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Pages about Sympathetic Magic: | Ceremonial Magic | Enchantment | Symbolism | Symbols | Mikhail Mao Formulas

Known Formulas:

• Ceremony of the Stormrider Portal: two ceremonial circles, each coded with the manatic sigils of storm, water, and wind in a unique sequence, one circle at the origin and one at the destination, clouds, rain, wind, lightning, and a pinch of earth from the destination: Cast one or two circle as noted, if they do not already exist, or reuse existing circles. Place a pinch of earth from the destination in a tiny circle at the center of the origin circle. Form a stormcloud above the circle, pouring rain enough to soak anything beneath it, and maintaining the downpour throughout the ceremony. Using wind currents, form the cloud into shapes that represent the landscape that would otherwise be crossed by the journey. Using lightning, draw the sigil-sequence of the origin circle, the path of the journey, and finally the sigil-sequence of the destination circle. If you are successful, the stormcloud will be mirrored at the destination circle and a portal will open, allowing any individual who passes through the cloud to travel instantly to the other location.
• Mao's Lightning-Chasing Blood: 7 drops of the target's blood taken from six different cuts on the feet and one from the tongue, 7x7 precisely targeted sevenfold bolts of lightning, 7x7 precisely targeted arrows, the target must be a talent or its blood must be mixed with a great talent's: Cast a circle, placing the blood at the points of a 7-pointed star inscribed in the circle. Seven by seven times, strike each point in turn with a sevenfold bolt of lightning, followed by an arrow. The final sevenfold bolt of lightning and arrow must strike the target's foot. If successful, the target will gain a new wild talent: being struck by lightning causes you to be transformed into lightning and transported to the far end of the bolt.
• Ceremony of Open Time
• Ceremony of the Law: Jade thorn, morag obsidian, sal ammoniac, thought ledger, blackheart ruby, jasper string, ravenstone, coal tear, book of law, great talent blood, gavel of the Arbiter's courts: Cast a circle. Stand in the exact center. Read from the book of law and the thought ledger simultaneously until you have memorized a whole page of each. Repeat that page while leaving the books open within the circle at precisely 45 degree angles from your position in the center and 90 degrees from each other, precisely a foot from the diameter each. Take the coal tear out and wash your chest with it. Take the sal ammoniac out and eat it. Take the morag obsidian out and smash your own sternum with it. Use the jade thorn to cut open your chest, and then use the jasper string to pull out your own heart. Coat the blackheart ruby in great talent blood, then place it in your chest. Drop the ravenstone onto the circle. If the void in the ravenstone is too powerful, you will null the circle and die. If it is too weak, you will be trapped. If it is just right, you will find the magical energies redirecting within the circle to empower you. As this happens, smash the ravenstone with the Arbiter gavel. When you awaken, you will be empowered to know the law.
• Ceremony of the Voice: Athak's voice, falconer's cry, cultist of the Mouth's voice, shattering scream, frustrated groan, phobian wolf howl, pterodactyl wail, mystic whisper, geometric pearl, Guardian's crown, gavel of the Arbiter's courts: Cast a circle. Stand in the exact center. Put on the Guardian's crown and face north. While facing north, unleash the pterodactyl wail. If it echoes back from the edge of the circle, catch it again. If it does not, you have failed. Next, face northeast. Unleash the shattering scream. If it breaks the circle, you have failed, but if it echoes back, catch it again. This process continues as follows: east/phobian wolf howl, southeast/falconer's cry, south/cultist of the Mouth's voice, southwest/frustrated groan, west/mystic whisper, northwest/athak's voice. When each of these has been echoed back and you have caught them, place them all in the geometric pearl. Place the pearl at your feet and smash it with the gavel. If the voices come out as separate entities, you have failed and will be torn to pieces. If they have rise, unified, catch them and swallow them. You will then have the power to speak the Names of the Divine.
• Fate of the Unbroken Victim: Cast a circle, crush the shattered pieces of a weapon that should have killed you into your veins, describe how you should have died, and the status of your soul in that hypothetical situation. If successful, you will find yourself remembering the truth of your soul.
• Periodic Table of Murder: Cast a circle, slay an owl, and use the owl's remains to draw a chemical formula in the circle to gain knowledge about that formula.
