SUBLUNAR SPACE - tehuti

Dawn of the Dead

2019-02-13T19:40:00+01:00

Death Cycles

At my morning walks along the canal this last week it has already become apparent that the winter is slowly fading and the sun is growing in strength. Nevertheless the all encompassing greyness and hardly visible but relentless February rain is just occasionally broken apart by blue sky and sunlight. From Capricorn to Aquarius, Saturn rules this time of the year and it seems appropriate. Before All Saints and All Souls got shifted towards the end of the year, the ancient Romans celebrated Parentalia during mid February - starting today and lasting for nine days of remembering and communing with the spirits of the dead ancestors.

To me it feels like a nice framing of time to connect with the dead in November and then again in February - almost like two twilight moments like dusk and dawn with the winter solstice at its darkest midpoint. It is the twilight between the world of the living and the world of the dead, liminal periods where the two realms bleed into each other and where it seems more easy and appropriate to have interactions between the two.

Magician and blogger BJ Swain has a brilliant chapter about ancestor work in his highly recommended book "Living Spirits". He touches on concepts and beliefs from the Kongo and how traditions there understand and conceptualize life and death. I found it very enlightening because it ties in with what I wrote in the previous paragraph about the worlds of life and death mirroring the daily and yearly solar cycle and puts in words what I could only describe as a feeling until now: the Dikènga cosmogram. It serves as a fundamental law of the universe and is especially suited to describe a cyclic relationship between the living and the dead. It also struck me as heavily resonating with ancient Egyptian cosmology:

Coded as a cross, a quartered circle or diamond, a seashell spiral, or a special cross with solar emblems at each ending - the sign of the four moments of the sun is the Kongo emblem of spiritual continuity and renaissance par excellence. [...] The horizontal line indicates the divide between the world of the living and the world of the dead. It also indicates the divide between night and day. The circles at each quarter point can indicate the sun, or they can indicate moments in the life and death cycle. This cycle is characterized not simply by each step feeding the next step until we return to where we begin, but also by the idea that life and death reflect each other. So when we are born into the world of the living we die from the world of the dead and vice versa. When the Sun is at noon in the world of the living it is midnight in the world of the dead. We do not simply exist in a step by step cycle but in a symbiotic reflection, where what occurs for us is coordinated with what occurs for them, and what occurs for them predicts what occurs for us and so forth. [1]

I dove deeper into the fascinating Dikènga rabbit-hole and found this description of the concept as a whole:

the stage known as Musoni is the stage of the conception of ideas, human beings, and ail things conceivable. Musoni corresponds to when the sun is at midnight and is represented by a yellow color. Although the sun has set and therefore cannot be seen directly by the observer, it is understood to still exist. Similarly, when a person dies, he/she is understood to still exist in the same fundamental way as the human being is conceived of as ntângu a môyo 'a living sun' (Fu-Kiau 1994: 26).' By the same token, matter is not created or destroyed - it simply changes form. [...] After Musoni, the next stage is Kola, illustrated in Black, which represents birth, sunrise, and [...] the beginning of the story. Next, Tukula, associated with the color red, represents the sun at noon. It corresponds to the highest point in a person’s life [...]. The next stage is Luvèmba, shown in a grey color. This represents sunset. This is the stage of the transformation that occurs when a person passes on. However, in the Afrikan worldview, this is not truly the end. Indeed, Fu-Kiau asserts that “Dying is not an end. Dying for the Kongo is just going on vacation” (Fu-Kiau 2001b). The underlying concept is articulated in the proverb "tufwanga mu soba — we die in order to undergo change" (Fu-Kiau 1994: 27) Luvèmba is where the story comes to its closing formula but continues to exist in other forms. [2]

Croissants, Coins, and Crows

The Romans celebrated Parentalia not only at home but visited the family tombs in the liminal space just outside of the cities to commune with their ancestors and bring them offerings of flower-garlands, wheat, salt, wine-soaked bread and violets. I really resonate with this practice and especially during these periods of the year really would like to do similar rites. But today not many of us still live in the same place where our ancestors were buried and we do not have a ritual space to be near to their physical remains. For me it is the same. I live around 700km away from my grandparents graves and I only have very few chances to "visit them."

But I discovered a magical solution to the problem - or it was rather Saturn who sent a cold black spark of inspiration that led me to a solution. But first let's rewind a bit...

