THE EX-VOTOS OF SORCERY

The notion of ex-voto is old, even if the term seems to appear for the first time in 1643. Votive offerings (or ex-votos) have a long tradition in the spiritual and religious practices of the Mediterranean basin and are a testimony of gratitude and devotion, most often, for a granted wish. The ex-voto expresses a relationship of exchange and testifies of the spiritual commitment to the tutelary deity. Often taking the form of a wish (e.g. in the case of a cure for an eye or arm infection, the ex-voto will have the shape of an eye or an arm), ex-votos have found an expression in Western (and Mexican) folk Christianity but also in certain practices of Witchcraft in which the object representing a member of the body serves the intentions of the sorcerer, to curse or to heal. Here the sorcerer makes the link between the "supernatural" and the person targeted by the spell. The ex-voto becomes a dagyde, a support for the practice which, through its associations with religion, becomes a heretical object.

In this iconic set I present what I have called the Ex-Votos of Sorcery, accompanied by a vision of The Daimon and Our Lady.

She is faceless, carrying the cosmos in her womb, crowned with spring flowers, surrounded by the Serpent on the lunar bark. She is the Great Mother, cosmic and chthonian at the same time, without name or face, and who nevertheless can bear them all. She is neither a pagan deity nor a divine form of current religions. Instead, these icons have been proposed as a mystical and archetypal vision draining several currents of cultural/cultic, temporal, spiritual and folkloric substrate. She is the Great White Goddess (1734 and Cochrane), Our Lady of Midnight, Our Lady of the Fallen Stars (the Watchers), Our Lady of the Powers of the Night.

The Daimon, hypostasis of the sorcerer's Initiator, the Serpent and the Goat, he whispers to souls who can hear him the impious words of power and knowledge! Both master and familiar sorcerer, initiator and servant, temptation and tempter, he is the taste of the apple and the kiss of the serpent, poison and remedy...

These ex-votos take here the form of the Skull, the Eye, the Hand, the Heart, the Egg, the Phallus and the Vulva. They are related to parts of the physical body and subtle bodies and are the expression of the incarnation of magical power in the body of the mystic-sorcerer, an atavistic vision of sorcerous forces. They are supports for meditation - votive icons referring to the Mysteries. These ex-votos are a symbolist, pictorial expression, to be deciphered not only by knowledge but also by corporal feeling through a process of incorporation. They are intended to reify different powers, different states of consciousness, of matter, of our bodies, and of the practices of witchcraft.

''Because in the shadows we act,
The Night is our setting, the Moon our Star.
Children of the Great Elders,
In us circulates the Blood of the Dragon,
And our spells shape the World.''