• Mao's Murderous Revelry: Cast a circle large enough to include your army. Select an appropriate number of representatives of your army, and feed them liquor that was once held in esteem by an ancient warlord of your army's nation. Have the representatives tear a flag of your enemy seven times with seven different weapons. Your army will consider it great fun to defeat the enemy army.
• Mao's Murder of the Rat of Eons, part one (The Eye of Time): Cast a circle, arranging 29 clocks around its circumference (or one for the number of known Ages). Synchronize the clocks exactly, then begin chanting the names of the Ages of Shems. Mix the vitreous and aqueous humors of an eye of the Rat of Time with a quantity of its blood, and wait for the words of the past to reach your ears via wild talent. While this is happening, place the drops in your eyes. Wait for your vision to clear and the words to end. Between two ticks of the clocks, destroy the circle and all of the clocks. The exact results will be unknown, but it is thought that this will provide incredible insight into the flow of time, including the ability to detect anomalies and perceive events in the past, or even other ages.
• Mao's Chains of the Dragon: Draw a circle, then stand in it naked. Wash yourself with pure water or dragon saliva or dragon blood. If you want speed, wrap the dragonsteel chains around your legs. If you want toughness, around your chest and stomach. If you want will power, around your head. Then, do a handstand. Remain that way for as many hours as you want bonus points (+1 per hour). When you are done, attempt to break the chains with your bare hands or teeth. If the chains break, you succeeded. If they don't, you will black out and get a penalty instead of a bonus.
• Episodic Knowledge Transfer: Make a ceremonial circle. Ring the circle with precisely eight candles made from the fat of different animals, and extinguish all other light. Wear a mantle studded with agates. Place your subject inside the circle and ensure it remains there for the duration. Inside the circle, think of your questions, drink a tea of Ko'tak Ginko, and study a book of facts. At the end of the eight hours, you will have the answers to your questions if your subject knew them.
• Corporeal Seance: Make a ceremonial circle around a corpse and sprinkle it with worm water. If can you invoke the true name of the corpse, you can force it to answer any question to the best of its ability. If you throw powdered bone over it and drink its blood, it will be strongly inclined to answer your questions, but can resist if the spirit wishes to resist. If you merely cut out its tongue and kiss its mouth, it will answer any question if it wishes. Lasts for about a minute.
• Dream Navigation: Prepare a sleeping area in a ceremonial circle. Hang a dream-catcher over the area and sleep for 24 hours while remaining in contact with a compass throughout the sleep. At the end of the sleep, burn everything that was in the circle except yourself and the compass. Observe the smoke until the compass begins spinning. The compass will thereafter remain useless in the waking world, but will point to your chosen destination within dreams.
• The Tongues of a Thousand Men: Subject gains the ability to comprehend languages. Gather 1,000 tongues and place them on the outside of a circle. The subjects stand inside and speak in their native tongues for an indeterminate length of time. Each subject learns the languages spoken by the tongues as well as the other subjects.
• Angel Ascendant: Caster gains feathery wings & skill Flight 13 for one hour. (Wind) Draw a thaumaturgical circle. Drop a fragment of wingbone from a bird of prey from twice your height into the circle while invoking the name of the Angel of Knowledge, then kiss your shoulders while leaping down. Spell lasts an hour.
• Escribar's Multiphasic Discriminator: Sense and identify magic. (Metamagic) Using a yew wand washed in the blood of a magical creature, trace in the air a thaumaturgical circle inscribed with symbols of the spheres you wish to detect and identify without blinking or looking away from the wand. Spell lasts ten minutes.
• The Wayfoot Waymark: Caster gains the ability to mark a spot with a finger-drawn glyph in the air, to return to at a later time. (Travel) Repeatedly draw the figure (the outline of your own foot) in the air while standing in a thaumaturgical circle with your finger wrapped in the skin of a swallow, your feet washed in the tears of a lost footpad. The more repetitions, the longer the ability to return lasts--one repetition equals 7 seconds.
• Tove's Spirit Tongue: Caster gains the ability to sense and speak to spirits for an hour. (Meta) While standing in a thaumaturgical circle, sing nonsense while mixing the powdered mucous of a magen with pure spring water in a silver cup, using a silver spoon. Drink, while singing. Once done, you will be able to speak to spirits for an hour.
