Working with Gusion: Discernment, Friendship, and Honour

Who Gusion is, in the Goetia

Gusion is a Duke in the Goetia, with forty legions. In the Grimoire Companion summary, his office is given plainly: he discerns all things past, present, and to come, reconciles friendships, and grants honour. Those three strands belong together, and it is worth seeing why before you ask for any one of them alone. Discernment is seeing a situation as it actually is, across time, not only as it feels in the moment. Reconciliation is what becomes possible when that seeing is honest, because a friendship cannot be mended on the basis of a story that is not true. And honour is what follows, over time, when discernment and reconciliation are lived out in conduct, not only asked for in a working.

If you are considering work with Gusion, start by asking which of those three you actually need, and in what order. A petition that asks for reconciliation while you are still holding a false version of what happened will work against itself. A petition that asks for honour while your conduct is careless will do the same. The work goes better when the outer conduct and the inner petition point the same way, and when you are willing to see what is actually there, even if it is uncomfortable.

Discernment across past, present, and future is not fortune-telling as entertainment. It is a disciplined way of looking: what happened, what is happening now, and where the present course is actually leading, if nothing changes. That kind of seeing is useful before any major decision, and it is particularly useful before a reconciliation, because it shows you whether the friendship can be mended, and on what terms, rather than whether you wish it could be.

Why a bath, for this work

A bath is a preparation of the body, and through the body, of attention. You step into water that has been prepared for a purpose, you stay in it, and you step out changed in the simple sense that you have washed, settled, and marked a transition. That transition is the point. A bath for work with Gusion is not a shortcut around discernment or reconciliation. It is a way of preparing yourself to do that discernment honestly, and to approach a strained friendship with a clearer head than you had before you stepped in.

Water suits this work because it is both cleansing and settling. It washes away the residue of the day, and it also slows you down. You cannot rush a bath in the way you can rush a spoken formula. You have to sit, or lie, in the water, and let the heat and the herbs do their slow work while your mind settles. That slowing is useful before discernment, because discernment done in haste tends to confirm whatever you already believed. Discernment done slowly, after settling, has a better chance of showing you something you did not already know.

A bath is also private, in a way that a public rite is not. You do it alone, in your own bathroom, with no audience. That privacy matters for reconciliation work, because the first honest look at a strained friendship often needs privacy. You need to be able to admit, to yourself, what your own part was, without performing that admission for anyone else. A bath gives you that private space, and the time in it to use it well.

How this bath is made, and how to use it

The baths made here use only 100% pure roots, herbs, and sometimes essential oils. No synthetics are used. That standard is practical, not decorative. A bath made from real roots and herbs smells, feels, and behaves like real plant material in water, with bits and pieces that need dealing with, rather than like a synthetic scent that dissolves cleanly and leaves nothing behind. The bits are part of the work, not a flaw in it.

To use any of these baths, you simply add them to a pot of water, approximately 1 litre or so. 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. That practical instruction is worth following literally. Herbs in a drain cause trouble, and a bath that ends with a blocked drain and a bad mood has not prepared you well for discernment. Strain the water, or strain the herbs out before you step in, whichever suits your bathroom, and keep the practical side tidy.

It is best to take each bath each day for 3 days in a row. That three-day rhythm matters. One bath is a preparation. Three baths, on three days, is a practice, and a practice gives you three chances to notice what changes, and three evenings to write down what you noticed. Do the baths at a time you can repeat, in the evening if you can, when the day's business is done and you can sit quietly afterwards, rather than rushing straight back into ordinary noise.

Discernment: past, present, and to come

Use the time in the bath, and the quiet time after it, to look at the situation in three parts. First, the past: what actually happened, in plain language, without the story you have told yourself about it since. Write it down, if you can, in short sentences, sticking to what was said and done, rather than to motives you have assigned to other people. Motives are guesses. Actions are facts, and discernment starts with facts.

