Sunday, February 20, 2011

What I learned about Magic This Week

Jason mentioned that Gordon hasn't done any "What I learned from Magicians this Week," probably because he's been too busy dealing with some shit in his life, either good shit or bad shit, or just the standard ordinary bull shit. That happens to online people occasionally, we get things happening in meatspace that unplugs us for indeterminate interludes.

And I've been dealing with too much of the latter category of shit to really spend a lot of time reading and learning from other magicians, although I did learn that I was right all along about the use of the term "Energy Work" last week; it's got so many meanings to different people in different contexts that it's useless to even use the term. But it's interesting to learn what you can about people from their different interpretations of the phrase.

Oh, and another thing... I wanted to mention that the spectrum I put up with Jason on the left and Balthazar on the right in terms of syncretism had no "bad" side, and that the use of the word "rational" in the center didn't mean to imply that anyone further left or right was any less rational. I just meant it to mean that in the center you weigh everything against the extremes before syncretizing carefully. Jason in his position on the far left would still be doing his syncretizing rationally, he would just be more comfortable working with multiple traditions than I would be. And the main point was it reflected my opinion of where people were at in their personal approaches to sycretizing traditions.

And I think syncretization is a good thing, and anyone who can operate in the Pure Chaos realm is equally entitled to and deserves respect for being able to handle that much at once. I get thread-processing errors often enough from "straight" Hermetics, because it's as far from straight or pure as you can get. I couldn't function the way Jason does, but that's ok because I'm not Jason. The spectrum thing was only supposed to be a reflection of a person's comfort level in terms of what they can plug together and make work in harmony. I can handle Greek, Roman, Hebrew, and Persian influences mingling under the proto-Christian banner, but only because the parts that work together do so in a harmony I can relate to.

Ok, enough of that. The thing I learned this week in magic is for those who have been working on getting K&CHGA, or the Supernatural Assistant, or who have been working with the Three Fold Keeper of a Man, or who has received a Solar Assistant, or the Agathosdaimon or whatever. There's a part of the Stele of Jeu that Crowley made into the rubric in Liber Samekh that makes for an awesome all-purpose conjure rite that brings fast luck, nearly instant wealth, opportunity, blessing, and uncrossing. Here's a sample for getting some moneys when you need it quickly:


Come thou forth, and make all Spirits subject unto Me so that every Spirit of the Firmament, and of the Ether, upon the Earth and under the Earth: on dry Land, or in the Water: of Whirling Air or of rushing Fire, and every Spell and scourge of God, may be obedient unto me!

Now, all you Spirits subject unto me, bring me the money! Cash, piles of gold, overflowing! Let my purse not be empty, let my bank accounts remain black, open my eyes to the opportunities you will provide, and above all, bring me cash and coin and checks and money, without harm, injury, or stress to myself or any that I love. I'll do the Work, you make straight the way.
Agathosdaimon! See to it!


See? Easy as pie. Worked great for me to get rid of some bad juju I stepped in while cleansing a client.

Which brings up another thing I learned about Magic, that Mexican curses by the brujos y brujas is some bad-ass shit! In taking apart a multi-layered curse that was also hidden from casual divination, I learned a lot about layering your efforts on a matter. You can design a web of aspects to a rite that affects multiple people simultaneously so they are all characters in a story, each carrying out actions prompted by what looks like a minor hexing if taken individually, but turns out to be a massive curse when you see its effects start coming together. It was a work of art, man, and getting rid of it was literally exhausting. I slept for 12 hours plus naps for a couple days this week just recuperating. I did some Solar Work to revitalize today, and that's helped a lot.

But man, these magicians don't play. They have integrated the things Jason teaches about in his Strategic Sorcery courses and his book Sorcerer's Secrets in a massive way. Hats off to the brujos, man. Respect. Cleaning that mess up was, as a friend warned me, hard!

9 comments:

  1. Dear Fr RO,

    Welcome to the group of those who have dealt with these brujos...they're heavy but not invencible; their speciality is fuck people's life at any price.

