Hey all, Rose wrote up a field report on the results of the Daimon Trap thing I make for people's Evil Daimons. Basically, I make a talisman of the Evil Daimon in steel, binding it therewith the forces of Mars. Then I encase that in lead and bind it with Saturn. Then I put a Secret Seal of Solomon over the top of that. I've made a couple of these for people, and received private reports of their success in the lives of the recipients.
I didn't ask Rose to publicly make the field report, she volunteered, and I'm very grateful. I didn't know the back story at the time, I was just contacted about putting together the Daimon Trap, did a divination that indicated success, and went forward from there. It's neat to see how the work manifested in her life.
Head for the Red: The ongoing adventures and insights of a magician's attempts to accomplish the Great Work.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Ascension without Forgetion
In the previous post, I talked about The Current and Miracle Juice. I mentioned the Current flows across all times and space, popping up in different cultures as different practices and interpretations.No matter what node you go through, you find yourself in a strange spirit world, compared to the material world of the senses, and it's filled with all kinds of entities. You find spirits of animals and objects, spirits of the land, spirits of Gods and spirits of the dead. This land has its own topology, its own natural laws. There are regions of similitude that visitors from the lands of forgetful flesh would find on the other side, with spirits in harmony with the powers represented there.
The visitors came back and made maps of the spirit realm, calling it the Underworld in regions where caves revealed vistas of beauty and color, and spewed gasses that made you see things, or calling it Heaven in regions where the sky goes on forever and the night's stars are not obscured by humidity. In every culture we see the same kind of thing, a place populated by our dead, and various angels, or demons, or gods and their assistants.
In each culture, there are some living humans called to act as intermediaries to the denizens of this other world. Some of us have an affinity to that place while we're alive, and we talk to and work with tribes of the entities of that place, and we learn to manipulate the stuff of that world and this as a consequence of our travels and study in that world. Shamans and Goets, Magi and Prophets walked with angels and geniuses and deities, fought those spirits who dwelt in dark places and fed on the pain of the living, and passed on messages from the dead.
For over ten thousand years, we've been doing the same things with this stuff, in whatever ways we learned from our cultures or remembered vaguely from previous incarnations. Today we're still doing it the same way the shamans did it. Symbols and forms, chants, plants and trance, animal skins and viscera, minerals, aromas, and orations. We dream dreams and see visions, we sit in Silence and return to our Source, we speak the Word and create the World.
In a recent post, Jack spoke of a hidden tributary into the underworld, the river Mnemosyne, or Memory. Memory is important stuff. Through the lens of neoplatonics, we see that the point of what we call the Great Work is to remember who we are and where we come from. Reclaiming your divine Race and remembering your eternal Value. This is the route we take when we don't want to fall prey to the effects of that other river of the Underworld, the river Lethe, the river of forgetfulness.
You ever have those brilliant epic dreams that run for weeks at a time, or throughout your entire life, but when you wake up all you can remember are vague visions of huge dogs in battle armor, and that still makes sense somehow? And you know how we have to go into a trance to "recover" our past life memories, and even then there's a strong chance most of the memory is made up anyway? There's a veil of forgetfulness that we have to get through, or past, or over in some way to be able to remember what we experienced when we return to the realm of the senses.
I think the River Lethe is the spiritual representation of this forgetfulness. It speaks to the existence of some layer between the spirit realm and the sensate realm that makes us forget who we are and where we come from when we incarnate. You have to cross that barrier carefully to retain what you've recalled. Rituals and trance states are techniques we use to dampen its effects.
But there's another aspect of it that affects us in our Great Work. While we're in the flesh and moving up through the heavens, kickin' ass and takin' names, we go further into the realm, sometimes even to its Source. It's a long journey, and we spend more and more time there, and it gets more of our attention and becomes more real to us in many ways than the physical realm we live in. I think that's ok, to a degree, because the eternal realm is our true home.
But we can forget about the physical realm and all that's going on here if we aren't careful. That river Lethe works both ways. Part of the whole Kingdom thing I've been on about since April has been focusing on taking what we learn Above and applying it here Below. Using the Current to shape our world. The point isn't wealth, that's a consequence. The point isn't control, that's an understanding, a perspective. The point is being wholly whole, at home in both realms, aware on multiple levels of our reason for being here.
In fact, the point isn't even about two levels at all, it's about understanding there's one level, and parts of it seem one way while you're in them, and parts seem another way when you're in them, but it's still all on big thing flowing and twisting and turning and churning. Being whole, letting your actions here below be an expression of your actions up above.
I think in the process of learning, we spend a lot of time in the spiritual realms, studying, achieving, receiving, remembering. And it's probably a good thing too, because it takes a while to learn stuff. But eventually youremember where you're also at, in the physical world, and you take what you know about the nature of the world and use it to shape the things you experience. You join the physical and the spiritual to the chariot and get them to pull you to your destination, whatever that might be.
Friday, October 28, 2011
The Current
Ok, so Jake Stratton-Kent has done some phenomenal work in tracing back Goety through the mists of time in Geosophia and True Grimoire, excellent work I highly recommend you purchase and study these books, referencing them regularly. I think in historic context, it ranks right up there with Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy, and gives an insight into Agrippa that you just can't understand without integrating the worldview Jake reveals.
As I've been reading through them, I keep on getting this warm glow, and the hairs on my arms stand up. He tracks our history of magic back to the animistic beginnings that resemble Shamanism more than any other system, and pieces it all together from surviving historic documents. He then builds a story around the pieces of historic remnants that reveals a mystery about the current we Work with as magicians of every type.
The following graphic is my interpretation of this current we're working with, and how it's manifested in societies and cultures across time. I could throw on a bunch more nodes, but I think this is a good representation of what I'm talking about. It's one current that pops up again and again, putting on the faces and facets of the culture and time it's manifesting in.
I think of the current as Miracle Juice. It's what fuels all the miracles in all the religions, what condenses as self-aware Angels and Demons, Gods and Spirits with powers and realms and specialized spheres of influence. It's what provides the Heat in our internal spiritual Alchemical Process of the Great Work. It's the ecstatic state we feel, the force that shapes the Quintessence of existence. It is the Nous and the Logos and all the celestial, terrestrial, and chthonic spirits, all at once, including us. When we plug into it and direct it with our minds and bodies through symbol, word, and rite, it's that ecstatic thrill of being and moving in tune with the creation of the Universe, it's the power that flows through us and turns into what we experience, revealing the Nature of God, and the God of Nature.
In our various practices and approaches, we dip into the current at different points, through different interfaces. We go through whatever filters harmonize with our own preferences and experiences, but we tap into the same current. Jason used to accuse me of speaking about magic as if the way I did it was the only one true way, and in the exuberance of my successes, I may indeed have done so on occasion, inadvertently. I always understood at the core that what I was talking about was my interface with this current, and when I criticized other people's approaches, I was talking about how their interfaces are limited in some ways from accessing some aspects of the current. I'm sure equal criticisms can be offered about my own approach. They'd be wrong and naive, of course, but they could still be made.
But fundamentally, it's the same current. Each interface provides access to specific aspects of the current, and they can be mingled and adapted harmoniously in different ways to get more of the current. Even this is an interpretation, so take it with a grain of salt.
The current itself has no culture of its own, it touches on many cultures and manifests however it needs to in each. Root doctors, Goets*, Charismatic Christians, Sufi mystics and Victorian Ceremonial Magicians are accessing the same current to accomplish their miracles and synchronicities, they just access it through different nodes.
The nodes they use are like lenses, filtering out some aspects of the current, and focusing specifically on other aspects. Our practices, our approaches distill the Miracle Juice into the stuff we want it to be, and like any distillation process, the final taste is influenced by every step of the process along the way.
The current has no ethics. It is neither good nor evil, it simply is. Parts of it are light compared to other parts, which in turn seem dark. But this dualistic perception of the current is false. It's a lens we put on it to see different parts, but angels aren't always good, and demons are nice to little old ladies who live alone on the edge of town.
In the Astral Warrior's Handbook, I mention that in an astral combat, the magician stuck in dualism will be limited in what they can bring to a fight. What I meant by that is if you're an Angelic Hermeticist who only works with Archangels and their legions of spirits, or a Demonic conjurer who only uses the True Grimoire, or even a balanced Solomonic magician who's at home with Angels and Demons alike, you're still limited to Angels and Demons, supposedly "Light" or "Dark" spirits with whatever kinds of effects they're capable or comfortable manifesting.
If you've seen through the illusion of Light and Dark, recognizing that both are looking at the Current through different parts of a single lens, you're not limited to the constraints of the lens.
And ultimately, we all create our own lenses, our own nodes. Mine is mostly Hermetic, Neoplatonist, with a balanced relationship with the "terrestrial" and "celestial" spirits alike, while leaving the "infernal" spirits alone unless necessity demands. But it's hoodoo-ish too, and Catholic, and Charismatic Christian. There are necromantic aspects, Orphic aspects, and bits and pieces of Crowley and Thelema in there too. And there's even stuff that's been personally revealed to me by extra-galactic entities with more tentacles than Cthulhu. Shh.
We aren't limited by anyone else's lenses. Jack wrote about some of the objections people have made to his path over the years. In reading it, I was shocked to think people were really that naive and spiritually unaware, but then in the comments he explained a lot of those objections came from his youth, presumably from other youths. I hope. Because he's living in the land of stupids if they're still saying shit like that.
You can't judge other people's lenses. It's stupid. You can critique them, help those who are interested build better nodes that get them access to different concentrations of the Miracle Juice than they've got now, but only if they're interested. Otherwise, it's really none of your business.
And cultural appropriation issues... "This is my lens, you can't look through it because you're white/black/green/unholy/uninitiated/circumcised/uncircumcised..."
Some of that shit's valid, some of it's not. The current has no culture. As long as it's harmonious and gives me a better view of the current, I'll look through whatever lens I want to, because I love the Miracle Juice. I won't pretend I'm something I'm not, and I won't hack, slash, and burn for profit the holy traditions of people who give a shit about that kind of thing, but in my personal practice, it's all fair game.
