The matter
The Picatrix is blunt: the image is not enough. The plate must be of the nature of the work. Venus on iron is a quarrel. Jupiter on lead is a closed door. Choose the metal or the wood the way you choose the hour — then cut in that hour. This is correspondence, not a result.
Metal takes a scriber or a punch. Wood takes a brand. Do not mix them on one sitting, and do not mix metals on one plate.
Venus · Metal kit · Scriber
The soft red metal. The Picatrix and the sages give copper to Venus: love, art, the purse that opens, the garden, peace between people. It takes a line easily. First sittings live here. Do not ask it to bind or to cut; that is iron’s work, and we do not pack iron.
Jupiter · Metal kit · Scriber
Tin-rich, lead-free British pewter. Jupiter’s metal in the old tables is tin. Abundance, honour, justice, the teacher, the open door. Harder than copper; still kind to a steel point. Keep it for wealth, study, and the 2nd and 9th, not for love-charms that belong on copper.
Sun, with Venus still in the mix · Metal kit · Scriber or punch
Copper and tin fired together. The Sun’s gold is beyond a first kit; bronze is the working stand-in: lasting, bright, a little proud. Honour, visibility, a name that should hold. It remembers both parents — Venus’s copper, Jupiter’s tin — so mixed work (office, reputation, a shop) sits well on it. Harder. Be patient with the point.
Gold (Sun), silver (Moon), iron (Mars), and lead (Saturn) are not in the first run. Gold and silver wait on cost; iron cuts and binds and wants its own ethics; lead we will not post. Bronze and pewter stand in where the book allows.
Cut in Glastonbury from wood we already hold. Brand in the hour. A steel point will not give you a figure you can keep.
Jupiter · Wood kit · Brand
Strength, doorways, kingship, a long life in one place. The oak does not hurry. Use it when the sitting should last: protection of a house, honour, a vow you mean to keep. Brand it. A scriber will only bruise the grain.
Sun · Wood kit · Brand
Temple wood. Incorruptible, scented, used where a thing must not rot. Solar: preservation, sanctity, a clean fame. The Picatrix allows wood when the work is of this kind. Keep it for protection, consecration, and anything you would put in a chest and find unchanged.
Venus · Wood kit · Brand
The orchard. Love, offering, the otherworld that is not far from Glastonbury. Softer than oak. Good for attraction, reconciliation, beauty, a gift. Do not put a binding or a curse on apple; the tree will not carry it honestly.
Mercury · Wood kit · Brand
The rod of poets and diviners. Letters, skill, cunning, the well, the sudden right word. Prefer it for study, speech, craft, and finding. Mercury’s metal is mixed and poisonous; hazel is how a first kit speaks for him.
Mars (in water) · Later
Shield-wood. Courage that does not dry out. Foundations by a river. When we cut it: protection that must stand in wet weather, a beginning that needs nerve.
Moon · Later
Water, grief, flexibility, the night-side of the craft. The Moon’s silver is not in the first kits; willow will be her plate. Dreams, cycles, letting a thing go without breaking.
Sun / the road · Later
Spears and world-trees. Travel, linking above and below, a sitting that must move with you. Not the first cut.
Moon, beginnings · Later
The first tree of a new wood. Purification, a clean start, a charm for a threshold. Soft enough to brand well.
The kits · The Bench Book · Sky-Sage
Correspondences follow the Picatrix, Agrippa, and the common Western tables, as used at this forge. They are not medical, legal, or a sold outcome.