The Game of Masks and Visitors
The Many Faces of the Other

"The principal deity who appeared to humans in visions and dreams was Hobbamock (Abbomacho), known also as Cheepi
(Chepi, Chepian), whose name was related to the words for death, the deceased, and the cold northeast wind.
Into his "deformed likeness they conceived themselves to be translated when they died; for the same word
they have for Devil, they also use for a Dead Man." (Eliot and Mayhew 1653). Hobbamock was associated with the color
black, and the Indians saw him often at night "in the most hideous woods and swamps" in the shapes of Englishmen,
Indians, animals, inanimate objects, and mythical creatures. Although he often startled and terrified those who believed
they saw him, many desired such visions, for he appeared not to all, wrote Winslow, but to "the chiefest
and most judicious amongst them; though all of them strive to attain that hellish height of honour." (Winslow 1624).

-William S. Simmons

* * *

When a Witch-man or Witch-wife has created the sigil of their will and made the night-journey to deliver it over the hedge, and then received the Omen from the Unseen that the working should proceed, the time has come to play the Game of Masks. The Other- the Doppleganger- is now moving closer to the Witch, but how it will appear, and what its name shall be, must be divined, under the force of the Otherness that has been channeled by the Witch through their actions thus far. This Game is a game of divination- Old Hobb or the chief powers, as well as the Other itself, are guiding the situation, and will guide the draw of the cards.

The Game of Masks will provide, through divination, the shape and name that the Doppleganger will assume for the purposes of empowering this working, this particular sigil-spell. The Doppleganger is a shape-shifter; it can wear many masks, and call itself by many names. Without the Other in this form, as a direct familiar or helper, this work and the Witching it needs to manifest its transformation cannot be attained or completed.

The Game of Masks begins any time after the Omen was received. The Witch must retire to a private place with a deck of cards and a cloth to spread them on. Regular playing cards can be used, but Tarocchi or Tarot cards can be substituted easily enough.

The Witch must create four different smaller piles of cards. The first pile is called the Letter-pile, and it has 21 different cards. The Ace through 10 from any two suits will provide twenty cards, and the King of either of those suits will provide the 21st. Each of these cards represents a consonant of the alphabet, minus the five vowels.

The second pile is called the Mother-pile, and it has five different cards, which represent the five vowels. It is suggested that they be the Nine, Ten, Jack, Queen, and King of one suit.

The next pile is called the Mask-pile, and it contains thirteen cards; any thirteen will do; the Ace through 10 of any one suit, plus the Jack, Queen, and King will make thirteen. Each of these thirteen cards represents one of the Thirteen Powers the Un-World, which were explained in an earlier portion of this grimoire. They are as follows:


Ace: The Heathen

Two: The Whore

Three: The Rake, Outlaw, or Traveling Man

Four: God as Beast

Five: The Red Man or the Dark Man

Six: Round Shelters

Seven: Bog or Woods, and Toads

Eight: Deer in Rut or Deer in the Forest

Nine: Wolf, Fox, or Wild Beast

Ten: Crows/Ravens and Serpents

Jack: Owls

Queen: Anarchy

King: Darkness


The last pile is called the Pile of Visitors, and has seven cards- the Ace through Seven of the suit from which you took the Mother-pile would make this pile.

From these four piles- Letters, Mothers, Masks, and Visitors, you will discover the Mask that will be worn by the Other as it will appear to you in this working, what sorcerous current it will be channeling, what name it will use, and what "visitor" or second omen or sign will show its appearance in your life to alert you when to bring the spell into completion by advancing to the last phase of the operation.

One must begin with the Pile of Masks; light a candle and whisper a simple incantation to the Other, and draw three cards from that pile. The three cards will show three of the "Un-world" persons, beasts, locations, or concepts- from those three cards, the shape of the Other must be created. One must engage the imagination here- do not over-think it; just let the three images born from the mask-cards flow together into the form of a being. If you draw one of the "places", like the round-hut or the bog or woods, let the being inhabit that place. In the game of Masks, the Other will always appear as an anthropomorphic or human-like being, even if it has mostly animal features.

Also, while the "whore" is always a female being, and the "rake" always a male, the "Heathen" can be male or female- always follow your first instinct. Drawing the "Whore" and the "Rake" produces a female traveler or outlaw. Drawing "darkness" always puts the figure under a veil of night, extremely dark featured, such as solid black hair/fur, eyes and teeth, or radiating an aura of darkness. The "anarchic" quality gives not just a personality feature to the Other, but can allow for an unnatural addition to the natural forms that make its composite mask- extra eyes, mouths, or the like.




John Screecham draws an Ace, a Five, and an Eight- The Heathen, The Red Man or Dark Man, and the Deer in Rut or Deer in the Forest. The Other's masks combine: John's Other will appear to him as a Heathen Red Man from the wild Forest, covered in deer skins and wielding a crooked cudgel or stave covered with deer-antlers. John sees him in his mind's eye as a grinning, wild creature dashing through the forest, wielding the staff of deer-skulls and antlers like a great thorny scepter.