• How to Skin a Rat: Caster gains the ability to inflict a skin-rotting disease with their touch. (Pestilence) Capture a dozen rats. Tie their tails together and leave them for six weeks in a thaumaturgical circle inside a privy. Return in six weeks. If they are dead, begin anew. If they are a rat-king, run for your life. If, however, they are merely weak & sick, take them and skin them alive. Use the blood to bathe yourself, the tails braided into your hair (or into a necklace if you are bald), and the skins patched into your clothes. So long as you keep these on, you will have the ability to transfer the disease.
• Molotov Cocktail: Caster creates a rune that can create a wall if placed on a ceiling or on the ground, destroy a wall if placed on a wall, or destroy a floor if placed on a floor that is also a roof. The explosion will also massively damage anything near the rune that is not an architectural feature. Stand in a thaumaturgical circle. Draw a mark on a blueprint of the building (or a survey map of an outdoor area), and then replicate the rune exactly on the target, using a mixture of ender's blood, sand from another continent, sewer water, and dust from a demolished building.
• Riverwalker's Water Balloon: Caster drops a ball of water on the head of a single target (Water). Take a fox's bladder and fill it with fresh water, let it sit in a thaumaturgical circle for the amount of time you wish to be able to invoke the spell at will (an hour for an hour, etc.). Return to it after the time wanted and then take a nap with it as your pillow. When you awake, you will have the power to invoke the spell.
• Srisian Pain Doll: See Ceremonial Magic.
• Virgil's Holy Shell: Caster creates an aura of protection against unholy powers (Light). Draw a thaumaturgical circle. Line it with either swan or angel feathers, then sing a Dhunnic (or angelic) hymn so softly only you can hear it. Sing it loud enough for others to hear it if you wish to protect them as well. At the end of the hymn, douse yourself in holy water and then kowtow. When you arise, you will be protected for some time by holy energy.
• Faustus's Threaded Arrow: Caster has the ability to cast a magical arrow that binds the victim's fate to the fate of the caster (Fate). Draw a thaumaturgical circle with the design of a cat's cradle within. Wrap an arrow in an albatross's guts, then throw the bound arrow to the 0, 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90, 105, 120, 135, 150, 165, 180, 195, 210, 225, 240, 255, 270, 285, 300, 315, 330, 345, and 360 degree points on the circle. Repeat to give more arrows to your will. When finished, stab yourself in the hand with the arrow. Once the wound is healed, you will have the ability to will the invisible arrow to strike a victim in line of sight.
• Caldonum's Angelfire: Caster creates a blast of golden angelfire (Light). Draw a thaumaturgical circle. Wash it in the tears of an angel and blanket it in swan's down. Use the breath of a golden dragon to ignite the feathers, then stand amidst them and inhale the smoke. The more smoke you manage to breathe in, the stronger the angelfire will be.
• Runner One's Piercing Sonic Arrow: Caster creates a sharp cone of piercing sound (Music). Draw a thaumaturgical circle. Place an arrow or dart (feathered by nightingale or thrush feathers for maximum effect) in the center, then stand at any point on the edge of the circle and play a sustained note on any instrument for an hour for each level of power you want the spell to have (1 hour = 3 s/w). The more difficult the instrument is to play a sustained note on, the longer the ability will last. As soon as the note ends, the spell ends.
• Nelia Ipsen's Trigger Device: Caster unleashes a wild surge (Meta). Draw a thaumaturgical circle, but leave it incomplete. This is very dangerous. Place eleven strands of magen hair around the broken circle, then count to eleven while standing in the middle of it. Close your eyes. Count to eleven again. Open your eyes and pour azure paint all over yourself and the circle, then shout your name eleven times. Wash off the paint, tie the hairs together, then place a single drop of the blood of a magical animal in the center of the circle, then place the hairs on top. Sit on it, then count to eleven out loud. A wild surge will occur.
• Geoffrey Allut's Subtle Philacrum: Caster subtles themselves for ten minutes (Silence). Draw a thaumaturgical circle with invisible ink. Wear sepia-toned glasses while reading your worst enemy's secret journal for one hour, then take off your clothing, including the glasses, and erase the circle completely.
• The Soul-Bearer's 25th Hour: Caster unleashes raw, primal forces from up to 25 of the neutral spheres in an uncontrolled holocaust. (Meta/Death/War/Dragon/Weather/Fate/Fire/Water/Earth/Air/Flora/ Fauna/Luck/Cosmos/Moon/Time/Travel/Change/Wealth/Celebration/ Silence/Knowledge/Dream/Connection/Skill/Might/Mischief/Hunt/ Force/Story/Metal) The only sphere required is meta magic, so the only part of this ceremony that is always there is the following:

