Working with Sabnock: fortification, and a bath taken over three days
Building high, and building to last
Sabnock is a Marquis in the Goetia, and the Grimoire Companion entry for him is a builder's entry: he builds high towers, castles, and cities, and grants fortification and familiars. Those phrases, read together, describe a kind of work that is often misunderstood, because fortification is easily read as mere defence, and building is easily read as mere construction.
A tower, a castle, and a city are not the same thing, and the difference matters. A tower is high, and it sees far. It is a place from which a matter can be surveyed, whole, rather than piecemeal. A castle is strong, and it holds. It is a place that can be kept, through difficulty, rather than abandoned at the first pressure. A city is inhabited, and it works. It is a place where many matters live together, in order, with walls, gates, streets, and a life inside them that continues, day after day.
Fortification, in that frame, is not only a wall against an enemy. It is the whole work of making a place, a household, a project, or a practice strong enough to last: strong in its boundaries, strong in its order, and strong in its daily keeping. A fortification that is built in a day, and never kept, is not a fortification. It is a gesture, and gestures do not hold.
Familiars, the last phrase in the entry, complete the picture in a practical way. A familiar, in this tradition, is a helper spirit, fitted to the work, and steady in it. For building work, a steady helper is worth more than a brilliant one, because building is long work, and long work needs steadiness more than it needs drama.
What needs fortifying
Before any Sabnock working, be specific about what needs fortifying, in your own words, and in one clear sentence. Reflection about being specific about what you want is not a formality. It is how you tell, afterwards, whether anything was actually strengthened, and whether that strengthening had anything to do with the work.
Write the sentence down. Name the place, the household, the project, the practice, or the boundary, as concretely as you can, and name what is threatening it, in plain terms: is it neglect, is it overwork, is it a person, is it a habit, is it a lack of order, is it a door that is never closed, literally or figuratively? Then name what you will do yourself, in ordinary terms, to fortify it: what order you will restore, what boundary you will keep, what daily keeping you will actually do, after the working.
A petition that asks for fortification, while naming no place to fortify, and no ordinary keeping to follow, is not a petition. It is a wish, and wishes are hard to read afterwards, because any outcome, or no outcome, can be fitted to them.
Be honest, too, about what fortification costs. A tower costs height, and height costs exposure. A castle costs keeping, and keeping costs time. A city costs order, and order costs the comfort of doing whatever you like, whenever you like, inside it. If you are not prepared to pay those costs, say so to yourself now, rather than discovering it after a working has begun to move a matter forward.
If you cannot state the matter in one sentence, leave it overnight and come back to it. That pause is part of the work, not a delay in it.
Why a bath, before building work
A bath before a working is preparation, not indulgence, and it is worth saying so plainly, because the two are easily confused. An ordinary bath washes the body. A magick bath, taken before a working, washes the day off the practitioner: the errands, the arguments, the noise of ordinary business. You step out of one state and into another, and the water is the threshold between them.
That threshold matters for building work in a particular way. Building is done by a practitioner who is settled, not by a practitioner who is still carrying the day. A hurried builder makes crooked walls. A settled builder, who has taken time to clear himself before he begins, can see the whole matter, in proportion, and can build straight. A bath taken deliberately, with the purpose named beforehand, does much of that settling in advance, so that the working can begin where it should begin.
A bath taken over three days, as this bath is, fits building work especially well. Building is not done in a single gesture. It is done course by course, day by day, with each course checked before the next is laid. Three baths, on three consecutive days, are a preparation in that same rhythm: repeated, checked, and kept, rather than done once and forgotten.
How the Sabnock bath is made, and how it is used
We only use 100% pure roots, herbs and sometimes essential oils. No synthetics are used.
To use any of our 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 detail, about the strainer or the net, is not a trivial aside. It is how a bath made of real roots and herbs is actually used, without leaving a bath full of chunks, and without blocking a drain, and it is worth following as written, rather than improvising a shortcut.
It is best to take each bath each day for 3 days in a row. Take the bath at a time you can keep, on all three days, and keep that time as steady as you can. A rhythm that is kept is a rhythm that can be read. A rhythm that changes every day, for convenience, cannot be read, because you cannot tell whether a change came from the working, or from the change in time, in place, or in mood.