Had he received the masks "whore, round shelter, darkness", his Other might have taken the form of a lascivious, attractive woman lying in the dark inside of a round hut in the forest- had he drawn "wolf/fox/wild beast, owls, anarchy" his Other might have been a part-wolf, part-owl humanoid monster with a penchant for destroying any manifestation of law and order that it came near. Had he drawn "The Rake/Outlaw/Traveling Man, Owls, and Bog/Woods/Toads", he might have created in his mind a masked and tricorn-hatted highwayman with a toad's eyes and an owl perched on his shoulder, walking through a bog.

Any combination is possible; one must let the Other create the vision inside them. The more sinister the Mask-born being is, the better, for it is a herald of the Otherness. If you receive "God as Beast" as a mask, the image created must bear the marks of a heathen God- crowned with horns or winged, mighty or awe-inspiring in aspect, or perhaps radiating some halo or light, though the animal features must be present.

Once the masks have been drawn, and the vision of the Other created in the mind, The pile of Visitors is placed before you, and you draw out one card- your visitor. Each of the seven visitor cards has a planetary alignment, as well as a "visitor"- something that intrudes from the "Otherness" into our world, to reveal to the Witch that the Other is ready for them to walk the Reversed Road- the next part of the working- and obtain the Witching that will give them the power to complete the work. The seven visitors are as follows:


Ace: Night (Saturn)

Two: Traveler (Mercury)

Three: Serpents/Toads (Moon)

Four: Owls/Crows/Ravens (Jupiter)

Five: Cats (Venus)

Six: Indian or African (Sun)

Seven: Sexual desire or Lust (Mars)


When you know what your "visitor" will be, you know when your working will proceed. If you draw Night, your visitor is the great night itself- the coming of darkness- which is, as we know, an intruder from the other side, which visits on a regular cycle. This is a fortunate card, for it means that on the night following the draw, the work must be done as it grows dark, or as the witching hour comes in that night. If you draw the Traveler, you must wait until you meet a traveling man or woman, and then work on the night of the day of the meeting.

As a rule, the visitor is never a common or normal part of your life. If you live near a road, the cars or people passing by are not "travelers" for the purposes of this omen. Omens can come in sleeping or in waking, and if they are in the form of people met in the waking world, those people will not know that they have been placed in your path because they are omens for you- the Unseen works through such circumstance without anyone but the Witch being aware. One must rely on the "burn" within- the sudden gripping feeling that the "omen" has been seen, to know when it has truly occurred.

One cannot intentionally find the omen- truck-drivers and haulers, for instance, are, indeed, traveling men, but you cannot set out to go to a truck stop and walk in, meet truckers, and think that the "traveling man" omen has been fulfilled. The same goes for the "Indian or African" Omen- if you yourself are Indian or African, you and your family or friends do not count as the omen; if your neighbor is Indian or African, they do not count either. In this case, you must understand that the appearance of the "dark skinned" man or woman will be an event that you realize is THE event, and it can never be something you sought out yourself, or completed by something that is a common part of your life- like, for instance, the Native-American men you see on your drive to work everyday.

In this case, the "Indian or African" Omen refers to any dark-skinned person who appears from the "outside" of your everyday life. They do not have to be Native American or African in heritage only; the omen refers to any non-caucasian person.

If your omen is an animal, you must wait until you see the animal in waking or in sleep, but you cannot claim the omen's fulfillment by intentionally visiting a place where you know the animal will be seen. Your own cat or your neighbor's does not count for the omen; but a strange cat appearing, would. It is poor form to sit outside, walking around, hoping to see an omen- one should go on with daily life, not thinking about it over-much, until the omen shows itself, either in this world or in a dream. Simply hearing a crow or toad is not enough, unless you hear it at an odd time- but hearing an owl is enough, so long as you weren't seeking out the sound when you heard it (by going to a place where you know an owls lives).

Two of the omens- Night and Sexual Desire or Lust- are the most fortunate, for when you draw Night, you know that your work will proceed within 24 hours, when the next evening comes, and if you draw Lust, your work will proceed the next time you feel a powerful sexual arousal- not one that you inspire in yourself through intentional action or intentionally placing yourself in a situation which you know will inspire it, but the next spontaneous arousal. When that arousal occurs- and goodness knows it occurs more often than not in most- the following evening is the time to proceed with the next portion of the work. For Lust, as we have seen, the herald of sexual force, is from the "outside"- it is a "visitor" in this sense, from the Unseen to human beings.

