Working with Alloces: Incense, Astronomy, and the Liberal Sciences

Alloces, and a domain of orderly study

Alloces is a Duke in the Goetia material, with thirty-six legions, and his domain, as given in the Grimoire Companion, is teaching astronomy and all the liberal sciences, and granting good and faithful familiars. This article is about the first half of that domain, and about the incense used for the work of it, because study is a practice that needs a room, a rhythm, and a way of marking time as set apart, and incense does all three.

Astronomy, in the older sense, is not only the mathematics of the sky. It is the study of order itself: of cycles, of returns, of the heavens moving according to laws that do not bend for anyone's convenience. The liberal sciences, likewise, are the arts by which a free person learns to think and to speak: grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Together, they form a course of study that is orderly, cumulative, and demanding, and that is precisely why it needs a steady practice to support it.

A practitioner who studies in fits and starts, in different places, at different hours, with no rhythm to the work, will find the study itself fits and starts. A practitioner who studies at the same hour, in the same place, with the same scent in the room, will find the study gathering momentum, because the room itself begins to remind him of the work. That is the honest, practical place of incense in study work.

Starting with the work, not with the tool

Spirit work is not shopping, and incense does not do the work for you. Before you light anything for Alloces work, be clear about what you are studying, and what question you are actually asking. A vague purpose produces a vague working, and a vague working is hard to read afterwards. If you cannot state the matter in one clear sentence, write it down, leave it overnight, and come back to see if it still reads true. That pause is part of the work, not a delay in it.

Ask yourself, concretely: which science are you studying? What text are you reading, what problem are you working, what chart are you studying? What will you do with what you learn, and how will you know, weeks later, whether you have learned it? Bring the book, the chart, or the notes into the room, and let the working gather around something real, rather than around a general wish to be learned.

If you are working in the Goetia system, work from the instructions and teaching you already follow in that system. A general article like this one is not a substitute for proper teaching, and it should not be used to invent a purpose for a spirit you have not studied.

Preparing the room for study

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.

Set out what you will need before you light anything: the incense, a safe burner or charcoal arrangement you have used before, the seal if your practice calls for one, and the book, chart, or notes you will be working with. Fumbling for a text after the incense is lit breaks the very attention the incense is meant to hold. A study room should be ready before the study begins, not assembled during it.

Ventilation matters, in a practical sense 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 study. Test it before the night of a working, not during it.

Why incense, and why this incense

Incense is not background scent for this work. It is part of the working itself. 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. For study, that staying quality matters, because study itself takes time: time to read, time to think, time to work a problem slowly, and time to sit quietly and notice what you have actually understood.

When you light incense for spirit work and spellwork with Alloces, 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. Treat the lighting as a step in the work, not as preparation for the work. Do it deliberately, name the purpose in your own words if that is part of your practice, and then give the room a moment to settle before you open the book.

The Alloces 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 I use myself for magical work. They work well enough that I use them successfully for spirit work, work for clients, as well as my own spellwork.

Oil to go with the incense

Oil and incense are often used together in Goetia work, and Alloces work is no exception. They do different jobs in the room. 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 a single period of study, use both. Anoint first, with a clear purpose in mind, then light the incense and let the room settle before you begin. Do not rush from lighting to studying. Give the room a moment to change, and give yourself a moment to notice that change. If you are only anointing a seal or a tool for later use, you can still use the incense to fumigate that item at the time you prepare it, as a way of starting the working and preparing the tools that will be used in it.

Anointing, in this context, is done on the hands, the forehead, or on a tool, seal, or candle, deliberately, naming the purpose in your own words. The act is simple, and that simplicity is the point. You are touching the thing, naming the study, and doing it deliberately, rather than hiding the work behind complicated gestures.

Astronomy, as a practice of noting

Astronomy rewards noting. The heavens move slowly, and a single night tells you little. A record kept over weeks and months tells you a great deal. Keep a record of your study in the same spirit: date, subject, text or chart studied, what you understood, what remained unclear, and what you will return to next. That record, kept honestly, becomes a body of knowledge that no single evening could give.

It is also worth studying the sky itself, when you can, not only books about the sky. Go out, on a clear night, and look. Learn one constellation, then another. Note the moon's phase, and the planets visible that night, in plain language. That direct observation, done regularly, teaches patience in a way reading alone does not, because the sky does not hurry for anyone, and a practitioner who watches it learns, whether he wants to or not, to wait, to note, and to compare one night with another.

The liberal sciences reward the same patience. Grammar is learned by parsing, sentence by sentence. Logic is learned by testing, argument by argument. Geometry is learned by working, problem by problem. Music is learned by practising, phrase by phrase. There is no step that skips the steps, and incense, lit at the same hour for study, helps to mark the steps as a rhythm rather than as isolated efforts.

Good and faithful familiars, in study work

The Grimoire Companion lists, for Alloces, good and faithful familiars, alongside the teaching of the sciences. In study work, faithful company has a particular meaning: presences, helpers, or habits of mind that stay with a practitioner over time, and are reliable precisely because the relationship has been built, not demanded.

By analogy with ordinary life, trust is built by consistency: by showing up at the agreed time, by speaking plainly, by keeping promises, and by not asking for more than the relationship can bear. The same applies here, in whatever form your practice understands familiars. A practitioner who is erratic, who demands constantly and gives nothing in return, who changes purpose every week, should not be surprised if the company he keeps is erratic too.

Be specific about what you want, in the sense this site always recommends: be clear about what kind of company, for what work, and for how long, and be honest with yourself about what you are prepared to give in return, in attention, in study, and in care for the tools of the work. Reflection about being specific about what you want is part of doing this work well, and it is worth doing before any petition is spoken.

Keeping a rhythm, and knowing when to stop

Study work is best done as a rhythm, not as a rare event. Light the incense at the same hour, in the same place, for study, and let the scent become associated with attention itself. Over weeks, that association does real work: the room begins to gather you, almost before you have sat down, and the study begins more readily because the beginning has been practised.

Keep a short record for each working: date, purpose in one sentence, oil and incense used, what you studied, and what you noticed afterwards, over days rather than only on the night itself. If nothing changes, that is also information. It may mean the question was unclear, the timing was wrong, the work was not appropriate, or simply that the subject needs more time. 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.

And as with all work of this kind, the incense is made for the work, blessed before sending, and sent to you to use in your own practice. What follows from that practice, in terms of magical result, is yours to observe, not mine to guarantee. That is about the work itself, not about delivery dates for physical items.

Alloces incense, and Alloces oil to go with it

If you are doing spirit work and spellwork with Alloces, this incense is for the room, and for the study that happens in it.

I hand make Alloces incense myself, each batch when you order it, unless a batch has just recently been made, and I use incenses of this quality myself for magical work, for spirit work, for work for clients, and for my own spellwork. I bless it myself before it is sent out. I make no promise about what it will do for you, only that it is made by hand, for this work, and not mass produced.

If you want the incense for that work, this is the one I offer: Alloces Goetia incense, $44 CAD. View the product

I also make the oil to go with it, for the same work: Alloces Goetia grimoire demon evocation oil, $44 CAD. View the product

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