a glade whatever, so what makes this feel safe for you? For example with my temple I have it situated in the middle of an endless desert, but bizarrely on the horizon, very faint in the intense heat of a blazing sun, is an encircling range of mountains. That is my border. I’ve placed my temple infinitely away from the edges. Distance, mountains and baking heat of the sun are my protective shields. No one can survive that intense sun for such a long journey to my temple.

Anything you have previously learnt on magical shielding will apply here too and can be a little more literal. Multiple layers are more effective, just remember that this is not your home plane, there will be inhabitants that will be stronger so layers are more effective.

Another highly effective form of defence is to keep the location secret, keep the door secret. Now I’ve been telling you about my temple, but I’ve not told you it’s exterior or interior details, only the desert, so you will not be able to visualise it and be drawn to where it is. And as I’ve been working this one for many years then it’s sort of matured and the layers hiding it are thick. The knowledge of it’s appearance is important as this will aid in you and anyone (or thing) in finding the pocket you’ve created.

There is little more that can be discussed as this now become a very personal journey but I hope I’ve stimulated some thoughts on this subject.