* That's the Goets who are the goetic magicians. Read Jake's books for enlightenment on the proper usage of the terms. A Goet is a name for a type of believer who works with spirits of the underworld, which didn't used to just mean chthonic or dark, the Underworld contained the Celestial Heavens and all their denizens. I'm simplifying a lot. Jake tells it better.
As I've been reading through them, I keep on getting this warm glow, and the hairs on my arms stand up. He tracks our history of magic back to the animistic beginnings that resemble Shamanism more than any other system, and pieces it all together from surviving historic documents. He then builds a story around the pieces of historic remnants that reveals a mystery about the current we Work with as magicians of every type.
The following graphic is my interpretation of this current we're working with, and how it's manifested in societies and cultures across time. I could throw on a bunch more nodes, but I think this is a good representation of what I'm talking about. It's one current that pops up again and again, putting on the faces and facets of the culture and time it's manifesting in.
I think of the current as Miracle Juice. It's what fuels all the miracles in all the religions, what condenses as self-aware Angels and Demons, Gods and Spirits with powers and realms and specialized spheres of influence. It's what provides the Heat in our internal spiritual Alchemical Process of the Great Work. It's the ecstatic state we feel, the force that shapes the Quintessence of existence. It is the Nous and the Logos and all the celestial, terrestrial, and chthonic spirits, all at once, including us. When we plug into it and direct it with our minds and bodies through symbol, word, and rite, it's that ecstatic thrill of being and moving in tune with the creation of the Universe, it's the power that flows through us and turns into what we experience, revealing the Nature of God, and the God of Nature.
In our various practices and approaches, we dip into the current at different points, through different interfaces. We go through whatever filters harmonize with our own preferences and experiences, but we tap into the same current. Jason used to accuse me of speaking about magic as if the way I did it was the only one true way, and in the exuberance of my successes, I may indeed have done so on occasion, inadvertently. I always understood at the core that what I was talking about was my interface with this current, and when I criticized other people's approaches, I was talking about how their interfaces are limited in some ways from accessing some aspects of the current. I'm sure equal criticisms can be offered about my own approach. They'd be wrong and naive, of course, but they could still be made.
But fundamentally, it's the same current. Each interface provides access to specific aspects of the current, and they can be mingled and adapted harmoniously in different ways to get more of the current. Even this is an interpretation, so take it with a grain of salt.
The current itself has no culture of its own, it touches on many cultures and manifests however it needs to in each. Root doctors, Goets*, Charismatic Christians, Sufi mystics and Victorian Ceremonial Magicians are accessing the same current to accomplish their miracles and synchronicities, they just access it through different nodes.
The nodes they use are like lenses, filtering out some aspects of the current, and focusing specifically on other aspects. Our practices, our approaches distill the Miracle Juice into the stuff we want it to be, and like any distillation process, the final taste is influenced by every step of the process along the way.
The current has no ethics. It is neither good nor evil, it simply is. Parts of it are light compared to other parts, which in turn seem dark. But this dualistic perception of the current is false. It's a lens we put on it to see different parts, but angels aren't always good, and demons are nice to little old ladies who live alone on the edge of town.
In the Astral Warrior's Handbook, I mention that in an astral combat, the magician stuck in dualism will be limited in what they can bring to a fight. What I meant by that is if you're an Angelic Hermeticist who only works with Archangels and their legions of spirits, or a Demonic conjurer who only uses the True Grimoire, or even a balanced Solomonic magician who's at home with Angels and Demons alike, you're still limited to Angels and Demons, supposedly "Light" or "Dark" spirits with whatever kinds of effects they're capable or comfortable manifesting.
If you've seen through the illusion of Light and Dark, recognizing that both are looking at the Current through different parts of a single lens, you're not limited to the constraints of the lens.
And ultimately, we all create our own lenses, our own nodes. Mine is mostly Hermetic, Neoplatonist, with a balanced relationship with the "terrestrial" and "celestial" spirits alike, while leaving the "infernal" spirits alone unless necessity demands. But it's hoodoo-ish too, and Catholic, and Charismatic Christian. There are necromantic aspects, Orphic aspects, and bits and pieces of Crowley and Thelema in there too. And there's even stuff that's been personally revealed to me by extra-galactic entities with more tentacles than Cthulhu. Shh.
We aren't limited by anyone else's lenses. Jack wrote about some of the objections people have made to his path over the years. In reading it, I was shocked to think people were really that naive and spiritually unaware, but then in the comments he explained a lot of those objections came from his youth, presumably from other youths. I hope. Because he's living in the land of stupids if they're still saying shit like that.
You can't judge other people's lenses. It's stupid. You can critique them, help those who are interested build better nodes that get them access to different concentrations of the Miracle Juice than they've got now, but only if they're interested. Otherwise, it's really none of your business.
And cultural appropriation issues... "This is my lens, you can't look through it because you're white/black/green/unholy/uninitiated/circumcised/uncircumcised..."
Some of that shit's valid, some of it's not. The current has no culture. As long as it's harmonious and gives me a better view of the current, I'll look through whatever lens I want to, because I love the Miracle Juice. I won't pretend I'm something I'm not, and I won't hack, slash, and burn for profit the holy traditions of people who give a shit about that kind of thing, but in my personal practice, it's all fair game.
* That's the Goets who are the goetic magicians. Read Jake's books for enlightenment on the proper usage of the terms. A Goet is a name for a type of believer who works with spirits of the underworld, which didn't used to just mean chthonic or dark, the Underworld contained the Celestial Heavens and all their denizens. I'm simplifying a lot. Jake tells it better.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Astral Warrior Vortex Talismans: Halfway There
A couple of weeks ago, I offered the Astral Warrior Vortex Talismans for sale that I talked about in the Astral Warrior's Handbook. Four people leaped on the chance to purchase them at $45 each, which turned out to be a real bargain. Come to find out, the price of Herkimer Diamonds has gone way, way up since the last time I bought them. Nevertheless, a deal's a deal. That'll teach me to check costs BEFORE setting prices in the future.
Lesson learned, prices updated.
Here's the first batch sitting in the consecrated bowl:
You can't really tell because the water is clear, but there's a layer of water over them. The water is Moon Water, purified water that was consecrated to the Moon on a Full Moon by the Intelligence and Spirit of the Moon. I made up a batch on the Super Moon night, but my wife dumped it out. I still get a little angry when I think about it, so I try not to.
This Moon water was from the last Full Moon. I made it on a Monday night, technically the day before the Full Moon, but she was bright and beautiful, and it was a Moon day, and a Moon hour, so I took advantage of the situation.
The bowl is silver plated, and I engraved the seal of the Inteligency of the Intelligence of the Moon in the bottom, the Seal of the Moon from the Table of the Moon on the inside top, and the seal of the Spirit of the Moon, much smaller on the bottom. I engraved the name of the Intelligency of the Intelligence of the Moon in Celestial Script on the bottom of the bowl as well. It's now a pretty potent Lunar Talisman in and of itself. You can see the engraving a little clearer here in this picture:
I'm not quite as good at engraving things nicely as Frater Ashen is, but I think it turned out pretty well. It hums with power, and that makes me happy. It's shiny bright on the Astral.
So I consecrated the talismans to open a vortex to the Astral whenever anyone holds it in their left hand and says the name of the Intelligency of the Intelligence of the Moon. It's a mouthful. "Malcha betharsism hed beruah schehalim." Try saying that five times fast. Or even one time slowly. Mal-ka-beth-ar-shism hed Bare-uach Shech-hah-leem is the best I can do at trying to spell it phonetically. I have to say it slowly, and have it written down in front of my to even do that to this day.
Having a complicated activation phrase is a safeguard to keep it from activating accidentally. I have kids who like shiny things, so I'm careful like that. Plus using the Intelligence name seems to be a useful thing in and of itself anyway.
After consecrating them, I set them out where they can absorb the powers of the Moon for a full cycle. At each quarter, I take them down and perform a consecration rite over them. Yesterday was the New Moon consecration, so I took the time to take some pictures for this post, and to let those who ordered them know they are indeed being worked on, they just aren't ready yet. Next Wednesday is the third Quarter, and the following Thursday is the Full Moon, and they should be shipped out the Saturday after that, so probably November 12, unless by some miracle I can get to the post office on Friday. It could happen.
But going forward, the talismans will be $75 plus shipping instead of the $45 plus shipping I originally charged for them. I've updated the blog post with the Buy Now buttons on it, so it will charge the updated price when you click on it from now on. I've also pasted the buttons below for easy access.
If you'd like to get in on the next cycle, you have until Wednesday, November 9th to place your order. That batch won't be ready until December 10th, which is the night of a Full Lunar Eclipse. Hmmm. Those might be a little dark. I hadn't thought about that. They'll still work, but they may be better suited to those on the Chthonic end of the current we Work.
As always, the method is provided here free. You can make your own for the cost of materials, and all the stuff you need to know to conjure the spirits is available at www.esotericarchives.com in chapter 22 of Book 2 of Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy and the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals attributed to Trithemius.* Or you can use the seals from Agrippa's Tables of the Planets with the Modern Angelic Grimoire, and that works too. If you're more comfortable with the Archangels instead of the Intelligences and Spirits of the Tables of the Planets, Gabriel works just fine too. I would much rather people made these things themselves, honestly, but I understand not everyone has the time, materials, or confidence in their initiatory authority to do so. And I like to make teh monies doing something I love to do instead of things I hate to do.
The silver bowl is from Goodwill. I had my spouse pick up a couple of silver bowls last time she was dropping off outgrown clothes, and I'll be offering the other one engraved and consecrated for $150 (plus shipping) soon after the next Full Moon. If you want it, email me, and I'll update this post when it's no longer available.
I'm also updating my blog links so people can order these things from the blog site whenever they want.
Happy travels, Astral Warriors!
And for the Google users:
*Speaking of which, Bryan Garner will be releasing his work on this technique soon, and I've seen advance copies. Very well done, I must say. Definitely something I'm glad I've read, and I'll be reviewing it in more detail soon.
