Sky-Sage

The planets

In the Picatrix the seven are not rocks to be used. They are intelligences — conscious, old, and not yours. A talisman does not tap a battery. It is an appeal: metal, hour, figure, smoke, and a will spoken once. If they decline, the plate is still copper. That is the work.

Treat them as you would a guest of rank. Wash. Face the hour. Name what you want without greed or threat. Fumigate as a greeting, not as a switch. Do not mock the sitting, do not film it for sport, and do not start a second petition in the same hour because the first felt thin.

Ethics and etiquette

• Petition, not coercion. Do not bind a named person against their will. Love as “make them mine” is theft. Ask for openness, meeting, or your own courage instead.
• No harm as a product. This bench does not sell Mars-for-ruin or Saturn-for-a-rival. Historical malefic images exist in the book. They are not stocked here.
• No medical, legal, or money vow. A Jupiter plate is not a contract, a diagnosis, or a trade. The hour ranks fit. It does not pay a debt.
• Keep the sitting. If you begin the cut, finish in that hour. Do not abandon a half-drawn figure on the cloth.
• Come sober. Anger, drunkenness, and joke-work insult the guest. If the will is not fixed, wait for another hour.
• Speak as yourself. Use the given petition if it fits. Change the words if your tongue will not carry them. Do not chant what you do not mean.
• Close. Thank the hour. Put out the taper. Wrap the plate. Do not leave smoke and tools as clutter for the house.

A space

The sky is the roof wherever you are. Sky-Sage is enough of a window. The bench is whatever you can keep clean and dedicated.

If you have a room or a corner. One small table that is not the kitchen. A cloth you do not eat on. East if you can, or facing the work as the figure requires. Lamp or taper, incense cup with sand, a dish for the disk, the scriber, the book or a printed sheet. Tools live together and are not borrowed for parcels. Cover the table when it is not in hour.

If you have a drawer. A leather or canvas roll is a full altar that folds. Cloth, one taper in a tin, a twist of frankincense, the disk, the scriber, a short petition card. Unroll only for the sitting. Roll it, tie it, put it away. The sacredness is the hour and the will, not square footage.

Do not mix the roll with jewellery-making clutter if you can help it. The planet is a guest. Give them a place that is obviously for them, even if it is twelve inches of cloth on a windowsill.

Your rite

The Bench Book is a form, not a cage. Keep the bones — wash, light, fumigate, cut, speak, fumigate, close — and let the flesh be yours. A bow you always make, a sentence you always open with, a direction you always face: these teach the body that the sitting has begun. Change them only when the work itself asks.

Write your petition in ordinary speech first. Then shorten it until it will stand in one breath. That is the oration. Repeat the same opening for a year and you will have a practice. Invent a new theatre every Tuesday and you will have a hobby.