Pentamegistus

Over the last month, I have conducted some experiments with an invocation from a Coptic magical papyrus ( Cairo 45060 ). Being the direct successors of the earlier PGM material, the Coptic magical papyri ( henceforth CMP ), are a good corpus for PGM practitioners to safely explore and even incorporate into existing workings. The CMP consist primarily of magical rites derived from Sethian Gnosticism,  interspersed with some earlier PGM material,  and strongly Christianized. Cairo 45060 forms part of a genre I refer to as the polyvalent /  omnivalent   formula , an invocation or prayer that has several different uses (which usually follow it in the surviving texts), and often can be employed for just about anything. Several of them occur in the CMP, most of them published in Marvin Meyer's "Ancient Christian Magic" (whence the present one is taken). One of the most impressive ones in my opinion is a long, liturgical Sethian invocation, published in " A Coptic Han...

In the countryside around my grandmother’s village in southern Portugal, there is a unique and beautiful grove (pictured above), full of birch trees which, while not entirely unheard of, are extremely rare in this otherwise dry Mediterranean region. On visiting it over the years, I have been struck by its lush beauty - it truly gives the impression of a ‘natural temple’, and is a wonderful spot for meditation (though in summer, the countless insects make this very challenging). I eventually decided to perform a ritual there (summer 2016), offering wine and incense to the local deity in traditional Mediterranean fashion, and communing with it. At the end of the ritual, I hoped for a sign that my offering had been accepted so I could leave (the numerous insects flying around me were making the stay rather difficult). At that point, a piece of bark fell from a tree directly in front of me, falling loudly about 6 feet from where I was kneeling. I took that as a sign that the...