Bathe thoroghly before hand in the urine of a blue tiger, then draw a circle on the ground with a silver pen. Hold a wand made of the horns of a long dead jackalope (dead from natural causes) about a foot above your head, focusing your energy upon it.

Then, depending on the spheres one wishes to invoke, do any of the following without losing focus on your upraised wand:

• • Stab the wand through the skull of a close relative (Death) to unleash a black wave of life-cessation
  • Draw a sword used to slay a hundred and one soldiers in honorable combat (War) to call down a rain of arrrows
  • Drink a dram of dragon's blood without vomiting (Diff: WIL vs. 19) (Dragon) to bring a rain of dragonfire
  • Have your wand struck by lightning (Weather) to unleash a hurricane
  • Weave a cat's cradle out of the skin of a moth (Fate) to alter the fates of those around you at your own will (WIL vs. WIL)
  • Immolate yourself (WIL vs. 19) (Fire) to unleash a rolling firestorm
  • Drink eleven gallons of water in the space of an hour (Water) to unleash a flood
  • Crack a boulder with the wand (Earth) to cause an earthquake
  • Jump off a cliff (Air) to create a series of tornadoes
  • Stab a 101 year old oak tree with the wand (Flora) to cause the plants to begin attacking intelligent life forms
  • Eat a jellyfish, cicada, dog, leopard, raccoon, alligator, porcupine, kangaroo, or indrik (Fauna) to summon a horde of vicious animals (sharks for jellyfish, hornets for cicada, wolves for dog, leopards for leopard, wolverines for raccoons, alligators for alligator, various woodland beasts for porcupine, various outback beasts for kangaroo, and everything for indrik)
  • Flip a coin eleven times and get the same result each time (Luck) to create a wave of misfortune
  • Catch a shooting star (Cosmos) to create a meteor shower
  • Drink a jar of moonbeams (Moon) to unleash the energies of the moons (esp. useful vs. lycanthropes)
  • Wind a watch (Time) to freeze time around you
  • Run eleven miles (in any directions) (Travel) to freeze everyone's movement around you
  • Change your clothes (Change) to unleash a wave of minor polymorph
  • Sell your most valued material possession (Wealth) to beggar everyone around you
  • Get drunk on 190 proof liquor (Celebration) to cause uncontrollable laughter for a mile around
  • Go unseen for eleven hours (Silence) to make all manmade objects within a mile invisible
  • Read an encyclopedia outloud, backwards (Knowledge) to make all people around you forget half their knowledge
  • Fall asleep (Dream) to cause everyone nearby to join you in the Dream Realm
  • Tie yourself to your closest friend (Connection) to cause everyone within a mile to become related to each other
  • etc

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• Toblerone's Unwarranted Marshmallow Surprise: SURPRISE! (Celebration/Harvest)
  • One lb. marshmallows
  • One tbsp. sugar
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1 cup flour
  • 3 lbs. dark chocolate (optional)
  • 1 bottle mead
  • 1/2 tsp. peppermint oil
  • 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
  • 1 duck's egg
  • 1/2 tsp. powdered silver
  • 1 8" by 11" pan
  • 1 wooden spoon
  • 1 wooden mixing bowl
  • 1 wooden board
  • 1 oven
  • Mix the sugar, milk, flour, peppermint, vanilla & silver in bowl with wooden spoon. Mash marshmallows on board with spoon until a pulpy mess, mixing in the water & duck's egg to get it to a nice, sludgy consistency. Have a glass of mead. Optionally, melt the chocolate (you will need special equipment for this). If not using chocolate, coat the bottom of the pan with marshmallow sludge. If using chocolate, float the sludge atop a lake of chocolate. Have another glass of mead. Go to the restroom. Come back, put the floury mixture down as a layer above the sludge. Place in the oven, pre-heated to 500 degrees, and wait for an hour.
  • While waiting, watch it closely. Never take your eyes off it, except to have some more mead.
  • If you have not finished the bottle of mead, the spell will fail. If the mixture doesn't come out of the oven as a well baked (chocolate?) trout, you have failed. Results may vary.

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Collected Reagents:

A kris knife of the stillborn cult (stillbirth)

A large amount of dragonsteel chain, enough for 17 castings of Mao's Chains of the Dragon (dragon)

The dust of a nail that should have killed me (death) - consumed

Khalif Benin's tarot (fate)

Fragment of behemoth horn from Alassa's hunt (fauna)

A handful of soil from Deseria (darkness)

The tongue of the Miracleman (hope) - and legbone - ground up and used to dye the Rugged Tunic Various pieces of the remains of Snow, Rat of Time (time):

• Head
• One Eye - consumed
• Tail
• Complete Skeleton
• Intestines
• Claws - two of four consumed
• Hide
• Most of the Heart
• About One Deciliter of Blood

Five leaf-traps from the Ruiz Flytrap Manifest (hunt)

A dead centipede of Lyson, Lyzinda's Son, Hollow Child of Despair (left in Storms/Mwyr Aeld)

A handful of Scarlet Pimpernel flowers (hate)

Banner of the Army of Light

A handful of Chrysanthemums from the pool of the Glowing Chrysanthemum

3 dead zurfalcon