Amon and the Mending of Feeling: Reconciliation, Love, and a Bath Made for the Work
Why a bath, for work of feeling
Some workings are done at an altar, with tools laid out and words spoken in a set order. Some workings are done in water, with the body itself as the place of the work. A magical bath belongs to the second kind. It is not a cosmetic soak, and it is not a bath with a pleasant scent added for atmosphere. It is a deliberate immersion, in water prepared with roots, herbs, and sometimes essential oils, for a purpose named beforehand, done over days, with attention, and closed properly when it is done.
Work of feeling suits a bath in a particular way. Reconciliation, love, and the mending of a relationship are not abstract matters. They live in the body: in tension, in sleeplessness, in the tightness of a chest, in the restlessness that comes from a quarrel left unresolved. A bath works on that level directly. Warm water, a quiet room, time set aside, and a preparation made for a purpose, together create a space in which feeling can settle enough to be looked at honestly. That settling is not the whole of the work, but it is a necessary part of it, because a practitioner who is still in the heat of a quarrel cannot see the quarrel clearly, let alone mend it.
That standard matters for a bath more than for almost any other preparation, because a bath is used on the skin, in warm water, over the whole body, for days in a row. A practitioner should know what is in the water they are sitting in, and should be able to trust that it is what the maker says it is.
Who Amon is in the grimoire tradition
In the Grimoire Companion data, Amon is a Marquis, with forty legions, who reconciles friends and foes, stirs love, and reveals what is past and to come. Three powers, each distinct, and each worth taking seriously on its own terms. Reconciliation is the mending of a breach: between friends who have quarrelled, between foes who have become enemies, between people who were once close and are now distant. Love, in this entry, is the stirring of affection and feeling, the rekindling of what has cooled or the kindling of what has not yet begun. Divination, the revealing of past and future, is the third power, and it belongs with the other two, because reconciliation without understanding of the past is shallow, and love without sight of what is coming is blind.
A Marquis, in the Goetia, is approached with formality and preparation, not casually. Amon's work is work of feeling, but it is not casual work. Feeling that is stirred without understanding, or reconciliation that is sought without honesty about what caused the breach, will not hold. A practitioner who works with Amon should be ready to look at the past honestly, including their own part in it, because the Companion's third power, revealing what is past, will not spare a practitioner who wants only a comforting story about the past. That honesty is part of the work, not an obstacle to it.
Reflection about being specific about what you want is good practice here, perhaps more than in any other kind of work. Do not bathe vaguely for love in general. Name the relationship, name the breach if there is one, name what you actually want to change, and name what you are prepared to do yourself, in the ordinary world, to mend it. A bath can mark a beginning, settle feeling, and focus intention, but it cannot do the ordinary work of apology, conversation, and changed behaviour for you. A practitioner who expects it to will be disappointed, and that disappointment will have nothing to do with the quality of the bath.
How the bath is used
To use any of the baths, you simply add them to a pot of water, approximately one litre or so. If you 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, to remove them. That practical detail is worth noting, because herb bits in bathwater are a nuisance if they are not dealt with, and a nuisance in the middle of a working breaks attention at exactly the moment attention matters most. Prepare the water, strain as needed, and then bathe without fuss.
That three-day rhythm is part of the work, not an arbitrary suggestion. Three days gives the work a beginning, a middle, and an end. The first day marks the beginning and the intention. The second day continues it, when novelty has worn off and the practitioner must choose to continue deliberately. The third day closes it, with the work completed as a sequence rather than as a single incident. A practitioner who bathes once, casually, and then stops, has not done a three-day bath. They have taken a bath, and the difference matters for the record, and for honesty about what was actually done.
Prepare for each bath as you would for any working: a clean bathroom or bathing space, time set aside without interruption, and the purpose named in your own words before you enter the water. Do not rush. A bath taken in a hurry, with a phone nearby and a mind on errands, is not a working bath, whatever is in the water. Set the time aside, put ordinary things aside with it, and give the bath the attention a working deserves.
Reconciliation: what it asks of the practitioner
Reconciliation is the first of Amon's powers in the Companion entry, and it is the hardest to do honestly, because it requires two things that are often in tension: honesty about the past, and willingness to change in the present. A practitioner who seeks reconciliation should be prepared to see their own part in the breach, not only the other person's. That is where Amon's divinatory power belongs: revealing what is past, truly, not as a comforting story, but as it actually happened, including the parts the practitioner would rather forget.
