This is one my recent commissioned projects that I’ve been working on. The cover artwork done by me for the Kehlvin/Fleshworld collab LP To Deny Everything That’s Mundane has been released. Can’t wait to see the end product.
I’ve seen the #Eternals trailer and I love it. I can not wait to see it! Thank you @erikaabdullahjames for the choice of the subject and for the tags
SUN SIGNS: Your sun sign is who you are on a basic level. It’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to your personality, which is why it’s important not only to consider your sun sign but your other signs when looking at who you are on the astrological spectrum. Sun signs describe traits that remain present throughout your entire life. It describes your central nature and and what your personality is like at its core.
MOON SIGNS: Your moon sign is who you are emotionally. It describes how you handle internal conflict, instincts, and how you react to crises. It’s the part of you that you keep hidden from others unless you’re comfortable with them. It’s how emotions develop and change within you and who you are when you’re not thinking about being someone else to make other people happy.
RISING SIGNS: Also known as your ascendent, your rising sign is the mask you wear in public. It’s the first impression people get from you and how you act around others. It’s the parts of you that you decide to portray to the world, but it might not necessarily be how you see yourself. It’s common to not identify with your rising sign because it’s typically the character you play to protect your true self from unknown situations and people.
MIDHEAVEN SIGNS: Your midheaven sign is how people perceive you. It’s similar to a rising sign, but the difference is that rising signs are more personal and midheaven signs are typically more broad. Think of someone knowing you (rising) versus knowing about you (midheaven). It’s your goals and achievements in the eyes of others and what they believe you to be.
MERCURY SIGNS: Your mercury sign details how you express yourself to others. It’s how you communicate, how much you like to communicate, and how you handle yourself in social situations. The way you interact with other people can be traced back to your mercury sign.
VENUS SIGNS: Your venus sign describes what you want out of love. It’s what you’re attracted to and how you act in a relationship. This is one of the most important signs to consider when thinking of compatibility with a partner.
MARS SIGNS: Your mars sign is how assertive we are. Depending on where this planet is in your chart, you could either be more soft-spoken and gentle when you’re upset or more blunt and aggressive. Mars also brings out how we achieve goals and how eager we are to make a name for ourselves. In short, it’s our animal instincts–how we handle feeling threatened and our need for survival.
JUPITER SIGNS: Your jupiter sign is how you learn and how things work out best for you. Jupiter is associated with intellect and luck. It’s how you absorb new information, work with new ideas, and what brings you the best results. Jupiter is also how optimistic you are and your general outlook on life.
SATURN SIGNS: Your saturn sign is how you grow. It’s how we learn from challenges and struggles throughout our life and how what happens to us affects us. Saturn also details our weaknesses and how we handle misfortune. This is a sign of maturity and wisdom and how we choose to let things get to us.
URANUS SIGNS: Your uranus sign is how you set yourself apart from other people. It’s your rebellious streak and how you break the mold. Uranus is how you stand out and make others notice you. It’s how unique you are and how willing you are to stand alone.
NEPTUNE SIGNS: Your neptune sign is what inspires you. Neptune is how you see the world, how you sense things, and what makes you inspirational to other people. It’s what makes you see the beauty in things and how you see yourself working in unison with the world around you.
PLUTO SIGNS: Your pluto sign is how you handle change. It’s how you handle having power or the lack thereof and how you empower yourself. Pluto is how you take things in stride–whether you’re more stubborn and resistant to change or if it’s something you look forward to. It’s how ambitious we are to take things into our own hands and take control of our lives.
Retrograde is a phenomenon where a planet appears to be moving backwards from our position on earth. Because the planet appears to be going backwards, there is a period of time where the planet’s energy has a reverse effect on us. Think of retrograde as a planet going on vacation, and there’s no one to fill in for it.
What is Venus retrograde? How does it affect me?
Every 18 months, Venus enters retrograde, for about forty days and forty nights. Venus is the planet of love and relationships, so when she enters her retrograde cycle, we can expect to re-evaluate what we love, and who we love. Venus also rules beauty and aesthetics, which can be affected during this time. You may have people from your past (whether it be old friends or exes) re-enter your life as well.
When is Venus retrograde?
In 2017…
Venus will retrograde in Aries from March 4th, and go direct April 15th in Pisces.
In 2018…
Venus will retrograde in Scorpio from October 5th, and go direct November 16th in Libra
In 2020…
Venus with retrograde in Gemini from May 13th, and go direct June 25th.
Who is affected by Venus retrograde?
Nobody gets to escape the wrath of a retrograde! Everybody experiences difficulties during the retrograde period, but at varying degrees. Most importantly, those who are Venusian dominant (Venus dominant, Libra/Taurus dominant), or have their sun, moon or Venus in Taurus/Libra will be more sensitive to the effects of this period.