*Speaking of which, Bryan Garner will be releasing his work on this technique soon, and I've seen advance copies. Very well done, I must say. Definitely something I'm glad I've read, and I'll be reviewing it in more detail soon.
Feed Changes and thoughts on Piracy
Hey y'all, a couple years ago I found a site that was scraping my feed into their own blog and using it to draw traffic to their ad site. Motherfuckers. So I cut the feed back to just the first few lines, and you had to come to the blog to read it.Wil Wheaton recently posted on G+ that he doesn't read feeds that do that. I was all, "but someone scraped my blog wah," and then I started thinking about it.
Originally I was mad because someone was drawing clicks to their ads when I had my own ads on my blog, not fair!
But then I quit putting ads up here. Fuck adwords, they don't pay shit. I make a lot more on eBooks and talismans and stuff than I ever would on ads. And ads make a blog look cheap. Chintzy. So I pulled them and put up ads for my own stuff.
And honestly, if anyone scrapes the blog feed, it's still free advertising for me, so fuck it.
I've had a fundamental attitude shift about piracy and word-theft in the digital age. Most of the people who steal and pirate aren't going to buy my books, even if they couldn't get them for free somewhere. But if the magic they use works, they're going to talk about me on forums and to their friends, and then the next book I release will sell more copies. It builds up business revenue over time.
So while I do not condone pirating my shit, and I will submit requests to remove any of my digital content from any sites making it available that I find out about, I'm not seriously hating on anyone who pirates from me these days. I've lifted all the curses I put on those who might upload my work to file sharing sites, though if you see my Modern Goetic Grimoire floating around, it's dangerous stuff on its own, regardless of any curses. I might just make that available again, I've been having deep thoughts about all that shit lately. I blame Jake.
It's funny how many people come to my site using the search terms "restitution for piracy" though. Heh.
All curses are lifted and you're forgiven, you dirty pirates, but next time I release an eBook, you'd better buy a copy.
If anyone gets this post in a feed, let me know if the whole thing's coming through now instead of the summary. I think I fixed it, but I may need to go into feedburner and change some occult setting I've forgotten about.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Call me PaROnoid
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| From "Obama: All US Troops Will Leave Iraq by Year's End. The War is Over" |
50,000 combat veterans with specialized training and direct combat experience in urban guerrilla warfare.
How convenient is that?
Expect the "National Guard" to be deployed. Hopefully it's just paranoia, and that will never happen, and it won't get any worse for us than it did for the hippies. Hope for that.
But prepare for the worst.
The way I see it, the 1% has a couple of factions. The Warren Buffet/Starbucks faction that supports higher taxes (because they STILL make more in profit in a year than the 99% make their whole lives) and job creation because it's a nice way to spend their money and it shows the 1% are Americans too. The Others are the old school Hawks, who believe they earned their money, worked hard for it, and by God, they aren't going to give up a penny just because the lazy unwashed rabble are protesting that life is hard.
The problem is, the Hawks have the law on their side. They wrote most of it, buying or renting senators and congressmen (on both sides of the aisle) to vote it into law. The Government is legally required to defend them from rioting mobs.
So in your magical preparations, take these things into account.
And be careful with your magic. There are things called "unintended consequences" that you have to manage and mitigate.
In fact, if you're new to this whole political magic thing, please don't go running in binding everything the social media funny posters say are evil. One guy I know mentioned "binding congress." I don't know what he meant by that, but imo, congress is already bound, bound to corporations, self interest, greed, and ideology. I'd rather see them freed from that, freed to govern, empowered in righteousness (the real kind), graced with wisdom, inspired to brilliance. Wouldn't it be awesome if for once in history, the day was saved by about 535 Americans governing for the common good?
Be careful. Don't make things worse. Just because someone made an image and posted it to FaceBook doesn't mean it's right, true, or even applicable in your personal politics. Do some research, find out what the reality is, so you can target your focused changes at things that will make it better for everyone.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Wishing I were in Europe
If you're a European looking for something to do, check it out. Scarlet Imprint and Hadean Press will be represented at booths, and Jake Stratton-Kent will be speaking, among others.
I gotta see if there's something going on in Baltimore I can participate in.
Blood, Love and Rhetoric Present: The Caretaker
You ever have one of those things that you really meant to do all week, but then forgot because other shit came up, and then it was late and you hadn't done what you really meant to do on time?
Well, for my readers in the Prague vicinity, I meant to tell you about a play you should really go check out. One of our Gentlemen for Jupiter is involved in the production, and from what I've seen of his work it's going to be brilliant. He's done stage adaptations of Lovecraft's work in the past, so ... you can imagine.
Here's the plug that I meant to publish all fucking week long. The last show is Saturday night, I think. So hopefully you get this before you make plans for tonight, you Eastern European readers, and make every effort to attend.
Well, for my readers in the Prague vicinity, I meant to tell you about a play you should really go check out. One of our Gentlemen for Jupiter is involved in the production, and from what I've seen of his work it's going to be brilliant. He's done stage adaptations of Lovecraft's work in the past, so ... you can imagine.
Here's the plug that I meant to publish all fucking week long. The last show is Saturday night, I think. So hopefully you get this before you make plans for tonight, you Eastern European readers, and make every effort to attend.
Blood, Love and Rhetoric present "The Caretaker" - Pinter's dark and poignant drama about life on the lunatic fringes of a collapsing society - an evening of menace, suspense, violence, terror and torture.
Re-imagined by Blood, Love and Rhetoric, "The Caretaker" is transported to a 2012 post-holocaust London. Thursday sold out but tickets still available for Friday (21st) at 7pm and 9pm or Saturday (22nd) at 5pm and 8pm. email blrtheatre@gmail.com for more information. Looking forward to seeing you at the show.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Mardukite Magick
Michael Cecchettelli, author of Crossed Keys, has recently released Mardukite Magick, an ebook covering a technique for Working the 50 Names of Marduk in harmony with the Jupiter current. It's available at his blog, another thing you should check out.This book is quick and to the point, and I enjoyed it immensely. It's everything a book about magic should be, in my opinion. It provides the basics of what you need to know, and then it jumps right into the magical rites. It forms the framework, and then it fleshes it out to the point where you can start filling in the details on your own.
This is not as much a book about Marduk as it is a book that puts you in contact with Marduk so you can find out about him first hand. That's awesome. It reminds me a lot of my own Modern Angelic Grimoire, in that it provides a quick and easy reference guide to everything you need to get started, tells a little about personal experiences, but is mostly focused on getting you in touch with the entities so you can get on with doing the Work yourself.
And I really love the tone Michael has in his writings. He's got this formal informality about his writing that is both authoritative and yet approachable at the same time. In this book, he focuses on the traditional Sumerian sources for his information, and the ritual format and style flows readily and easily. This approach doesn't take a lot of specialized tools, and the rites themselves are fun. Just reading through them, I felt the Jupiter Current Michael is tapping begin to flow.
My favorite part is the table at the end with the traditional 50 names of Marduk and the description of each. It's chock full of goodness and insight into the many facets of this Jovian deity. I found things in there that I will be incorporating into my own Work that I hadn't thought of, like how there's a facet of the Jupiter current that sustains all things all the time, an ongoing maintenance that I hadn't thought about before.
All in all, this book provides the information you need to establish a Working relationship with the Jupiter Current through the God Marduk, and the details you need to develop that relationship over time. I can easily see a magician immersing themselves in this system for years, and still only just scratching the surface of its potential.
Generation X Wants its Slack
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| Eventually. |
Remember when your biggest fashion conundrum was resolved entirely by figuring out which flannel shirt smelled the least bad?
Remember when we saved the world from Y2K?
Remember when we built the internet?
Remember when we didn't really have any hope for the future, but it was alright, because there was slack?
Where did the slack go? I'll tell you where it went.
The 1% took all the slack.
Sure, some of us are a bit bitter and resigned still, some of us are having the same reaction I had at first to this OWS thing.
"Oh, you're getting fucked? Welcome to my world, trapped between the boomers and Gen Y, and nobody's ever given a shit about us, but we do everything useful anyway."
Here, it's put much better in this Gizmodo article: Generation X is Sick of your Bullshit.
But some of us are not putting up with it. Some of us are remembering you can't steal slack.
And we're taking it back.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Revolution Within: Small Business
|
| Because this is how it happens. |
Well, I was APPARENTLY a bit hasty. Check this shit out:
Here’s the idea they came up with: Americans themselves would start lending to small businesses, with Starbucks serving as the middleman. Starbucks would find financial institutions willing to loan to small businesses. Starbucks customers would be able to donate money to the effort when they bought their coffee. Those who gave $5 or more would get a red-white-and-blue wristband, which Schultz labeled “Indivisible.” “We are hoping it will bring back pride in the American dream,” he says. The tag line will read: “Americans Helping Americans.”THIS.
This is what I was talking about. Subsidize small business, I said. Get small businesses moving, and the jobs will follow. And it's STARBUCKS, the very corp I was knocking who's making it happen. Fuckin' figures.
But fuck it, I support this.
Start your own online business for under $100.
Jump into the gig economy. (Got that link off Gordon's latest Apocalypse post, which is chock full of nougatey goodness.)
Plan on growing your business over the next year to where you are the job creator. Don't wait for corporations to do it for you, even though apparently they aren't all evil greedy bastards with no solutions, only ways to get more money. Don't wait for Government to do it for you, though I'm starting to feel this weird feeling of hope that there might actually be something good that comes from all this OWS stuff. I still suspect nothing good will come of it, but ... it would be nice if I'm wrong.
And then magic your Business to Success.
And while I don't think it's entirely necessary to use credit to expand and grow in the digital age, we now have access to it if necessary. Maybe a couple grand here or there will get you the materials you need to take things to the next level in your product line, increasing demand and allowing you to hire people. Who knows? It's an option though, when a couple weeks ago it was not.
