Working with Vine: hidden things, true answers, and a bath before the working
Vine, and the difference between a hidden thing and a secret
In the Grimoire Companion material, Vine is a King with 36 legions, who discovers hidden things, knows past, present, and future, and commands storms. That is a broad field, and it is worth narrowing before you work with it, because hidden things come in more than one kind, and they do not all need the same approach.
Some hidden things are simply unknown to you: a fact you have not yet learned, a document you have not yet read, a connection you have not yet noticed. Some are hidden because someone else is keeping them hidden, or because a situation is tangled enough that the plain facts are hard to see through the noise around them. And some are hidden in time, in the sense that you are asking about what has already happened, or what may come, rather than about a thing sitting in a drawer somewhere. Vine's field, as given here, covers discovery and knowledge across past, present, and future, so the first task in any Vine working is to say which kind of hidden thing you are actually asking about.
Storms belong in this picture too, and they should not be treated as decoration. In the old material, a spirit who commands storms is a spirit of sudden change in the weather of a situation, not only of literal weather. A storm clears the air, but it also breaks things that were already weak. If you are asking for a hidden thing to be revealed, be prepared for the revelation to change the shape of the situation, and not only to confirm what you already suspected. That is part of why preparation matters, and why a bath before the working is not an optional extra.
Why a bath comes before this kind of work
It is the part of the practice where you wash off the day, slow down, and arrive at the working with a clearer head than the one you had when you came in from errands, arguments, or ordinary worry. For divination work, that clearing matters more than usual, because divination asks you to notice what is actually there, rather than what you wish were there, or what you fear might be there.
A bath for work with Vine is therefore not a general cleansing bath for any purpose you can think of. It is preparation for a particular kind of work, where a hidden thing needs to be found, a question needs a true answer, and the practitioner needs to be steady enough to hear an answer that may not be the one they wanted. If you take the bath and then do no working at all, you have still done something useful, in that you have washed and settled yourself, but you have not done Vine work. The bath prepares the working; it does not replace it.
It is also worth being honest, before you bathe, about what you will do with an answer. If you already know you will ignore any answer that contradicts your plan, then the working is not divination, it is a search for confirmation, and no bath will turn it into something else. Write the question down before you bathe, in one clear sentence, and keep it where you can read it again after the working, unchanged. That written question is what keeps the working honest.
How the bath is made, and how it is used
The baths in this line are made from 100% pure roots, herbs, and sometimes essential oils. No synthetics are used.
To use any of these baths, you add them to a pot of water, approximately 1 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. That practical detail matters: herb bits in a drain are a nuisance, and a bath that ends with plumbing trouble is a poor preparation for any working. Strain the bath, keep the water, and dispose of the herb matter tidily.
That three-day rhythm is itself part of the preparation. A single bath on the night of a working is a wash. Three days in a row is a pattern, and a pattern gives you time to notice whether your question is getting clearer, or whether it is shifting under you as you sit with it. If the question changes during those three days, let it change, and write the change down, rather than clinging to the first wording out of stubbornness.
Take the bath in the ordinary way, with ordinary care. Hot water, a clean tub, and enough time that you are not rushing to get out and get on with something else. Dry yourself properly, change into clothes you do not wear for ordinary errands, and go to your working space without filling the gap with noise, news, or argument. The bath is a threshold. Treat the time after it as part of the working, not as a break before the working starts.
Preparing the question
Preparation for Vine work is mostly preparation of the question. A good question for this kind of work is specific, and it admits an answer you could check. Asking about a hidden thing in general terms, with no way to tell a true answer from a pleasing one, leaves you with nothing to work with afterwards, except a feeling. Asking about a particular matter, in a particular time, with a particular source of information in mind, gives you something you can test against what you already know, and against what you learn later.
It helps to write down, before the working, what you already know about the matter, what you do not know, and what you suspect but cannot yet show. Keep those three lists separate. Suspicions written down as facts are the most common source of false divination, because once a suspicion is written as if it were known, every later sign gets read as confirming it. Keep suspicion in its own column, and let the working speak to the unknown column, not to the suspicion column.
Prepare the room and yourself in the same way you would for any Goetia working: clear the space, set it aside for this purpose, and know what you are going to say, in your own words, before you begin. A clear head is a working tool, just as much as a bath, oil, or incense is. If your practice calls for cleansing or consecration of tools, follow the instructions you already follow in your system. A general article like this one is not a substitute for proper teaching in the system, and it should not be used to invent a rite you have not been taught.
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, take the bath, as above, each day for 3 days in a row, with the question written down before the first bath. Second, prepare the room and yourself, and set out any seal, oil, incense, or candle you will use. Third, speak your petition, clearly and once, rather than repeating it until it loses its shape. Fourth, sit quietly for a time and listen, rather than filling every moment with more words. Fifth, close the working properly, in whatever way your practice requires, and put your tools away in their proper places.
Vine also has a matching incense, at $44 CAD, for spirit work and spellwork with Vine. This article is about the bath, so it does not turn into a second article about incense, but it is worth knowing that companion exists, because fumigating the tools and the working space is a companion practice to bathing the practitioner, and both are forms of preparation, one for the person and one for the place.
Afterwards, write down what you did, when you did it, and what you noticed. Not what you hoped would happen, but what actually happened, in plain language. For Vine work, that record should include the question as written, the answer as received, and, later, what turned out to be true. That later note is the important one. A divination record without a follow-up note is only half a record, because you cannot tell, from the night itself, whether an answer was true, or only convincing.
After the working: checking, not chasing
Do not repeat the same working endlessly in the hope that repetition alone will force a clearer answer. 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. Repetition without reflection is not persistence. It is noise, and in divination work it is worse than noise, because each repetition gives you another chance to hear what you want to hear.
Give an answer time to be checked. Some hidden things are revealed at once, in a document, a conversation, or a plain fact you had overlooked. Others take days or weeks to confirm, as events unfold and earlier unknowns become known. Keep the record open for that period, and add to it as facts arrive, rather than closing it on the night of the working with a verdict you cannot yet support.
If nothing changes, that is also information. It may mean the question was unclear, the timing was wrong, the work was not appropriate, or simply that the situation needs a different approach, such as ordinary research, a direct conversation, or waiting for more facts before asking again. A bath and a working do not replace ordinary ways of finding things out. They sit alongside them, and a practitioner who uses both, and keeps a record of both, will learn more than a practitioner who uses only one.
Vine Goetia bath
A bath for Vine work should prepare you to hear a true answer, not only a welcome one.
I make these baths from 100% pure roots, herbs, and sometimes essential oils, with no synthetics, and I bless each one myself before it is sent out. This one is Vine, for a magick bath for work with Vine, to be taken each day for 3 days in a row as preparation for the working. I make no promise about what it will do for you, only that it is made by hand, for this work.
If you want a Vine bath made in this way, this is the one I offer: Vine Goetia bath, $44 CAD. View the product
Use: add to a pot of water, approximately 1 litre or so, strain out herb bits with a strainer, fish tank net, or bird catching net, and take each day for 3 days in a row. Matching Vine incense is also, $44 CAD.
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