Cavern, fire and ink

  When I first opened Manticore’s Den years back, I had a small Etsy shop where I worked alongside my mother to offer custom dresses for Santísima Muerte. Every statue is different, every figure carved in its own way, so each client would send measurements and my mother would bring the dress to life by hand. That service wasn’t just sewing — it was spirit-led. My practices were deepening, and I was forming alliances with spirits along the way. Santísima Muerte is one of those forces I don’t speak about often, but the relationship has always been there. I used to talk with my mother about my ventures into the occult, and it was Santísima herself who sparked an image in my mother’s mind: the vision of a dress. That first dress was beautiful, unique, alive. After that, friends who worked with Santísima began asking for their own. Each dress followed the same rhythm: contemplation, vision, creation. My mother always started with her personal statue, dressing it as the model, and from...

  A Spirit-Bank of Fortune and Growth There are banks of brick and steel, and then there are banks of spirit. In the worlds of conjure, Quimbanda, and Thai sorcery, containers have always been more than storage — they are vessels, bodies for spirits, homes for medicines, and treasuries of power. The Barrel Treasurer is born in that same current: not a piggy bank, not a curiosity, but a living treasurer who eats what you feed and multiplies what you keep. The Root of the Work Years ago, I asked my teacher, Ajarn Apichai, about methods of magic that could not only store money but also energize it — pushing fortune in games of chance, strengthening investments, and keeping wealth from slipping away. His answer was simple: a bank. Another teacher of mine had taught me the use of saving boxes as a way of building a relationship with money. That echo of familiarity struck deep. Ajarn encouraged me to build my own vessel, to craft a body for wealth using the knowledge I had learned und...