Do it yourself. I've already got one part time employee helping me out with my online business. She's gathering materials for talismans, handling incoming orders, taking care of shipping, and doing a lot of the administration, freeing me up to concentrate on providing the occult services and writing. Business is booming. I'm telling you, it's not only possible, it's effective.
Things are really changing. Who knew?
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
I am the 0.044%
Hey Magician, how's it going?
You know how pissed everyone is that the wealthy elite control all teh monies?
How pissed would they be if they knew a handful of occultists around the world were the primary movers and shakers of this shared reality we experience?
How many magicians* actively participating in the creation of their experienced world do you think are at work today?
Based on book sales statistics for the last decade, about 1.1% of the population is interested in spirituality, self help, occult, and new age beliefs. Out of all the people interested in these topics that you know, how many of them are actually actively creating their world?
Purely as an estimate based on my personal observations in three states over the last twenty years, I'd say there are probably two competent practicing reality engineers for every fifty people who buy books about this stuff, of various paths and traditions. And that's a generous estimate, in my opinion, as most of those folks are still figuring out how to do it, and a lot of them will get distracted for years at a time. So that's 4% of the 1.1%.
That's 0.044% of the population that's actively participating in creating the world using occult means, spiritual assistance, eastern occult philosophies, or new age techniques of some kind.
And guess what most of them were focused on?
That's right. As the great philosopher once said, "Life ain't nothing but bitches and money."**
The good news is that most of us, if we're serious about using magic to make money, eventually realize the role money has to take if we're going to be successful in conjuring it on demand. It becomes the servant, and not the goal. That's the key.
And we stop trying to get to be the 1%. At least, that's what's happened to me. I don't want to be at the top, I simply want to be free to pursue what I want to pursue when I want to pursue it. For years I figured that meant amassing great stockpiles of money, the interest on which I could support a decent lifestyle. In other words, becoming the 1%.
I didn't want billions, just $4.2 million. Not a lot, really, when you think about it.
But see, that was the means to the goal, not the goal. The actual goal is to get out of the game, to play my own game by my own rules, to rule myself.
OWS is about giving more people the opportunity to achieve that goal. The grip on the wealth held by the wealthy is tight, and they are strangling the 99%, making sure they can't get in on the deal, pushing them even further away from the end goal.
More on that later, it's miller time.
But before I head out, I should acknowledge that I may have been wrong about Soros funding the OWS. It wouldn't be the first time.
But we'll see where things go when Adbusters starts rolling out their demands. It's entirely possible their planned demands get washed under the masses they've organized though, at this point.
* Or sorcerers, root doctors, folk healers, shamans, masters, gurus, priests, goes, theurgists, or whatever you want to call them.
** to which Philosoraptor replies, "But didn't Biggie say mo money mo problems?"
How pissed would they be if they knew a handful of occultists around the world were the primary movers and shakers of this shared reality we experience?
How many magicians* actively participating in the creation of their experienced world do you think are at work today?
Based on book sales statistics for the last decade, about 1.1% of the population is interested in spirituality, self help, occult, and new age beliefs. Out of all the people interested in these topics that you know, how many of them are actually actively creating their world?
Purely as an estimate based on my personal observations in three states over the last twenty years, I'd say there are probably two competent practicing reality engineers for every fifty people who buy books about this stuff, of various paths and traditions. And that's a generous estimate, in my opinion, as most of those folks are still figuring out how to do it, and a lot of them will get distracted for years at a time. So that's 4% of the 1.1%.
That's 0.044% of the population that's actively participating in creating the world using occult means, spiritual assistance, eastern occult philosophies, or new age techniques of some kind.
And guess what most of them were focused on?
- Sex: Fuckin' and relationships is the number one magical service requested, and most people's first attempts at spellcraft were related to someone they wanted to fuck.
- Money: Wealth and prosperity is the number two magical service requested. Moving up through the ranks of society, getting an edge, making businesses profitable... In other words, doing everything in our power to become the 1% the OWS is railing against.
That's right. As the great philosopher once said, "Life ain't nothing but bitches and money."**
 |
| It's Elemental |
And we stop trying to get to be the 1%. At least, that's what's happened to me. I don't want to be at the top, I simply want to be free to pursue what I want to pursue when I want to pursue it. For years I figured that meant amassing great stockpiles of money, the interest on which I could support a decent lifestyle. In other words, becoming the 1%.
I didn't want billions, just $4.2 million. Not a lot, really, when you think about it.
But see, that was the means to the goal, not the goal. The actual goal is to get out of the game, to play my own game by my own rules, to rule myself.
OWS is about giving more people the opportunity to achieve that goal. The grip on the wealth held by the wealthy is tight, and they are strangling the 99%, making sure they can't get in on the deal, pushing them even further away from the end goal.
More on that later, it's miller time.
But before I head out, I should acknowledge that I may have been wrong about Soros funding the OWS. It wouldn't be the first time.
But we'll see where things go when Adbusters starts rolling out their demands. It's entirely possible their planned demands get washed under the masses they've organized though, at this point.
* Or sorcerers, root doctors, folk healers, shamans, masters, gurus, priests, goes, theurgists, or whatever you want to call them.
** to which Philosoraptor replies, "But didn't Biggie say mo money mo problems?"
Monday, October 17, 2011
Chains of Religion and Belief
Service again. If your beliefs are serving you, you are free. If you are serving them, you are enslaved.
Of course there are nuances, but this is from my phone and my fingers are cold.
The Occupation and the Tea Party Explained
For those who have not yet looked at what's going on politically in America from a spiritual perspective, from a firm foundation of history, here's a simple graphic explaining it all as clearly as I can:
They're both movements primarily started by the wealthy elite. Adbusters started the OWS, and they've got a long term agenda planned for it. It starts seemingly seemingly at random, but then it starts putting out a cohesive message. They've already talked about it here:
They're both movements primarily started by the wealthy elite. Adbusters started the OWS, and they've got a long term agenda planned for it. It starts seemingly seemingly at random, but then it starts putting out a cohesive message. They've already talked about it here:
"Down the road, there will be crystal clear demands coming out of this movement," he said. "But this first phase of the movement is messy and leaderless and demandless."Do not make the mistake of thinking that this OWS was spontaneous, or unplanned. Maybe Soros did or didn't have anything to do with funding OWS, but do not think for a moment he will not profit off the unrest. See Rule 162.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Greed, Attachment, and Service
Since I started doing the Gates Rites regularly, I've been harmonizing within and without, and it's changed the way I see things. If you read the introductory material of the Rites, it's apparent that they are aspiring towards something much more than wealth and prosperity. It's not about becoming King and being a tyrant, jockin' the bitches and slappin' the hos.
It's about taking responsibility for your life. It's about taking ownership of your existence and your experience. That takes courage, power, authority, and compassion. You become the patriarch or matriarch of everything and everyone in your world when you harmonize your consciousness with Destiny. You see how they all work together to create the one thing that is your life, and you see weaknesses and strengths, potentials to shape, projects to accomplish. You get inspired, and your life becomes your Art as you express yourself through yourself, becoming the fulcrum between the Seen and the Unseen realms.
It's a process of decompartmentalization of your life, in many ways. You see that they all feed on one another, your happiness, success, family, work, society at large, global population, the environment, space, time, and all the illusions of differentiation. It's all a bunch of arbitrary lines marking off similar subjects, but it leads to the illusion of separation. It's all attached, it's all one big shiny thing, your life, and it's fucking brilliant.
The reason the Gates Rites take you down through all the spheres along the chain of manifestation is to build up a resonance in your sphere of manifestation. In other words, it makes you powerful in all the different ways things manifest. Hermetics supplies a map of the forces, organized by qualities and similarities, but it's all one big process, and we use the phase gates of the process to work with it. At a high level. More granularly speaking, there's a lot of conjuration of helpful entities that goes on in practice.
We're in that current of manifestation all the time, but we're not of it. I'm fond of the Crowned Creation interpretation of where our ability to do magic comes from. I believe we're made in God's image, and we're loved by everything because of that, and that's why spirits work with us and we get to do magic. I think "made in God's image" is code for Thou art God, but I've always put St. Heinlein a few notches above St. Paul when it comes to scripture.
Jake Stratton-Kent believes you get your magic powers from the pacts made with the spirits, specifically the parchment or Liber Spiritum which contains the covenant between the Spirits and the Magician. The agreed exchange is the magical effects for the offerings of fire and smoke, and other things we do with the spirits. You don't pay the spirits, you don't get the magic, like in any business venture.
Functionally, we both end up with a Liber Spiritus, and we both burn candles and incense, so what difference does it make? I think it's one of those areas of doctrine where there's enough room in the universe for multiple interpretations with explanatory force. However you interpret it, you end up with the power to create your personal world.
You're not like other people when you do that shit.
Ok, so to recap:
- Man's the fulcrum between the Unseen and the Seen worlds
- And it's one big current manifesting above and below simultaneously
- And regardless of where the power to do magic comes from, the reclamation of your race and value, or the pact between you and the spirits, magicians have special authority over their lives
- This authority is how the Universe is made
- You're special; you create your world
For most people, the world is their whole world. For us, it's our playground, our laboratory. It's where we practice being gods. Practical magic. Practice. See that? Isn't that neat?** So when it comes to society and worldly things, we're in the world but not of it. We have a perspective on the forces that are manifesting as the Occupation, the Arab Spring, the Tea Party, the entire global recession in general that most people don't have.
Manifestation is hierarchical. Hierarchies of spirits are maps and tribes, it's true, but they are also a lesson in relationship. "Man" is a spiritual class of entities with a role to play in manifestation, the role of god of their world. The secret Joseph Smith missed was that you don't have to wait to die to get your own planet, it's already yours. It doesn't feel like it because there are forces out there you can't control, market forces, economic fluctuations, natural disasters, but that's just because you're looking at it as if they were separate things. They really are part of that one big current of manifestation.
And you're part of it too, but separate. Detached a bit because you're special. You can do magic. You can create your world. You work with what you've got. The world is your laboratory, the stuff that happens is your materia, and your magic is your equipment.
