Working with Naberius: rhetoric, craft, and the bath that prepares you to speak

Why a bath, before a working about words

A bath is preparation, not pampering, in this kind of work. Water marks a break between the day you have been living and the working you are about to do. You step in carrying the noise of the day, and you step out with a cleaner edge to your attention. That is why baths have a place in magical practice that is separate from oils and incense: they work on the practitioner first, before any tool is picked up.

Naberius work is, above all, work about words and craft. In the Grimoire Companion material, Naberius is a Marquis who makes one cunning in arts and sciences and masterful in rhetoric, and who restores lost dignities. The old descriptions also present him as making a person amiable and cunning in all arts, and especially in rhetoric, and as procuring the loss of prelacies and dignities, which is the other side of the same coin: standing that is gained, and standing that is lost, both turn on how a person speaks and is heard.

If you are about to speak somewhere it matters, a hearing, a teaching, a negotiation, a performance, a difficult conversation, the state you speak from matters as much as the words you have prepared. A bath taken deliberately, over three days, is a way of preparing that state, day by day, rather than trying to force it in the last ten minutes before you begin.

Naberius, and what rhetoric means here

Rhetoric, in the old sense, is not trickery. It is the craft of saying a true thing in a way that can actually be heard. A person can be right and still unheard, because the words came out rushed, defensive, overlong, or aimed at the wrong listener.

Being cunning in arts and sciences, in this context, does not mean being sly. It means knowing your craft well enough to speak about it without bluffing, and without shrinking. A practitioner who has done the study, and who can say plainly what they know and what they do not know, carries a different weight in a room from one who hides behind jargon or apology. That weight is part of what dignity means in practice: not a title, but the way a person is received when they speak.

Restoring lost dignities is the harder side of this work. It asks an honest question first: was the standing lost through someone else's act, through your own mistake, or through neglect over time? Each answer calls for a different petition, and a different kind of repair afterwards. A bath cannot answer that question for you. It can give you the quiet to ask it honestly, before you speak to anyone else about it.

What the bath is, in practical terms

The baths offered here use only pure roots, herbs and sometimes essential oils. No synthetics are used.

Add the bath to a pot of water, approximately one litre or so. If you pour everything in, including the bits of herbs, use either a strainer to get the chunks out after your bath, or one of those fish tank nets, or a bird catching net. It is best to take each bath each day for three days in a row.

That three-day rhythm is the working, not an optional extra. One bath is a wash. Three baths, taken on three days in a row, are a preparation: a repeated act that builds a state over time, and that gives you three evenings to sit with the matter, to revise what you plan to say, and to notice what changes in your own temper as the days pass.

Preparing the three days

Choose three days when you can actually take the bath without rushing. An evening bath taken in a hurry, with the phone buzzing on the side of the tub, is not preparation. It is another chore. If the matter you are preparing for is urgent, take the three days before it if you can. If you cannot, take them as close as you can, and be honest with yourself about the difference.

Before the first bath, write down, in one sentence, what you need to say, and to whom. Not a speech, not a list of grievances, just the sentence. Leave it where you can see it during the three days. Each evening, after the bath, read it again and ask whether it still reads true. Often it will change by the second day, and that change is the work doing its proper job: clearing away the first, heated version of the matter, and leaving the version you can actually stand behind.

Prepare the room for the bath itself in the same spirit. Clean the bathroom, lay out clean clothes, and set the time aside. The bath is not the main event. It is the threshold to the main event, and thresholds deserve to be kept clean.

The bath itself, and what to do in it

Pour that water over yourself in the bath, or add it to the bath water, according to your own practice, and sit with it rather than rushing through it.

While you are in the water, do not rehearse a speech word for word. Rehearsal has its place, but the bath is not that place. Instead, sit quietly, and let the matter come to mind in its own shape. Notice where you feel defensive, where you feel certain, where you feel vague. Vagueness is useful information in rhetoric work. It usually marks the place where you have not yet done the study, or have not yet decided what you actually think.

After the bath, dry off, dress in clean clothes, and write down anything that came clear during it, in plain language. Do not polish it into a speech yet. The polish comes later, when you have the notes in front of you.

Working with a seal alongside the bath

A bath prepares the practitioner. A seal gives the working a fixed point to return to afterwards. Athena's seal-working guidance names the uses: holding a seal, putting it under a candle, putting oil on it, carrying it, wearing it as a pendant, showing it to the desired person, each specific to the working at hand.

For Naberius work, carrying a seal after the three baths is a natural extension. The bath prepares you to speak. The seal, carried or worn when you do speak, is a reminder of the state you prepared in, and of the sentence you settled on over three days. It is not a substitute for preparation, and it does not speak for you. It holds the thread between the quiet of the bath and the noise of the room where you will be heard.

If your practice calls for anointing the seal, use a matching oil for that purpose, applied deliberately, naming the purpose in your own words. If your practice calls for fumigation, pass the seal through incense smoke before the working. Both are general practices in this tradition, and both can be used with a seal, if your practice calls for them.

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. First, state the matter in one sentence, and decide honestly how the standing in question was lost or put at risk. Third, on the day of the speaking itself, or of the working, prepare the room and yourself as you would for any Goetia working. Fourth, set out the seal and any oil or incense you will use, and anoint or fumigate as your practice requires. Fifth, speak your petition, clearly and once. Sixth, close properly, and put the tools away.

Afterwards, write down what you said, what was heard, and what followed, in plain language. Rhetoric work is judged by what happens in the room, not by how it felt while you were speaking. A record kept over days and weeks is what lets you tell the difference.

What not to do

Do not use a bath, or a spirit working, as a way to avoid doing the study. If you need to speak about a craft, study the craft. If you need to speak about a decision, know the facts of it. Naberius work, as presented here, is about mastery of rhetoric and of arts and sciences, and mastery is earned by work, not granted by water alone.

Do not drink the bath water, and do not use bath herbs internally. The baths are made for bathing, from roots, herbs and sometimes essential oils, and they should be treated as bath preparations, not as food, medicine, or skin treatment. If you have sensitivities to herbs or essential oils, test carefully, or do not use the bath on skin, and choose another form of preparation instead.

Do not repeat the same petition endlessly in the hope that repetition alone will force a result. Do the preparation properly, once, observe, and then decide, calmly, whether a second working, a different approach, or no further working is the right next step.

Keeping a record, and knowing when to stop

Keep a short record for each working: date, purpose in one sentence, bath days kept, what you said, and what you noticed afterwards, over days and weeks. For rhetoric work, note the response you actually received, not the response you hoped for. Were you heard? Was the question answered? Did the standing you sought actually change, in the eyes of others, or only in your own feeling about it?

If nothing changes, that is also information. It may mean the petition was unclear, the preparation was rushed, the work was not appropriate, or simply that the situation needs a different approach, including an ordinary-world approach: more study, a conversation, an apology, or a decision made plainly and kept.

Naberius bath, and Naberius oil to go with it

If you are doing spirit work with Naberius, the bath is for preparation, not for show.

The Naberius bath is made from pure roots, herbs and sometimes essential oils, with no synthetics, and it is made for a magick bath for work with Naberius. I make no promise about what it will do for you, only that it is made for this work, and not mass produced.

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

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

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