So with the launch of our Etsy store this week I wanted to take a minute and talk about how Goetic Impressions got started, why we got started, and what we are trying to accomplish.
When I was younger (much younger) and stupider (I like to pretend I'm smart now) I got involved with magick, particularly the Lesser Key of Solomon in a bad way. I have written about this in other places, but the psychological strain of contacting demonic entities combined with the rigors of puberty led me down a rabbit hole of mental health issues that has taken years to confront and overcome.
For me, part of conquering my inner demons was conquering my outer ones. Returning to Goetic Work after my bad experiences and finally mastering it has allowed me to move on in a big way from the issues that Work caused (or contributed to) in the first place. After several years of successful Work I found myself in a good place, mentally and magickally, and I felt like I had an obligation to try to help others that might encounter the same issues I did when I first began working with the Goetia.
Now I am going to rewind a bit, because I want to explore some other things tangential to my Goetic Work. When I seriously began the Work of overcoming the negative consequences of my first failures with the Goetia, I looked everywhere for ritual accurate tools to assist in the evocations. While many of the those tools are available, the costs of many are prohibitive for many practitioners. This is not to say that these tools are not worth what they are priced at, the magicians that create these implements often do it by hand, putting countless hours into painstakingly recreating the ritual tool per the specifications laid out in the ancient grimoires. This is a lot of work, and the people who do it deserve to get paid for their effort.
However, most of these tools were too expensive for me. So, I set out to create my own. I learned various skills with wood and metal working in order to make working versions of the tools I needed for my own Work, and though they were rough I used them successfully for many years.
In my professional life I started a new job working for a commercial printer. For a long time it never occurred to me to combine my new and expanding knowledge of industrial printing with my knowledge and passion of ritual tools. I finally had an epiphany in November of 2018 when I was working on enamel pins for a customer.
For a long time I had been hoping that someone would make the individual seals of the Goetic spirits in a way that was ritual accurate, felt good to wear and use, and was also affordable for the average practitioner. I realized that I had everything I needed in order to make that happen, the knowledge of how to actually make the seals, as well as what they needed to look like in order to function properly in the context of Goetic Ritual Work.
I sat down with Alara (my partner in magickal crime), and between us we designed the medallions and launched our Kickstarter to help cover the initial costs of making the molds we would need in order to get production started. With a little help from Dantalion, Seere, and all of you our Kickstarter was ultimately successful, and work on the medallions started. It took longer than we initially estimated (and we very recently had an issue with two of the final medallions and we need to remake them) but finally we got to the point where we were ready to launch our Etsy store!
That doesn't mean our journey is over though, it is actually just beginning. I still feel a need to be there as a resource to anyone struggling out there to figure this stuff out, and between me and Alara we have a whole range of ideas for new products and services we want to bring to all of you in the coming months (and years!)
I hope some of you will join us on our journey and keep an eye out for what we are manifesting. I promise that ultimately what we are manifesting is going to be awesome!
Feel free to reach out to me with any questions or issues you might be having in your personal practice, I want to be a resource for you!
For now though I will leave you with some of the most powerful and wise words in the last century:
Do as Thou Wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the Law, Love under Will.
~Ben, from Goetic Impressions
