Journal The Scrolls of Agreia, Elemental Serpent

[Romolo]

I start this new journal exactly one year after "The Druid's Way", which I consider completed. Thanks to everyone who read, followed and encouraged me!

This new journal will follow the meandering trajectory of a magical creature that came to life unexpectedly three days ago. She is not really a servitor, nor a familiar, but... more of a foundling. I call her Agreia, the name that came to me when I first picked her up. As she explores this world anew, I might be able to dillute some of her life experiences into spells, hence the title of the grimoire. The format will be self-explanatory.

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Name: Agreia
Genus: Elemental Serpent
Age: 3 days
Features: red skin, forked tongue, scorpion tail
Nest: a small airarium made of mirrors

Epiteths: none yet
Magical properties: none yet discovered
Spells added to the scrolls: none yet

Journal:

Sept 21th, 2024.
I got stung by two wasps on Wednesday. Both stings (one in each foot, I was wearing sandals) caused a lightning bolt of sweet, nauseating pain that made me cry & laugh and pulled me into an electrifying state of self-remembering. The second sting woke me up for real, like leaving behind a nested dream inside a dream. The state of Gurdjieffian awareness lasted for six hours and culminated in the ritual that birthed Agreia.

I cannot go into particulars yet of how this went, because none of it would make any sense to anyone except myself. The occult experience is very personal and has to be approached in fragments or shards of a fractal whole. I would first have to explain that I keep a "cauldron" which functions as an externalized memory bank or archive, how the items inside are tokens/remnants of things I have learnt or experienced, how those can be dissolved into... but writing it like this makes no sense at all. I will limit myself, for this first journal entry, to a description of how Agreaia appears in this physical realm, and add a photo below.

The red ribbon (body) has been used for numerous rituals by myself and another magician friend. Over the past year it has tasted melting snow, river water, fumes of myrrh, prayers, dripping wax, possibly even tears, blood and certainly also countless other elements. It has become a true palimpsest of experiences. At one occasion I also used the ribbon to bind the light of Sirius, the Dog star, nine times as I held the loop aloft against the night sky under a waning moon.

The forked branch (tongue) is the tip of a small branch I had never consacrated or used before. It was wrapped in the red ribbon for one full moon phase and three additional days. During the ritual, I cut off "the tip of the tongue" with my Finnish hunting knife. After the cut, I place both ends against my feet, where I got stung earlier that day by the wasps. I channeled some ether to draw the pain and its poison into the serpent tongue.

The dried red pepper (scorpion tail) has been grown in our own garden. As soon as I spotted its exquisite curl, I knew this pepper was destined for magical purposes. I let it dry for over 40 days inside a box of mirrors, which forms the current nest and home of Agreia. I will have to read into the use of the Italian cornicello, the famous pepper that protects against the "evil eye".

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Photo on the first morning after her birth:

 

[djcullgirl]

Im so excited to hear their story! that little "unknown" under magical abilities sure draws my curiosity

 

[Romolo]

Name: Agreia
Genus: Elemental Serpent
Age: 14 days
Features: red skin, exoskeleton of pebbles
Nest: currently asleep on my altar, curled up in a spiral

Epiteths: limnoketai ("kept in the pool")
Magical properties: memory enhancement, weather affinity (see report below)
Spells added to the scrolls: none yet

Oct 21st, 2024.
Agreia shook off her red pepper scorpion tail when I lifted her out of her balcony of mirrors. This happened ten days ago, as I wanted to pack her away in my hand luggage. Guess it made it easier to bring her along on the airplane: I simply rolled her around her tiny tongue and tucked her away in my pocket.

We got to know each other. I carried her as a bracelet around my wrist and as a thin forehead bandage. I threw her in the waves and swam with her. I tied her into knots around stones and stuck her to marble. Her tongue broke off as well.

I understand now that all of these game actions have been a powerful way to enhance my own memory of this trip. For instance: I remember exactly how it felt like when the wind shook the ribbon tied to the pole of the beach umbrella, how her writhing movements became shadows of ink on my body. Without her presence, this moment would have been forgotten. Maybe it is my aphantasia pushing myself into new directions to store memories and knowledge.

Something curious happened on the evening following the first day. As we walked to the flat, I noticed how a black cat sneaked into a wooden boat on the beach. She did this to drink from a trembling remainder of rain water that had gathered there. The whole scene was very poetic.

On our rooftop terrace, there was a green plastic chair with a slightly concave seating. Some rain water was left there. Before going to bed, I put down Agreia into this trembling black pool, and thought a magic thought, I thought: drink all this rain, fair serpent, drink it all, drink and quench your thirst. It was no prayer nor a spell, but just a playful enchantment.

