graycloak

[graycloak]

Dropped Out. Yes… AGAIN 😒

As some of my long-term followers may remember (if they predate the great deletioning), my magical journey began with [The Grey School of Wizardry]. I even ran a side blog with a friend of mine for while, focused on our studies (mostly) and the tribulations of trying to do magic-themed homework in modern life — @gsw-apprentice . That side blog didn’t really gain traction, and neither @solanablue-blog nor I put that much effort into it, so… it is what it is.

My path has crossed with that of GSW’s a few times since, with the most recent being last year, where I was offered a promotional tuition rate if I came back (again, again). I thought, why not.

Well, a year later, this is why not 🫠

I have done absolutely nothing with it. I thought shelling out tuition for the whole year at once would be motivation to make use of their resources, but instead I might as well have just piled the money in my living room, pissed on it, flicked it off, lit it on fire, and laughed as it burned.

I’m really kind of mad at myself, but - and my followers are probably rolling their eyes at this - it’s hardly surprising given my “””recent””” work-ethic tripandstumbledownthehillfacefirstintoapileofnailsandbrokenglass.

I still think GSW is a great program, and I would recommend them to anyone looking for a broad spectrum based magic education, my life is just too chaotic right now 🥺 and I can’t afford to keep throwing good money after bad.

[graycloak]

April 19 - Feast Day for St. Expeditus

(Image source)

Red flowers, red wine, and three slices of Sarah Lee Pound Cake.

[graycloak]

[graycloak]

Asterion Mage's Seal of the Four Rulers

I'm sure we've all seen this 1,000 times, but this is a reminder that this seal is by the occult artist Asterion Mage. It's getting increasingly difficult to find him or his work online, but he has helped me in the past, and I feel somewhat protective of him and his work.

In the [original post] where he shared this back in February of 2014, he explicitly states:

Please do not copy, repost, share, tweet, tween, twerk or blog without my permission or without linking it to this blog. Please don t make T-shirts, mugs or epoxy keychains out of it.

Nonetheless, I have seen this countless times on Etsy, eBay, and other shopping outlets over the years without even giving credit - sometimes going so far as to say this is an ancient seal from rare grimoires. 🙄😠

It can be easy for an artist's credit to get lost over time, so I just wanted to put this back out there: Asterion created this seal and specifically stated not to use it with cheap, mass-marketed merchandise. Please do your best to respect that by not buying items for which he's clearly not getting credit or compensation.

Thanks 🙏

[Archive of Original Post]

[graycloak]

WitchCon Online 2025

Anyone from my Tumblr fam doing this?

[graycloak]

Occult Book Podcast?

I’m thinking about going through these two books and podcasting the experience. Would that be of any interest to folks? Maybe we could work through them together as a parasocial community 😎

I only just thought about this a few minutes ago, so there’s still time to stop me 😆

[graycloak]

📆 👀

Oof … I am a solid shmuck. I completely forgot @saint-cyprian ‘s feast day this year 🤦‍♂️

[graycloak]

The harvest moon, arriving on Sept. 17, appears every year. It's simply the name given to the moon that happens closest to the autumn equinox, which takes place on Sept. 22 this year. But this year's harvest moon is also going to be a supermoon, as well as a blood moon, and these phenomena don't often happen together.

Time to do the All The Things Together At Once shuffle! 😆

[graycloak]

Print out this post and frame it. 🖼️

Reasons to not always take spirit communication posts at face value

Reading accounts of other people's easy and fabulous spirit communications might make us negatively judge our own practice if we lose sight of how much can be lost in translation.

(I'm not saying every spirit communication anecdote is inherently misleading)

LANGUAGE OF CONVENIENCE: OP is summarizing complex encounters as "the spirit said."

LOST NUANCE: A lot more tedious detail was happening behind the scenes; when personal detail is lost, the experience appears to be simple, easy, and vivid.

INTENTIONAL OBFUSCATION: The practitioner changed details of what happened on purpose, perhaps to share part of a personal or sacred story, without betraying their obligations.

THEY MEANT SOMETHING ELSE COMPLETELY: OP didn't mean they were having vivid communication experiences, it just sounded like that.

"I love it when my spirits help me throughout the day" can imply regular 2-way spirit communication or spiritual intervention.

But it can also mean, "it's easier to manage my anxiety when I focus on the idea that spiritual protectors are around me."

FALSE INFERENCE: OP meant what they said, we just assumed it meant something else. We might think a "powerful experience with Hekate" is supposed to mean shadows grow out of the walls and auditory hallucinations of baying hounds, when in reality OP just felt a strong sense of certainty and intuitive power.

