Am5: Celestial Symposium
Panels
Power of Joy: TBA
Many and One: Kadmus, Kristin Mathis, Michael Ofek, JD Kelley
Calanais Experience: TBA
Med/Eco Astral: Mary Gaterud, Lee Lehman, William Morris, Kira Sutherland, Marcos Patchett, JD Kelley
Contributors
Michael Ofek
Emotions, Virtues, and Astral Magic
In this lecture, we will explore the vital role of emotions as the living bridge between the soul and the stars. Far from being mere disturbances of the psyche, emotions are the dynamic — and daemonic — forces that attune the human spirit to the greater harmonies of the cosmos.
Drawing on Platonic, Hermetic, and Neoplatonic theurgical traditions, we will consider the transformative function of emotional purification and exaltation, giving rise to the virtues that elevate the spirit and open it to the divine influx and intelligence.
This foundational aspect of internal planetary attunement is gracefully aligned with Jupiter’s light shining through the Moon’s watery temple. It invites us to reflect on the heart’s prolific power as a vessel of spiritual nourishment, awakening its exalted virtues in the cultivation of a living communion with the cosmos.
Michael Ofek is an astrologer, cosmologist, astral magician, and shamanic practitioner, has practiced astrology and magic for over two decades, alongside avidly researching all branches of the ancient tradition.
Kristin Mathis
Bolt-Hurler, Birth-Seeder: Esoteric Revelations from the Orphic Hymn of Zeus
While mainstream ancient Greek mythology often presented Zeus through narratives of sexual violence and coercion that can be difficult for modern readers and practitioners alike, the Orphic Hymn of Zeus offered a different vision. The Orphic hymn-writer brought together many different traditions from the ancient Mediterranean: the well-known Greek stories from Homer and Hesiod that presented Zeus as an Olympian storm god, traditional titles and associations from the deity's many worship sites throughout the Greek-speaking world, and the emerging insights of the pre-Socratic philosophers. Perhaps most boldly, the Orphic Hymns also drew on extremely ancient Babylonian, Egyptian, and Phoenician temple and star traditions that preserved thousands of years of closely guarded secret teachings on many topics.
Kristin Mathis's translation of the Orphic Hymns is the first to take the ancient art of hidden meanings seriously, using it as a modern interpretation and translation strategy. Her work "opens up" the original Greek text to today's readers by translating its wordplay, puns, and hidden references—associations that ancient initiates would have immediately recognized as being concealed in plain sight. The result reveals meanings lost for centuries but once clear to the Orphics themselves: a Zeus whose cosmic scope extends far beyond the planet Jupiter, both more primal and more philosophical than the figure in conventional myth.
Kristin Mathis is a translator, poet, and scholar whose work focuses on the Orphic Hymns—ritual texts from the Greek Mystery traditions that flourished in Sicily and Southern Italy around 500 BCE. Her translations illuminate the sophisticated wordplay and esoteric knowledge embedded within these poems. She studied ancient Mediterranean esoteric religions and cultural anthropology at Brown, Princeton, and Columbia Universities, where her teachers included Elaine Pagels, Hans Dieter Betz, John Gager, and David Pingree. In 2022, she founded the Mysteria Mundi translation project, pursuing her passion for the Orphic Hymns while adapting to the challenges she faces living with Long Covid.
Kristin’s understanding of the cosmos as a living being was shaped by her childhood in 1970s Borneo, where she grew up alongside indigenous animist traditions. Now based in Brooklyn, NY, she's a single mom to one teenage son, two cats named Venus and Comet, and an ever-expanding collection of herbs, plants, and books.
David Rankine
The Influence of the Wandering Stars: How the Classical Planets underpin the Grimoire Tradition
This presentation will explore the hugely significant role of the planets throughout the grimoire tradition from the first grimoires through to the modern day. The influence of the planets in the angelic and demonic hierarchies, pentacles, tools, timings, fragrances and other areas will all be considered.
David Rankine is an author, esoteric researcher and sorcerer who has been practising magic and grimoires for over 45 years. He works as the editor-in-chief for Hadean Press and lives in Spain with his family. In recent decades he is best known for his work on titles like The Grimoire Encyclopaedia, Claves Intelligentarium, The Goetia of Dr Rudd, The Veritable Key of Solomon, Clavis Inferni and Claves Spirituum.
