1.1 - Neo-Platonic Cosmology: How it all started

The best encapsulation of the neo-platonic creation story that I've found is in the second book of The Divine Pymander by Hermes Trismegistus. (Check wikipedia for his story.) It's simple and to the point. Christians like myself can identify enough parallels to feel at ease in it, and pagans can find enough other gods that they feel at home too. It's a good little catch-all, and that makes sense when you study its history. Which I won't get into here. Lots of debate around that, and I'd rather get to the point.

My understanding of the Creation is summarized below. There's a lot I'm omitting for the sake of brevity, but I'm trying to include the required pieces to to lay the foundation.

In the beginning was essential God-the-Progenitor, dwelling in perfect darkness. In that perfect darkness, God still and always resides. By its nature, it radiates infinite pure light. In The Divine Pymander, Hermes Trismegistus is given a vision of the creation of the material realm. Within the infinite light appeared a great darkness, smoking as if it were on fire. Out of the infinite Light leaped a "certain holy Word" and that Word joined itself to the dark mass of Matter that came into being. When this holy Word entered the darkness, it separated into four realms. Fire leaped up highest to be closest to the infinite light, followed by Air, which seemed to hang between the Fire and Earth-Water below.

Next, God created a Workman. This guy created seven governors, each with their own sphere, surrounding the realm of Matter. When he did, the Word leaped up and cohabited with the Workman. This being then set the spheres in motion, and the natural world began creating animals and plants.

Meanwhile, God made Man in Its image. Man was the honored and beloved "brother" of the family. Eventually, after a lot went down (!), Man entered the physical realm, containing a spark of infinite God within, and yet also loving and being loved by Nature. We're of two natures, mortal and immortal.

The Spark of the Divine within is what gives us "authority" overt the elements, and the seven governors. We're coworkers though, not masters and slaves.

Ptolemy laid out the basic cosmology of the NP system. the center sphere is the sphere of Earth, surrounded by the sphere of Water, then Air, then Fire. Then there are the seven Spheres of the Governors. Each of these spheres is associated with one of the seven planets of classical astrology, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Around these are the "fixt stars," whose influence is primarily felt through the planetary governors. Beyond the stars is the realm of eternal light, and sitting in eternal divine darkness, radiating the light outwards and willing existence is the Primum Mobile, God.

The following image displays the basic cosmology of the NP system:

As you can see, there's a hierarchy involved. Each successive sphere heading "outward" brings you further from the realm of matter and closer to the realm of God. This is the structure brought to Creation by Logos, the "holy Word" created or uttered by God-the-Progenitor.

Neo-Platonic Basics

I'm in a bit of a quandary. I've been Working with this syncretic Judeo-Christian/Neo-Platonic system for a while now, based almost entirely on the the Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Agrippa. I've been reading Plato's Timaeus, Plotinus' Enneads, and Hermes Trismegistus' s The Divine Pymander, and it's all been percolating into a pretty strong brew within my sphere. When I hit the epiphany the other day, I was convinced it was a Universal Truth. I still think it is, but the general responses I'm getting are telling me that it's not making the kind of impact it had on me. In general, I've gotten a "yeah, ok" response, when this is the Key to Everything! Well, at least I think it is. For me, definitely, and I don't see anything that would indicate it wouldn't be the Key to Life, the Universe and Everything in a much more more meaningful way than "42."

So, with that in mind, I'm going to be posting a series of NP basics so the foundation of the system I'm working with is documented somewhere. I see another book in my future. Distant future. :)

So here's the planned outline:

1.0 - Overview Sections:

• 1.1 - NP Cosmology: How it all started
• 1.2 - The Harmony of the Spheres
• 1.3 - Spirits: Why we Work with 'em, How we Work with 'em
  
• 1.4 - Why we're here: The Great Work in a NP Magical System
• 1.5 - While we're here: The Great Work in Action

2.0 - Practical Sections:

• 2.1 - The Lamp
• 2.2 - About those Planets...
• 2.3 - The Joys of Making Talismen
• 2.4 - Elemental Kings
• 2.5 - Spirit Pots
• 2.6 - Them pesky demons are at it again...
• 2.7 - The Genius and the Evil Daimon

3.0 - The Glyph

• 3.1 - Putting it all Together: The Altar Layout Revisited
  
• 3.2 - Using the Glyph in Practice

That should cover everything. Along the way, I'll probably have other posts to make about some pet projects. I've started making my Genius/Evil Daimon... thing. Yeah, I'll get to details on that later.