You work with what's really going on in the world. You become aware of the force and how one facet of it is manifesting in your world, and you have established a relationship to it. You're in a relative position to everything that's happening. If you've recently lost your fortune to the economic downturn, you're position relative to the big dick of economic hardship is bent over. Positional relationships.
You learn to read the current as a magician. You learn to adapt to it, as well as adapting it to you. You harmonize it with your desires. You harmonize with it too.
Dropping it down a level, less abstract, say you're working on getting money, and there's an Occupation of Wall Street going on, it's a good time to start selling T-Shirts with slogans on them. Or if you've got political aspirations, and there's a protest going on, you join in and see how many people you can convince to support your platform. If you're a day trader and the economy's taking a nose dive, you focus on strategies for making a profit in down markets.
Magicians, that's us, only not so specialized. We're doing that all the time with everything that's going on at once, on some level. Strategizing. working with what we've got. Using everything to our advantage. Bullshit makes the flowers grow, and that's beautiful. War, peace, they're both good for business.
And I'm using money metaphors here because it's a language I understand, because I've focused on it a lot. But don't think that just because I talk a lot about money, that's all I care about. I talk a lot about it because it matters a lot, and also, to a much much lesser degree, because I used to be really greedy. Wealth was goign to answer everything, wealth and prosperity were the ticket to everything I wanted.
And I still see money as a means to an end, but my desire has shifted from the means to the end. As a result, the focus of my magic has changed, and things have gotten a lot better in my world. And money is the easiest thing to make in the world, as a magician. Money, once you see how easy it is to make, loses value. Rob it of its mystique, and it has no power over you.
Greed is not an issue when you're being a good King. Philosopher Kings know the truth and harmonize with it. The cynics taught to give up everything and live in harmony with nature. I agree completely, Hermetically speaking. Give up attachment to all the compartmentalized pieces of the current, and live in harmony with it instead, harmonizing it with you, harmonizing you with it, playing, creating, in tune with everything else, using what you have to work with and crafting your world.
Do that right, and the money just flows in. Like a flood. Whenever you need it, address the means and the end, and do the magic to harmonize it to your desired outcome, be willing to adapt as necessary, and you'll find it just moves right where it needs to go. And the money was never the point, the resolution or acquired result was the goal, and that's where your intent and attention was focused. That's the trick of all this. Awareness of your relationship to everything else, and creation of your world.
Money serves you. Jason teaches that fundamental concept in his financial sorcery classes. Make money serve you, or else you're serving money. Someone's got to be the bitch in the relationship.
But that lesson applies to everything, and there's more to it. You're either serving your job or its serving you. Your family, your spouse, your boyfriend/girlfriend, your pets. Are they serving a purpose in your life? You've got them in your life for a reason, what is it? Are the situations serving you by providing you with the rewards you should be getting?
I like being a dad. It's cool. I like having kids. They're awesome. I love the parenting process, shaping little minds and hearts and aiming them at the future, having progeny, knowing my genes have been passed on. It's awesome. It's like emanation in the flesh. Little pieces of myself that will go on after I'm gone, bringing me wisdom, love, and happiness as a father. Fatherhood serves a purpose, it makes me happy.
But for it to make me happy, I have to do it right. There's nothing wrong with being a hedonist if you accept the responsibility that comes with getting the pleasure you seek. I have to be a GOOD dad to have good kids who do good things that make me happy. If I fuck them up, my life will be hell. I won't get any pleasure out of being a father if I screw up. So I have to do it right.
Which means I end up in service to them.
Service, it turns out, is part of rulership, intrinsically linked, aspects of the same principle. You aren't a good king if you're not ruling in compassion, serving your kingdom by creating it beautifully. Everyone else in the world, no matter what they look like, or what they believe, or how they vote, they're all in our world. They're our brothers and sisters, as well as being part of our Kingdoms, part of the manifestation of that One Thing. To be happy Kings, we have to serve even them.
* Try googling that and see where it gets you. Teh Intertubes are clogged with bullshit and I can never find what I need anymore! Fucking 2012 has ruined any kind of decent results you can get on ancient eschatologies. And Camping hasn't helped at all.
** You've got to listen to this story about Lonnie Sue Johnson, it's kind of a downer until you get to about 7:28 or so, and then some of the most profound wisdom comes out, pointing to the Mystery of the interconnectedness of the One Thing in relation to the role of Man in creation.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Tea Party, Occupation, and Occultists: The Big Picture
In my rant against the Occupation, I bemoaned the fact that the Occupiers have no view of History, no idea of where they're at in the decline of civilization, and they ought to be doing (basically) the Great Work to really change the world.
But the truth is, I am the one who lost perspective on where we're at socially as a global community, and that's something Magicians, Kings, Sages, Sorcerers, and other forms of entrepreneurs really, really can't afford to do. Not if they're serious about the fundamental axiom "As above, so below."
Basically, and I'm being brief because it's important to get this up and then I gotta get back to work, there are currents manifesting across the world, and it's manifesting all over. Tea Party, Occupation, Arab Spring, London Riots, Drug Cartel wars... There's revolution in the air. And it's all related, somehow. Here's a neat pic for you to chew on, M.C. and BtF:
It's a bit simplified, but it's interesting, nonetheless.
And the main thing to remember, imo, is that these are profitable times for magicians, my brothers and sisters. Times of unrest send people flocking to us for help and answers in droves.
[EDIT: And you'd damned well better be able to offer them something useful if you're going to offer anything at all.]
But the truth is, I am the one who lost perspective on where we're at socially as a global community, and that's something Magicians, Kings, Sages, Sorcerers, and other forms of entrepreneurs really, really can't afford to do. Not if they're serious about the fundamental axiom "As above, so below."
Basically, and I'm being brief because it's important to get this up and then I gotta get back to work, there are currents manifesting across the world, and it's manifesting all over. Tea Party, Occupation, Arab Spring, London Riots, Drug Cartel wars... There's revolution in the air. And it's all related, somehow. Here's a neat pic for you to chew on, M.C. and BtF:
And the main thing to remember, imo, is that these are profitable times for magicians, my brothers and sisters. Times of unrest send people flocking to us for help and answers in droves.
[EDIT: And you'd damned well better be able to offer them something useful if you're going to offer anything at all.]
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Wrong.
I've reconsidered my stance on the whole Occupation thing. I still think most of the people are idiots, but I think it needs to be done, and it's got my full support.
I was wrong in attacking the whole thing. And I was a dick about that. Sorry.
I was wrong in attacking the whole thing. And I was a dick about that. Sorry.
Monday, October 10, 2011
A Solution
The last post was a bit controversial. I got a hair across my ass when I was watching the videos of the protesters that are being posted on YouTube. I was interested because I, like everyone else in the middle class, support the brutal financial rape of Bank of America as vengeance for their ongoing raping of their clients. And the same for every other major corporation that abuses its consumers. I want to see some white collar criminals go to jail for their crimes and evilness that have fucked over the country. I think the greedy patricians and oligarchs ought to pay for abusing me with their stupid ways.
And I was all set to go Occupy Baltimore, too, to express my disgust with the corporate hierarchs.
And then I saw a video of a guy holding up a cardboard sign that said "We are the 99%." And I got this vision of the whole entire world, and I remembered the Global Rich List calculator, and that I'm something like the 50,000,000th richest person on the planet, out of 7 billion. That puts me at about the top 7% of the planet, and the 99% bottom of the US at the same time.
And then I started seeing all the plastic bottles of water these guys were carrying around. And I saw they were organizing in Starbucks. And they were wearing all their obscure t-shirts they ordered online, wearing their designer hipster glasses, sporting carefully crafted couture. And I watched the folks who "know what's going on" saying that no one person stands for the movement, there is no one voice, what unites them is their disgust at the current situation. And then I saw someone saying to those considering joining the occupation to take the time to figure out what you believe, ten or fifteen minutes so that if you get interviewed, you don't look like an idiot on Fox News.
And it dawned on me that most of those folks showing up were idiots. They don't have any historical perspective, and they think any changes that they manage to get will be more than cosmetic. Hell, they don't even watch what is happening in Egypt right now, today. Hello new boss, same as the old boss. 1% controls the most, everyone else makes due with as much as they can scramble up and horde. It's the way of the world, and it always has been when more than a couple hundred or so humans are living in the same place.
A long time friend said I had the most cynical stoic perspective she'd ever seen in response to one of the comments along those lines I made on FaceBook. It's not, I don't think, because that's just how it is, was, and regardless of optimistic idealists' hopes and dreams, that's how it's going to remain forever.
Ok, maybe she's right.
But why does it have to be that way?
Because the way people do things in groups is fucked up.
When the revolutionaries, peaceful or bloodied have won, they divvy up the spoils of war along the lines that they all agree are right and fair for everyone, right? Ever? No. Even in a completely democratic process, there will be factions who walk away feeling dissatisfied. Look at Washington. People don't agree on things.
The idea that forming a group to do group activities to change the world will make it better is infantile, and stands bald faced against the solid evidence of history, and the evidence of the eyeballs in our heads right now. Right now goddamnit. Search Google News for what's going on with the Arab Spring. Today.
My Idea of a Solution
But there is an answer that will fix everything. If every one of those protesters out there in the street stopped making their event an occupation, and started making their lives a protest, things would change fundamentally.
If they unhooked their reliance on the system, and plugged it into themselves, and then started doing the real work of picking the right institutions to invest in, living ecologically sound lifestyles, destroying their reliance on the public energy grid, starting their own businesses, creating jobs themselves as they grew and profited, and voted sane, center-political candidates into office that would work together to get corporations taxed and regulated, small businesses subsidized, and the distribution of taxation fair, they would change the whole world.
When I start seeing them saying, "I got ripped off by corporate America because I trusted them and signed the contracts without reading the fine print or understanding the risks I was getting into, and I'm not going to do that ever again," then I'll have respect for this movement.
If they just tended their gardens, the problems they have would go away.