Kadmus
On The Nature of the Winds
There has been a lot of attention given recently concerning the value and power of the winds in magical practice, largely triggered by the recent work of David Rankine with more expected in his forthcoming book “Claves Spirituum”. This discussion will consider how the winds can be understood as connected with astral forces such as the moon, planets, and related gods as well as diving into the more concrete and both culturally and geographically specific aspects of wind lore. What does it mean to really ground our investigation of the winds in embodied worldly specifics while using them, at the same time, to connect with the heavens?
Kadmus is a professor of philosophy, a writer, teacher, practicing occultists and dedicated pagan. He has taught classes for every year of both the Salem Witchcraft and Folklore Festival and the Astro Magia astrological magic conference. He has two new books out, “Learning from Legendary Practitioners: A Necromantic Journey into History, Myth, and the Practice of Magic” is published by Hadean Press and a book of short occult themed mystery stories “The Elucidations of Drake”, published under the pen name of Bill Koch, is out from Sul Books.
Rory Keys
Hephaestion of Thebes Katarchē for Ritual Magic
In Book III of Apotelesmatika, Hephaestion details the electional parameters for magicians to observe when undertaking their work. Protocols for divination through ritual sacrifice, consecrating statues, and petitioning the gods are all described. Much is left unsaid, prompting further contemplation and speculation. By referencing Dorotheus - who heavily inspired Hephaestion - we seek to fill in the gaps, and fortify our ritual elections by doing so.
Rory Keys is a professional Astrologer, based in London. His research revolves around the revival of Traditional Astrological techniques, specifically innovations emerging from Hellenistic Egypt. When consulting with clients, Rory’s specialty is in helping them mitigate difficult natal placements with novel remedial techniques, helping them alter the trajectory of Fate.
Daniel MacDonald
Every [Saint] Is A (Wandering) Star: Ascending and Descending in the Arms of The Saints
This talk proposes that the Saints represent an accessible and underexplored avenue of knowledge and assistance in matters of astral magic, and points towards ways we can begin to consider this idea with initial explorations. It is a contemplation as and leading to praxis, an invitation into an unfolding relationship. It offers avenues of thought for how to see in Saints their potential celestial correspondences and virtues, and therefore how to build relationship with them to potentially deepen one's own astrological magic pursuits.
Many systems of magic focus on the acquisition of or congress with a spiritual guide, a tutelary spirit, an intermediary. From the Olympic Spirits of the Arbatel, to the Angels of the Solomonic Pentacles, to the Agathos Daimon of the 11th House, and the Holy Guardian Angel. Ceremonial magic is replete with many guides that can help in our work with the Spheres. This is one avenue of approach. To begin above the horizon, in the realm of star and spirit given primacy. Saints offer a more direct link to ancestry, the once human. Breath within clay returned to dust and lived on in legends and stories and a role of the bone-bothered elevated ancestor.
Saints contain within their iconography and associated symbols hints towards planetary associations. Their hagiography and the lore they accrue through time and folklore offer further links. With this in mind, Saints are a category of spirits with great potential to teach and assist the astrological magician. We will consider examples of specific Saints and how to call forth their virtues as it relates to astrological magic. Especially in how they may function as tutelary daimons and magical assistants in the broad work of astrological magic or witchcraft, and relating to the stars and celestial spirits in an operative animist worldview.
Daniel MacDonald traces his astrological background and learning starting with the work of Demetra George, continuing via Austin Coppock in his Fundamentals of Astrology course, and now sustained with personal explorations and fed by the ongoing scholarship of Dr. Ali A Olomi. Astrology sits under the broader umbrella of Animism as a primary way to understand and relate to the world. From this flows an interest in magic as a means to exist within this ecosystem. The primacy of spirits as ontologically distinct beings and personalities that can be related to, with a language and perspective that can be learned and changes you with contact drives his work and projects now.
With a background in academic Theology, Psychology, and Art, he seeks always to be learning in service to this goal of not just understanding spirits intellectually but in striving to ever better walk alongside them. To this end his current work and services are centred around divination, having spent two years in an extended ritual with a teacher to learn one perspective of the Norse Runes as a means to understand both self and the world around us, then a further year digesting this and applying it in a divinatory context. This focus on system agnostic divination as a language by which spirits may speak informs his use of other tools and systems, and allows his blending of approaches while maintaining respect and rigour for the traditions and lineages he is involved in.