HIDDEN COST: The rituals, initiations, careful planning, long-standing offering schedule, and perhaps years of practice aren't directly mentioned in the post; perhaps neither are spiritual exhaustion, burn-out, or other "ceiling" factors that prevent these experiences from regularly happening. Without this context, it can seem that everyone is having powerful experiences so easily.

[graycloak]

Ask: The Most Important Work

Anon asked: “What is the most important work any of us should be doing? Emphasis on those of us brand new to magick.”

As a ceremonial magician in the grimoire tradition, the most important work you can do at any given time is foundational reading: either just starting with your foundational reading, brushing up on foundational reading, or even ruminating on and cross-referencing different parts of foundational reading.

I know that advice flies in the face of the modern “just do something“ philosophy, but hear me out.

We live in a time of a veritable magick renascence. In the last 20-ish or so years, so much has been written, translated, or mass-printed for the first time that for many practitioners - neophyte and adept alike - the tidal wave of information has been overwhelming.  Sometimes, you haven’t even finished reading the latest translation of a text when you hear about two academic papers getting released on the subject, one giving an alternate interpretive reading and the other declaring the translation was based on a misunderstanding of the cultural significance of Iron. And you know that Iron is a big deal in Solomonic Magick - or, at least, you thought it was - so of course, you need to read that before you do anything because you don’t want to get any of it wrong.

And there it is - the core of the “just do something” philosophy.

The speed with which new information, or new theories about existing information, becomes available can turn the study of magick into a never-ending conveyor belt of data you are feverishly trying to digest and integrate into your practice, to the point you never find the time TO practice. Before you know it, you find you have turned into that most dreaded of magical practitioners –  the proverbial Armchair Magician.

So then, why is foundational reading the most important work you should be doing? Because, in my opinion, when you’re talking about the grimoire tradition, a blanket recommendation to “just do something” without giving any guiding context is letting that pendulum swing way too far in the other direction.

So, step one is to pick a grimoire - A grimoire - and read that. Read it with the understanding that grimoires from the medieval and renaissance periods were intended to be self-contained systems of magick (that’s why we call them “grimoires,” by the way; these books detail the grammar of a system of magick).

Step two is to reread it. Most of the time, when you reread a grimoire, things you read later in it will help you see earlier sections in a new light the second time around and gain a better perspective of it.

Step three is to read foundational texts the audience of your chosen grimoire would be knowledgeable of. This may sound like it’s getting too armchair-ish, but just like modern cookbooks can safely assume readers either know what braising is or have the available information in their collection to find out what braising is, so they don’t need to describe it every single time, so too did some grimoire authors take some “common knowledge” things for granted; so when they say something like, “...after the art of the apothecary,” it’s just assumed the reader knows what that means. So, for us today, sometimes that translates into a little extra reading.

This list will change depending on your specific branch of the grimoire tradition tree, but a decent starting list of foundational reading could include some of the following:

Agrippa’s Three (Four) Books on Occult Philosophy -- Of Occult Philosophy or Magic ('de occulta philosophia')

The Picatrix – Picatrix (The Goal of the Wise) pseudo-Majriti. (Summary)

The Grimorium Verum – Grimorium Verum (True Grimoire) (French with parallel English)

The Grand Grimoire / The Red Dragon – Le Grand Grimoire (French and English)

The Heptameron of Peter of Abano (and/or The Elucidation of Necromancy) – Heptameron, or Magical Elements (Latin with English translation)

Step four is where you then go out and do something.  At this point, you’ve done your essential reading, you have your fundamentals, and you’ve got the basic information you’ll need to be more agile “in the field,” as it were. 

Step five is to balance reading and practice.  Start integrating new grimoires and fundamental texts into your library - keep what works for your chosen system and discard what doesn’t. Evolve, grow, and persist.

I also feel you should establish and nurture relationships with the spirits - not just the more well-known celestial and chthonic spirits, but also the various genius loci of your area (for these local spirits, I suggest you start with your home and work your way out in bands). If you start building and nurturing relationships with them early, you will have greater success down the road when you start requesting their assistance.

So there you have it: Foundational Reading and Establishing/Nurturing Relationships are the two most important things you should be working on.  It's probably not what you expected, but I hope this has been helpful!

[graycloak]

Graycloak's Four 'D's for Magical Protection

Anon asked: "I am under heavy magickal attack and need help. I’m looking for someone trustworthy who could aid me in that subject. Would you do something like that?"

Let's face it: not everyone is friendly. That's not to say everyone is out to get you personally, but sometimes you might just be an innocent bystander unknowingly blocking someone's direct path from Point A to Point B. And, in the process of their magic clearing that path for them, you find yourself the unwitting target of magical machinations shifting reality around you to suit someone else.