Second, the present: what is actually happening now, not what you fear will happen, or what you hope will happen. Who is speaking to whom, and in what tone? What has actually been offered, refused, or left unsaid? What is your own conduct contributing, right now, to the shape of the situation? Those questions are uncomfortable, and that discomfort is a sign you are doing the work, not a sign you are doing it wrong.

Third, the course to come: if nothing changes, where is this actually leading? Not where you wish it would lead, and not where you fear it will lead in the worst case, but where the present actions, continued, would naturally take it. That middle path, the likely course rather than the hoped or feared course, is the one discernment is for. It is also the one that tells you whether reconciliation is possible, and what would have to change, on your side as well as theirs, for it to become possible.

Reconciliation and honour, in practice

Reconciliation, in Gusion's office, is the mending of friendships, not the winning of arguments. A friendship mended on the basis of a false story will break again, in the same place, because the break was never actually addressed. A friendship mended on the basis of honest discernment has a better chance of holding, because both sides know what happened, what changed, and what will be different now. That honesty is the work, and the bath is a preparation for it, not a substitute for it.

Be specific about the friendship you are asking about, and about what you will do differently within it. Reflection about being specific about what you want is part of this: be specific about the relationship you want, and about your own part in it. Are you willing to speak differently, to stop rehearsing grievances, to meet the other person without the old story already decided in your head? If you are not willing to change anything on your side, a petition for reconciliation is asking the other person to do all the changing, and that is rarely how reconciliation works.

Honour, in this office, follows from that honesty over time. It is not a title, and it is not granted in a single night. It is what people come to say about you when your conduct, over months, matches your words: that you see clearly, that you mend what can be mended, and that you do not pretend a break is mended when it is not. A bath taken for three days can begin that process. It cannot complete it. The completion is in the conduct that follows, day after day, after the baths are done.

When reconciliation is not the right aim

Some friendships should not be resumed, and some strained relationships are best ended cleanly, with distance, rather than mended. Discernment is useful precisely because it can show you that, clearly, before you spend months trying to mend something that should be left. If the relationship involves harm, danger, or a pattern you need to leave, distance may be wiser than reconciliation, and a working for clear seeing can still help you leave cleanly, with your honour intact, without asking for friendship where friendship is not appropriate.

If the matter is legal, medical, or a matter of safety, deal with it in the ordinary world first, or at the same time. Ritual work is not a substitute for a lawyer, a doctor, or for leaving a dangerous situation. If you are unsure whether a working is appropriate, wait, ask a teacher you trust, or choose a simpler practice first and see how that sits. Waiting, in that case, is discernment in action, not a failure of it.

After the three baths, do not repeat the same working endlessly in the hope that repetition alone will force a result. Do the work properly, over the 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 it makes it harder to read what actually happened.

Record, close, and carry forward

Keep a short record for each bath: date, purpose in one sentence, what you did, and what you noticed afterwards, over days and weeks, not just on the night itself. Notice changes in how you see the situation, in how you speak about it, and in how the other person responds, or does not respond, to a change in your conduct. All of those are information, and together, over three days and the weeks after, they show you more than any single night could.

Close each bath properly. Drain the water, strain out the herbs as instructed, tidy the bathroom, and change back into ordinary clothes. Those small outer actions help the inner shift back as well, so the bath stays set apart, and the rest of your life stays ordinary. A practice that is opened deliberately should be closed deliberately.

I make no promise about what the bath will do for you, only that it is made from 100% pure roots, herbs, and sometimes essential oils, with no synthetics, and that it is made for work with Gusion. What follows from your 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.

Gusion Goetia bath

If you want a bath for work with Gusion, for discernment of things past, present, and to come, for reconciliation of friendships, and for honour, this is the bath I offer.

It is made from only 100% pure roots, herbs, and sometimes essential oils, with no synthetics. To use it, add it to a pot of water, approximately 1 litre or so, strain out the chunks after your bath, and take it each day for 3 days in a row for best effect.

Gusion Goetia bath, $44 CAD. View the product

For work with Gusion in your own practice, I also make Gusion Goetia grimoire demon evocation oil, $44 CAD, and Gusion Goetia incense, $44 CAD. View the product

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