Working with Vine: hidden things, knowledge of past and to come, and storms

Vine, and what is hidden

In the Grimoire Companion entry, Vine is a King who discovers hidden things, knows past, present, and future, and commands storms. The first of those three points is the one most workings will start with, because hidden things are the commonest reason to seek Vine work. But hidden things is a broad phrase, and a broad phrase makes a vague working. Before you begin, say what is hidden, in your own words, and why it matters that it be found.

A hidden thing can be a lost object, a piece of information that has been kept from you, a motive that has not been stated, or a part of a situation that everyone is avoiding. Those are different petitions, and they lead to different questions. A lost object needs a place. A hidden motive needs a person and a decision. An avoided part of a situation needs honesty about your own part in the avoidance. Write the hidden thing down in one sentence, and write what finding it would change, in ordinary terms. If finding it would change nothing, you are not yet asking a working question.

Knowledge of past, present, and future, used together

Vine knows past, present, and future, and those three times should be used together, not picked from separately. Knowledge of the past explains how a situation came to be hidden in the first place. Knowledge of the present shows what is actually happening now, under the surface that is usually discussed. Knowledge of the future shows what is coming if the present course continues, so a decision can be made before events force one. A working that only asks about the future, without asking about the past that produced the present, is likely to receive an answer that is hard to act on, because its causes remain hidden.

Write three questions, one for each time, before the working, and keep them separate in the record afterwards. What happened, that made this matter hidden? What is happening now, that is not being said? What is coming, if nothing changes? That three-part record is worth more than a single dramatic revelation, because it can be tested against events as they unfold, part by part.

Storms, read plainly

Commanding storms is the most easily misunderstood part of Vine's office, because it is easily read as a metaphor for everything dramatic. Read it plainly, as the entry gives it: storms are disruptions in the natural order, powerful, visible, and hard to ignore. In a working, a storm can mean a disruption that clears a hidden matter into the open, or a disruption that must be faced rather than avoided. Either way, a practitioner asking for storm work should be clear about what disruption they actually mean, and what they are prepared to deal with afterwards.

A storm, in ordinary life, does not only affect the person who called for it. It affects everyone in its path, and a working that asks for disruption should take that into account in its plain statement, before it begins. State what is to be disrupted, what is to be left standing, and what you will do in the aftermath. A working without an aftermath plan is not a storm working. It is a wish for drama.

Why incense for hidden things

Incense fills a room, and for hidden-things work that room-filling quality is useful in a particular way. A hidden matter is often hidden because the space around it has never been set apart for looking at it honestly. Incense marks the space and the time for that looking, and the working happens in air set apart from ordinary chatter. A bath covers you, and oil marks a person or a tool, but incense marks the room where a question is asked, and a hidden thing is asked to come into the open within that room.

If your practice calls for fumigating a seal for Vine, pass it through the smoke in the order your system teaches. The incense is the material; the method belongs to the system you work in, and a general article is not a substitute for proper teaching in that system.

Preparing, and testing what is revealed

Preparation is most of the work. Before you begin, write the matter down in one clear sentence: what you are asking, and what you are prepared to do yourself in ordinary terms. If you cannot state it plainly, you are not yet ready to begin, and that pause is part of the work, not a delay in it. Clear the space you will use, set it aside for this purpose, and prepare yourself in the same way you would for any Goetia working: wash, change into clothes set aside for the work, and set out what you need before you start, so you are not hunting for tools halfway through.

After a working, test what was revealed, rather than only marvelling at it. A hidden thing, once revealed, should lead to something checkable in ordinary terms: a place searched, a question asked of a person, a document found, a decision changed. If nothing checkable follows, the revelation remains only a feeling, and a feeling is a poor basis for action. Note what you checked, what you found, and what remains hidden, separately, so the record stays honest about its own limits.

Hidden things, found and faced

Vine work, done well, ends not with a revelation but with a facing: a hidden thing found, a past understood, a present seen plainly, a future prepared for, and a disruption, where one was asked for, dealt with in its aftermath. That sequence is the work, and the incense marks the space where it begins. Keep the record, check it against events, and let the next working start from what the last one actually revealed, rather than from a fresh wish for something hidden to appear.

After a storm: the aftermath plan

Any working that asks for disruption needs an aftermath plan, and Vine work is no exception. A storm clears, but it also leaves debris, and the practitioner who asked for the storm is responsible, in ordinary terms, for dealing with what follows. Before the working, write down what you will do the day after a disruption: who you will speak to, what arrangements you will repair or replace, what you will leave alone until the dust settles. That plan does not weaken the working. It makes it a working with a beginning, a middle, and an end, rather than a wish for upheaval with no thought for what comes next. It also helps you recognise whether a disruption that follows was the one you asked for, or an unrelated event that merely feels dramatic. Not every upheaval after a working is an answer to it, and a practitioner who claims every storm as a result will soon lose the ability to tell a working's effects from ordinary life. Record the disruption, record your aftermath actions, and judge the working by whether the hidden matter actually came into the open, not by how dramatic the week felt.

Vine Goetia incense

Incense is not background scent for this work. It is part of the working itself.

I hand make each batch of incense when you order it, unless I have just recently made some. These are incenses of a quality I use myself for magical work, for spirit work, for work for clients, and for my own spellwork. I bless the incense myself before it is sent out. I make no promise about what it will do for you, only that it is made by hand, for this work, and not bought in bulk and relabelled.

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

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