Holistic Wholeness and Perfect Goodness

Good news, everyone, I got it! I mean, I got it. I really got it.

I had an epiphany last night and early this morning. I'll try not to
wax all mystical and ecstatic on it, but it was beautiful. It made
sense of everything. Literally, everything. Birth, life,m death, struggles, woe, time, death, eternity, bliss, joy, it all wrapped up together around 4:30 a.m. in the following. The glyph is the key, ultimately.

I'm not getting into the boring details at the moment, I'm just going to summarize. I posted this to Ritual Magick, so if you've been there, you'll be wasting your time unless you want to hear me talk more about it. You should be working on this shit. I'll be coming down with a minor messiah complex for a few days, but I DID do some conjuring in the name of Messiah at daybreak, so hey, what can you expect?

Anyway, the result of my moment is the following layout for the altar:

In the center, you place four sealed vessels that have the spirits
of the Four Kings of the elements bound within, each in their
appropriate quadrant:

• South - Mahazael, sealed with the name Uriel
• North - Azael, sealed with the name Gabriel
• West - Azazel, sealed with the name Raphael
• East - Samael, sealed with the name Michael

Make sure you seal these demons in using something that you can let
them out if you need them later in your existence, but you want them
sealed unless they are actively performing something you've told them
to do.

Around these four sealed vessels, you place the following talismen
in their appropriate quadrant:

• South - Uriel~Ariel Talisman
• North - Gabriel~Tharsis Talisman
• West - Raphael~Cherub Talisman
• East - Michael~Seraph Talisman

These talismen should NOT use the seals of the angels as attributed
in other grimoires. These are the four elemental Kings, not the
Archangels of the planetary spheres that share the same names. To
get the appropriate seal, conjure each of the Elemental Kings
separately.

Beside each of the Elemental Kings' talismen, place the appropriate
elemental weapon. The wand in the East, the Cup in the North, the
Knife in the West, and in the South your own personal seal.

You now have two circles on your altar, the infernal circle in the
center, and the elemental circle around that. These two spheres
*are* the material realm, and at the exact same time they *are* your
personal Sphere as a magician.

Starting in the South, place 7 planetary Talisman in the following
order clockwise, 51.429 degrees apart (give or take a hundredth of a
degree):

• Moon
• Venus
• Jupiter
• Mercury
• Saturn
• Sun
• Mars

These are the seven spheres that surround the magician's sphere.
These create the table of practice.

That's the physical manifestation of the Key. The Lamp should be
placed outside this circle to the east. The Divine Darkness that
Dionysius the Areopogate is outside the light.

The altar is now complete.

This is what mine looks like:

As you can see, I'm using the four elemental kings of the Tarot as temporary placeholders for Michael, Uriel, Raphael, and Gabriel.

Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism

I recently received an interesting link from someone in a comment to my post concerning the Guf.

For those readers who are interested in more traditional interpretations of the QBL than you'll ever see here, you might find his blog interesting. Especially those members of Alchemical College that are talking about Adam Kadmon at the moment.

Angelic Grimoire is now Available

Goodish news, I've finally gotten fed up with the Angelic Grimoire writing project. Therefore, a nice little manual that covers the basics of conjuring an angel of the planets is now available. For a limited time, I'm sending it out in PDF format for free. After I've gotten some feedback on it from the sample audience, and when I'm ready to face it again, I'll publish an updated version and start charging for it.

So, if you want a free draft, let me know, and I'll email it to you. If you're interested, drop me a line at frredactumopus@gmail.com.

Dealing with the Guf - Reclaiming Moments of Horror - A Follow-up

Someone asked me to follow up on the "Dealing with the Guf" post. Basically, the technique I talked about was successful. If you have excruciatingly embarrassing moments that you want to get over, try the following:

1. Meditate. Clear your mind. Do whatever it is you do when you're stilling the waves of your mental sea.

2. Contemplate your source. This takes knowing who you are and what you are. I know very well that I am an incarnated spark of raw divinity in its purest form. Knowing that I came from God, and ultimately will return to God, I'm able to get in touch with and commune with this spark of my Self.