It was during a visit in my hometown around Christmas two years ago. I was on the way to visit my sister at her home to have breakfast together. Before, I wanted to buy some croissants and other delicacies at a French bakery around the corner of where she lives. Upon entering I checked my wallet to see if I had enough cash. In my usual early morning pre-breakfast clumsiness I managed to drop a handful of coins on the street right in front of the bakery. Mumbling curses I managed to pick most of them up and realized that among them were also three Chinese coins that I occasionally used for I Ching divination. There were only two of them on the pavement and I crawled around looking for the third one. Then I saw the gully...

Pointing my phone's flashlight into the shaft while dodging confused customers who tried to enter the bakery I spotted the lost coin. It was lying on a layer of rotten leaves that had clogged the shaft, just a few centimeters below the gully's opening. The slots on the lid were too narrow to put my finger through so I decided to try again on my way back after breakfast.

Two hours later I returned, confident of victory, armed with a magnet, a string, and a coat hanger made of wire. The first blowback was to find out that the damn coin did not stick to the magnet, so I tried it with the coat hanger. I got more frowns and suspicious looks from bakery customers and owner, crawling around on the floor poking around in the gully.

Eventually...instead of managing to stick the end of the wire through the coin's square hole, I poked a hole into the layer of leaves and the coin dropped right through it and disappeared in the darkness.

I chuckled when I looked up, still on my knees - because the bakery's entrance had a little black iron crow as decoration of their doorstep - and they had dressed it with a red scarf and a Santa hat for the Christmas season. It seemed to mock me - I guess I deserved it.

Graveyeard Wormholes

I don't remember if it was on the same day or a day after, but in the afternoon I walked through my favourite cemetery that I use as a shortcut on my way from my parents house to the inner city. Some of my relatives from my mother's side are buried there, so I decided to visit their grave. When I walked past the beautiful crematorium building in the middle of the cemetery that was built in the late 1900s and looks like an antique temple I was suddenly struck with an insight and a plan:

Today was Saturday, the day of Saturn. The crow in front of the bakery: a Saturnian animal. It all suddenly made sense to me now and I instantly knew what to do: I remembered that had wanted to collect earth from my ancestors graves for some time already and I also remembered that in the African American Hoodoo Rootwork tradition you offer coins to the spirits in exchange for graveyard dirt. In this particular moment these two thoughts developed into a magical idea...

I walked to the crematorium because I remembered the beautiful mosaic of a skull and a sand clock it has on the floor of the front gable. I placed my remaining Chinese coins on the mosaic, recited the Orphic hymn to Kronos and did an impromptu request to Saturn to cleanse the coins of all previous influences. Then I asked him to aid me in fusing all of my Chinese coins together to one etherically interconnected network of magical tokens that by themselves should act as portals to exchange magical energies with each other across the network. I waited for a moment and recollected the coins.

After I went to the grave of my grandparents and uncle, recited a requiem prayer and asked for permission to take some dirt. I placed one of the freshly created Saturnian portal coins into the earth and told my ancestors that through this object we will be connected with each other beyond space and time.

A few days later I did the same at the grave of my father's parents on a different cemetery and also at the grave of our old neighbors who were close to my heart because they were also like grandparents to me when I was a child.

Back home in Berlin I placed all the collected earth from the graves into a beautiful glass container and put another of the Saturnian coins on top of it. This acts as a proxy or portal to the physical graves of my ancestors and when I want to give offerings to them I pour libations over the coin or wave it through incense smoke and imagine how the offering's energies travel across the etheric network and reach their graves. I also imagine the portals to be open for exchange and meditate on this image while communing with my ancestors spirits.

Feel free to use this idea yourself and see if it helps you to be closer to your ancestors if you whish so. It certainly helps me. I can also imagine that instead of coins you could use a rock or other item broken into pieces or make up a batch of tokens with the same sigil on it.

Spirit Communion

The general protocol that I have currently settled with for my own practice of communing with my ancestors is mainly based on the ritual outlined in this highly recommended Sphere & Sundry article, but also heavily inspired by a Shinto ritual that I love for its powerful minimalism. I combined the two and I work with Tehuti as psychopomp, because I already had a relationship with this god through my Tarot practice.

The full protocol is suitable for first contact or special occasions and can be easily simplified for more casual subsequent communication. The calls to the ancestors in the ritual outlined below are a spin-off from a general prayer to the ancestors that I wrote a while ago and which I frequently use in other ritual settings:

You ancestors who came before me. I call you. Mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, daughters and sons. All you, from whose community I came forth, whose blood flows through my veins, whose traces and memories I carry within me. With deep compassion, I think of your sufferings and your pains, through which you had to go on your life's path. With gratitude and love I think of your struggles, your dreams, your achievements, your courage and your strength. May your blessing and guidance bring out the best in me, for the benefit of all, whom I may meet in this life. Amen.