A group of enraged Bank of America people all went to BoA to close their accounts at once in a big protest, and they got arrested. Some people were like, "whoa, it's a crime to close your bank account, see how fucked up it is!" I see your point, you're right, but really what did you expect? An angry mob goes to the bank, the cops will be called.
If people would just calmly, quietly walk into their large banking institutions and close them down like sane adults, there wouldn't have been any uproar, the cops wouldn't have been called in, and the banks would be feeling a deep, cold dread that would spread to every corner of corporate business.
Put your money where your beliefs are. Find small local institutions, and put your money in them. Credit unions. Don't put it all in one place. Have some land somewhere, have something that produces something useful available.
If you must work with big corporations, read the fine print, shop around, and get screwed the least. It's complicated, it sucks, and that's life. It can't be simpler because there are too many of us involved now. That's the world you live in, and it's not going to change at the core, it will be complicated, and the rich will control the most and the poor will control the least. It doesn't matter if the outer form is capitalist, communist, or religious, democratic or tyrranical. Oligarchical patricians will still rule the world, and stack the deck in their favor. Gerrymandering, it's like that.
But this social outcry could do something positive, and I'd rather see people rioting in the streets than eating cheeseburgers while they watch Jersey Shore. I guess.
But really, they're doing it for the same reasons.
And I was all set to go Occupy Baltimore, too, to express my disgust with the corporate hierarchs.
And then I saw a video of a guy holding up a cardboard sign that said "We are the 99%." And I got this vision of the whole entire world, and I remembered the Global Rich List calculator, and that I'm something like the 50,000,000th richest person on the planet, out of 7 billion. That puts me at about the top 7% of the planet, and the 99% bottom of the US at the same time.
And then I started seeing all the plastic bottles of water these guys were carrying around. And I saw they were organizing in Starbucks. And they were wearing all their obscure t-shirts they ordered online, wearing their designer hipster glasses, sporting carefully crafted couture. And I watched the folks who "know what's going on" saying that no one person stands for the movement, there is no one voice, what unites them is their disgust at the current situation. And then I saw someone saying to those considering joining the occupation to take the time to figure out what you believe, ten or fifteen minutes so that if you get interviewed, you don't look like an idiot on Fox News.
And it dawned on me that most of those folks showing up were idiots. They don't have any historical perspective, and they think any changes that they manage to get will be more than cosmetic. Hell, they don't even watch what is happening in Egypt right now, today. Hello new boss, same as the old boss. 1% controls the most, everyone else makes due with as much as they can scramble up and horde. It's the way of the world, and it always has been when more than a couple hundred or so humans are living in the same place.
A long time friend said I had the most cynical stoic perspective she'd ever seen in response to one of the comments along those lines I made on FaceBook. It's not, I don't think, because that's just how it is, was, and regardless of optimistic idealists' hopes and dreams, that's how it's going to remain forever.
Ok, maybe she's right.
But why does it have to be that way?
Because the way people do things in groups is fucked up.
When the revolutionaries, peaceful or bloodied have won, they divvy up the spoils of war along the lines that they all agree are right and fair for everyone, right? Ever? No. Even in a completely democratic process, there will be factions who walk away feeling dissatisfied. Look at Washington. People don't agree on things.
The idea that forming a group to do group activities to change the world will make it better is infantile, and stands bald faced against the solid evidence of history, and the evidence of the eyeballs in our heads right now. Right now goddamnit. Search Google News for what's going on with the Arab Spring. Today.
My Idea of a Solution
But there is an answer that will fix everything. If every one of those protesters out there in the street stopped making their event an occupation, and started making their lives a protest, things would change fundamentally.
If they unhooked their reliance on the system, and plugged it into themselves, and then started doing the real work of picking the right institutions to invest in, living ecologically sound lifestyles, destroying their reliance on the public energy grid, starting their own businesses, creating jobs themselves as they grew and profited, and voted sane, center-political candidates into office that would work together to get corporations taxed and regulated, small businesses subsidized, and the distribution of taxation fair, they would change the whole world.
When I start seeing them saying, "I got ripped off by corporate America because I trusted them and signed the contracts without reading the fine print or understanding the risks I was getting into, and I'm not going to do that ever again," then I'll have respect for this movement.
If they just tended their gardens, the problems they have would go away.
A group of enraged Bank of America people all went to BoA to close their accounts at once in a big protest, and they got arrested. Some people were like, "whoa, it's a crime to close your bank account, see how fucked up it is!" I see your point, you're right, but really what did you expect? An angry mob goes to the bank, the cops will be called.
If people would just calmly, quietly walk into their large banking institutions and close them down like sane adults, there wouldn't have been any uproar, the cops wouldn't have been called in, and the banks would be feeling a deep, cold dread that would spread to every corner of corporate business.
Put your money where your beliefs are. Find small local institutions, and put your money in them. Credit unions. Don't put it all in one place. Have some land somewhere, have something that produces something useful available.
If you must work with big corporations, read the fine print, shop around, and get screwed the least. It's complicated, it sucks, and that's life. It can't be simpler because there are too many of us involved now. That's the world you live in, and it's not going to change at the core, it will be complicated, and the rich will control the most and the poor will control the least. It doesn't matter if the outer form is capitalist, communist, or religious, democratic or tyrranical. Oligarchical patricians will still rule the world, and stack the deck in their favor. Gerrymandering, it's like that.
But this social outcry could do something positive, and I'd rather see people rioting in the streets than eating cheeseburgers while they watch Jersey Shore. I guess.
But really, they're doing it for the same reasons.
Sunday, October 09, 2011
It's not hate, it's wrath
Occupy Wall Street! Meet at Starbucks to Organize!
FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE.
Wake the fuck up. We've got ten thousand years of history on Wikipedia. Pick a fucking civilization. Any of the ones that have fallen. Look at what happened. Pick another, and tell me what was different. And another. And another. And another.
Now look at your goddamned "culture." Look at what you're protesting FOR. You want the money the rich folks have so you can have that ipad. It's not fair that THEY get the ipads, or droids, is it? It's not fair that THEY get the best healthcare, secreted out in the middle of the night for clandestine liver transplants that you or I won't qualify for unless we're as rich and famous as Steve Jobs, is it? FUCK NO it isn't fair!
Nor has it ever been.
But what you really want is to get "back" to being able to have whatever you want whenever you want it. You never had that, but shit, it wasn't as hard as it is now, was it? People had jobs, and houses, and if you went to college, you were guaranteed a career, right?
No, not everyone. Not everyone in America, for sure. And remember the rest of the world? Humans from all over the world, 85% of whom make less than $2000 a year. Your life today in America, unemployed, uninsured, moved back in with mommy and daddy, no car, no club money... it's still magnitudes greater than theirs ever was, or ever will be. Ever.
You are a spoiled ass bitchy whiny selfish rotten brat.
You mad bro? You should be. At yourself.
Here's the TRVTH. Your life sucks because of who you are, and what you've done with it for the last few years. You've done the bare minimum, spent way to much, and you're going to have to suck it up for 50-75 years, if things get better. Might be another Dark Age, who knows?
Life's harder than you thought? Yeah. Wah. Hard to get a job? Yeah. Wah. Had to live with three generations of a single family under one roof when you were making a fortune in comparison before in a home in the suburbs? Wah.
Hard times hit, and you're either rolling with the punches, using the cycle to your advantage, or getting ass fucked and crying about it. Or getting the fuck out.
You idealists wanting to make the world more fair, look at history. It's never been fair. You "idealists" aren't even Idealists. You're materialists. You want to work as little as possible and have as much as possible. You don't want to have to grow a garden, can food, cook yourself, work together with other people in the community just to get by, that's hard. That's what POOR folk do!
Welcome to Humanity, bitches.
Feh.
You go Occupy with latte in hand!
I'll be ruling my kingdom like a King. Responsibly. Wisely. Proactively. Profitably. Aware of my means and living in them. Aware of the environmental impact of so-called conveniences. Keeping my family safe.
If everyone "occupying" were to do the same, it wouldn't matter what the bankers were doing. Demanding change from leadership, demanding redistribution of wealth and health is ignoring every other example of that same exact thing for the last ten thousand years. Slaves begging for a new master.
Look, it doesn't matter where you go or what you do when you get there, it matters who you are all the time. Years of indolence and decadence have led to this stage, and it's a profitable phase of societal breakdown for those with the heart, mind, and willingness to work to take advantage of what they've got to work with. All it takes is achieving your potential as a Human.
Saturday, October 08, 2011
Holy...
Check out the latest post from the Bone Singer.
Remember she's also got mad skills at Hermetic Alchemy as you read what she wrote and look into the painting.
Friday, October 07, 2011
Astral Warrior Vortex Talismans
In the Astral Warrior's Handbook, I talk about making a talisman that you can use to open a portal to the Astral Realm simply by sitting comfortably in your chair and holding it in your hand while you mutter arcane Hebrew words that speak of the Intelligency of the Intelligencies of the Moon.
It functions as a portable vortex that you can open and close whenever you want to. It's convenient for people who want to do a lot of astral magic, but don't necessarily want to open a full time permanent vortex to the astral planes in their bedrooms.
These talismans are relatively simple to make. I used a herkimer diamond, and worked with the Intelligence of the Moon. I used the Modern Angelic Grimoire technique to conjure the Intelligence, and then set up the talisman so it would be triggered by speaking the name of the Intelligence. It's a pretty simple ritual, and everything you need to make your own is online for free.
However, if you don't have the time, or maybe Hermetic conjure magic isn't your forte, or you simply would rather have one made by a professional who's done it before successfully, I'm offering these talismans for$45 $75*. They will come with instructions on consecration (over the period of a full cycle of the Moon), as well as the Talisman Maintenance and Operations Manual.
It functions as a portable vortex that you can open and close whenever you want to. It's convenient for people who want to do a lot of astral magic, but don't necessarily want to open a full time permanent vortex to the astral planes in their bedrooms.
These talismans are relatively simple to make. I used a herkimer diamond, and worked with the Intelligence of the Moon. I used the Modern Angelic Grimoire technique to conjure the Intelligence, and then set up the talisman so it would be triggered by speaking the name of the Intelligence. It's a pretty simple ritual, and everything you need to make your own is online for free.
