Black Venus and the Tuba Veneris: the two main seals, in copper

A little book, and two seals

The Tuba Veneris, the Black Venus, is a small book with a large reputation. It is the kind of text that practitioners pass around in whispers, partly because of what it claims to do, and partly because of its tangled history. John Dee, and that honest uncertainty is worth keeping. Dee's name is attached to a great deal of material, some of it certainly his, some of it attributed to him by later hands, and a practitioner who pretends that question is settled is selling certainty the sources do not offer.

That pairing matters. These are not two unrelated seals that happen to be sold at the same time. They are a set, the two main seals of the book, and they belong together in the work, as the book presents them.

Venus is the thread that runs through the book, and through the seals. Venus in the old grimoire sense is not a vague idea of love as a feeling. It is a planetary power, with its own hours, its own materials, its own character, and its own place in a system of correspondences that a practitioner either learns or does not. Working with a Venus seal is working with that power, in that system, and the seals are the forms by which that power is addressed and carried.

Why copper, and why it is not a detail

That of course is doing real work. In planetary magic, the metal is not a fashion choice. Copper is the metal of Venus, and a Venus seal in another metal would be, in the book's own terms, a different thing, or at best a compromised thing. The book insists on copper, and this offering follows the book.

That insistence is a useful test for any talisman work. If a text tells you a material is essential, and the maker ignores it for convenience or cost, you are not looking at the same working. You are looking at a souvenir of it. A copper seal, cast for this purpose, keeps faith with the text it comes from, and it gives the practitioner something solid to work with: a seal whose material, like its design, belongs to the power it addresses.

Copper also has a practical character that suits a working seal. It is warm in the hand, it takes engraving and casting cleanly, and it ages visibly, darkening with handling and time. That ageing is not damage, in the usual sense. It is the record of use, and a seal that has been carried and handled for years looks different from a seal that has sat in a drawer, which is as it should be. Keep it clean, keep it dry when you can, and handle it as a tool, not as a trinket.

Working with a pair of seals

Working with two seals, rather than one, asks for a little more thought about arrangement. Do the seals sit together on the altar, or does one lead and the other follow? Does one belong to the working itself and the other to the preparation, or to the carrying of the work afterwards? The book itself is the place to look for those answers, and a practitioner who owns these seals should be reading it, not guessing at its structure from the seals alone.

In general terms, the ways of working with a seal apply to each of the pair. You may hold a seal while you work, so that the petition has a physical anchor. You may lay the seals on the altar as the focus of the working. You may put a seal under a candle, so that the light stands over it for the whole working. You may put oil on a seal, lightly, to dress it for the work. You may carry a seal as a pendant, or wear it, so that the work travels with you rather than staying behind on the altar.

When you have a pair, keep a record for the pair, and for each seal separately. Note which seal you used, in what arrangement, for what purpose, and what you noticed afterwards. Over time, that record will show you whether the seals work best together for your purposes, or whether one of them tends to lead in a particular kind of working. That is knowledge you can only get by working, and writing it down is what turns it into practice rather than impression.

Preparation, and the question of purpose

Before you work with Venus seals, be clear about purpose, in the same way you would be with any planetary working. Venus covers a wide field, and a vague petition in that field will give you a vague result to read afterwards. Are you working on affection, on attraction, on harmony in a household, on the arts, on a matter of favour or reconciliation? Those are different petitions, and they should not be blurred together under a single word like love.

Prepare the place and yourself as you would for any serious working. Clear the space, set it aside for this purpose, and set out what you need before you begin, so that you are not fumbling for a tool halfway through. Bathe or wash, change into clothes you do not wear for ordinary errands, and give yourself time to settle before you speak. A planetary working done in a rush, between other errands, is unlikely to teach you much about the planet.

Read the book, or as much of it as you can get in a reliable form, before you claim to be working from it. The Tuba Veneris has a complicated transmission, and there are versions and summaries that smooth over its difficulties. A practitioner who works from the seals alone, without the text, is working with half the material. A practitioner who reads the text, and then works with the seals, has something to test the work against.

Keeping a record, and keeping perspective

After a working, write down what you did, when you did it, which seals you used and in what arrangement, what you asked, and what you noticed over the following days and weeks. Do not write down what you hoped would happen as if it had happened. Write down what actually happened, in plain language. That discipline is what lets you tell, months later, whether a working had anything to do with a change you noticed, or whether the change had another, ordinary cause.

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. Venus work in particular can drift into repetition, because the matters it touches are matters people feel urgently about, and urgency is a poor counsellor in ritual work.

Keep the seals themselves in good order. Store them apart from ordinary jewellery, clean them when they need it, and inspect them before a working. A pair of seals that is cared for together, used together, and recorded together will build up an association that a pair bought and forgotten cannot. That association is part of the work, not a decoration around it.

Venus work, and the discipline of a planetary seal

Planetary work has a discipline of its own, and it begins with the recognition that a planet is not a mood. Venus, in the grimoire tradition, has its own character, its own associations, and its own place among the planets, and a practitioner who works with a Venus seal is expected to learn those things, not merely to feel affectionate and call that feeling Venus. Read about Venus in the sources you follow, learn how the planet is described, and let that description shape the working, rather than shaping the planet to fit a wish you already had.

Time, in planetary work, is also part of the discipline. Practitioners in this tradition attend to days, hours, and seasons, and to the state of the sky, as part of preparation, and a Venus working done without any attention to timing is a working done with half its tools left in the drawer. You do not need to become an astronomer overnight, and you should not invent a timing rule you have not learned, but you should learn the timing rules of the tradition you follow, and apply them, consistently, so that timing becomes part of the practice rather than an afterthought.

Finally, keep Venus work in proportion. A seal for Venus, worn or laid on an altar, is a focus for a particular kind of work, not a general charm for a better life, and a practitioner who asks a Venus seal to solve every problem, from money to health to friendship, is asking it to be something it is not. Use the seals for the work they belong to, judge them by that work, and let other matters be dealt with by other workings, or by ordinary means. That proportion is what keeps a planetary seal honest, and what keeps the practitioner honest with himself.

A final word on the pair itself: keep the two seals together, in storage as well as in work, so that the set remains a set, and so that neither seal is lost, lent, or separated from its partner without a deliberate decision. A pair of seals that has been kept together, used together, and recorded together will carry an association that two seals kept apart cannot, and that association, built up over years of careful use, is part of what makes the Black Venus seals, in copper, a working set rather than two handsome objects.

The Black Venus seals offered here

I offer here the set of the two main talismans or spirit seals from the Tuba Veneris, as owned, or perhaps written, by Dr. John Dee. These are cast in copper, as stated to be essential in the little book itself, and this offering is for both, the main two.

This is the one I offer: Black Venus 2 main seals, Tuba Veneris talisman pendant, $216 CAD. View the product

I make no promise about what working with these seals will do for you, only that they are cast in copper, for this book and this work. That wording is about the magical result, not about delivery dates for a physical item.

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