Full Ritual

Preliminaries

Ritual bath
Anoint with oil
Light candles
Light general incense (Frankincense)
Place a bowl of Natron or Butsudan ash powder in the center of the altar

Orphic Hymns

I prefer to do this rite during planetary hours that combine the hour and day of Mercury and Saturn. Hour of Mercury on Saturdays or hour of Saturn on Wednesdays. I start with the Orphic hymn of whoever rules the day, then the one of whoever rules the hour. For Mercury I use the hymn to Hermes Chthonios. You can find different versions of the Orphic Hymns. The recent translation by Patrick Dunn flow very well in English. Or use the free ones you can find here. For best pronunciation in Greek check Susan Chang's amazing video. Light Storax / Benzoin incense before you start. One for Mercury, one for Saturn.

Prayer to Tehuti

Burn some Egyptian papyrus or Kyphi incense and give an offering of Natron.
Pray the Hymn to Tehuti down to "Who enters duat, knows those in it"
Call to Tehuti:

Tehuti, I call you! Thrice greatest Tehuti, scribe of Ra, Silver Aton, leader of souls in the hereafter. I invoke you in your great, divine names: ALIPS, THABLIPS, STSILIPS, GAGARPAOTHAR, THANASIMA, QHAH, ORTHOMENKHROÔN, BALSA, ALABAKHABEL [4], Come to me here and now to this place that will serve as a meeting place for myself and my ancestors, guardians, and leaders who now dwell in the afterlife, whose blood runs through me, and all whose spirits have helped shape me.

Thrice greatest Tehuti, I humbly ask you to aid me as a messenger and as a light for those I seek. Open the veil between this world and the hereafter. Find my ancestors and make sure they receive my words, gifts and intentions.

Thrice greatest Tehuti, accept these offerings of smoke, light, water, food and wine. Accept them in gratitude for your help, and please spread them to the dead I call and invite them to attend and see to it that no uninvited intruder comes to this place.

Be praised, oh Thrice greatest Tehuti, forecaster of the future, notary of Ra!

Peret kheru ta, heneket, khau kau apedu, khut nebet noferet wabet ankhet netjer im. [5]

Offerings to the Dead

Place all offerings on the table, smudge them with incense.
Place a lit stick of incense into the bowl of Natron, a bit to the rear right of its center. This is for all women in your bloodline.

I call you: mothers and grandmothers, sisters and cousins, daughters and granddaughters. All you women, from whose community I came forth, whose blood flows through my veins, whose traces and memories I carry within me. With deep compassion, I think of your sufferings and your pains, through which you had to go on your life's path. With gratitude and love I think of your struggles, your dreams, your achievements, your courage and your strength. Come to this altar in your honor and accept my offerings, giving thanks for the sacrifices you made for our family. Accept these gifts, along with my gratitude and love.

Place another lit stick of incense into the bowl of Natron, a bit to the rear left of its center. This is for all men in your bloodline.

I call you: fathers and grandfathers, brothers and cousins, sons and grandsons. All you men, from whose community I came forth, whose blood flows through my veins, whose traces and memories I carry within me. With deep compassion, I think of your sufferings and your pains, through which you had to go on your life's path. With gratitude and love I think of your struggles, your dreams, your achievements, your courage and your strength. Come to this altar in your honor and accept my offerings, giving thanks for the sacrifices you made for our family. Accept these gifts, along with my gratitude and love.

Place a third lit stick of incense into the bowl of Natron, a bit to the front of its center, so all three sticks shape a triangle. This is for the lost and forgotten ones of your bloodline and the ones who are not genetically related to you, yet important.

I call you: all you forgotten dead, you unborn dead, you who died as children. I also call you, all you friends and acquaintances, and all those who have stood with and helped my family and me, whose influences and benevolence I carry within me. Come also to this altar in your honor and accept my offerings, giving thanks for the sacrifices you made for our family. Accept these gifts, along with my gratitude and love.

(Optionally, call the mighty dead.

I call you: you inspiring ancestors, you artists and magicians, poets and thinkers, you role models who have given your lifeblood for the benefit of all, you mighty forefathers, who have made this world a better one before your transition to the next world. With gratitude and love I think of your struggles, your dreams, your achievements, your courage and your strength. They live in me and flow through my veins, they inspire my existence and from them I draw strength. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Accept these gifts, along with my gratitude and love.)

If it is the first time you do this ritual, I recommend to say something about the collected earth and the Saturnian tokens:

Dear grandparents and dear uncle (or whose graves are connected with each other through the token network), through this earth and through the tokens, which are consecrated by Saturn and connected to each other beyond distance, I can always be close to your graves. All of you other ancestors, I ask you to acknowledge this earth as symbol also for the earth of your graves and to recognize the network of tokens also as a symbol of our inseparable connection.

