Episode 34: The Feast of Saint George

Merry Georgemas, each and every one and all of us!

Whether you are tuning in from Moscow, Malta, Ethiopia, Catalonia, or the chalky shores of Albion, we wish you a very merry Feast of St George! As the bluebells ring out from greening meadows and the seasons Spring further toward Summer, we celebrate and reflect on the mysteries of subduing the monsters that blight the land, battling jingoistic nationalism, the popularity of parading dragons, and the mumming of resurrected knights.

Via our Demon of the episode, Damostan, we get stuck into some deep grimoiric questions of both historical reception of magical texts and the practicalities of practitioners’ animism, conceiving such books of spirits as ecosystems as well as rogue’s galleries of shifting masques. We also pay homage to the transformative potencies and pontos of Exu Ganga.

Our celebrated good Herb is Crocus and the golden mysteries and precious magics of its saffron; from kitchen to the robes of Hekate and so many other goddesses, nymphs, Morai, and more; considering even more occult colour theory and dyeing practices, Jupiterian suffumigations, and much more.

Our mineralia magica for today is Jasper; whether spotted, speckled, emeraldine, bloody, or lordly. We survey the wide variety of this many-hued chalcedony’s virtues across lapidaries and talismanic medicine, touching upon its qualities of youthful vigor and victorious purity, as well as its blood staunching and even contraceptive usages across history.

Our Style of Magic is Patronage, and we delve especially excitedly into thinking about protectors and pedagogues – whether of places, peoples, practices, or particular endeavours – as well as thinking about patronage – both emblematically and locally – in terms of finding our patrons, heeding their calls, pledging ourselves, and exploring what discovery and integration of mysteries can look like in our practices and our lives.

Our geomantic Figure this time is Caput Draconis, the benevolent Dragon’s Head of the Benefic Wandering Ones, which speaks of undiscerning prosperity, and the powerful but undirected growth of spring’s saplings turning new leaves. We discuss both the traditional Renaissance attributions of this figure as well as its applications in the magics and mysticisms of trees; as well as offer respectful comparison and contrast with its counterparted Odu, the dynamic, energetic, and spirited Osa Meji.

Our Arcana takes us on a survey of the shifting trends in interpretations of the Fool and their journey; from the unhoused vagrant dogged by misfortune and mental illness, to moralized parables of self-control and forethought, to our Zero-that-is-Hero’s divine innocence and ‘pure spirit in search of experience.’

Finally, our Dead Magician of the episode is twentieth-century Czech occultist and hermeticist, Franz Bardon, and the cosmological theories, pore-breathing practices, and developmental pedagogies of his most famous trilogy of books – Initiation Into Hermetics, The Practice of Magical Evocation and The Key to the True Kabbalah.

From our own campaigns to battle the dragons of ignorance and xenophobia – and indeed to combat the hydra-headed monsters of our own ever-multiplying tangents and delightful distractions! – we wish you a hearty, healthy, and hermetically-vibrant Feast of St George!

We will of course continue to update the website and our facebook page when footnotes become available.