Generally, those who are ruled by their Venusian influences (Venus dominant, Libra dominant, Taurus dominant, Libra ascendant, Taurus ascendant) will be more affected by this retrograde, as opposed to someone who isn’t. They may feel stuck when it comes to relationships, and moving forward may prove to be difficult for them.
Those with a Taurus or Libra moon or sun will also experience some complications during this time. Those with a Libra sun or Taurus sun may re-evaluate their appearance and self image. Those with Libra or Taurus moon will be forced to re-assess emotionally, and evaluate their feelings.
Those with an Aries or Scorpio ascendant will face some issues because Taurus or Libra will fall on the 7th house cusp, or the descendant. These people will need to revisit and reexamine their current and past relationships.
Of course, you need to consider where your Venus is in your birth chart, as well as where Libra/Taurus fall in your houses. These areas will be directly impacted during this retrograde period. For example, someone with Venus in the 9th house may find it difficult to connect with someone and share their personal beliefs.
What should I do/not do?
Of course, you shouldn’t let retrogrades control your life, but these are just a few suggestions that may make this period easier.
DO finish things you’ve started regarding beauty, emotion and finance.
DO be aware of what is happening around you.
DO reflect on your material and financial goals.
DO reflect your current relationships, friends, and what you hold dear or are passionate about.
DO NOT begin any new love affairs.
DO NOT spend an excessive amount of money on clothing, jewelry, cosmetics, etc.
DO NOTredecorate.
DO NOT make any huge investments.
And most importantly, DO NOT STRESS OVER RETROGRADE! The more you think about bad things happening, the more likely they are to happen!
Sigils are very, very popular on Tumblr and the Internet lately. They are perfect for witches and magicians living in today’s dynamic world. There is much consternation and perhaps even a bit of debate, though, over what constitutes a sigil and how to use them properly. I personally just define them as any (usually) two-dimensional symbol communicating magical intent, and I’ve talked about my process for making and charging them here. A lot of us have different methods for making sigils, and there’s really no wrong way to do it (provided it works for you), but there do exist some traditional sigilization methods, among which we find the idea of using planetary squares.
This method, popularized by Agrippa, uses a series of number grids associated with each planet. A statement of some sort of magical intent is translated into numbers, and then the numbers are plotted on the grid. A line is then drawn between the numbers in their order within the statement, beginning with a circle to denote a start point, and ending with a perpendicular line across the main one. You’ve probably seen sigils made in this fashion before - the circle at the beginning and perpendicular line at the end make them rather recognizable.
While not all sigils with those features are planetary, they do employ a similar technique to those using the planetary grids, usually a grid setup of some sort. Of note, many technowitches will use keypads and keyboards as grids in making sigils. Here, though, I’ll describe what’s (mostly) the traditional method for making a simple sigil using a planetary grid. It’s pretty far beyond the scope of this article to include all the grids, but resources for them can be found in various places online, including this site.
Lets just here, as an example, focus on the grid for Venus, which is shown below.
Suppose you’re a witch and would like to create a sigil using it to help a friend find love, or to bring love of some sort into your own life, strengthen an existing relationship, or just invoke the concept of love for some reason in general. Venus is an ideal celestial sphere to work with for this purpose, as most people know, given that Venus is not only named for a goddess of love, but also associated with love in astrology. Venus is associated with other matters, too, such as creativity, fertility, and art, though, so we want to be specific. We could, in theory, just use the glyph, hexagram, or other symbol of Venus for this, but suppose your friend (who has bad luck in love, and needs help with it) wants a custom sigil specifically. It’s quite easy to do.
Like with most sigils, you begin by summing up your intent. Were I doing this for a specific, actual situation and not as an example, I might spend a long time deciding on the correct choice of word or words to sum up the goal of the sigil, but for the purposes of this example, we’ll just use the word LOVEitself as our statement of intent. It’s not very specific, but it’s positive, and using it in this fashion will be a great demonstration of this technique. The word LOVE, after all, only has five letters, and works well to sigilize in this fashion. That’s one thing I do want to emphasize before you try this with something more complex - try to reduce your intent to as few letters as possible. This can be done by removing vowels or repeating letters if your statement is complex, but planetary sigils really do work best with as succinct an intent as possible. You’ll soon see why.
We take the word LOVEand transliterate it into numbers using the following table of values. The table has variations, and witches assign numbers to letters in a variety of ways - some might transliterate their intent into Hebrew or Greek letters and use those systems of gematria, for example. This is the most common way that I’ve seen of doing it in English, though. Of note - Dixie Deerman (whose book taught me to do this back in the day) actually includes a & symbol at the end, equal to 900, and uses that to connect words if necessary. I’ve never been much for that, but some might find it useful, so I mention it. It’s in the image below.