However, if you don't have the time, or maybe Hermetic conjure magic isn't your forte, or you simply would rather have one made by a professional who's done it before successfully, I'm offering these talismans for
And for the Google users:
Again, please let me know if the buttons aren't working properly. I think I've got the hang of this.
* Note: Astral Warrior Vortex Talismans are now $75. I didn't realize the price of Herkimer Diamonds had gone up so much. Sheesh.
Again, please let me know if the buttons aren't working properly. I think I've got the hang of this.
* Note: Astral Warrior Vortex Talismans are now $75. I didn't realize the price of Herkimer Diamonds had gone up so much. Sheesh.
The Astral Warrior's Handbook
A long, long time ago, I started writing up a book I called The Astral Warrior for fun. In it I was planning on throwing out all those concerns about accomplishing the Great Work, all that fuddy duddy old dusty musty grimoire bullshit, and just having fun talking about the joys of Astral Magic, romping about the astral plane fighting demons and saving the world.
And it is joyful. I love it. It's like being a super hero in your own comic book. All those Neil Gaiman Sandman comics that talk about the land of Dream? Yeah, it's like that. All the time. Beautiful stuff up there.
But as I was writing it up, I realized that I use astral magic every day. It's an intricate part of the Great Work. I talk a lot more about strategy and approach these days, and when I talk tech I talk about conjuring and seals and such, but I've overlooked the fundamental basic stuff that makes it all stick together, the Astral Magic part of it.
Every time I conjure a spirit into a crystal, I'm gazing into the ball, but my third eye is wide open on the astral plane, where I can see and sense the spirits better, more clearly. When I'm doing a tarot card reading, the story line comes clear in the Astral, where I see the events indicated on the cards unfolding in the client's world. When I'm doing cleansing and purification, initiations, or lifting curses for my clients over the internet, it's the Astral realm that provides me with the ability to direct the magical effects around the world, bringing blessings, success, and victory to those with the balls to claim it on their behalf.
And every day at work, I'm keeping an eye on the Astral plane to get a feel for the currents in the air, to keep track of politics, to catch warning signs of imminent danger, or discord before it can manifest as something unpleasant for me personally. When I'm stuck in traffic, I'll lift my awareness and see what's blocking the flow, and see what I can do to make it better so things move more quickly (usually applied Mercury, in some form). When I'm trying to keep a low profile, I weave a glamour in the astral and cloak myself in it. When I want to influence someone my way, I slip into the astral and give them a nudge toward agreeing with me.
Astral magic is a part of all my magical acts. It's everywhere!
So I wrote up the Astral Warrior's Handbook. I think it's entertaining, but it contains a whole lot of really useful information, and a technique for creating an on-demand portal to the astral realm whenever you need to using a bit of Aggripinian magic that might be a bit baroque, but is damned useful.
A lot of the things I touch on in this book are things that you can do much better if you're also doing the magic I've been doing for years. The Gates Rites prepare you for this, as do the initiatory conjurations of the Archangels from the Modern Angelic Grimoire. Students of the Red Work Courses will be in a good position to utilize the techniques in this book, as will folks of other traditions.
The Table of Contents is provided below as an overview of what you can expect in this handy guide:
1 Astral Warriors ........................................... 3
2 The Astral Realm........................................... 4
2.1 Developing the Astral Faculty of the Mind ............... 5
2.2 Vortex Creation ......................................... 6
2.2.1 Opening the Vortex .................................... 7
3 Taking Form ............................................... 9
4 Types of Astral Magic .................................... 11
4.1 Sniffing Out Magical Attacks ........................... 12
4.2 Snooping and Spying .................................... 14
4.3 Reading People’s Hearts and Minds ...................... 16
4.4 Cleansing and Healing .................................. 17
4.5 Combat ................................................. 19
4.6 Manipulation ........................................... 22
5 Astral Magic in the Great Work ........................... 23
The book is going for $11.95, my new favorite price to charge for eBooks. It's 29 pages of stuff to do in the Astral Realms to get ahead and have some fun.
And for the Google Checkout users:
And please let me know if the buy now buttons don't work. Sometimes I have issues.
And it is joyful. I love it. It's like being a super hero in your own comic book. All those Neil Gaiman Sandman comics that talk about the land of Dream? Yeah, it's like that. All the time. Beautiful stuff up there.
But as I was writing it up, I realized that I use astral magic every day. It's an intricate part of the Great Work. I talk a lot more about strategy and approach these days, and when I talk tech I talk about conjuring and seals and such, but I've overlooked the fundamental basic stuff that makes it all stick together, the Astral Magic part of it.
Every time I conjure a spirit into a crystal, I'm gazing into the ball, but my third eye is wide open on the astral plane, where I can see and sense the spirits better, more clearly. When I'm doing a tarot card reading, the story line comes clear in the Astral, where I see the events indicated on the cards unfolding in the client's world. When I'm doing cleansing and purification, initiations, or lifting curses for my clients over the internet, it's the Astral realm that provides me with the ability to direct the magical effects around the world, bringing blessings, success, and victory to those with the balls to claim it on their behalf.
And every day at work, I'm keeping an eye on the Astral plane to get a feel for the currents in the air, to keep track of politics, to catch warning signs of imminent danger, or discord before it can manifest as something unpleasant for me personally. When I'm stuck in traffic, I'll lift my awareness and see what's blocking the flow, and see what I can do to make it better so things move more quickly (usually applied Mercury, in some form). When I'm trying to keep a low profile, I weave a glamour in the astral and cloak myself in it. When I want to influence someone my way, I slip into the astral and give them a nudge toward agreeing with me.
Astral magic is a part of all my magical acts. It's everywhere!
So I wrote up the Astral Warrior's Handbook. I think it's entertaining, but it contains a whole lot of really useful information, and a technique for creating an on-demand portal to the astral realm whenever you need to using a bit of Aggripinian magic that might be a bit baroque, but is damned useful.
A lot of the things I touch on in this book are things that you can do much better if you're also doing the magic I've been doing for years. The Gates Rites prepare you for this, as do the initiatory conjurations of the Archangels from the Modern Angelic Grimoire. Students of the Red Work Courses will be in a good position to utilize the techniques in this book, as will folks of other traditions.
The Table of Contents is provided below as an overview of what you can expect in this handy guide:
1 Astral Warriors ........................................... 3
2 The Astral Realm........................................... 4
2.1 Developing the Astral Faculty of the Mind ............... 5
2.2 Vortex Creation ......................................... 6
2.2.1 Opening the Vortex .................................... 7
3 Taking Form ............................................... 9
4 Types of Astral Magic .................................... 11
4.1 Sniffing Out Magical Attacks ........................... 12
4.2 Snooping and Spying .................................... 14
4.3 Reading People’s Hearts and Minds ...................... 16
4.4 Cleansing and Healing .................................. 17
4.5 Combat ................................................. 19
4.6 Manipulation ........................................... 22
5 Astral Magic in the Great Work ........................... 23
The book is going for $11.95, my new favorite price to charge for eBooks. It's 29 pages of stuff to do in the Astral Realms to get ahead and have some fun.
And for the Google Checkout users:
And please let me know if the buy now buttons don't work. Sometimes I have issues.
Haven't felt evil in a while
You know what? I haven't felt evil in a long ass time.
I used to get all seething angry about shit in my life. Regularly. I hated some things. I mean, hated. I had a hate garden in the astral realm where I would plant seeds of hate and nurture them into evil malignant multi-tendriled things.
I used to get so angry at people. Lon Milo DuQuette, for instance. I hated that motherfucker after he posted a video of that stupid Christmas song where he kicks Christianity to the dirt and rubs its face in broken shards of glass. I hated him for that for a long time, until one day I was reading Konx Om Pax and saw, "Hush, it is the salvation of the world," and it all made sense. I still didn't like that it was done, but I get it.
And that's what it's been like in a lot of ways. Moloch recently banned Jake Stratton-Kent from the Evocational Magic yahoo group, and I figured if Jake got banned, it was only a matter of time before I was too. So I left. And Moloch sent me an email offlist asking if I left because of that, and I was like, yeah. That's all, just "Yeah." Not too long ago, there would have been angry words, imprecations, and possibly an all-out magical war... but over what? A disagreement? Fuck that shit. I've got a world to create and maintain, I'm not going to waste my time on fighting over bullshit. Moloch doesn't like Jake's tone or something, I don't know, but I like it a lot and I know I'm going to be getting more Jake-like in the next few months, so I proactively addressed it and moved on.
Shit happens. Shit that I don't like. But I don't have to fight about it anymore, and I don't have to hate anything. Things I don't like I can just get rid of, or change to something I do like.
I stopped hating when I started being a real magician. Traffic issues? Mercury solutions. Money problems? Mercury/Jupiter solutions. Magical attacks? Solar-Mars-Saturn solutions. Family problems? Venus solutions. Feeling stuck and unable to do anything good? HGA solutions.
I still get mad. I still get annoyed. But it's not so bad, really. It's temporary bullshit. I don't have to retreat to my perspective from eternity to make it through the worst of life, knowing that it's all a blink in the cosmic eye when you really get down to brass tacks. I just deal with it.
It comes from doing the magic. Conjuring the spirits, getting initiated, integrating the forces, and then using them. Use magic for everything, not just once in a while on the big things. If you don't use it often, you're not going to be very good at it. If you use it for the little things, you'll be that much better at it when you have something to do on a large scale. And chances are, if you're magicing the little things, you won't have the big things that need a big magical reaction, you'll already have built the momentum up to make you an unstoppable force.
I used to get all seething angry about shit in my life. Regularly. I hated some things. I mean, hated. I had a hate garden in the astral realm where I would plant seeds of hate and nurture them into evil malignant multi-tendriled things.
