Working with Agares: incense, language, and settling restlessness

Agares, and why this article is specific to him

Agares is not a general spirit for general work. In the Grimoire Companion material, Agares is a Duke who teaches all languages and tongues, returns runaways, and stills restlessness. That is a tight, practical set of concerns, and it is worth holding on to it, because it keeps the work honest. If you are working with Agares, you are probably dealing with one of three things: words that are not landing, something or someone that has gone astray, or a restlessness in yourself that will not settle long enough for anything else to be done well.

Those three things are related more often than they first appear. A person who cannot find the right words is often a person who is restless. A household or a project with something missing from it is often a place where communication has already broken down. Agares work, as described here, sits at that crossing point: language, return, and stillness. Before you light anything, ask which of the three you are actually working on. The answer changes the petition, and it changes what you should be watching for afterwards.

Language, in this context, does not only mean a foreign tongue learned from a book. It means being understood. It means finding the word that says what you mean, in a conversation, in a letter, in a negotiation, or in a ritual petition itself. If you have ever written a petition three times and still felt it missed the point, you know the difference between having words and having language. Agares is presented here as a teacher of that second thing: not vocabulary alone, but the ability to speak and be understood.

Return is equally concrete. A runaway, in the old sense, is someone or something that has left and not come back. In ordinary life that can be a person who has drifted away, an opportunity that slipped, a habit of practice that was dropped, or a part of your own attention that keeps wandering off. Be specific about what has gone, and what return would actually look like. A vague wish for things to come back is hard to read afterwards. A clear statement of what you are calling back, and where you want it to land, is easier to work with and easier to recognise when it happens.

Restlessness is the third piece, and often the one that needs attention first. Restlessness is not the same as energy. Energy has a direction. Restlessness pulls in several directions at once and settles in none of them. If you start a working in that state, the working tends to take on the same shape: scattered, hurried, and hard to close properly. Part of Agares work, then, is the work of settling yourself before you ask for anything else.

Incense is not background scent

Incense is not background scent for this work. It is part of the working itself. That is a habit worth correcting early, because in ordinary life scent is pleasant, atmospheric, or something that makes a room feel nicer. In ritual work, incense does a different job. It marks the time as set apart, it fills the space you are working in, and it stays with you through the working in a way a spoken word does not.

When you light incense for spirit work and spellwork with Agares, you are changing the room you are working in, and you are changing your own attention along with it. The smoke, the scent, and the act of lighting itself all tell you, in a physical way, that you have begun. A working that has no clear beginning often has no clear end either, and it drifts. Treat the lighting as a step in the work, not as preparation for the work. Do it deliberately, and then give the room a moment to settle before you go on to anything else.

That settling moment matters especially for restlessness. If you light the incense and immediately rush into speaking, you have carried the restlessness straight into the working. If you light it, sit, breathe, and let the room change around you, you have already begun the stilling that the work is about. The incense does not do that for you on its own, but it gives you a physical anchor for it: something to attend to while your attention stops darting.

Preparing the room and yourself

Preparation is most of the work. Clear the space you will use, physically, and set it aside for this purpose. Put away the things that pull your attention elsewhere. If you have a regular working space, use it. If you do not, choose one place and use it consistently for this working, so the place itself starts to carry the association.

Ventilation is a practical point that is easy to overlook when you are focused on the ritual side. A room that is completely sealed will fill with smoke quickly, and a room that is wide open will lose the scent before the working is done. Find a balance that works for your space: enough air to breathe comfortably, enough containment that the scent remains present through the working. Test that balance before the night of the working, not during it.

Set out what you will need before you light anything: the incense, a safe burner or charcoal arrangement that you have used before, a seal or tool if your practice calls for one, and the oil if you are using oil as well. Fumbling for a tool after the incense is lit breaks the very attention the incense is meant to hold.

Then prepare yourself. Bathe, or at least wash your hands and face, and change into clothes you do not wear for ordinary errands. This is not about looking a certain way for anyone else. It is about marking, for yourself, that this time is set apart. Eat simply beforehand if you can, and avoid starting a working when you are exhausted, drunk, or already agitated. A clear head is a working tool, just as much as incense or oil is.

