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Epithets and Aspects of Venus for Enhancing Your Venus Devotional Practice
Below we have collected a wide range of epithets, titles, and monikers of Venus that you can consider using—whether for your petitions, or simply for contemplating and feeling into the different dimensions of this deep and powerful being. In our list, we have filtered out the hyper-local titles that refer to specific geographic cults, focusing…
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Enhancing Your Prayers and Petitions With Precision Epithets
In our view, devotion and theurgy (god-work) play an intrinsic part of astrological magic. Simply put, we think one’s relationship to the spheres matters—both in general (spheres plural) and in particular (that is, specific spheres, e.g., the Moon, Venus, Saturn). In this post, we explore some general top-down ways to think about this as a…
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Attuning to Astrological Talismans Part II – Rationale & Suggested Practices
After the launch of Idola Stellarum’s first collection of astromagical talismanic jewelry, Sanctuary, we fielded a number of questions about how to attune to astrological talismans. “Attunement” refers to the ritual process of connecting or introducing oneself to an astrological talisman for the first time. In Part I of this post series, we took a…
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Attuning to Astrological Talismans Part I – Historical Perspective
After the launch of Idola Stellarum’s first collection of astromagical talismanic jewelry, Sanctuary, we fielded a number of questions about how to attune to astrological talismans. “Attuning” or “attunement” refers to the process of connecting to a talisman for the first time. Often, attunement involves some degree of ceremony or ritual. There is no standard…
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Sanctuary Collection Update
Launched to our mailing list on March 22 (with our early access list getting the first selection on March 21), the Sanctuary collection was down to only three unsold talismans in under four hours. The last few pieces from the collection found takers the next day, meaning that the whole collection was sold out the…
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Why We Use Natural Gemstones for Astrological Talismans
At Idola Stellarum, we make every effort to source gemstones that are 100% natural: undyed, unheated, untreated, and not lab-created. We are painfully aware that natural gemstones present their own violence and ethical problems, including but not limited to the opacity of the supply chain, the treatment of workers, disrespect for the land and Indigenous…
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Are Astrological Talismans Safe? Part II: Safety & Quality Control
In the first post of our series on safety in astrological talismans, we explored the question whether astrological talismans are safe from a technical astrological perspective and a relational perspective. We established that real and consequential magic is alive and astrological talismans are sentient beings, and therefore, astrological talismans are always to some extent unpredictable…
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Are Astrological Talismans Safe? Part I: Technique & Sturdy Relationships
Fear of magic reverberates down through history in the so-called West. From early on, ‘magic’ connoted perceptions of the sinister practices of mysterious foreigners, witch trials and the Inquisition loom large in the cultural imagination, and shows and movies reliably paint magic as chaotic, volatile, and often mixed up in tragedies involving greed and the…
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On Offerings in Astrological Magic – Part II
In Part I of this series on offerings, we examined historical sources to make two points about the use of offerings in astrological magic. From the example of Albertus Magnus, we saw that making astrological talismans definitely does not require offerings. From other sources more aligned with the devotional, theurgical side of things (Iamblichus, Proclus,…
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Announcement: Idola Stellarum presents ‘Relational Astromagic’ for Initiate
We have the pleasure of presenting for our colleague and friend Drew Levanti’s groundbreaking electional astrology course Initiate, and it’s open to the public! Live & recorded for registrants. Our presentation, ‘Relational Astromagic: An Ecological Spirit Model‘ is a first gesture toward offering insight into how we work and play at Idola Stellarum. As ‘medicine…