* * *

The draw of visitors shows a planetary ruler, and which current your Other will channel to you. This does not have to be the same current as your working. John Screecham draws a seven, Sexual Desire or Lust, and Mars- so his Other, the wild heathen red man dressed in the skins of deer and wielding antlers in the woods- is a martial figure, which helps John to understand the personality of his Other's appearance for this spell-work; martial personalities are fiery and aggressive. The next time John feels the flame of passion rise in his body, he will know that the Other is calling him to the next phase of the working.

John's working is Jupiterian in nature, but his other will be appearing under a Martial aspect. This is fine- it does not affect the outcome of the work. When the Other's planetary aspect does not match the working, the entire spell or working is called a "working of the gentry". When the planetary aspect of the Other DOES match that of the working-intention, it is called a "royal working", and has greater power.

The "planetary personalities" are as such: Martial is fiery and aggressive, or angry; Lunar is calm, detached, and very odd; Solar is observant, clear-eyed and energetic, Saturnian is dark, cynical, and cold; Jupiterian is strong, imperious and overbearing; Mercurial is mischievous and inclined to tricks and mayhem, and Venusian is hedonistic and quite seductive.




Now, there remain two piles- the Pile of Letters and the Pile of Mothers or Vowels. You must discover the sorcerous Name that your Other will be invoked under for this work. First, determine how many letters the name will contain by drawing a single card from the Mother-pile. Here are the results:


Nine: Six letters- Three consonants and three vowels, a vowel coming first

Ten: Five letters- Three consonants and two vowels, a consonant coming first

Jack: Four letters- Two consonants and two vowels, a consonant coming first

Queen: Five letters- Three consonants and two vowels, a vowel coming first

King: Six Letters- Three consonants and three vowels, a consonant coming first


To generate the name, shuffle the letter pile and draw out the number of consonants you need, and lay them out from left to right. The 21 cards in the letter pile are associated with one of the 21 consonants of the alphabet- associate them as you will, so long as each card is associated with one letter. Always draw the number of consonants you need; there are never any redundant consonants in the word.

When you know what the consonants are, you place a random vowel from the mother-pile between each- or one first, if the name begins with a vowel. For illustration, if one divined a five letter name with a consonant first, and drew D...R...N from the consonant deck, the vowels should certainly go between the D and R and between the R and N. When you draw the vowels, draw one at a time and replace the card into the Mother pile, so that the possibility of the same vowel appearing again in the name exists. In this example, an "O" was drawn for the first space, the O was returned to the deck, and a "U" was drawn for the last- making the name DORUN. If it had been a name of five letters with a vowel first, it would have been ODURN.

In any name that has a vowel first, the final letters may be consonants that don't seem to work- if you had a five letter name with a vowel first, and drew H...J...K, and then got two U's for vowels, you would get UHUJK. In this case, you must place a final vowel between the J and the K which is derived from the one before it- in this case, U. You would use the vowel that comes before U in order, which is O- making the name UHUJOK. The vowels make a circle, so the vowel that comes "before" A would be U. (AHAJK would have become AHAJUK).

If you had a five or six-letter name (let's go with six for this example) and drew D...T...H, and then gained the vowels A... O... I, the name yields DATOHI- but in the case of T and H being drawn, you can choose- if you like- to collapse them into the "TH" character, and choose to ignore the final vowel, yielding DATHO. This rule also applies to the RN combination- drawing H...R...N and the vowels I...O would yield HIRON, but can be collapsed to HIRN. This too, is your choice. This rule is only for SH, TH, RN, CK, and CH splices. It does not matter which order the SH, TH, RN, CK, or CH was drawn- if you drew Y...H...T and got two A's for vowels, it would normally yield YAHAT- but you can collapse it to YATH if you prefer, even though the H came before the T.

"Y" may sometimes be drawn as the last letter of a name. It works well, usually: if you divined a five-letter name with the vowel first, and drew B...Z...Y, and got E and O as the vowels, it yields EBOZY, which is a final name.

John Screecham divines a five letter name for his Other's masquerade, and draws D...H...C from the Letters deck, and then an A for the first space and a U for the second- yielding DAHUC. John drew an H and a C, and could have collapsed the name to DACH, but his intuition tells him not to. His Other's mask is now fully known: John's Other will appear to him, for this work, as a Heathen Red wild man in the forest, draped in deer-skins and wielding an antlered staff, of Martial character, named DAHUC. The very forces of lust from within him and the unseen will come, soon, to draw John to the next part of the work.

But in the meantime, John must spend as much time as he can alone, visualizing DAHUC as he has imagined him, crashing through the woods, and making whispered incantations to the Other as DAHUC- for DAHUC is his doppleganger, playing with a mask and a mask-name. The Witch who performs this work must have a powerful, clear image of the Other under this mask. That same witch might also create a sigil of the name of the Other which was generated by this game- and meditate on it as well, to deepen the connection.


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All Text, aside from given citations, is Copyright © 2009 by Robin Artisson
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