Another bone to pick, on herbs.

The yahoogroups are abuzz with whether or not herbs have to be replaced within six months or become useless to the magician.

The simple answer is no.

The long answer is something like this:
Forget all the nonsense of "energy" or "vibrations" you hear new-agers talk bout. That is crap.
The truth is that it is the "idea" of the plant that is the active principal.
From the divine Nous, the idea of the herb descends through the Soul of the World where it picks up its many attributes. In the physical world it is these attributes that are physically represented by its scent, shape, or what have you. Now, when you combine herbs in a mixture for a particular purpose, you focus on one particular attribute that is shared amongst the herbs to make it sympathetic for your purpose. It doesn't matter if the herbs are new, old, wet or dry.

The only time age is of importance is if the herbs are being used medically. And only then it depends on whether the medicinal alkaloids are fragile and known to break down after a period of time.

So no. You do not have to replace all your herbs every six months.

A bone to pick concerning timing.

I recently ran across a fellow magician's post regarding timing his ceremonies. His belief is that no matter how long the ceremony takes, it is when the ceremony begins that is most important. Some how in his mind he thinks that the influences at a given time are locked into place by the start of ones ceremony.

I have to disagree here.

When you start the working matters less than when it is completed.  Take for instance a birth of a baby. Without going into the mechanisms as to why certain astrological positions imparts their influence upon a person, we collectively understand that it is the moment of birth that defines which stellar influences have been inherited. A person can theoretically be seen as a talisman, and a talisman can also be a birthing of a physical body of sorts.

In the realm of magical timing, there are two major routes a would-be magician travels.
There is timing via planetary correspondences with the days and hours of the week, and then there is timing via astrological positions in the heavens. Both are fine and depend on the particular working a magician is planning to do, but which ever one chooses to use, the ceremony must be accomplished within the set time.

Now it is relatively easy to perform and complete a ceremony during one on the magical-hours of the week. But when it comes to basing a ceremony on the astrological positions, you normally only have 15 minutes. Its a lot harder to complete a task magically in 15 minutes especially to complete a talisman.
So the trick is to make most of the talisman during a magic-hour and day that corresponds to the ceremony before the plotted astrological time. Then at the moment of the astrological event, you put the final touches on the talisman and invoke the entities to inhabit it.

September 15th

Well I whipped-up 2.5 gallons of holy water via the Solomonic Arts of magic.
I think that will hold me for a while.

Its a real nice victorian-looking 2.5 gallon glass container with a lever-tap on the front for dispensing into a smaller holy water bottle which is much more portable for ritual work.

I am really pleased with this.

The Oil for the Lamp

So I have figured out how to make it, and I have chosen the way it will look.
I will wait till Mercury is out of retrograde, and I will commence its final construction the day and hour of mercury according to the arts of solomon.

As for the oil..I am going to steep various resins, that one may typically find in the traditional Abramelin's incense recipe, into the oil that will be used in the lamp. I am hoping that the resins will lend their fragrant essences through diffusion into the oil.

Resins:
Olibanum (boswellia serrata) from India
Storax (liquidambar orientalis) from Turkey
Aloeswood (aquilaria agallocha) from South Asia