Or… maybe someone just has it out for you. I don't know your life. 😆

What follows is an outline for protecting yourself against incoming magical forces. This outline is relatively agnostic, meaning you don't need to know who is attacking you, what magic is being used, or how they are using it (answers to those questions would make defending yourself a lot easier, however). But remember: this is only an outline - which means there is ample room for you to define things how you see fit.

-----------------------//-----------------------

That being said, I present to you my four ‘D’s for magical protection:

Decoy

Deflect

Detach

Defense 

Step 1: Decoy I suggest this as a first step because it will help take the immediate pressure off you and allow you to focus on the next steps.  As the name suggests, you create a magical decoy of yourself to help draw attention away from you.  You could use many types of magical decoys, but the classic example is the Witch Bottle; I like this a lot because not only is a witch bottle a decoy, it's a trapped decoy.  This means magic intended for you that gets pulled in by the witch bottle is usually either contained in the bottle and whittled away over time or dispelled entirely upon being trapped. 

Step 2: Deflect For this, you want to create something like a Magic Mirror.  You will use this to deflect incoming magic away from you.  With this step, we are still in the "buying yourself time" phase, so take note of the word choice - DEflect, not REflect.  When we use the term 'reflect' in this context, the connotation is you are sending the magic back to whoever sent it to you.  While you certainly could do that here in this step, that is not what I encourage - hence the 'deflect' word choice.  If you reflect back, you increase the likelihood of that person catching on that you're trying to be defensive.  This could cause them to change their tactics completely or to complicate things by layering their attacks with contingencies and countermeasures - neither of these would be good, so it's best to aimlessly deflect away what can be deflected and not bring undo attention to what you're doing.

Step 3: Detach This is the first heavy-lifting step, so roll up your sleeves.  The idea here is that you first want to break links your attacker has managed to attach to you and then, second, build up layers of camouflage.  By doing this, you will be detaching your attacker from easy access to you and detaching yourself from easy ways they could try to reestablish those attachments.  I recommend a series of magical baths under auspicious timing conditions, combined with suffumigations and petitions.

Step 4: Defense This is the second heavy-lifting step, all about building walls.  I recommend a multi-pronged plan for this step: amulets, candle magic, sigils, and wards.  Amulets will bolster protection around your person - candles will help give you an anchor at home around which you're able to radiate protection - wards will help seal gaps in the magical walls around your home and reinforce naturally weaker threshold areas - and sigils, jack-of-all-trades that they are, can help boost all of these areas. 

With these four steps, you’ve added confusion and misdirection to incoming magics, severed links that someone could have used to make their attacks more effortless, and built up a series of protective layers that make you more difficult to reach, more difficult to target, and more difficult to hit.  Is this a cure-all? No.  But its strength lies in its passivity - as noted earlier, while you could add more pointedly offensive measures using this outline, its basic structure is designed to keep you flying under the radar.  If your attacker doesn’t know for sure you are actively defending against them, they won’t know to load their workings to counter you - and it wouldn’t be cost-effective for them.  So, let the passive nature of this outline be your guide. Pop some popcorn and enjoy watching them run into your invisible walls for a while.

-----------------------//-----------------------

Remember, it's never wise to talk about the protections you employ in too much detail, so I've made the steps above generic enough to be more widely approachable while still providing enough structure to be helpful.  My goal was to give some broad strokes with plenty of room for you to apply techniques from your own magical tradition to fill the rest of it out - I hope I’ve accomplished that, and I hope you find it useful.

Good luck, Anon.

[graycloak]

Dear 'Looking for Someone Trustworthy' Anon

I'm looking for someone trustworthy who could aid me in that subject. Would you do something like that?

Note: I am intentionally being vague due to the nature of the Anon ask. I'm not vague-blogging to be shady, but to protect the Anon's situation. Thank you for your understanding 😊

Without knowing the full extent of the situation, I can say this: I could perform operations on your behalf from here, yes, but alone, those operations would only be band-aids.

I can advise and offer experience-based suggestions on a more comprehensive plan for you, though, which would require more work on your end but would also have more long-lasting results. I am willing to chat with you more on this, so feel free to reach out again -- or, if you would rather maintain anonymity, I can publicly post a list of general guidelines and steps to follow that you would be able to fill in with specifics from your own tradition.

[graycloak]

Honestly? Same to my followers as well 🤪

Thank you to everyone who has been following me while my blog is inactive. I will hate to see you go when I start posting again.

[graycloak]

Welcome New Followers

I’ve noticed a wave of new followers over the last 48 hours, so I wanted to take a moment and say hi … “Hi! *waves*” :D

If you haven’t done so already, please take a moment and look at my [About Me] page, so you can get a better feel for who I am and what I post about. 

