My proposal for the Viridis Genii Symposium 2025– the Tenth of its name!– was accepted. Along many other amazing teachers and colleagues (plant magicians, green witches, drug wizards, and botany geeks all!), I’ll be presenting on a subject near and dear to my heart- the Magical Oil and its constituent parts, both material and immaterial. The conference is a long weekend near Olympia, Washington in July. Admission is for the whole conference. I have been every year since its creation, and spoken many times at the event. I highly recommend it, and also look for the accompanying publication that also comes out each year with articles from all the lecturers.
On the Very Viscous: In Defense of the Material and Immaterial Magical Oil
Through the centuries, magical oils have often followed a similar maxim as incense- sweet for fair things, noxious for foul things. However, such over-reliance on scent as the primary importance is a fallacy that has led to oil as secondary support rather than an oil as the magic itself. Much like traditional suffumigations, scent is a secondary, often collateral quality, of a traditional oil. So too are its constituent physical ingredients. An oil itself is a bottle-spell, containing the essences of plant, fungi, animal, mineral, place, human, and things subtler still–whereby the physical oil is the carrier of the combined essence and force of these ingredients delivered through the menstruum of a given oleum. They may come from inspired recipes brought forth from intellect or spirit communication; found in or inspired by ancient texts; and others the children of established tradition or any combination of such. Some oils can take years to make, being buried, stored away for certain tides of the year, or are merely prohibitive in their ingredients and can be made with ease once these are procured. Some are simple macerations and infusions, others given to the art of distillation, many combine both techniques. Some may address simple purposes, and others may be spirits unto themselves. But the Oil is more than the sum of its parts, and knowing all the ingredients will not, and should not, make the same oil. In this lecture, Hathaway Diaz will explore how the immaterial demands relationality that enhances the often over-commodification of the material and how, as magicians and witches, we should nurture and defend both the material and the immaterial oil.