Antares

Wailing, lamenting mother, brazier burning bright ✶ You whose flesh is armored by the iridescent bodies of scorpions ✶ Drowning fire for a heart ✶ Whose tongues of flame know all too well the taste of anger ✶ Come, to feast, on the flames of angry gods! ✶ Come, to lament in wailing praise the dying gods! ✶ Your tongue, oh your tongues ✶ They hunger for pain, anger, and rage ✶ To sing, to cry, and to wail, they hunger ✶ Lapping at fecund wounds in cacophonic lamentations of wailing praise ✶ Your voices open doors between worlds ✶ They open the way for the dead to go

Antares 𓇗 Cor Scorpionis 𓇗 Lamenting Mother

The Antares collection was birthed during a chosen election, working in tandem with traditional correspondences given in The Book of Hermes on the Fifteen Fixed Stars alongside the guidance of the spirit who spearheaded and filled the role of patron in the creation of these wares. Over the course of several moons, utilizing timing that was appropriate for work with The Heart of the Scorpion, the wares were further nurtured and worked. 

The Antares Oil - of which only 30 bottles are available, being the centerpiece of the collection, contains all of the plant and mineral ascriptions given in The Book of Hermes: Sardonyx and Amethyst, Birthwort and Yew, further augmented by the addition of Mullein - a plant useful in working with Antares in my practice - Meteorite, Snake bone and skin, Whole Scorpion, and Amber. Many other bones, stones, plants, and minerals live and breathe within this oil, whispering from behind - they are nameless here. Mother’s mouth is many…

For those seeking talismanic-based approaches, the whispering offers such uses:

❖ Gives men a healthy color: It is said that Antares is a star that holds great capabilities in the arts of healing when one is transmuting poisons in the body. This is something that I cannot elaborate upon further for legal purposes.

❖ Grants good memory and intelligence: For those in pursuit of knowledge, those who are constantly learning, and those in school, the Oil of Antares comes to aid in enhancing the ability to retain information and helping one to recycle and utilize that information to the best of its potential when put towards a given end. It helps you to understand and to work better with the resources that you have - to make the most out of one’s situation. 

❖ Makes one appear wise: Whether one is truly wise or not, Antares Oil holds sway of charms of glamour that can create the illusion of one being wise. It can be utilized by individuals interacting regularly with others, such as educators, communicators, or those aspiring towards career advancement. This glamour holds many possibilities in the works of maneuver and success when one needs to be seen as knowing how to do a - thing -.

❖ Banishes Demons:  Being heavily alluded to in historical ascriptions through working with Amethyst and the stellar rays of the Heart of the Scorpion, Antares is well suited towards works of removing demons and chthonic spirits. The Oil lends itself well to creating protection charms against these types of spirits and removing them from a given space.

For those that might hear that which is constantly shifting behind the oil, further workings beyond what is listed above may be wrought and brought to fruition. For those who, by choice or by obligation, swim in the many worlds of spirits, Antares may be the Burning Brazier in the Sky whose many mouths eat at the flame. It is in supplication to angry and dying gods, in lamenting at their shrines turned to sand, that this path of Antares unfolds. There is poison here - where there is poison there is medicine. The Heart of the Scorpion is vast - all permutations of the scorpion’s heart are here accessible.

In all stellar collections up to this point, there has been a selection of candles and a powder that are worked to draw in the influence of a given stellar body. These offerings are not present in this Antares lineup as so little of each was made that I reserved them all for personal use in upcoming projects and personal work.

For this collection dedicated to the Burning Brazier in the Sky, I wanted to create a set of vessels that served two functions: To enchant what is burned and turned to smoke in offering to spirits to be more pleasing, to lament and eat away at any anger or ill will directed at a particular person by the spirit being offered to, be it worker or client - to soothe the recipient of the smoke, and secondly, to soothe the flames of angry gods when those are the gods with which one is communing.  The Braziers of Antares are elaborated upon further in their listing here.

Recently, in a new approach to how Haus Of Ophidious offers instructions, I stopped sending printed instructions with new orders and instead digitized them all to be more eco-friendly, accessible to people on the go, and to those with visual or audio impairment. I have been working on taking this even further by creating multi-page PDF booklets for each set of offerings that contain detailed write-ups and multiple workings that can be performed with each ware. These booklets are still being created and most range from 8-14 pages - I hope to have them all out over the next month. The first of these booklets is being provided with the Antares Oil and Braziers which will contain a series of 6 workings that may be performed with the oil and how the braziers may be incorporated into general-purpose work and working directly with a given spirit. In the instructions for the oil, there are methods for creating two styles of physical charms; one for those who need good memory and to gain intelligence, and a second charm for banishing demons and chthonic spirits while barring them from entering a place again. A method by which the witch may approach Antares for pact-making through the oil is also provided for those seeking this route.