Happy New Calendar Year, Golgothians one and all, and merry Feast of the Ass!
We kick 2025 off with an episode celebrating the many forms of the Festum Asinorum: a holyday drawing on early traditions of the Feast of Fools as well as dramatised ecclesiastical processions of prophets, honouring the sacrality and popularity of the humble donkey in Scripture and indeed in churches.
Our featured Demon is Bifrons, the Two-Faced One; affording both our usual discussion of grimoiric sourcetexts and spirit catalogues, as well as reflections on the semblances of monstrosity, epithets of Janus, the mysteries of Exu Dos Cabeças, and further two-headed co-ramble on both sides of the coin of duality.
Our Herb of the hour is the Apple, by whose savour we consider its great mutational variety in orchards (and indeed wherever its pippins take root!), Greek myths of Kallisti and Atalanta, Edenic Temptations and Falls, Anglo-Saxon charms, early modern physick and Shakespearean wit, enchantments of love and lust, and the prankish theologies of Discordianism.
Our hallowed Mineral is Sulphur, through whose stinking fumes we survey brimstone from its use and conjuration in – amongst other things – hellish exorcism and mephitic malediction, Saturnian incensings, and spirit-vexing.
Our emblematic Beast is the Hare: phlegmatic and ever-watchful escapologist and weather-teller, folkloric witch-form, fecund hermaphrodite, and ancient and still popular triskelion of The Three Who Share Ears.
Our Geomantic Figure for this episode is Caput Draconis, the Dragon’s Head; Earthy figure of the Benefics of Jupiter and Venus; signifier of slow seedling development, spiritual elevation and responsibility, benevolent forest magic, and the ways Nature can gently surprise us. Such discussion leads us to comparative contrast with the mysteries of its morphologically similar Odu (Meji), Osa, to consider when the surprises of Nature do not seem so gentle…
Our Daysign is Calli, The House, allowing us some rehearsal of Mesoamerican calendrical cycles of durational moments and momentums, as well as some honouring of Tepeyollotl, the Heart of the Mountain and Jaguar of the Night; by which we evaluate zeitgeists recommending time spent at home with loved ones and trusted friends.
Our Style of Magic this time is Calendrical Divinations, for which we distinguish moments or singular days good for divination from durational auguries made across several days, concentrating on the foretellings of the year in January: discussing the year-walk of Årsgång, the delightful complexities of Latin American and Spanish la sistema de las Cabañuelas, and the Italian Giorni Della Merla.
This episode marks the progression of our forays into the mysteries and meanings of Tarot beyond the Major Arcana into the elemental realms of the Aces, beginning here with the Ace of Coins, Disks, or Pentacles: by which we consider some traditions of reading and even deck-keeping found in Baraja Española, how Coins make sense as Fiery rather than Earthy, and what it means to plant a seed.
Finally, our Dead Magician is one Samuel Lidell MacGregor Mathers, polyglot, translator, ceremonial magician, ritual attire enthusiast, public dramatist, psychic nemesis of Aleister Crowley, and curriculum-setter and otherwise instrumental contributor to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, by whose lux we muse on the influence of the Victorian “Occult Revival” on modern magic, neo-paganism, and grimoire sorcery.
By these seeds scattered, strong scents aired, and braying amens we bid you welcome to the new calendar year, and hope that January finds you watchful in both eyes of every double-faced turn, surprising first-leaves, and all the signs in sky and ground of the promises and choices of tomorrow.