Keep a notebook ready, for the three days, and for the working that follows them. Note, each day, what you noticed about the matter to be fortified: what is weak, what is strong, what is out of order, what needs keeping. A record kept across three days, in plain language, will show a pattern that a single day's note will not, and that pattern is often the real plan for the fortification, in ordinary terms, as well as in ritual.
Preparation, beyond the bath itself
Preparation for a Sabnock working is preparation for building, and it starts before the first bath. Walk the place, literally or in your mind, that is to be fortified: the house, the room, the project, the practice. Note its boundaries, its gates, its weak points, and its strong points, in plain language, before you begin any ritual. A builder who has not surveyed the ground cannot build straight, however good his tools are.
Clear the space you will use for the working itself, and set it aside for this purpose. Gather what you need before you begin, so you are not hunting for a tool halfway through. Know what you are going to say, in your own words, before you begin, and know what you are not going to say. A petition that tries to cover every possible threat usually covers none of them well. Keep it direct, keep it honest, and keep it to the matter at hand.
Do not begin when you are exhausted, drunk, or already agitated, if you can avoid it. A clear head is a working tool, just as much as a bath, oil, or incense is, and a working done in the heat of a feeling often reads, afterwards, as something you wish you had phrased differently. Wait until you can state the matter calmly, even if the matter itself is serious.
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, and to the instructions you already follow for Goetia work. Do not treat a general article as a substitute for proper teaching in the system.
First, write your one-sentence matter down, and survey the place or project to be fortified, in plain terms. Second, take the bath on day one, at your kept time, with the purpose named beforehand, and write down what you noticed afterwards. Third, repeat on day two, and on day three, keeping the same time, and the same record, so the three days can be compared. Fourth, prepare the room and yourself for the working itself, and set out the seal, tool, or candle you will use. Fifth, speak your petition, clearly and once, rather than repeating it until it loses its shape. Sixth, sit quietly for a time and listen, rather than filling every moment with more words. Seventh, close the working properly, in whatever way your practice requires, and put the tools away in their proper place.
Afterwards, keep the record going, over days and weeks, not just on the night of the working. Note what was strengthened, what was kept, and what fell back into disorder, and when. That record is what lets you tell, weeks later, whether anything changed, and whether that change had anything to do with the work, or with ordinary keeping that followed it.
Ordinary keeping, alongside ritual fortification
Fortification is judged, in the end, in ordinary life, not only in ritual. If the working concerns a house, keep the house: close the doors, mend what is broken, keep the order you promised to keep. If it concerns a project, keep the project: do the daily work, meet the deadlines, keep the records. If it concerns a practice, keep the practice: at the kept time, in the kept place, with the record kept afterwards.
Ritual and ordinary keeping should point the same way, or neither will carry much weight. A working that asks for fortification, while the practitioner continues to neglect the place, the project, or the practice, is working against itself. That is not a moral judgment added to the article. It is a practical observation: a petition and a life that contradict each other cannot both be read as true.
It is also worth asking, honestly, whether the matter needs a tower, a castle, or a city. A tower, for seeing far, a castle, for holding, and a city, for living in order, are different answers, and they call for different petitions, and different ordinary actions. A working aimed at a tower when the real need is a city will give you a view, and no place to live in it.
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 did, and what you noticed afterwards, over days and weeks, not just on the night itself. If nothing is strengthened, that is also information. It may mean the petition was unclear, the survey was too vague, the timing was wrong, or simply that the matter needs a different approach, in the ordinary world as well as in ritual.
Do not repeat the same working endlessly in the hope that repetition alone will force a fortification. Do the work properly, once, over three days, observe, keep the place or project in the ordinary world as the matter requires, 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.
Building, in Sabnock's entry, is long work, and fortification is keeping work. Both are judged over time, by what stands, and by what is kept standing, after the working is over.
Sabnock bath
If you are doing work with Sabnock, the bath is for preparation over three days, not for show.
I make Sabnock baths from 100% pure roots, herbs, and sometimes essential oils, with no synthetics, to be added to a pot of water, approximately 1 litre or so, and taken each day for 3 days in a row, for work with Sabnock, for high towers, castles, and cities, and for fortification, in the Companion's words. 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 bath for that work, this is the one I offer: Sabnock Goetia bath, $44 CAD. View the product
Sabnock also has a matching oil and a matching incense, both at $44 CAD, for spirit work with Sabnock, for anointing and fumigating where your practice calls for it.
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