    I would you to do some research on Catemaco, is a Mexican city where their main industry and economic activity, is brujeria!

    VL

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  2. hey Daddy-o, the word energy is no more or less useful than the word "Spirits".

    Think about how many facets each has.

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  3. Very interesting! Now will that little part actually work if you haven't gotten in contact with your Agathadaimon as of yet?

    I've been using the Liber Samekh for a while now (per the instructions in Sorceror's Secret, but am still working on that connection.

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  4. @Jason: I think spirits is useful though, it cranks things up to a higher level, like "non-physical entities" does, but with a more traditional vibe. When you talk about spirits, you can be referring to the dead, angels, demons, or genii loci, and it generally means about the same thing, a non-physical assistant who has access to a specific skill set you wish to work with.

    "Energy Work" can mean anything from prayer and meditation to the transformation of the body of light to astral play to the channeling of specific forces. To me, those are three related but very different practices requiring specialized tech that is different in each circumstance.

    Spirit work, on the other hand, is always conjure work. Conjure rites are all based on the same tech.

    I liked your definition of "energy work" best, it matched most closely with what immediately comes to mind when I think of "energy work."

    It could be a matter of semantics, with me talking about my linguistic preferences as if they were "best." I do think they are the best, but I recognize that they are best for me.

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  5. I do quite a bit of uncrossing and reversal work for clients and I'm with you. Brujos are pretty damn skilled crossing up and cursing people.

    I find they have a tendency of attaching muertos to people.

    Neat little trick you can try is mix some Saltpeter with Reversal incense and set this on a link and set that sucker on fire. It has a great way of knocking the mess back in the brujo's face.

    In my humble opinion when it comes to curses and destruction then nothing beats old fashioned rootworkers, or paleros. Rootworker's will not only cross you up but they know how to entangle the work in such a fashion that it makes it damn hard to uncross.

    And Paleros pack a mean punch too. I was enganged in a drawn-out spiritual conflict with a palero who was targetting this young lady by sending spirits to accost her while she slept. She would get physical brusies, cuts, and even felt sexually violated.

    It took me a good 5 weeks to undo the entire mess, but in the end i hit him with his own crap so hard that it gave him a nervous break down that left him in the hospital. Messy business going up against other practitoners.

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  6. Oddly, I never ever use the term "energy work". I have specific practices that I think of in very specific terms and call by very specific names.

    When I use the AMORC techniques for manipulating forces conducted by the body to rebalance another person, that's called "contact healing". When I project vibrations or images to other people to influence them in one way or another, that's called distant influence or thought projection. When I consciously run forces through my body to improve my vitality, that's chi kung.

    The list goes on. There are many things I do that involve manipulating of forces, but I would never use the fuzzy expression "energy work" because I've never learned any technique that has that name. I prefer to be very specific about what principles I am working with and what I am doing with them. Maybe that's the biggest problem with these terms. What comes to mind is when someone says they will send someone else "positive thoughts" or "positive energy". I shudder when I hear that.

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  7. You certainly hit the nail on the head with regard to the art of brujeria, RO! A mediocre worker's bad juju can be detected before it really causes major damage through unhappy dreams, omens, readings or whatever.

    A skilled worker, however, will hit you like a ton of bricks without warning and even then it can be hard to make sense of what is happening because it is so stealthy and confusing.

    If I do detect something on a client, I do an additional reading on the possible outcome of getting involved for myself before committing because some forms of bad juju I will never mess with. Usually my quadro will warn me me it's too hot for me.

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  8. I am curious
    Did you work on the brujos magic in the informational level (by Jason), in the higher astral, with the help of your agathadaimon, traveling through the spheres...

    I think the brujos usually work more on the material level, so I don´t know how are their philotic links in the astral...

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  9. I'm with yuzuru on this one, I'd love to know how a Hermeticist deals with materia-based curses.

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