It's this or nothing.

As I was meditating one day, the Spirit descended upon me and took me up into the heavens, whether in body, or in a dream, I do not know.

In the Workshop, I saw my Brother overseeing a manifestation of Plague. It was time for the new pandemic to be rolled out, under the supervision of the appropriate spirits of  Saturn and Venus.

"It's going to kill millions of people," I said, and my Brother looked up at me.

"Yes, it is."

"But why? Why like this? That's going to hurt, and leave families without children, children without parents, and it's going to hurt the poor worse than the rich. It's not fair to any of them."

Gently, he sighed, and got that look he gets when he's going to tell me something I won't like, agree with, or understand.

"They have to die."

He just looked at me. His face is always so compassionate. He knows what it means to be human, mostly cut off from our birth-right, yet still conscious enough to be aware of the disconnect. He knows I don't see the beginning and the end the way he does.

"Like this?" I asked.

"Yes. Exactly like this. It has to happen."

"Why? You're God, or close enough for it not to matter any more. You can let them live and find their deaths of old age. What could happen if you just had mercy and spared us from this stupid plague?"

"This," he said, and took me over to a corner of the workshop that seemed dustier than the rest. He sat me on a stool and sat across from me. "Close your eyes."

He's totally done this before. It's a vision trip, where he shows me shit that I can't understand in words.So I know what to expect; he's going to show me a future with too many people, or something to justify the horrors this disease will cause.

Instead, all I see is nothing. Deep nothing. Nothing without even anything to compare it to, no way to know it is nothing. Nothing. No eyes to see, no me to look through eyes, even if they were there, nothing for my brain to process, no brain to process with. Nothing. Empty.

"See?"

"I didn't see anything," I said.

"Right." My blank stare spoke volumes.

"Look," he said. "Remember the sign on the Boot Hill Saloon?"

(The Boot Hill Saloon is a bar in Daytona across the street from the old Boot Hill cemetery, where outlaws and the destitute were buried.)

"You're better off here than across the street?"

"Yeah."

"That's the big mystical secret? It's this or nothing?" There was a brief pause, and I heard laughter in the distance. "Nothing's a hell of a lot better than unleashing this disease and suffering!"

He returned my gaze without flinching for a long moment, and when he had my full attention again, he simply said one word.

"Really?"

Cthulhu Comments

So Cthulhu was reading the comments on my blog today, and he saw Wind's comment "it makes me wonder... you attained your HGA some time ago and you're just figuring out that you want to serve mankind now? Maybe the path ain't what I thought it was."

"Mlaroeognhchth!"

"Yeah," I said, "I get that all the time."

"Granachlethtulku?"

"Nah, I'll just write a blog post."

"Ng yalthkaz ruek."

"Heh, yeah, I know, right? But I'll just put it in English my way. It's not so messy."

This is one of the reasons I started writing the blog and eventually got around to starting the Supernatural Assistant course. The fact is, the path isn't what a lot of people think it is. The HGA isn't instant enlightenment. It isn't a path to becoming compassionate and wise and everything you think a spiritual guru or enlightened Master is supposed to be. It's nothing like the point of Eastern Mysticism at all.

The HGA is primarily a spiritual assistant. It's got the powers of a lot of the entities from the Lemegeton, entities largely considered "demonic." It also has the power to bring you entities often considered Demonic. It's also a straight and direct line of communion with your Source. It's also a powerful motivator and Teacher, a Guide that can direct you to spiritual wisdom and the whole guru thing. It can help you attain compassion and service to others, if that's your purpose in life.

But it's not a given. Just because you can talk to your HGA doesn't mean you will. Just because you can have it make troops appear to frighten off your King's enemies doesn't mean you'll ever be in a position to need that.

The primary goal of the HGA is to help you do more magic. More magic causes spiritual transformations that may lead to compassion, or it may lead to wisdom, or it may lead to wealth, or something like that. But there's no guarantee, and above all, it's not a process that happens over night.

I started out an asshole who literally hated people. Misanthropist barely describes the hate I felt for "other people." After years of doing magic with my HGA, I have changed. I generally get mildly annoyed by people now, and even then I recognize that whatever's annoying me is only temporary, and does not mean I need to write off that person entirely because one area of their life is annoying to me. I've learned that I don't need to curse people, because their lives are usually pretty shitty, and that's why they're acting so annoying. I've learned I don't have to be a dick, all the time.

I'm not a perfectly compassionate, lay-down-my-life-for-a-friend kind of guy. I still want to do things for me, regardless of the impact it has on others. I have a hard time getting out of bed and doing a load of dishes or laundry when my wife's sick. I'd rather play video games than mow the lawn. I'd rather have a ton of money than have to earn it. I still see people do stupid things and think, "God! How flippin' STUPID!" and feel better about myself because I'm so not-STUPID.

I'm petty and mean, sometimes. There are days when I regret ever writing this blog, ever trying to help people, ever starting the path of the Great Work. There are days that I hate the responsibility that comes with it, and frankly, there are days when I ignore the responsibility that comes with it.

But I've progressed a great deal, in my own estimation, from where I used to be. I hear it from others as well, that I've shown growth in understanding aspects of the path I'm on that they thought I'd never achieve.