ALkistis Dimech
Living Crystal : Incarnate Cosmos
This conversation explores the occult body — the incarnate liquid crystalline field, where matter, memory, and imagination converge. Drawing on both scientific and hermetic perspectives, we’ll consider the body as an intelligent, living medium shaped by cosmic and terrestrial forces — lunar tides, solar weather, and the great cycles of planetary change.
At this moment of ecological and energetic transformation, what does it mean to be incarnate? To recognise that within us is an ocean, ancient waters, and the resilience of epochs past? The body becomes both archive and vessel — a place where the cosmos imprints itself, where consciousness and flesh evolves.
Through reflection and experiential practice, participants will attune to the intelligence of the flesh — the coherence of its crystalline structures, the imagination woven through matter — and glimpse the emergence of a new, luminous human form shaped through our ongoing dialogue with the world.
Alkistis Dimech is an artist, dancer-choreographer and writer exploring the mysteries of the carnal body and its subtle anatomy through an archaeology and poietics of flesh. Her art and praxis is grounded in ankoku butô (dark dance), which she have practised since 2002.
She has performed, given workshops and spoken on my practice at events, conferences and research seminars in the UK, Europe and the United States.
With Peter Grey, Alkistis is the co-founder of Scarlet Imprint, channelling her creative energies into book design and typography.
Joey Cannizzaro
Chrono/Krater: Ritual Distributions, Vessels of Time, and the Time Lord as Symposiarch
What if Time Lords (“Chronocrators”) in ancient predictive astrology aren’t demagogues or kings, but symposiarchs mixing each of our fates according to their own unique natures, motives, and passions? Through semantic slippage and dream logic, this talk somehow arrives at a compelling historical root for this idea, reconsidering astrological time through the lens of the krater (or ancient Greek wine-mixing vessel) and extending this into a framework for divination and interpretation.
Beyond its application in predictive and natal astrology, this framework might contribute something valuable to practitioners of astrological magic and ritual, and inform larger discussions about the nature and quality of time. Also, it’s fun to think of the planetary gods this way—as our divine bartenders and masters of ceremony rather than authoritarian lords—and perhaps it can help us practice meeting the events of life without an attitude of control and domination ourselves.
Across disciplines and forms of media, Joey Cannizzaro works with metaphysics to cultivate radically different ways of thinking and being. Joey’s astrology practice is oriented towards both nurturing personal liberation and provoking societal transformation, weaving together ancient techniques and cosmologies with threads of anarchism, mysticism, crip theory, and queerness. In addition to their consulting practice, Joey is faculty in the Hellenistic astrology program at Kepler College, and author of the blog Chronos & Chaos. Following an intensive three-year course of study with Demetra George, they were awarded a Certification in Hellenistic Astrology in 2022. They also have a bachelor's degree from The New School and an MFA from California Institute of the Arts.
JD Kelley
Heavenly Bodies: Divinity, Imagination, Embodiment, Theurgy, & Telestic Art
Heavenly Bodies journeys into the mystery of divine embodiment — the ways in which gods are given form, breath, and body through art, ritual, and devotion. Across cultures, the making of statues and images has served not as imitation but as invocation: a remembering of the world’s living divinity. This talk opens a pathway through these traditions, exploring how the body itself — human and cosmic — becomes a field of consecration.
Drawing from Tantric Buddhist ritual, where statues are enlivened as the living Buddhas, and from the somatic magic of witchcraft and ecstatic movement, the inquiry follows the winds and channels that shape inner and outer space alike. Here, the microcosm pulses with the macrocosm; the flesh bears the signs of the zodiac; the breath turns with the stars.
Through the theurgic vision of Iamblichus, the body is revealed not as a prison to be transcended but as a divine instrument— the place where parts and wholes are reconciled, and matter itself becomes luminous. When we open up ourselves to the gods, allowing them to inhabit and instill our imaginations, we remember that they have never left us — that their substance flows through blood and stone, through rhythm, ritual, and the ever-living dance of the heavens made flesh.
Danny Larkin
The Albedo and Washing in Alchemical Manuscripts
As we ponder how we might magically work with Jupiter’s exaltation in Cancer, exploring the spectrum of Albedo imagery in the alchemical tradition offers us a royal way into how the watery and the lunar might meld with Jupiter. This talk will explore and unpack magical alchemical images of the albedo - often involving water - from several primary sources including the Pretiosissimum Donum Dei (1400s), the Aurora Consurgens (1420) the Splendor Solis (1582), the Clavis Artis (1737), and the Seven Keys of Honoratus Marinier (1785).