Play music, commune with the present spirits, have a party, do whatever you want to do.

Closing the Space

Thank you all, my ancestors who have appeared. May your blessing and guidance bring out the best in me, for the benefit of all, whom I may meet in this life. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I hereby grant you a license to depart. Return to your resting places and do not stay in this house. But come back soon when I call you. My love and gratitude are always with you!

Thrice greatest Tehuti, make sure that all the souls called here today find their way and return to their resting places and close the veil again between this world and the hereafter. This ritual is closed.

Requiem

O Lord, grant all eternal rest. And let eternal light shine on each of them. May the souls of the ancestors rest in peace through Your mercy. Amen

Family Troubles

I know that it can be difficult to connect with the own dead relatives, be it because some of them have been abusive towards members of the family and caused traumata and grief, or because they would not have agreed with their descendants life-style, beliefs, sexuality, identification, etc. or vice versa. You can find important thoughts about these issues in the linked Sphere & Sundry article above or in BJ Swain's book, and many other places, but my own are as follows:

First of all nobody has to talk to the ancestors, there are other ways of getting help from the dead. A good example would be working with the "Lost Souls" in "purgatory", as I recently heard and read about in this great article by Agostino Taumaturgo or in the pure Shinto way. You can also tie Catholicism and pagan Roman rites together and do a kind of Parentalia Novena.

An important point that made a huge difference for me was involving a psychopomp in aiding to make contact with the dead. You can ask them to filter out unwanted ancestors, either by explicitly naming them or by asking him to not let the ones come who are not comfortable supporting your current life, or something along those lines. You can also ask them specifically to invite only your magically operand ancestors, or the artists among them, or the queer ones, and so on. Use them as a bouncer to your party.

Incarnations

Coming back to the "Saturnian coins": I came across an article on Gnome School that had a quote from a book by Henry Rogers about very intriguing objects that I can very well imagine being used for such an "etheric network":

From the period 8500-3000 OLD, a large number of artefacts known as tokens have been found. There are small clay objects of simple geometric shapes: spheres, cones, tetrahydra, cylinders, disks, lens-shaped disks, etc. tokens of this period are known as plain tokens. They are associated with the beginnings of agriculture [and] were used for record keeping… some have been found stored inside sealed, hollow clay balls forming envelopes around the tokens… these envelopes represented a way of safegaurding the record of the contract. If there was a disagreement, the envelope could be broken, and the evidence of the tokens would be inside. [3]

This magical network concept lends itself also to many other potential magical applications. Some research revealed that it is apparently also nothing really new. The famous DKMU "Ellis" aka. "Linking Sigil" and Chaos Magick 101's Sigil Matrix followed a similar line of thought. My plan is to further explore this technology of linking talismanic tokens to each other.

(1) Swain, BJ. Living Spirits: A Guide to Magic in a World of Spirits. Independently published. 2018
(2) Kambon, Ọbádélé. "Akan Ananse stories, Yorùbá Ìjàpá tales, and the Dikènga theory: worldview and structure." Contemporary Journal of African Studies 4.2 (2017): 1-36.
(3) Rogers, Henry. Writing systems: A linguistic approach. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005.
(4) translation from demotic spells with secret names of Tehuti from Louvre E 3229 papyrus (Betz PDM lxi. 63-78 and PDM Suppl. 149—62) found in: Betz, Hans Dieter, ed. The Greek magical papyri in translation, including the Demotic spells. Vol. 1. University of Chicago Press, 1996. pg. 288 and 328.
(5) Common Egyptian offering formula. It translates to: "A voice offering of bread, beer, a thousand of beef and fowl, and every good and pure thing on which a god lives"

Interrogating the Ibis

2018-10-30T22:30:00+01:00

This article is about my preferred Tarot deck and reading method and the consecration ritual I constructed for it based on Egyptian hymns and Demotic spells to Tehuti (Thoth).

Épiphanie

In May of last year I was on holidays in a remote town in the Provence with my extended family for a few days. Before that my wife, daughter and I spent three days in the beautiful city of Marseille. Besides visiting the black madonna called Notre Dame de Confession in the ancient Abbaye St. Victor the other occult sightseeing spot I wanted to visit was the old Camoin House. It is the building where in 1760 Nicolas Conver established his cardmaking factory and engraved his famous Tarot de Marseille, the mother of most modern Tarot decks.

