Austin Coppock is presenting at the 2012 Esoteric Book Conference, September 15th-16th in Seattle, Washington. His presentation is titled “The Astrological Decans and Magical Practice.” Get your tickets here!
2012 Esoteric Book Conference Presentation:
The Astrological Decans and Magical Practice
There is a thread that runs through over three millennia of astrological and magical history, a cord that binds ancient Egypt with the Hellenistic world, the Arabic empire, India, the European Renaissance and even touches the present. That thread is the Decans.
The Decans are, physically, a division of the earth’s sky into 36 sections. Yet these 36 faces of heaven are more than just a curious footnote in the history of archeo-astronomy. This particular division first emerged in ancient Egypt, but has moved with the corpus of Hermetic material, reincarnating itself in culture after culture.
Ostensibly a gear in astrology’s encompassing clockworks, the Decans have also long been a key to accessing legions of spirits. For several millennia and in multiple cultures, magicians have looked at these 36 faces and seen gaggles of gods, choirs of angels, hordes of demons, and a host of other spirits staring back at them. Far from going undocumented, this gallery of faces has been painted and drawn by a host of sorcerors and artists, and can be found on walls of the Sistine chapel as well as in the pages of grimoires.
Weaving together astrology and magic, divination and sorcery, time and sky, this thread of esoteric history deserves more than a footnote. The lecture will include a survey of the astrological and magical use of the Decans during each period, accompanied by the images used to represent and call down their power.