The albedo is not a monolith. Each artist-magician-alchemist brings their own perspective, wisdom, and style to create a unique mix of aquatic, lunar and jovial symbols. Alas, this gorgeous diversity can be flattened out when the intention is only - somewhat anachronistically - to illustrate a far latter 20th century Jungian concept of a psychological phase, which the artists never fathomed as such. We will seek to work more magically and esoterically to retrieve the earlier pre-jungian meanings of the albedo, and draw visual inspiration to deepen into and meet the Jupiter in Cancer moment.
John-David (JD) Kelley is the chairman of the Scottish Astrological Association, having served since 2020; the founding president of the International Association of Astral Magic (IAAM), and the organiser of Astro Magia.
JD is a professional natal and electional astrologer, as well as a practicing astral magician and talisman crafter. His astrological leanings are both traditional and modern alongside a deep interest in astrological and astral magic. JD is influenced by historical approaches to magic, the mixing of magical traditions throughout the world, by an animist view of the Cosmos, by art and art-making, and by visionary and ecstatic practices. You can find him at Cunning as Folk where he teaches and practices his range of esoteric and interpretive arts, or you can follow his dance on instagram @cunningasfolk.
Danny Larkin is a professional astrologer and art critic in New York City. He attended Demetra George’s inaugural retreats in Hellenistic Astrology in 2016, 2017 and 2018 and passed her first two exams with distinction. He is a lifetime member of the International Society for Astrological Research (ISAR) and fully certified after passing the ISAR competency exam. He is a lifetime member of the National Council for Geocosmic Research (NCGR), and certified at NCGR’s first level. Danny has been a coordinator of the Big Apple Astrology Meetup since 2017, which has now grown into the largest monthly in person gathering of astrologers in the United States. Danny has taught astrology classes as part of the Faculty of the New York City Chapter of NCGR since 2021. Danny has served as the Vice President of the International Association of Astral Magic since 2022. Previously, Danny served as President of the Association of Young Astrologers (AYA) from 2018-2020, and as Vice President of AYA in 2017.
Jonah Emerson-Bell
Styx & Stars: Water in Nature, Soul and Cosmos
This talk explores the element of water through three interconnected lenses: ecological, psychological, and astrological.
We begin in the physical realm, examining water's natural properties and its vital role within ecological systems. By tracing its movement through the water cycle, we gain insight into how water flows and functions in nature.
From there, we follow the river inward—into the depths of the unconscious. Drawing on Jung’s concept of the feeling function, alchemical symbolism, and the mythic rivers of the underworld, to understand water’s role in memory, emotion, and transformation within the unconscious.
Finally, we ascend to the celestial sphere to consider how the element of water appears in the astrological chart. We consider how water functions through the cardinal, fixed, and mutable signs and how these various expressions shape our inner experience and interpersonal dynamics.
Integrating insights from each stage of our journey, we explore magical and ritual applications to cultivate a more conscious and skillful relationship with the element of water in everyday life.
Jonah Emerson-Bell is a Tarot Reader, Astrologer, and Licensed Mental Health Counselor with a background in Hypnosis and Integration Coaching. He holds a Master's in Mental Health Counseling from Southwestern College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His work uses the archetypal language of symbol to help make the unconscious conscious and incorporates myth, magick, and creativity as ways to support clients in creating meaningful change. Jonah has appeared on various podcasts, taught classes, and given talks on astrology, mythology, and psychology. He produces a weekly Astrology forecast called This Week in Space!!! that can be found on YouTube and Instagram.
Ben Jeans Houghton
MEANDERMANCY; LUNA ET JOVE
Meandermancy: Luna et Jove, is a collection of black and white photographs made by night and day in the spirit of adventurous reflection. For as long as I can remember, I have been a meanderer; walking, wandering, wondering. In our relinquishing the linearity of A to B, the wyrd readily rushes to meet us, and the world's symbolic fabric unfurls.
These images were made over two years of wandering my star-spun karmas between Devon and London: through protest camps to free the night skies, nocturnal woods etched by flash, to the torn edge-lands of the coasts opera, and the filthy tarot of the seething metropolis. They were made first, before I knew why, and only later found their belonging beneath this theme of Moon and Jupiter: the reflectivity of Luna's alchemy ambulated by the expansive faith of Jove’s quest to know.