ForLOVE, it gets transliterated into five numbers, which are, in order, 30,60,400,and5. This can then be plotted on the Venus square using the method described above, beginning with the first number (30) and ended with the 5. But wait! If you actually look at the Venus square, it doesn’t quite go as high as 400, does it? It doesn’t even go up to 60. So, how do we include those numbers (representing the letters O and V) in the sigil? Well, simply divide them by 10! Instead of plotting straight up 30, 60, 400, and 5 on the grid, we’re plotting 30, 6, 40, and 5. This is how it is commonly done, and, in my experience, it works quite well.
Below is the finished LOVEsigil plotted on the Venus grid. Notice how the first number is circled, to designate where the sigil begins, and the last one is marked with a perpendicular line. Feel free to use this yourself if you want (and feel like doing love magick!), but I do encourage everyone to experiment and make their own for whatever purposes they favor.
Sigils made in this fashion on planetary grids can be used without the grid, naturally. If I were wanting to use the one above as a bit of gesture magick by tracing it in the air, or perhaps just sketch it on a piece of paper for a quick boost, I’d do so without drawing the full grid - just the lines themselves. The grid is implied. When creating the grid on paper in preparation for creating a sigil, though, it’s traditional to draw the lines, and then jump around the grid, filling in the numbers in order. I personally make most of my planetary sigils digitally in Photoshop, but some witches will have all the grids in their grimoire and use tracing paper over them to create the sigils. There’s a lot of methods for making a planetary sigil physically or digitally, so practice, and see what works for you.
Color can play a role in any sigil you create, too. If anything peeves me in the magical community these days, it would be that so few witches realize you canuse colorful sigils. I just feel that people miss out when they don’t explore that, and it can be a lot of fun! With planetary sigils, each planet is associated with several colors traditionally (as an example, Venus has an association with both pink and emerald green), and you yourself might have color associations on your own for the planets or the intent of your sigil that can be used. You’ll note above that I’ve tinted the lines of the sigil itself a nice Venusian green, and were I casting the sigil, I’d do it with green ink if possible, or just visualize it in green. In fact, were I to suggest someone use this sigil (or were I using it myself), it might end up looking something like this:
The usual “rules” (as in, whatever you usually get results doing) as far as charging and preparing mentally to use a sigil apply with planetary sigils, as well. If you’ve read my article on charging sigils, you know that I personally know some folks who don’t “charge” sigils formally, yet still get good results. A lot of them work with planetary sigils, and the general consensus between us (having discussed this) is that, for some people, the very process (which you now see is quite involved) for creating these sigils can be sufficient to charge them. Whatever works for you is fine, but definitely experiment a bit.
I hope this article on planetary squares and sigilization was useful or entertaining for you, and that you create wonderful magick, regardless of how you do it! Planetary squares used in sigilization are a great way to get started working with celestial forces in specific ways, and they’re ideal for witches who’re on a budget or trying to keep things low-key, as they, like most sigils, require essentially nothing but paper and pen to create. If you like my work, consider donatingorpurchasing a divination reading in my shop, and if you have an questions, feel free to contact me.
1. The Divine Matrix (Unified Field) is the container that holds the universe, the bridge between all things and the mirror that shows us what we have created.
2. Everything in our world is connected to everything else.
3. To tap the force of the universe itself, we must see ourselves as part of the world rather than separate from it.
4. Once something is joined, it is always connected, whether it remains physically linked or not.
5. The act of focusing our consciousness is an act of creation. Consciousness creates!
6. We have all the power we need to create all the changes we choose!
7. The focus of our awareness becomes the reality of our world.
8. To simply say that we choose a new reality is not enough!
9. Feeling is the language that “speaks” to the Divine Matrix. Feel as though your goal is accomplished and your prayer is already answered.
10. Not just any feeling will do. The ones that create must be without ego and judgment.
11. We must become in our lives the things that we choose to experience as our world.
12. We are not bound by the laws of physics as we know them today.
13. In a holographic “something” every piece of the something mirrors the whole something.
14. The universally connected hologram of consciousness promises that the instant we create our good wishes and prayers they are already received at their destination.
15. Through the hologram of consciousness, a little change in our lives is mirrored everywhere in our world.
16. The minimum number of people required to “jump-start” a change in consciousness is the square root of one percent of a population.
17. The Divine Matrix (Unified Field) serves as the mirror in our world of the relationships that we create in our beliefs.
18. The root of our “negative” experiences may be reduced to one of three universal fears (or a combination of them): abandonment, low self-worth or lack of trust.
19. Our true beliefs are mirrored in our most intimate relationships.
20. We must become in our lives the very things that we choose to experience in our world.