I used to get so angry at people. Lon Milo DuQuette, for instance. I hated that motherfucker after he posted a video of that stupid Christmas song where he kicks Christianity to the dirt and rubs its face in broken shards of glass. I hated him for that for a long time, until one day I was reading Konx Om Pax and saw, "Hush, it is the salvation of the world," and it all made sense. I still didn't like that it was done, but I get it.
And that's what it's been like in a lot of ways. Moloch recently banned Jake Stratton-Kent from the Evocational Magic yahoo group, and I figured if Jake got banned, it was only a matter of time before I was too. So I left. And Moloch sent me an email offlist asking if I left because of that, and I was like, yeah. That's all, just "Yeah." Not too long ago, there would have been angry words, imprecations, and possibly an all-out magical war... but over what? A disagreement? Fuck that shit. I've got a world to create and maintain, I'm not going to waste my time on fighting over bullshit. Moloch doesn't like Jake's tone or something, I don't know, but I like it a lot and I know I'm going to be getting more Jake-like in the next few months, so I proactively addressed it and moved on.
Shit happens. Shit that I don't like. But I don't have to fight about it anymore, and I don't have to hate anything. Things I don't like I can just get rid of, or change to something I do like.
I stopped hating when I started being a real magician. Traffic issues? Mercury solutions. Money problems? Mercury/Jupiter solutions. Magical attacks? Solar-Mars-Saturn solutions. Family problems? Venus solutions. Feeling stuck and unable to do anything good? HGA solutions.
I still get mad. I still get annoyed. But it's not so bad, really. It's temporary bullshit. I don't have to retreat to my perspective from eternity to make it through the worst of life, knowing that it's all a blink in the cosmic eye when you really get down to brass tacks. I just deal with it.
It comes from doing the magic. Conjuring the spirits, getting initiated, integrating the forces, and then using them. Use magic for everything, not just once in a while on the big things. If you don't use it often, you're not going to be very good at it. If you use it for the little things, you'll be that much better at it when you have something to do on a large scale. And chances are, if you're magicing the little things, you won't have the big things that need a big magical reaction, you'll already have built the momentum up to make you an unstoppable force.
Thursday, October 06, 2011
Inventory Time
On Rosh Hashanah, I took the time to remember where I was a year ago, and where I fucked up, and who I fucked over this year. This week I'm repenting and atoning where necessary, and planning the year to come. On Yom Kippur I'm doing a Saturn rite to seal the plan in place, and then I'll be traveling to the spirit realm throughout the year to get help and support in implementing the plan.
In figuring out my plan, I went back to basics. Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here? What do I want? What has to happen to get me what I want? What spiritual aid will be most appropriate?
I am a human being, made in the Image of God. I am a magician, called to move between the spiritual and material realms to gain power and insight, to take my place as a manifestation of the Divine and resume my proper role of Creator and Maintainer of my world. I am directly responsible for most of what I experience. I am responsible for my reactions to the things I experience that are not direct manifestations of my decisions, thoughts, and actions. The things I experience this year will be the results of the things that I have done and will do, mostly.
I am the nexus point of the spiritual and material realms. Through me the world I experience is created. In the material realm, the Realm of Elements, the Ideas in the Mind of God take shape and form, the spiritual powers that contributed to the fleshing out of the Idea are reflected in matter. In the spirit realm, I am in all the heavens at the same time, in communion with my spiritual brothers and sisters. I am in a world in motion, where the powers and forces I deal with in the spiritual realm are at play. I am in the realm of the Effect, experiencing my spiritual and material realities from a constantly moving reference point of consciousness that travels across space and time under the guise of "now."
And most of what I experience already happened a few milliseconds before I became aware of it enough to react.
I am here to create and maintain my world. I gain the wisdom and power to do so through my spiritual practices. I get clues about the future through divination and direct revelation. I get clues about what I need to be focusing on from my desires, and my interests. I get clues about where my next projects will lie from my inspiration, my Muse, my Genius.
As for my plans, and what spiritual aid is necessary to accomplish them, well, you'll just have to wait and see. Let's just say this coming year is going to be a lot of fun.
Hermetic Magician, Keeping to Agrippa
Heh, Jason forever cracks me up. At Crucible, he had a tinge of jealousy because he and Andrieh were all over the place describing their paths, and I was able to sum it up by saying I kept to Agrippa.
But as I recently mentioned, I do chakra work too. And a lot of my spiritual understanding is heavily influenced by Crowley. And Taoism. And I did Eckankar and Soul Travel too. When he mentioned that I was all, Sugmad! Good times! And I've done GD stuff, and Modern Magic, and ADF druidry, and Celtic Wicca. I've been an Erisian Mystic, ever so much more advanced and understanding than those stupid Discordians. Chaos Magic? Well, yeah. Rootwork? Maybe sometimes, something similar. I use the oils made by root workers. I'm really fond of the charms of Pow Wow. I'm into charismatic Christian Kerygma magic, and I make use of various Catholic stuff in most of my rites these days.
My main goal is to accomplish the Rainbow Body of Dzogchen and become a Powerful Dead, like the Egyptians did.
But at Crucible, I was presenting an overview of using Hermetic Magic, based on Agrippa, to rule your world. So I kept it to that. It summed me up for the purposes of that particular space and time.
We're all more than a label can cover. I like "Magician" because it fits well enough, but I firmly believe all labels are lies, and no word can accurately and fully communicate the Idea it represents fully. Words are shit, but they're the best thing we have to communicate with.
But as I recently mentioned, I do chakra work too. And a lot of my spiritual understanding is heavily influenced by Crowley. And Taoism. And I did Eckankar and Soul Travel too. When he mentioned that I was all, Sugmad! Good times! And I've done GD stuff, and Modern Magic, and ADF druidry, and Celtic Wicca. I've been an Erisian Mystic, ever so much more advanced and understanding than those stupid Discordians. Chaos Magic? Well, yeah. Rootwork? Maybe sometimes, something similar. I use the oils made by root workers. I'm really fond of the charms of Pow Wow. I'm into charismatic Christian Kerygma magic, and I make use of various Catholic stuff in most of my rites these days.
My main goal is to accomplish the Rainbow Body of Dzogchen and become a Powerful Dead, like the Egyptians did.
But at Crucible, I was presenting an overview of using Hermetic Magic, based on Agrippa, to rule your world. So I kept it to that. It summed me up for the purposes of that particular space and time.
We're all more than a label can cover. I like "Magician" because it fits well enough, but I firmly believe all labels are lies, and no word can accurately and fully communicate the Idea it represents fully. Words are shit, but they're the best thing we have to communicate with.
Wednesday, October 05, 2011
Some Serious Magic
The Detroit Lions have sucked donkey shit for years in terms of being a professional football team.
Here's their record:
Year Wins-Losses
1998 5-11
1999 8-8
2000 9-7
2001 2-14
2002 3-13
2003 5-11
2004 6-10
2005 5-11
2006 3-13
2007 7-9
2008 0-16
2009 2-14
2010 6-10
You'll note that the last time they even won more games in a season than they lost was in 2000.
Then some British kabalist, with as much interest in American football as any proper British man should have, picks the goddamned Detroit Lions to run a series of experiments on. "A Lion has Roared" he calls it.
In the last four games, the Lions have won, and won hard. They're facing the Bears next week, and they're favored to win. It's still early in the season, but right now the Lions are tied with the Packers for the lead in their division. In my opinion, that's pretty unbefuckinglievable.
I'm watching this experiment with a great deal of interest. I'm looking forward to seeing the results at the end of the season.
Sports though? Really? What has the wins/losses of the Detroit Lions have to do with magicians? Fuck, if you don't know the answer to that one, shame on you. Simon Tomasi's blog is "Trainee Golem Builder." He's in training. He's experimenting, practicing. He's taken on a project that can have pretty obvious results. He's testing his skills, flexing his magical muscles. He's learning how to influence the world.
He picked something he doesn't really give a shit about (I don't think), American Football. It might not seem like a big deal, but Detroit's going through some major shit. They don't have a lot to be proud of right now. They don't have a lot, period. They're broke and desperate, the Somalia of the United States. A successful home team can be a morale booster that slops over into all aspects of the city's economy, crime, and future expansion. Every win brings a little bit of joy to Michiganders who have been consistently disappointed for a decade in their team's performance, in their treatment by the unions and the auto manufacturing companies, and their government. The indirect consequences of a winning season in Detroit could be huge.
Well begun, sir. And good luck.
Here's their record:
Year Wins-Losses
1998 5-11
1999 8-8
2000 9-7
2001 2-14
2002 3-13
2003 5-11
2004 6-10
2005 5-11
2006 3-13
2007 7-9
2008 0-16
2009 2-14
2010 6-10
You'll note that the last time they even won more games in a season than they lost was in 2000.
Then some British kabalist, with as much interest in American football as any proper British man should have, picks the goddamned Detroit Lions to run a series of experiments on. "A Lion has Roared" he calls it.
In the last four games, the Lions have won, and won hard. They're facing the Bears next week, and they're favored to win. It's still early in the season, but right now the Lions are tied with the Packers for the lead in their division. In my opinion, that's pretty unbefuckinglievable.
I'm watching this experiment with a great deal of interest. I'm looking forward to seeing the results at the end of the season.
Sports though? Really? What has the wins/losses of the Detroit Lions have to do with magicians? Fuck, if you don't know the answer to that one, shame on you. Simon Tomasi's blog is "Trainee Golem Builder." He's in training. He's experimenting, practicing. He's taken on a project that can have pretty obvious results. He's testing his skills, flexing his magical muscles. He's learning how to influence the world.
He picked something he doesn't really give a shit about (I don't think), American Football. It might not seem like a big deal, but Detroit's going through some major shit. They don't have a lot to be proud of right now. They don't have a lot, period. They're broke and desperate, the Somalia of the United States. A successful home team can be a morale booster that slops over into all aspects of the city's economy, crime, and future expansion. Every win brings a little bit of joy to Michiganders who have been consistently disappointed for a decade in their team's performance, in their treatment by the unions and the auto manufacturing companies, and their government. The indirect consequences of a winning season in Detroit could be huge.
Well begun, sir. And good luck.
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