The winter before, I had been obsessing about the question which Tarot deck to use for divination. I had no experience with Tarot and after some research I had bought the beautiful Smith-Waite Centennial Tarot Deck which I really loved for aesthetic reasons and because Smith-Waite decks are apparently recommended for beginners. Unfortunately it did not really resonate so much with me after trying giving it a try for a few months. The detailed imagery of the minor arcana seemed sometimes a bit too detailed and confusing to me and results were too ambiguous. So I was looking for alternatives. I did not like any of the Smith-Waite derivatives and I also found Crowley's deck very unappealing. The final contestants were the Camoin Jodorowsky Tarot de Marseille deck, the Sola Busca from Scarlet Imprint, and the Hermetic Tarot and I could not really decide on one.

My question was answered in an uncanny way on the day we walked through the lovely district of Noailles in Marseille, a lively area with a lot of North African expats. We strolled through the Rue d'Aubagne, a lively small street with a lot of cafés and small shops, mostly selling goods and delicacies from the Maghreb. We approached a small intersection and suddenly I was overwhelmed by a strange "epiphanic" feeling of clarity. It was as if the time stood still for a moment and everything went quiet, just to continue normally after a short glimpse. It was uplifting and strange at the same time.

I checked the map to see where we were, because I knew that the old Camoin House was supposed to be in this very street. I discovered that we were standing right in front of it: Number 8! I was excited! Today it looks like a normal residential house and hosts a (delicious) Tunisian restaurant on the ground floor. Nothing points to the history of this building. I immediately knew that this strange moment was a clear hint which direction to take in my Tarot deck quest.

The Open Reading

After I had jumped down the Tarot de Marseille rabbit-hole and read Jodorowsky's excellent book, I soon realized that Camoin and Jodo had altered the original Conver design and had added more little occult details into it. I did not like that approach and wanted something more genuine.

Luckily, during my research I stumbled over a great little Tarot book that resonated a lot with me. It was the work of Israeli physicist and philosopher Yoav Ben-Dov who had studied Tarot and psychomagic with Jodorowsky in Paris and subsequently created his own method of reading the Tarot which ironically seems to be the complete opposite of Jodorowsky's very esoteric system:

The open reading is my way of reading the Tarot. In a nutshell, it is based on the three following points. First, a Tarot card does not have a fixed meaning which can be learned in advance. Rather, the meaning emerges from what we can see in the card. Second, the function of each position in a spread is also not fixed. Rather, it depends on the card combination. Third, we don't start by interpreting each card separately. Instead, we first try to see the whole picture.

This concept resonated very much with my idea of how divination is meant to work. He had also created a very clear and clean reproduction of the original Conver Tarot deck that looked gorgeous and immediately became my top-pick. I bought Ben-Dov's ebook on Amazon, but had to wait a couple of months until the deck became available again after having been sold out. In the meantime I downloaded the free digital version and could already enjoy the design.

Although the minor arcana cards can be a bit difficult to interpret, I resonated much more with the CBD Tarot de Marseille than with the Smith-Waite deck. Because my past attempts of reading the cards had been so ambiguous I decided that before using this new deck I would need to properly consecrate it, hoping to improve the clarity of the message.

The Beaked Scribe

An Egyptian god I have wanted to connect with for quite some time was Tehuti, most commonly known as Thoth. If you don't know much about him here is some basic information about Tehuti from the excellent Henadology website:

[Tehuti] is the God of learning and of wisdom, depicted as an ibis-headed man, as an ibis, or, less often, as a baboon (in this form generally with a lunar crescent on his head), and frequently holding the brush and palette of a scribe, since the wisdom of which he is the master is in particular that contained in sacred texts. [Tehuti] has also strong lunar associations, to the extent of being often identified with the moon itself [...], but more systematically [Tehuti] is the God responsible for healing the wedjat, the Eye of Horus, after it was injured by Seth, and since the wedjat‘s regeneration is embodied in the waxing lunar cycle, [Tehuti] is the God who restores the light of the moon. [...] [Tehuti]'s identification with the moon probably also involves an idea known to many cultures, namely that the moon, as the nocturnal sun, symbolizes the powers of the human intelligence to supplement that which nature provides and as an intermediary between the divine and mortal realms. [Tehuti] is not only the embodiment of wisdom, but also its advocate in the world: [...] [Tehuti] is also a peacemaker who reconciles Horus and Seth and who pacifies the wrathful Goddesses, especially Sekhmet. [...]