Know what you are going to say, in your own words, and know what you are not going to say. That matters doubly in Agares work, because language is the subject of the work. A petition that tries to cover every possible outcome usually covers none of them well. Keep it direct, keep it honest, and keep it to the matter at hand. If your practice calls for a formal form of address, use the form you have been taught. If it does not, plain, direct words said once, clearly, are better than a long improvisation that loses its shape halfway through.

Why this incense, and how it is made here

The Agares incense offered here is hand made in the same way as the other incenses on this site. Each batch is hand made when you order it, unless a batch has just recently been made. The incenses made here are of a quality that Athena uses herself for magical work. They work well enough that she uses them successfully for spirit work, work for clients, as well as her own spellwork.

That made-to-order point matters here, too. It means the incense has not been sitting, opened and closed, through other people's orders. It is made for your order, and then blessed by Athena herself before it is sent out. No promise about what it will do for you is made here, only that it is made by hand, for this work, and not mass produced. That wording about no promise is about the magical result of the work itself, not about delivery dates for physical items.

If you are only burning incense to fumigate a tool or a seal for later use, that is also a recognised use in this kind of work: to start a working, and for fumigating the tools and talismans that will be used in it. Do that fumigation deliberately, too, passing the item through the smoke with the purpose in mind, rather than waving it through quickly and putting it away.

Oil to go with the incense

Oil and incense are often used together in Goetia work, and Agares work is no exception. They do different jobs in the room, and they reinforce each other when they are used together with a clear purpose. The oil marks and anoints. The incense fills the space and sets the atmosphere for the working itself.

If you are doing a full working, rather than simply burning incense on its own, use both. Anoint first, with a clear purpose in mind, then light the incense and let the room settle before you speak your petition. Do not rush from lighting to speaking. Give the room a moment to change, and give yourself a moment to notice that change. The Agares oil offered here is made in the same way as the other oils on this site: from only pure essential oils, roots and herbs, with no synthetics and no fillers, sometimes with the odd gemstone thrown in, in a 1/2 oz bottle, about twice as large as those little health food store essential oil bottles, unless otherwise stated. Each batch is hand made when you order.

If you are anointing a seal, a candle, or your own hands for the working, that oil is the matching companion to this incense, for the same work with Agares. Anointing is a way of marking something for a purpose, and in language work it is worth being deliberate about what you anoint: your hands if the work is about speaking, a seal if the work is about calling, a candle if the work is about holding a petition steady through the working.

A simple working order, to adapt to your own practice

The following is a general order, not a fixed script. Adapt it to the system you already work in, and to the instructions you already follow for Goetia work. First, prepare the room and yourself, as above. Second, set out the incense, the burner, and the oil and any seal or tool you will use. Third, anoint, if you are using oil, deliberately, naming the purpose in your own words. Fourth, light the incense and let the space settle. Fifth, speak your petition, clearly and once, rather than repeating it until it loses its shape. Sixth, sit quietly for a time and listen, rather than filling every moment with more words. Seventh, close the working properly, in whatever way your practice requires, and put the tools away in their proper place.

Afterwards, write down what you did, when you did it, and what you noticed. Not what you hoped would happen, but what actually happened, in plain language. For Agares work, that record is especially useful, because language and restlessness are both things you can track: write down the words you used, whether you were understood, whether the restlessness eased, and whether what had gone astray showed any sign of returning. That record is what lets you tell, weeks later, whether anything changed, and whether that change had anything to do with the work.

Keeping a record, and knowing when to stop

Keep a short record for each working: date, purpose in one sentence, incense and oil used, what you did, and what you noticed afterwards, over days and weeks, not just on the night itself. 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 working endlessly in the hope that repetition alone will force a result. Do the work properly, once, 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. In language work, that point cuts both ways: saying the same petition louder and more often is not the same as finding clearer words, and clearer words are often what was missing in the first place.

Do not burn incense in a room where it is unsafe to do so, and do not leave a burner unattended. Use a safe burner, on a heat-proof surface, away from curtains, papers, and anything that could catch, and stay with it for the whole working. If you have sensitivities to smoke or to particular incense ingredients, test carefully, ventilate well, or choose a different form of working.

#SettlingRestlessness #DemonEvocation #2OzBottle #12Oz #AgaresIncense #Incense #BackgroundScent #Grimoire #Goetia #Ritual #Spirit #Seal