Asenath Mason - Author & Artist

  Group Ritual RITE OF THE RIPENING POISON A Working of Samael's Blade 5TH SEPTEMBER, DUSK ❖ ❖ ❖   This is a group working dedicated to Samael in his aspect as the Sword of Severity, the archangel whose bitterness is not cruelty but correction. It is built for performance in deliberate synchrony with other practitioners, each alone in your own temple and yet bound together through the same current, the same blade drawn at the same hour across however many miles separate you from the rest of the circle. Samael is invoked here not as a destroyer but as an assessor — the archangel whose severity exists to balance excessive mercy, whose traditional epithet names him the poison of God: not poison as ruin, but poison as the substance that, correctly metabolized, becomes medicine. The early September date of this working refers to the moment when the harvest stands cut and gathered but not yet sorted, when what looked like triumph all summer must finally be opened and inspect...

  August 13th Group Ritual Rite of the Devouring Torch A Working of Hecate — the Feast of Torches There is one night in the height of summer when the torch-bearing goddess steps out of the dark she is usually associated with and stands in the open — and makes her demand before the harvest is completed. She comes in August because August is when there is still something to lose.   This is a group ritual working dedicated to Hecate in her aspect as the Torch-Bearer and the Lady of Storms, performed on the night of August 13th — the Feast of the Torches, the Hecatean Ides, the night drawn from the ancient Nemoralia when women carried flames through the darkness to the sacred lake and made their offerings before the storm season could take everything they had grown. This is not the Hecate of autumn's gentle decline into darkness. This is the Hecate who governs the height of summer: who was propitiated in the Zerinthian cave against terrors and storms, whose torch-lit...