“I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar; Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, an excerpt from “Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats”
@theghostofthedakahlo I tried to reply to your question on my post but I am bad at tumblr. I’m applying to Starr King School for Ministry, a Unitarian Universalist and multi religious seminary in Berkeley CA, which is part of Graduate Theological Union, a large consortium of seminaries and religious schools of numerous faiths.
I came while listening to The Song of Solomon and reading the Zohar last night.
It was beautiful.
Last night, I met Lucifer in astral. I found him in the woods near the Sabbat fire.
He asked me if I wanted to see hell.
I said “Maybe not right now.”
“Too bad,” he said, grabbing me by the hair and shoving me into the flames.
At first I resisted, but then I saw a way to thrive. I turned myself into a salamander and ran around in the flames, climbing on the burning crucifixes and bibles from which the Sabbat fire is built. I basked in the heat. I let the flames tickle me. It wasn’t bad at all.
Lucifer laughed and said “good,” and stuck his hands into the fire, letting little salamander me run over them.
The lesson was clear. Hell is only hell if you lack the proper constitution.
This concept is much like that of a Witch’s/Witches’ Ladder
– only round. It serves much the same purpose: to inflict harm, but can also
be used as a ward or an instrument of protection, much depending on the
construction – of which I will name a few. That which goes into it is heavily
reliant on the will of the witch assembling it and can be taken, reworked and
revised depending on most any situation.
My simple construction is as follows:
Gather your supplies. For this I will include only a few
boughs of a weeping willow (the leaves removed – and hopefully dried for
further use), nails and string. However, a few other ideas include bramble
sprigs and/or thorny, rose stems, broken glass (tied up with string and hung
from the round like a macabre wind-chime), hair, black hen feathers, hot chiles
(hung much in the same fashion as the glass), and whatever else one might find
befitting.
From the aforementioned materials (string, willow and
nails), take the willow strands and braid them together. For a tighter fit, you
can soak them for a few hours to make them more flexible, but so long as
they’re freshly cut, they’re usually pretty pliable. When the strands are
braided to your liking, arc the sides into a ring and either braid then
together or (much more simply) tie the ends to form a circle. Note: if braiding
then wet, you’ll probably want to braid the nails in as you go – which should
hold them in place, but may require reinforcing once dry.
If working with dry boughs, simply take the nails (in
multiples of 9s or 7s, depending) and work them into the braid. For inflicting
harm, organize the nails pointing inward, for protection, face then outward.
You may find that some of the nails remain loose and this can be remedied by
fixing them tightly with string, which, for continuity’s sake, I’d say go ahead
and extend this to all the nails.
To this base, you can add almost anything you’d like, but
some ideas may require integration earlier on, so plan accordingly.
When complete, you have something reminiscent of a
frightening dream catcher or horrific wind-chime – both of which serving a
useful purpose.
You can hang it any number of places, inside or outside of
the house – though I’d recommend near the front door. If being used to inflict
harm, the curio can be tossed into the yard of the victim or simply hung in a
tree on your own property.
As far as its similarity to a dream catcher goes, it can
also be used as a snare for malicious witchcraft when hung near a bedroom
window or workstation.
Create a figure with likeness to the one you seek to bind. A wax figure shaped into a human figure is best suited, otherwise, a cloth doll would suffice. Set it down on a table before a burning candle and incense.
To strengthen the connection between the subject and the doll, bind to it a piece of object belonging to person to be bound, using a length of twine. Anoint the eyes, the lips, the hands and feet of the doll with an oil made from bitter herbs, speaking the following:
“I bind thine eyes; I bind thine lips; I bind thine hands and feet; I bind thee to work harm no more.”
The figure must be wrapped in black cloth, tied about by a length of black ribbon and hidden at a secret place. It may be locked away in a drawer, cupboard, inside a box of wood or buried in earth far from your home.
Church of the Morningstar 