The Cup and Thurible – Consecrations

Quite in keeping with the tradition of magical texts, Huson’s ‘Mastering Witchcraft’ turns quickly to the process of creating what he terms ‘the tools of your trade’.

Being fundamental in the process of consecrating the other tools, the first two you are tasked to create are the Cup and Thurible.

Huson gives the clear instructions that one should obtain your tools without bartering. This worked out fine for me as the cup came from an antique store for a few dollars and the thurible was a gift from a friend.

The herbs were a little more tricky to obtain, as a few of them are anything but standard kitchen herbs. Thankfully, I live with a couple of the worst kind of hippies who happen to have a passing interest in looking like herbalists. A quick trip to their favourite local health store had me up to my eyes in all of the strange herbs I’ve been reading about since childhood and never once considered being able to obtain (because they don’t grow in my region).

So, fully equipped and slightly poorer than before, I set up my space and made my infusion.

Let me tell you right now: I quickly learnt a few practical things.

First thing’s first: some herbs are really difficult to powder!

After spending a chunk of time repeatedly reminding myself that my effort was proving something to the spirits and my determination must have some impact of the potency of the compound (I mean, it’s just gotta, right?), I found myself wishing that I had an electric coffee grinder or my little brother’s ‘herb grinder’. Do yourselves a favour and buy powdered.

Once my individual herbs were all nicely refined, my water salted and prayed over, I came to the next little hurdle: cold, salty water does not readily accept large amounts of dried herbs in varying degrees of ‘ground’.

I unceremoniously mixed it up with a finger tip and used the visualisation from the text to justify to myself that I was actually ‘impregnating it with power’.

From here things got a little easier.

I washed the cup with the mixture and ran it through the incense. Things were going well, but this (and I mean really), this next step has to be the darndest part of the entire operation.

Painting on the sigils.

Now, in his book, Huson provides a set of runes or symbols to be painted or engraved onto your tools. This is perfectly in keeping with ceremonial and grimoire practices, but I am anything but equipped or skilled in the arts of engraving.

Given his mention of ‘painting on the runes’ I had imagined it would be as simple as that. Have you ever tried to find a paint which adheres to metal? Well, you’ll find they don’t really exist. The closest I found was an art pen which would paint on to the surface but the adherence part… not so much.

What you need to do is clean the surface with a fine grit or steal wool, before applying a layer of lacquer which is compatible with water-based paints. If that doesn’t sound like enough effort, you’ve then got to apply a coat of acrylic gloss over the painted runes so that they don’t wear off.

This might be an okay solution for the cup… but have you ever tried lacquering, painting, and then sealing a metal container full of smouldering herbs and hot coals?

It doesn’t work so well.

And here is where I found myself deviating from the book a little: I scrapped the thurible runes completely, and I applied the cup runes, did the visualisations, then washed them off. I kind of prefer the look of them as they were anyway.

They definitely have a different feel since the ritual, but it’s more like a focus. I think, in future, if I were to try this sort of thing, I would just find a more able friend to engrave the metal with the symbols, and then I would trace over them in the ritual during the consecration.

That said, I don’t particularly feel like I have missed out on much by not having permanent runes on these two tools.

I like to imagine everyone trying these rituals runs into similar issues, and that the individuals showcasing masterworks have either done the ritual several times or completely sacrificed the ritual aspects for the aesthetic.

Either way, it’s interesting to observe the mundane skill sets being called on and a suitable application of Huson’s concept of “Will” being necessitated so early on in the process.