The work speaks to that Möbius garden of time, where futures seed their beginnings. Art often knows before its maker's meaning ripens. These photographs are waymarks from wanderings, traces of a dialogue between light and shadow, fate and curiosity, solitude and the wyrd world that adores our witness when we wander our transits as bodied light.
Gnostic Animist, Artist, Author and Astrologer Ben Jeans Houghton’s multidisciplinary practice spans votive-sculpture, architectural-installation, oneiric film-essay, self-reflexive writing, ritual costume, improvised performance, mantric-glossolalia and esoteric lectures. The work explores and expresses magic; the art of transformation and its methodologies, technologies, agencies, and implications, through art-praxis, as-gnosis, informed by astrological, philosophical, and metaphysical perspectives.
Ben has delivered exhibitions, screenings, presentations, performances and publications internationally in Germany, Greece, Africa, Japan, South Korea, and America and nationally across the UK with CCA, Gymnasium Gallery, Bloc Projects, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Generator Projects, Whitstable Biennale, BFI and Channel Four. Ben has also been commissioned to author and orate esoteric lectures for Trans-States, Astromagia, Occulture and IAAM.
Jove Spucchi
Nymphs, Asteroid Daimons, and the Consecration of Waters
This presentation examines the Lunar consecration of waters through a cycle of experimental astrological rites performed between 2024 and 2025, with additional elections identified for future work through 2026. The research centers on moments when aquatic asteroids—Amphitrite, Thalassa, Thetis, Doris, Nerthus, Amalthea, and related nymphic daimons—formed conjunctions or trines (≤2°) with the Moon or Jupiter. These bodies are treated as daimonic mediators translating celestial influence into the mutable body of water.
Water was collected for a selected handful of these alignments, each time from a source resonant with the asteroid’s myth: seawater for Amphitrite, spring water for Naiad, rainwater for Thalassa. Each sample was blessed beneath starlight through improvised invocations and attentive embodiment, emphasizing responsiveness over fixed liturgy.
The work proposes that re-enacting these myths under precise Lunar–Jovian configurations cultivates charged, sensate materia capable of holding planetary virtue. Current results invite further consecrations at predicted alignments through 2026, continuing a living inquiry into how astrological timing and mythic sympathy shape the vitality of ritual waters.
Jove Spucchi is a consulting astrologer, magician, and diviner whose work bridges ritual practice, performance, and artistic inquiry. Their approach to astrology is devotional and experimental—treating the chart as a living image to be read through chart scrying, daimonic correspondence, and embodied ritual.
Drawing from Hellenistic foundations and contemporary magical lineages, Jove’s practice centers on cultivating direct relationships with planetary and spirit intelligences through consecration, divination, and creative performance. Based between New York City and Ogden, Utah, they maintain a private astrological practice and develop works exploring the intersection of art, magic, and celestial participation.
They have studied with Demetra George, Sasha Ravitch, and Larry Arrington.
Skyler Bruinsma
Jupiterian Labyrinths for Windfall Fortune
Labyrinths, as immemorial earthworks, are a common heritage across many cultures…
As we step into them and the logic behind these artifacts, epitomizing the most ancient of rites: weather magic and the perambulation of sacred precincts, I will outline how to apply the sixteen starry figures of Geomancy to the telluric currents typified within the bounds of forty-two meandering vortices; focusing on a practical analysis of three distinct labyrinths, which evince a special affinity for manifesting Jupiter’s face of Acquisition, I seek to raise an experimental initiative for all so inclined to utilize and substantiate this science as a veritable methodology, one which applies alchemical mathesis and bodily gesture to manipulate sublunary elements and stir the etheric tides of incarnation and environment.
Skyler Bruinsma has been practicing ceremonial rites and studying philosophical traditions for more than a decade. Founded upon asemic arts and the barbarous speech of word cyphers, he currently specializes in the idiosyncratic theurgy of archangels and chant of ritual languages. As an autodidact of many mysteries pertaining to esoteric religion and revelation literature, he has long sought to establish tenets of a humanist unity among spiritual disciplines; recently envisioned under the exalted Jupiter kazimi, he has set to reviving itinerant wizardry as a noble and recognized profession in the postmodern age.