[Tehuti] facilitates the exchange across the border between the human and divine realms in his function as lord of sacred texts. [...] Re empowers [Tehuti] by a series of formulae linked to [Tehuti]'s diverse forms—the ibis, the moon, and the baboon. First, Re grants him the authority to send forth the other Gods through spells and invocations and to check their actions in turn, this power corresponding to the ibis. Next Re bids him to “encompass the two heavens with thy beauty and thy light,” this corresponding to the moon. Finally, Re charges him with traversing the lands of the Ha-nebu, the ‘Northern Lords', a vague term for the islands of the Aegean [...], perhaps implying a circuit around the Mediterranean and thus through many foreign lands—a hymn to [Tehuti] states that he “made different the tongue of one country from another,” (Bleeker 1973, 140); this last power corresponds to the baboon.

Besides being the founder of the words of speech including magical words, he also was the demiurge who created the world through utterance. He has knowledge of true names of all creation, he has the power to heal and he's a god of justice. As a lunar god he presides over the passing of time and length of every human's life. He doesn't necessarily rule over, but at least has knowledge of all fate. Therefore he also presides over divination and prophecy.

I thought it would be a great way to start a relationship with Tehuti by dedicating my new deck to him and consecrating it by his name in a proper ritual.

Invoking the Ibis

The Greeks identified Tehuti with the divine messenger and trickster god Hermes, ruler over trade, heraldry, merchants, commerce, roads, sports, and travel. The god of boundaries and the transgression of boundaries, patron of herdsmen, thieves, graves, and heralds. Like Tehuti Hermes is described as moving freely between the worlds of the mortal and divine, and was the conductor of souls into the afterlife.

Hermes is also the son of Zeus and Zeus is the only god who knows the affairs of men, all that the Moirai (Fates) give them, and all that is not destined for them. Zeus is also the only god not affected by the decisions of the Moirai, but obeyed by them.

So a suitable planetary timing for the consecration would be the hour of Mercury on a Wednesday or Thursday. I was especially paranoid about negative spiritual residue on the cards due the production process they went through. So my choice of day was Saturday because I've had some good experiences working with Kronos/Saturn to wipe and purify items.

Also it seems very fitting to Tehuti that the hour of Mercury is followed by the hour of Luna, I imagine him dwelling right on the edge of the two. I timed the consecration in a way so it would start at the end of Mercury's hour and be done in the beginning of Luna's.

I start all of my rituals with the acknowledgement of the planetary rulers by reciting a planetary prayer from the Hygromanteia and the matching Orphic Hymn. When the rite is heavily Egyptian, like this one, I put more weight to that paradigm by acknowledging the ruling Decan.

In more complex workings I also usually banish or add the Stele of Jeu as a preliminary rite, I align myself with the Axis Mundi, and so on, but this ritual is just a consecration of a deck of Tarot cards and already polyphanic enough... You could probably skip the whole beginning and just do the hymn to Tehuti and the actual consecration, but this is what I did, so I am faithfully laying it out here:

Acknowledge the Planetary Rulers

Planetary prayer of the day.
Orphic hymn to the planet of the day.
Planetary prayer of the hour.
Orphic hymn to the planet of the hour.

Use whatever set of planetary prayers you like. I took the ones from the Hygromanteia but you might as well apply the ones from the Book of Oberon, Munich Manual, whatever you prefer to work with...

You can find different versions of the Orphic Hymns. The very recent translation by Patrick Dunn flow very well in English. Or use the free ones you can find here.

Acknowledge the Decans

The Egyptians venerated and feared the baktiu (Decans), gods ruling over time and fate, signified by stars near the ecliptic that were observed to measure slices of time and to determine which decan ruled over them. I will get deeper into this topic in a series of future posts.

For now, let's acknowledge them in this working with this hymn to the Decans found at the temple of Esna, combined with an Egyptian offering formula. To find the appropriate name of the current Decan, find out the sidereal Zodiac degree you are currently in and use the table below.

(If this whole section raises too many questions and doubts, skip it. I am just adding it here, because that's what I use for "doing the usual".)