3. Knowing your race and value, knowing that you are of the race of God, and have the value of God itself, begin to remember the moment that imprinted the embarrassment that haunts you. Remember it in detail. Think about what happened. Then remember your race and value. Relive the moment while retaining conscious knowledge of your race and value. View it from the perspective of eternity.

4. Repeat as necessary. It took me two full sessions like this to overcome the anxiety attacks that came when I remembered my folly. After that, I slept fine. Thinking back to the moment now, I have peace. It really seems pretty funny.

It takes time to overcome years of thought patterns, but this method does eliminate the majority of the reactions quickly. I hope it serves you as well as it served me.

Kammael Rites

Greetings!

In the course of my rituals, I've created several talismen and lamens for use with the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals. Below you will find the Lamen of Kammael, and an image of my "Table of Practice" I use with the rit. I just put the crystal in the center and read the evocations while wearing the lamen.

As you can see, I wrote the names of God around the outer edges in the "Celestial Script" from Agrippa, but the text of the "grimoire" lists them in the Latin script. I just liked how it looked.

The Far-Reaching Aspects of Mars

Earlier today I made a Mars talisman, and then did some work with my HGA and the Sun, and I'm still flying a bit. Post-coital bliss, in a way.

But while it's all still fresh, I want to share a bit on the aspects of Mars-in-Sagittarius.

I had a long history of inappropriate displays of Martial energies. Especially when I got angry. I'm a Taurus, and all the stereotypical images that pop into mind when you think of a bull seeing red applied to me when I lost my temper. I'd snort, rant and rave, crush everything that stood in my way, and then when I calmed down, I was left to deal with the mess I'd made.

As a result, I was a bit wary in working with Mars. I didn't want to have any Martial energy coming into my sphere and triggering some kind of outburst. At the same time, I was eager to get that sphere integrated into my own, so it wouldn't manifest destructively. The solution, of course, is to work with the powers of Mars through the auspices of the HGA. Which I did do today.

I started with Kammael, archangel of Mars. I did a simple conjuration with my HGA and asked it to integrate the energies of Mars into my sphere. No problem, it said, and I began to behave more judiciously in my actions. That was neat. I also began to see conflict differently, whether in the wars in the middle east, or the politics in the workplace. I also began to stand up for things that I had earned, but in a diplomatic way.

Today I made a talisman of mars to use in my Table of Practice. I carved the Table of Mars from Agrippa's Book 3 on one side of a sheet of steel coated in tin. On the other side, I carved the symbol of Mars and the seals of the Intelligence and Spirit of Mars. It was similar to one I had made on paper a few months ago when Mars was in Scorpio. that talisman was made to use in vengeance-focused rituals. This one is designed to take advantage of Mars in Sagittarius, that is, using force, justice, and appropriate violence to make a better future. Mars is also well-aspected by Jupiter today, so there's an aspect of using violence under authority to accomplish necessary actions to build a brighter future. Al in all, a very useful talisman.

After making the talisman, I went on to make a talisman of the Sun, this one more of a lamen of Michael. While I was doing that, the powers of the sphere of Mars were still bouncing around in my sphere. My HGA and Michael used the time that I was focusing on drawing the seal to commune with me and reveal some aspects of the powers of Mars I hadn't recognized before.

Kammael, the archangel of Mars, is constantly monitoring me, directing the energies of Mars into my sphere at the levels that I require at any given time. Usually this is slight, but lately he's been TRYING to get my attention. There's been some spiritual business that I've been ignoring because it could easily reveal more character flaws in my self that I really would rather avoid dealing with.

So I've been irritable, mean-spirited, and generally argumentative. I see attacks where there are none, and I feel under pressure. After working with the spirits today, I can see where I need to direct the martial force in my life, and I feel totally psyched about it. Instead of seeming like a bother or something to avoid, it seems like a challenge. The thrill of victory is right around the corner.

That, I think, is the lesson I'm walking away with. There's more going on than a lesson from the spirits, of course, but this is a blog, after all, and the words are all I have to put it into in this particular forum. The point I learned today about the powers of Mars is that they empower you to achieve victory in any circumstance, not just for violence or revenge, but for Success. All the things you read about successful business plans, successful family management, successful parenting, all these things are aspects of the powers of Mars. Victory.