Change the Herb, Change the Sentence

Replacements, Substitutions, Changes, whether we are talking the ingredients of an Oil or the parts of a Ritual you will eventually come accross a situation where you will be tweaking a formula. In fact one of the marks of adeptship is the ability to do this with skill and effectiveness. The conversation around substitution often revolves around the idea of whether it is “ok” or not. At the most extreme ends of the spectrum you have people insisting that any deviation from the formula destroys the whole work, or that nothing really matters except your intention. Thankfully, people stuck at these far ends of conservative and wildly eclectic thought are rare, and most people are willing to accept that substations or innovations are part of the practice, but still the conversation revolves around the matter of whether it is close enough or deviates too far from a perfect ideal.

When I was young, the guy that taught me to make my first Mojo Hand told me that the ingredients form a sentence, its not just about a bunch of herbs that fall under the header of “love” or “protection”, its about weaving a sentence” what herb is the noun that is the subject, what is the verb that rolls it into action? What are the adjectives and adverbs that modify those? Another teacher taught me that it was like making a living thing: what was the heart? The brain? the limbs?

The question to ask when replacing or substituting, or for that matter simply adding and subtracting an elements is not “is this ok?” or “will this still work?”. The question is “how does this change the sentence?”.

For instance Licorice Root and Master Root are both used to control and influence people but Licorice does it through Sweetness whereas Master root gets its power from its twistiness and ability to grab and bind up. Both would work to control someone, but the effect or the sentence would be very different. Calamus is also sweet, but more controlling than Licorice. Its also the most accepted ingredient for Kaneh Bosem, one of the five ingredients in Holy Oil, so it takes on that meaning as well if you work in the Jewish or Christian traditions.

Similarly in ritual we can replace things like purification baths and fasting with other types of purification such as intense prayer or even rituals like Vajrasattva that primarily consist of energetic and visualization work – but it changes the rite. The presence of a circle, the substitution of a different circle, etc. These all change the rite. In Rufus Opus’s approach to Trithemius he uses the Archangels in the Holy Table rather than the four Demon Kings – it doesn’t kill the operation, but it certainly changes it. Rather than bringing the presence of the evoked spirit here into the terrestrial world, it yields a more visionary experience, like archangels are lifting up your spirit instead.

Another benefit of viewing things on a basis of how the work changes, rather than whether it works or not, is that it robs the power of those insufferable people who argue that anything they happen to think up is just as valid as anything else because “it works.” Yeah, ok it worked. It did something. But what did it do? How did it do it? How did it change? These are better questions.
So whatever you are doing, maybe the question should not be “is this ok?” or “will this work” as much as “what does it do to the whole?” or, if you like, “how does it change the meaning of the sentence.”

The pic I used for this post is a photo of the herb shelf at Mystical Times in New Hope PA. The first occult store I regularly visited when I was a snotty know it all teenager. Thankfully they are STILL thriving, and still willing to put up with me 25 years later.