Sign	Degree	Decan
Cancer	0° - 9.9°	Wart
Cancer	10° - 19.9°	Pehwi Heri
Cancer	20° - 29.9°	Kenmet
Leo	0° - 9.9°	Khery Kheped Kenmet
Leo	10° - 19.9°	Hat Djat
Leo	20° - 29.9°	Djat
Virgo	0° - 9.9°	Pechwi Djat
Virgo	10° - 19.9°	Djmat Heret Kheret
Virgo	20° - 29.9°	Wushahti
Libra	0° - 9.9°	Bekahti
Libra	10° - 19.9°	Ipdjes
Libra	20° - 29.9°	Sebshessen
Scorpio	0° - 9.9°	Tepi-Ah Hentet
Scorpio	10° - 19.9°	Heriyib Wiah
Scorpio	20° - 29.9°	Septi Henwi
Sagittarius	0° - 9.9°	Seshmu
Sagittarius	10° - 19.9°	Sah Seshmu
Sagittarius	20° - 29.9°	Kenmu
Capricorn	0° - 9.9°	Tepi-Ah Semed
Capricorn	10° - 19.9°	Pa-Sebah Whati
Capricorn	20° - 29.9°	Semed
Aquarius	0° - 9.9°	Seret
Aquarius	10° - 19.9°	Sah Seret
Aquarius	20° - 29.9°	Tepi-Ah Akhwi
Pisces	0° - 9.9°	Akhwi
Pisces	10° - 19.9°	Tepi-Ah Bahwi
Pisces	20° - 29.9°	Bahwi
Aries	0° - 9.9°	Khentu Heru
Aries	10° - 19.9°	Khentu Kheru
Aries	20° - 29.9°	Ked
Taurus	0° - 9.9°	Sah Ked
Taurus	10° - 19.9°	Khau
Taurus	20° - 29.9°	Aret
Gemini	0° - 9.9°	Remen Heri
Gemini	10° - 19.9°	Tjes Ark
Gemini	20° - 29.9°	Remen Kheri

Hymn to the Decans

Reverence to you, living gods, workers in the necropolis, who shine next to the disk in the evening, who recognize the hours when you come forth from the east, who announce what happens, who keep alive and kill the rebels at their wish, who shine in the sky and shoot the two countries with flames, everybody trembles when you come forth, who the star-watchers observe in your times! Greetings, children of Re, who appear at his setting, Ennead of the primeval, when you circulate daily in your orbit, living souls of the gods, daily, when you come out of the eye of Re, Messengers in the cities and districts, who shoot arrows from your mouths at the one they see from afar, the six stars and shining ones, daily, who save their Lord from every evil thing, from the shooting of the Star Gods on this day, this month, this year, in each of your hours to this day, [come, benevolent, for which I call you, as benevolent assistants in this rite for my benefit.] (1)

I call you, ruling Decan of this decade in the sign of [CURRENT ZODIAC SIGN], the one who shines on the whole inhabited and uninhabited world. I call upon you, by your name of [DECAN NAME], glorious one, of kind heart and power supreme, to bless this operation. As you cross the skies, look down to me favourably and accept my offering for your appeasing (2): Peret kheru ta, heneket, khau kau apedu, khut nebet noferet wabet ankhet netjer im. (3)

Hymn to Tehuti

Hail to you, Moon, [Tehuti],
Bull in Khmun, dweller in Hesret,
Who makes way for the gods!
Who knows the secrets,
Who records their expression,
Who distinguishes one speech from another,
Who is judge of everyone.
Keen-faced in the Ship-of-millions,
Courier of mankind,
Who knows a man by his utterance,
Who makes the deed rise against the doer.
Who contents Re,
Advises the Sole Lord,
Lets him know whatever happens;
At dawn he summons in heaven,
And forgets not yesterday's report.

Who makes safe the night-bark
Makes tranquil the day-bark,
With arms outstretched in the bow of the ship.
Pure-faced when he takes the stern-rope,
As the day-bark rejoices in the night-bark's joy,
At the feast of crossing the sky.
Who fells the fiend,
Sunders western lightland.
The Ennead in the night-bark worships [Tehuti],
They say to him: “Hail, [Son of] Re,
Praised of Re whom the gods applaud!”
They repeat what your ka wishes,
As you make way for the place of the bark,
As you act against the fiend:
You cut off his head, you break his ba,
You cast his corpse into the fire,
You are the god who slaughters him.

Nothing is done without your knowing,
Great one, son of a Great one, who came from her limbs,
Champion of Harakhti,
Wise friend in On,
Who makes the place of the gods,
Who knows the secrets,
Expounds their words.

Let us give praise to [Tehuti],
Straight plummet in the scales,
Who repulses evil,
Who accepts him who leans not on crime.
The vizier who settles cases,
Who changes turmoil to peace;
The scribe of the mat who keeps the book,
Who punishes crime,
Who accepts the submissive.
Who is sound of arm,
Wise among the ennead,
Who relates what was forgotten.
Counselor to him who errs,
Who remembers the fleeting moment,
Who reports the hour of the night,
Whose words endure forever,
Who enters duat, knows those in it, (4)

Hermes, lord of the world, who're in the heart,
O circle of Selene, spherical
And square, the founder of the words of speech,
Pleader of justice's cause, garbed in a mantle,
With winged sandals, turning airy course
Beneath earth's depths, who hold the spirit's reins,
O eye of Helios, O mighty one,
Founder of full-voiced speech, who with your lamps
Give joy to those beneath earth's depths, to mortals
Who've finished life. The prophet of events
And Dream divine you're said to be, who send
Forth oracles by day and night; you cure
All pains of mortals with your healing cares. (5)