That honesty should be carried into the ordinary world as well. A bath for reconciliation, followed by no apology, no conversation, and no change in behaviour, is a ritual without a remedy. The bath can settle feeling, clarify intention, and mark a commitment to mend, but the mending itself happens in words and actions, in the ordinary world, with the other person, where that is possible and proper. A practitioner who is not willing to do that ordinary work should ask whether they want reconciliation, or only the feeling of having tried, because those are different wants, and only one of them mends a relationship.
There are also breaches that cannot, or should not, be mended by returning to the same relationship, and a practitioner should be honest about that possibility too. Reconciliation, in the fullest sense, is the mending of feeling and the restoration of goodwill, which does not always mean the restoration of the same closeness, the same terms, or the same daily contact. Sometimes the honest outcome of reconciliation work is a peaceful distance, rather than a renewed intimacy, and that outcome should be recognised as a real result, not counted as a failure because it was not the outcome first imagined.
Love, and the discipline of specificity
Love work, in the Amon entry, is the stirring of love, and it carries the same discipline of specificity as reconciliation. Name what kind of love you mean: the rekindling of affection in an existing relationship, the opening of feeling toward a new person, the mending of affection that has cooled through neglect rather than quarrel. Each is a different working, with a different ordinary counterpart, and a bath taken vaguely for love in general will not distinguish between them.
Be specific, too, about what you are prepared to offer, not only what you want to receive. Love work that asks only for affection, without offering attention, care, time, and honesty in return, is a one-way petition, and one-way petitions rarely hold, in magic or in ordinary life. A practitioner who bathes for love should be ready to be the person who pays attention, who listens, who keeps promises, and who shows up, because those ordinary acts are the substance of which love is made, and ritual without them is only scented water.
The bath itself can help with that readiness, in a modest and honest way. Three days of bathing with a named intention, in quiet, without distraction, gives a practitioner time to consider what they actually want, and what they are actually prepared to do. That consideration, done honestly over three days, is often more valuable than the bath itself, and it is available to any practitioner who takes the three days seriously rather than rushing through them.
Past and future, in a bath working
Amon's third power, revealing what is past and to come, belongs in a bath working as a time for reflection, not as a fortune-telling performance. In the quiet of a bath, with no phone, no conversation, and no task except attention, a practitioner may notice what they had overlooked: a pattern in the past, a cause of the breach, a likely consequence of a present course. That noticing is divination in its humblest and most useful form: not a dramatic vision, but a clear seeing of what was already there, now attended to.
Keep a record after each bath, not during it. Note the date, the intention in one sentence, and what you noticed afterwards, in plain language, without polishing it into something more dramatic. Note, over the three days, how feeling changed, if it changed, and how your understanding of the past or the future changed, if it changed. Then, over weeks, note what actually happened in the relationship, and whether it matched what you noticed. That second record, the record of what followed, is what turns a bath working from an experience into knowledge.
Nothing in this article promises a magical result, and that wording is about the work itself, not about delivery of a physical parcel. Feeling may settle, understanding may clarify, a relationship may mend, or nothing may change in a way you can yet discern. All are possible outcomes of honest work, and all should be recorded as they are, not forced into a success story. Do not repeat the same bath endlessly in the hope that repetition alone will force a result. Do the three days properly, once, observe, do the ordinary work that belongs to it, and then decide calmly whether a second working, a different approach, or no further working is right.
Practical care for a bath preparation
Care for a bath preparation is practical. Keep it dry and sealed until use, away from damp, heat, and direct light, so that the roots and herbs keep their character. Check, before use, that you have no known sensitivity to any plant material in the preparation, and if you have sensitive skin, or a skin condition, test cautiously and stop if irritation occurs. These are ordinary precautions for a strong plant preparation used on the skin, and they are worth stating plainly rather than assuming everyone already knows them. Do not ingest a bath preparation, and keep it out of reach of children and pets.
A working bath should not leave a mess for the next person to clean, and a practitioner who leaves herb bits in a shared bath has not closed the working properly in the ordinary sense, whatever was done in the ritual sense. Cleanliness after a bath is part of the discipline, not an afterthought.
Amon Goetia bath
For a magical bath for work with Amon, in the domain the Grimoire Companion gives him: reconciling friends and foes, stirring love, and revealing what is past and to come.
I use only one hundred percent pure roots, herbs, and sometimes essential oils in my baths. No synthetics are used. To use the bath, add it to a pot of water, approximately one litre or so, strain the herb bits out afterwards with a strainer or a net, and take the bath each day for three days in a row. I make no promise about what it will do for you, and that wording is about the magical work itself, not about delivery of a physical parcel. What I promise is that it is made in the way described here, for this work.
Amon Goetia bath, $44 CAD. View the product
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