It did not rain anymore for the following six days and we had only sunny weather. I decided to give Agreia a first epiteth: limnoketai ("kept in the pool"). Every night I woke up around 3am and saw the thin sickle of the waning-crescent moon hanging above the sea. It cast a twinkling pool of moonlight on the waves.

On my return, I looked at the stone pebbles that I collected. When I spread them out, they effortlessly flowed into the shape below, with Agreia spiraling inwards. The sharp artifacts on the bottom, where her ribbon is tied, are a dry branch I picked up inside the archaeological remnants of a temple, and a dented chunk of raw silver I found on the beach:

 

[Romolo]

Name: Agreia
Genus: Elemental Serpent
Age: 45 days
Features: red skin, exoskeleton of wood, five spidery legs, breathing smoke
Nest: my altar

Epiteths: limnoketai ("kept in the pool"), phanokriptephano ("she who appears, disappears, and appears")
Magical properties: memory enhancement & weather affinity (see Oct 2), rebirth from darkness (see report below)
Spells added to the scrolls: none yet

Nov 1st, 2024. I went "dry" and almost "returned to the world without", as Crowley warns in "Magick and Theory and Practice" (page 397). "This state must be endured with fortitude; and no means of alleviating it may be employed. It may be broken up by the breaking up of the whole Method, and a return to the world without." Crowley is severe about this last option: "This cowardice (...) makes they Will a mockery to men and gods." On the other hand, should the mage embrace this state of dryness, there remains hope. He specifies: "[this state] can be purifying, in such depths that the soul cannot fathom it. It is less like pain than like death. But it is the necessary death that comes before the rising of a body glorified."

For almost two weeks, Agreia lay "caked" in a pile of pebbles, soil, wax, dry leaves (and even a statuette of a bronze horse) in the middle of my altar. I did not do much magic, my rituals went slack. I got sick. My mental health also sank an octave, further aggravated by the genocide in Gaza, and the failure of humanity as a whole. Agreia went dormant, waiting for a new manifestation.

The trigger happened when I set myself to work in the garden. This time I cut back the wild wine and started making wreaths with the long branches. One particular piece of wood had a spidery star jutting out from the branch. I took this piece home, not yet knowing why, and a few nights later it came together. The red ribbon came out of the rubble and I wound it around the branch. Then I got sick again, this time I lost my voice. This was last weekend. I used the Samhain / New Moon conjuncture to lift myself up again.

The snake moves in coiling shapes, up and down, within "and without", similar to branches of wild wine in a wreath. At its best, the snake bites her own tail. This is the extended state of awareness; or in Gurdjieff's terms, self-remembering that has been acquired and "swallowed". You are lit with the holy fire, ready for life in all her facets. But the serpent is also the confrontation with darkness: the Egyptians thought a snake attacked the sun at night, when Ra sails underneath the earth to the other side again. Priests where praying at night to ensure Ra safely emerged again.

In her new form Agreaia is walking on five legs (five points of a star, the sun), but she is also resting her neck on one pebble (the moon) from her previous embodiment. She breathes out smoke (not yet full fire). She seems to evolve into a cute elemental dragon:

 

[Romolo]

Name: Agreia
Genus: Elemental Serpent
Age: 164 days
Features: red skin, forked tongue, forked tail, golden scales
Current nest: my altar

Feb 27th, 2025. Even as we sit still, believing the balance is reached, the mirror of our soul once again "gathers dust" (Blavatsky) The Work is never done. Ironically, the harder you "work", invest in ritual & devotion; the higher you set your own stakes, and the more work is required. The serpent really bites her own tail... From the Poetic Edda: "Better not to pray than to sacrifice too much: one gift always calls for another; better not dispatched than too many slaughtered."

Agreia's new epiteth is "asterolepsis", "whose scales are stars" or "star-scaled". This was revealed when I watched her on my altar. The shimmering-twinkling aspect aligns with her earlier names limnoketai ("kept in the pool") and phanokriptephano ("she who appears, disappears, and appears").

Her body got shorter, as pieces of ribbon were cut off during rituals. Maybe she fed on her own body, and is ready to evolve beyond the flesh. On her forked tongue, a piece of resin from the plum tree. Her tail, also forked, is made of yew fir. I gathered snow water for her to drink. She does not bite her own tail. Still no spells for the scrolls.

Epiteths: limnoketai ("kept in the pool"), phanokriptephano ("she who appears, disappears, and appears"), asterolepsis ("star scaled")
Magical properties: memory enhancement & weather affinity (see Oct 2nd '24), rebirth from darkness (see Nov 1st '24)
Spells added to the scrolls: none yet