Consecration

Light some suitable incense for cleansing, like Styrax Benzoin, Frankincense or Sage. Open the deck of cards and shuffle them in the incense smoke. Let the smoke purify the cards thoroughly while reciting the following:

Hither, O blessed one, O mighty son
Of Memory, who brings full mental powers,
In your own form both graciously appear
And graciously [consecrate these cards for me],
A pious man, [NAME], son of [YOUR MOTHER'S NAME]
That I may comprehend you by your skills
Of prophecy, by your own wond'rous deeds.
I ask you, lord, be gracious to me and [cleanse
These cards from all past influences,
([With the purifying powers of Kronos,])
And graciously consecrate these cards for me.] (5)
When I call to you, O [Tehuti], the hearing-ear,
Who listens to everything,
In your names which are great, which are divine,
ALIPS, THABLIPS, STSILIPS,
GAGARPAOTHAR, THANASIMA, QHAH,
ORTHOMENKHROÔN, BALSA, ALABAKHABEL,
HEFKAE, HEPKA, HEBIKE, NEKHEPKAI
Without deceit prophesy to me [through these cards,
At any place and any time come to me and tell me,
An answer to everything, truly, without falsehood therein]. (6)

Sources

(1) Inscription from the temple of Esna translated by me into English from the German translation I found in Alexandra von Lieven's "Der Himmel über Esna: eine Fallstudie zur religiösen Astronomie in Ägypten am Beispiel der kosmologischen Decken-und Architravinschriften im Tempel von Esna" in Vol. 64. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2000. Page 43.
(2) borrowed bits from Julio Ody's essay on his attempt to work Paul Huson's Mastering Witchcraft Vassago operation
(3) Common Egyptian offering formula. It translates to: "A voice offering of bread, beer, a thousand of beef and fowl, and every good and pure thing on which a god lives"
(4) Adoration of Thoth, inscribed on a statue of Haremhab, a royal scribe and general of the army under Tutankhamun.
(5) from PGM V. 370-446 in Betz, Hans Dieter, ed. The Greek magical papyri in translation, including the Demotic spells. Vol. 1. University of Chicago Press, 1996. pg. 108.
(6) translation from demotic spells with secret names of Tehuti from Louvre E 3229 papyrus (Betz PDM lxi. 63-78 and PDM Suppl. 149—62) found in (5) pg. 288 and 328.

Consulting the Book of Tehuti

Everytime I have a need to consult with Tehuti through the Tarot, I take the deck out of its box and shuffle the cards. While I am doing that I envision the Ibis-headed god shuffling the cards through me and I speak the following invocation:

I call to you, O Tehuti, In your names which are great, which are divine, ALIPS, THABLIPS, STSILIPS, GAGARPAOTHAR, THANASIMA, QHAH, ORTHOMENKHROÔN, BALSA, ALABAKHABEL, HEFKAE, HEPKA, HEBIKE, NEKHEPKAI, Show me the truth by these cards.

Then I speak out the desired way of consulting with him: the number of cards to be used and if they are more than one I define what their positions represent. For example:

"Using one card, answer my following question..."
"Using two cards, representing the two choices I have concerning ... tell me what to expect"
"Using three cards, representing from left to right: the past, the present, and the future, answer me concerning..."

After, I shuffle a bit more until I have the feeling that I need to stop and lay the agreed number of cards down in front of me. I interpret them intuitively using Ben-Dov's Open Reading method.

In addition I check the common interpretations found in the usually frowned upon little white book that comes with the deck and treat it like a "second layer" on top of my initial intuitive interpretation to see the bigger picture.

Skype with the Scribe

After the ambiguous experiences I had had before, using the Smith-Waite deck, consulting this Tehuti consecrated CBD Tarot feels like a crystal-clear, Dolby Surround, Full-HD, video-conference uplink directly to the Ibis-headed god. So far I've always had mind-blowing readings with very straight-forward answers. But I have to admit that I only read for myself and not for others. I will still have to try that out. After initial doubts I know fully trust my Tarot and almost treat it like an intimate companion. It travels with me most of the time. Sounds cheesy? Yeah it does! I didn't expect such a strong link to happen at all, it just did.

Tehuti rules over prophecy in general, so you can use the above ritual also to consecrate other divination tools. I am looking forward to apply an adapted version of the ritual to a set of four Japanese 100¥ coins I recently found and use them in the way Sam Block laid out his Four Coin Divination of Hermes.