My blog was accidently deleted in July of 2015, so if you followed a link to my blog and it resolved to ‘not found’ please check my [New Locations] page to see a list of the posts I was able to find/recover

Some of my more popular tags include:

[#solomonic magick] - [#alchemy] - [#magick books] - [#planetary magick] - [#grimoire tradition] - [#faith and magick]

I also have a page to give an [Introduction to Solomonic Magick] for those curious about the subject.

My [ask box] is always open, so feel free to drop me a note :)  Anon is turned on and off at random intervals. Don’t worry, though; for non-anon asks, I post responses with screen shots of the ask but with the names cropped out.

Anyway .. welcome! And, I hope you find something useful and edifying here :D

[graycloak]

I’ve noticed this as well :\ Asks were one of the main reasons I even started here in the first place. I know others have had anonymous-ask abuse, I feel I’ve been relatively lucky — despite that blip when my grandmother died and I received some anonymous asks that were ……… not friendly 😒, I have kept my anonymous-ask box open.

Hopefully asks pick up throughout the ecosystem; some of the best reblog back-and-forths I’ve been part of have been kicked off by thought-provoking asks.

You know, an interesting tumblr transformation that's happened gradually, and which I've seen no one talk about: ask-culture has essentially dropped off to nothing.

By which I mean, asks used to be WAY more of the tumblr economy. They used to be more common to send, and receive, and see. They were integral to the collaborative, forum-like behavior of old tumblr communities, not even to speak on the HUGE number of ask-blogs that used to exist to only be interacted with in ask-form.

I'm not saying this in a vying-for-attention way but instead in an observational way: I used to get way way more asks in like 2015, even with a fraction of my follower count. I wonder if it's due to the homogenization of social media sites? There's a lot more of this divide between "content creator" and "consumer" instead of just a bunch of peer blogs who would talk to each other. "Asks" aren't really a thing on twitter, are they? And as I understand it, the closest thing to an "ask" on instagram or tiktok would be a creator screenshotting some comment and responding to it in a new reel or video or whatever those content mediums are. Are asks just too tumblr-specific? Is that aspect of the site culture dying out as more and more people converge to using all their social media sites in the same way?

[graycloak]

🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 Follow me and you'll be 🎵 On a blog of pure occultination 🎵 Take a look and you'll see 🎵 Into magiblogination 🎵 🎵 We'll begin with a spin 🎵 Traveling in occult and magic reblogs 🎵 What you'll see will disperse 🎵 Your mind fog 🎵 🎵 If you want to cast magic spells 🎵 Simply ground yourself and will it 🎵 Anything you want to, do it 🎵 Want to brew potions? 🎵 There's nothing to it 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵

*ᴰᵒᵉˢ ⁿᵒᵗ ᶜᵒⁿˢᵗᶦᵗᵘᵗᵉ ᵐᵃᵍᶦᶜᵏᵃˡ ᵃᵈᵛᶦᶜᵉ ⁻ ᴵⁿᵈᶦᵛᶦᵈᵘᵃˡ ʳᵉˢᵘˡᵗˢ ᵐᵃʸ ᵛᵃʳʸ ⁻ ᶜᵒⁿᵗᵃᶜᵗ ᵃ ˡᶦᶜᵉⁿˢᵉᵈ ᴼᶜᶜᵘˡᵗᶦˢᵗ ᵇᵉᶠᵒʳᵉ ᵃᵗᵗᵉᵐᵖᵗᶦⁿᵍ

So I just saw a post by a random personal blog that said “don’t follow me if we never even had a conversation before” and?????? Not to be rude but literally what the fuck??????????

I’ve had people (non-pornbots) try to strike conversation out of nowhere in my DMs recently, and now I’m wondering if they were doing that because they wanted to follow me and thought they needed to interact first. I feel compelled to say, just in case, that it’s totally okay to follow this blog (or my side blog, for that matter) even if we’ve never talked before.

Also, I’m legit confused. Is this how follow culture works right now? It was worded like it’s common sense but is that really a thing?

[graycloak]

❤️

*sips red wine* 🍷 mmmmm

*munches a slice of Sarah Lee pound cake* 🍰 omnomnom

*wipes mouth* oh man, my feast day is the absolute BEST feast day.

*grabs another slice* 🍰 omnomnom

Seriously, y’all, you have spoiled me today. Spoiled 👏 Me 👏 and I am HERE for it. 🍷

Hodie! Hodie! HODIE! Your petitions have been heard this day!

Thanks for this cool collage, @graycloak ! Original St. Expeditus image from https://www.deviantart.com/lady7archangels/art/St-Expedite-824047461