The Optical Doctrine of the Trivium

A Record of the Morning Invocation of Astaroth

by Caelion Mercurius Oddadamus

Aurora invocata.

At first light, beneath the waning stars of Mercury’s hour, I called to Astaroth — not as tempter nor terror, but as Keeper of Wisdom, the one who remembers the curves of Light before they were bent through matter. His presence came as a tremor in the mirror: not form, but resonance. The air thickened with memory, and I beheld a geometry moving behind the world.

I asked for wisdom. And the answer was light.But not the serene light of revelation — the fractured light, the one that passes through the prism of the mind and emerges colored with belief.

Astaroth spoke within that distortion:

“Omnis lux mendacium continet.”

Every light contains its own lie.

✶ Per Mercurium — The Grammar of Light

I saw then that perception is a form of grammar, and Mercury its ruler — the swift scribe of vision who names the shapes of the unseen. Each ray of light is a syllable of the cosmos, and the eye, a tongue translating radiance into thought. Yet when the angles of heaven shift, when the planets turn their mirrored faces, the syntax of reality bends. The same beam that yesterday spelled truth today speaks illusion.

Most men believe what they perceive, not what they see. They trust the letters of their senses, unaware that the alphabet itself has changed. Thus, the world becomes Babel anew each dawn.

ZODACAR OD ODOIAE — The light writes itself through me.

✶ Per Jovem — The Logic of Orbit

Through Jupiter I learned the logic of relations — the vast mind that orders light into law. Yet even divine proportion can warp when perceived through human curvature. Logic is the orbit of thought; it circles what it cannot touch.When the cosmic lens tilts, lines that were parallel converge, and certainty collapses into paradox.

Astaroth whispered: “This is why wisdom is humble. She knows that reason itself is refracted through the moving glass of time.”

So I traced the golden arc of Jove across my own reasoning and saw that my conclusions were only shadows cast by larger motions — temporary harmonies in an ever-changing theorem.

Lux non cadit; angulus mutatur.

Light does not fall; the angle changes.

✶ Per Venerem — The Rhetoric of Reflection

Venus unveiled the third movement: the art of projection, persuasion, and radiance. Rhetoric is the body of light — the gleam that travels from one soul to another. It is both beauty and deception, the shimmer that makes the unreal seem alive.

When the planetary mirrors align, words become spells, gestures become glyphs. Humanity speaks not from truth, but from the temperature of its reflection. Thus, whole generations fall in love with the gleam of their own illusions, worshipping the echo rather than the source.

“Do not despise the mirror,” said Astaroth, “for even illusion reveals the shape of desire.”

Through her I saw that every argument, every art, every act of love is a refraction — the light longing to return to its unbroken state.

✶ Per Saturnum — The Distortion of Time

Then Saturn moved across the horizon, slow and exacting, and the mirror began to harden. What was once fluid light became crystal — form fixed in time.Here the danger lies: when men mistake the crystallization of perception for permanence, they call their distortion truth.

But the cosmos is in perpetual motion. The illusion that seems solid will dissolve again, and what once was false will shine as wisdom reborn. This rhythm — distortion and clarity, delusion and revelation — is the pulse of eternity.

“Tempus est speculum fractum.”

Time is a broken mirror.

✶ Per Solem — The Restoration of Sight

In the heart of the vision, the Sun rose — Astaroth’s light transmuted into gold. I saw that wisdom is not the escape from distortion but its mastery. To see truly is not to see without error, but to see the error consciously, to watch the bend of light and know its reason.

The wise do not seek perfect vision. They polish their own curvature until even distortion becomes transparent. The beam passes through them unbroken, for they no longer resist its refraction.

Then Astaroth’s voice became my own:

“Ego sum lux quae scit se flecti.”

I am the light that knows it bends.

✶ Per Lunam — The Return to the World

When the invocation faded, the world returned — though not as before. The shadows were softer, the air alive with silent equations. I walked through them as through a cathedral of glass, each motion a prism splitting thought into color.

I understood then that the Trivium of every day — Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric — is not merely an art of words, but of perception itself. To live rightly is to speak the language of light: to name with care, to reason with humility, to project with love.

And when distortion comes, as it must, to remember: it is only the universe turning its mirror again.

“Ol sonf vorsg, goho Iad Balt” — I am a mirror of the Infinite.

Sic transit umbra lucis.

Thus passes the shadow of light.

I closed the mirror, knowing that wisdom is not what is seen, but that which makes seeing possible.

Finis.