The bottom line is that the HGA doesn't make you perfect, it makes it easier to approach perfection. But that's not it's primary function at all. It's primarily there to aid you in performing magic, magic that is intended to create the world. There are things that need to be created on the planet that aren't going to be fun for everyone that participate, things that will hurt, maim, and kill. Conjure a daimon to help your brother in a battle in Afghanistan, and you're helping to kill Taliban-believing humans. For what? To protect your brother? What makes your brother special compared to the Taliban?

But that's what the spirits are there for. We're supposed to be concerned about this level of "petty" human interaction. Why would God create a spirit that causes pustules and death if there weren't a time that pustules and death were necessary?

We don't take on a flesh suit and manifest as human beings so that we can transcend being human, or so that we can attain an understanding that makes us more than human. We do it to be fully human. We aren't supposed to be perfect. If we were supposed to be perfectly good and do only the "right" thing all the time, we wouldn't have bothered being human in the first place.

Yeah, I found out I like helping people. The interesting part to me was that I enjoy it. I mean, I'm really fulfilled by doing it. I've helped people before, but in general I usually resent having to help people. I would rather help myself. I've never felt so happy about it, I've just sort of felt it was a necessary burden, an obligation to pass things on that I didn't have a lot of choice in. I've always looked at the Hierophant thing as a burden, not a joy. I've said before, "I do it because I gots to, Mister!" It's true, too, I do have to.

What's surprising to me is that I'm enjoying it too. I'm actually having fun.

An interesting observation

I realized something about myself today. I'm totally happy helping people. I mean, I'm actually fulfilled by this shit. I like teaching, I like it a lot. I like writing books that help people do magic. I like giving people access to the power to change the world. It makes me feel happy. It makes me feel good.

Helping people is fun; who knew?

About that curse on the book...

The "curse" on the book is just for pirates stealing my work and putting it out on the web intentionally depriving me of income off my work. There's little chance that you'll accidentally trigger the curse by saving the book to a thumbdrive, or even letting a your friends read copies. I consider that "fair use." The curse is directed at anyone loading anything I write up to a torrent or file-sharing service that is geared to spreading the information for free to millions of members or just your average web surfer.

It's also aimed only at the person that uploads the material. I think the sites that provide the service with the intent to rip off writers are deplorable, but most file sharing sites are providing the service with good intentions. I respect those who make the Great Work accessible to more people. I just don't want my stuff given away until I've been dead for at least 25 years.

After that, it's fair game.* I think I'll put that in my will. I want people to ...

Oh my god. I just realized I'm talking about leaving my stuff for posterity. I'm not as arrogant as I may seem, really.

Ok, maybe I am. Maybe I do think the stuff being written today by people like me and Jason Miller and Patrick Dunn and many of my up and coming blogger friends is going to change the world and make it a better place for magicians to live in. We're doing the magic, changing the face of the world a little bit, one reader at a time. I am proud of that, proud of being a part of it.

This is the best time in history to be an occultist, ever. We have access to so much more, and our generation of magicians have left the armchair for good. I don't think there were this many practicing magicians with Knowledge and Conversation with their Holy Guardian Angels ever before on Earth. And we have access to their materials, their experiences, their Work online that no magician in history has had.

It's fabulous, really.

*Not until I'm dead for 25 years, or I'll haunt you myself.

Lesson 1 Available

For those who signed up for the course, Lesson 1 has been posted and is now available.

As I developed it, the structure for the whole series of courses came together. Each is a progression from the one before, and each covers a part of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes. I'm calling the course series The Red Work.

The Red Work series of courses is designed to take the magician through these phases of the Alchemical Work allegorically.

In Course 1, Acquiring a Supernatural Assistant, we will go through the Black and White phases, applying the Heat of the Sun to a crucible in the Moon, drawing out the imperfections and other negative qualities that distract us from the Work, and preparing us to perform the next phases of the Work.

Course 2: Hermetic Merkavah picks up the Green and Red Works. During the Green phase, the magician undergoes a series of initiations into the celestial spheres of the planets and fixed stars. You begin a technique of traveling through the spheres, and receiving spiritual attunements that bring you into harmony with the spheres around you. During the Red Work phase, you’ll be learning to apply the powers and lessons obtained in the Celestial spheres in the mundane world. Early efforts are clumsy, and there’s a learning curve involved, but the awkward stage is mercifully brief. By this phase, you’ve learned to learn, a skill that mitigates all challenges.

Course 3: Goety begins the Projection phase. In this phase, I’ll be going over the ways to conjure the spirits that I discuss in the Modern Goetic Grimoire. This style of magic focuses on working primarily with the Terrestrial Spirits, the spirits of Nature, the Elements, and the Genius Loci, or spirits of place. It touches on working with our ancestors, and other entities of the recently (and not-so-recently) dead brothers and sisters. It also addresses working with the daimonic spirits of the Lemegeton’s Goetia. 

While I strongly urge everyone to take them in order, or at least have accomplished the goals of the previous lessons before beginning the next, each course is independent, and you are not required to have taken either of the other 2.

On a second track, I'm going to develop the Neo-Platonic Basics into a full-blown system that makes use of the series of initiations acquired through the other courses. It'll be the system that puts a consistent framework around the information in Agrippa, and it'll teach the practical applications of Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy.

But that won't be until the The Red Work courses are complete.