Agares: languages, runaways, and a bath taken three days in a row

Agares, the first Duke under the power of the East

Agares is the Second Spirit in the Goetia, a Duke under the power of the East, and he comes up in the form of an old fair man, riding upon a crocodile, carrying a goshawk upon his fist, and yet mild in appearance. That mildness is the first thing to notice, because it does not match the rest of the picture at first glance. A crocodile is not a mild mount. A goshawk is not a mild bird. An old man who rides one and carries the other, and still looks mild, is a figure who has mastered things that are not mild, and who does not need to show force to use them.

Patience, wisdom, and a willingness to talk are not the qualities most people expect from a spirit whose entry also speaks of destroying dignities and causing earthquakes. But Agares holds both sides together, and that is why a bath, of all things, suits him. A bath is patient work. It is not done in a moment, it is not done by shouting, and it is not done by force. It is done by sitting in warm water, over days, and letting the preparation do its slow work on the person in it. If you are the kind of practitioner who wants everything at once, Agares will still, by the old books, teach you languages presently, and bring back runaways, and make them run that stand still. But the bath asks you to slow down first, and that slowing down is part of the teaching.

Languages, runaways, and things that stand still

Agares teaches all languages or tongues presently. That is a precise office, and it is worth narrowing before you use it. Languages, in this context, does not only mean foreign languages learned from a book, though it can mean that. It means tongues in the old sense: the ability to speak, to understand, and to be understood, in a language that is not yet your own, or in a situation where words have stopped working. If you are learning a language, Agares is the spirit the old books place for that learning. If you are trying to speak clearly to someone who does not hear you, or to understand someone whose words you keep missing, that is also a matter of tongues, and it is worth stating it that plainly before you bathe.

He also makes them run that stand still, and brings back runaways. Those two offices are two sides of one motion. Something that has stopped moving needs to move again. Something that has run away needs to come back. Both are matters of movement, and both are matters where a practitioner is often stuck in the middle, watching a situation that will not shift. A runaway can be a person, a habit, a project, or an opportunity that has slipped out of reach. A thing that stands still can be a negotiation, a study, a piece of work, or a relationship that has gone quiet. Before you take the bath, name which one you mean, in one sentence, and name what movement would look like if it happened. A bath taken for everything at once is a bath taken for nothing in particular, and Agares, patient as he is, still works best with a clear request.

What a magick bath is, and what it is not

A magick bath, as it is made here, is made from only pure roots, herbs, and sometimes essential oils, with no synthetics used. That matters for a bath in a way it might not matter for a tool you only look at, because a bath goes on your skin, into warm water, and into the air of the room while you sit in it. You will smell it, feel it, and live in it for the length of the bath. An ingredient list that is plain and real is therefore not a luxury. It is the substance of the thing itself, and it is why a bath for Agares, who is patient and wise, is fitting: the bath itself is a patient preparation, made from real things, used slowly, over days.

A bath is not a substitute for the rest of the work. It does not learn the language for you, it does not speak to the runaway for you, and it does not move the thing that stands still by itself. What a bath does, in this kind of practice, is prepare the person who will do those things. It marks a time set apart, it cleanses in the ritual sense as well as the physical sense, and it puts the practitioner into a state where they can speak clearly, listen carefully, and act steadily. If you take the bath and then do nothing else, you have taken a pleasant bath with herbs in it. If you take the bath and then do the study, make the call, write the letter, or have the conversation, you have used the bath as it is meant to be used: as preparation for the work, not as a replacement for it.

How the bath is prepared

To use any of these baths, you simply add them to a pot of water, approximately 1 litre or so. Bring it to a boil, then after about one minute turn the heat down and simmer it for another 5 to 10 minutes. Next you can either strain it into your bathwater, or you can just pour everything into the bath water. If you do pour everything in, including the bits of herbs, just use either a strainer to get the chunks out after your bath, or one of those fish tank nets, or a bird catching net. Those practical details are not decoration. They are the difference between a bath that is comfortable to sit in and a bath that leaves you picking herb bits off your skin for an hour afterwards.

That is the kind of detail that only comes from someone who has actually done this, many times, and it is worth trusting. A ritual bath that is physically miserable is a ritual bath that pulls your attention away from the work and onto your own discomfort, and that is not preparation. It is distraction.

Three days in a row, and the hour after

It is best to take each bath each day for 3 days in a row. Three days is long enough to be a discipline, and short enough to be kept. One bath is a single event. Three baths, on three consecutive days, are a practice, and a practice is what Agares work, with its patience and its teaching, is about. That dunking is not an extra. It is the moment in the bath when the preparation reaches the head, the place where language lives, where listening happens, and where a decision to move is made.

It is also recommended that you sit in meditation and do not have contact with other people for at least half an hour to an hour after the bath. That hour matters more than most practitioners allow for it. The temptation, after a bath, is to go straight back to the phone, the conversation, and the ordinary noise, and to let the bath become just something you did before lunch. Use that hour to sit with the question you named before the bath. If the question is a language, sit with a phrase or a passage. If the question is a runaway, sit with what you will say when it returns. If the question is a thing that stands still, sit with the next step you will take to move it. The bath prepares you. The hour after is when you decide what the preparation was for.

Incense, and talking with Agares

Athena's note says Agares is willing to talk for a time if offerings of incense are used. That is a practical hint, and it connects the bath to the rest of the Agares work on this site. A bath prepares the practitioner. Incense, in a working after the bath, or in a working on its own, is the offering that accompanies speech. If your Agares work involves asking for advice, or for teaching in a language, or for counsel about a matter that will not move, then incense is not decoration for that working. The Agares incense offered here is hand made in the same way as the other incenses on this site: each batch hand made when you order it, unless a batch has just recently been made, from resins, spices, and herbs, with no fillers, and no substitutions.

If you are doing a full Agares working, rather than only taking the bath, use both in their proper order. Bathe first, over the three days, with the hour of quiet after each bath. Then, when you come to the working itself, light the incense and speak your request plainly, in your own words, once, rather than repeating it until it loses its shape. Then sit quietly and listen, rather than filling every moment with more words. That listening is the part most practitioners skip, and it is the part Athena's note points to: Agares is willing to talk for a time. Talking, in a working, goes both ways, and the listening side is the side that needs practice.

Keeping a record over the three days

Keep a short record for each of the three days: date, purpose in one sentence, what you did in the bath, and what you noticed afterwards, over days and weeks, not just on the night itself. Note the language work, if that is your matter: what you studied, what you understood that you had not understood before, and what still resists you. Note the movement, if that is your matter: what moved, what came back, what still stands still, and what you did yourself to move it. If nothing changes, that is also information. It may mean the petition was unclear, the timing was wrong, the work was not appropriate, or simply that the situation needs a different approach.

Do not repeat the same three days endlessly in the hope that repetition alone will force a result. Do the baths properly, once, over three days, observe, and then decide, calmly, whether a second working, a different approach, or no further working is the right next step. Repetition without reflection is not persistence. It is noise. And if the matter in hand is a legal matter, a safety matter, or a matter involving another person's freedom, deal with that matter in the ordinary world first, or at the same time. Ritual work is not a substitute for ordinary action, and a bath, however well prepared, does not replace a conversation, a letter, or a decision that only you can make.

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