Red Work Course Package Update

For the people who ordered the course package I offered a couple weeks ago, the Yahoo Group is up and running. I have sent invitations to the emails associated with the PayPal accounts. Check your inbox, and if it isn't there today (Yahoo can take a while to deliver invites for some reason), check your spam folders.

You can sign up to the group using whatever email address you prefer using the link in the invitation. It doesn't have to be the email you used for PayPal.

You will receive a ton of files when you join. Remember, the order is Black Work, then White Work, then Green Work. Check the Files section of the group for more information.

How to Be Happy Forever

In the comment section of the Favor of Kings post, I had a conversation with Lance Michael Foster about what happens when you achieve your goals. To keep things in perspective, he offered the following:

The old chestnut goes is that there are three curses of increasing severity (often said to be Chinese, though there is no proof):

1. "May you live in interesting times."
2. "May you come to the attention of those in authority."
3. "May your wishes be granted."

and:

"There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it."

-Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, IV

I don't think he was being a a cheerio-pisser on purpose. I read through his blogs a bit to get a sense of who he was and where he was coming from before I started assuming he was being an intentional prick, and he comes across as an interesting guy with a wide range ofactivities . Subsequent comments have revealed him to be a decent fellow with good intentions.

I think he was sincerely trying to offer up some conventional wisdom that's supposed to keep you from getting all excited and hopeful about something that's going to turn out to be shitty in real life. There's nothing wrong with that.

Except these proverbial nuggets of wisdom are based on a glaring false assumption: that the thing you want in and of itself will somehow bring you instant happiness, once and for all.

That's not how it works. Most of us know that getting what you want means you have to take care of it to keep it nice. But some people don't think about what their life will really be like after they get what they want.

Unexpected maintenance requirements are usually why people aren't happy when they get what they want. That hot chick needs affection, has issues, gets PMS, expects you to listen to her and value her goals and dreams and accomplishments. That million dollars has to be invested, cared for, tapped into sparingly, not given away to family members and friends with can't-fail investment opportunities.

Unanticipated consequences are another reason people aren't happy with how things work out when they get what they want. That guy who killed his partner and stole the money from his armored truck is finding out that his mom didn't just quietly go pick up the $25k he left at his grandmother's grave site for her, and his buddy didn't jump at the chance to live off the stolen loot on the lam for the rest of his life.

But I think the main reason people aren't happy when they get what they want, the main thing that makes getting a heart's desire into a tragedy is that it doesn't satisfy them completely forever. They get what they wanted, and they integrate having it into their lives, and then they're faced with the inevitable question:

Life isn't static. It moves, lives, breathes. Creation never stopped. Manifestation is an ongoing process. Everything physical is decaying at varying rates. The universe is not designed to reach a particular state and then stay there forever.

Achieving goals makes you happy. It's the process of achievement itself that is pleasing, not the actual goal. When you accomplish your goals, achieve your desires, you feel good, you enjoy the fruits of your labor, and then you move on to your next goal, taking the good vibes from your success and channeling it into your future efforts.

And that's the trick to being happy forever. Keep making new goals. Keep moving. Get in tune with the process of manifestation, and you'll see it's a current flowing ever outward into the material realm from the un-manifest realms. Get to know yourself and your abilities, the way you think and the things that really make you happy, and you realize that you are a creator god. You're designed to be happy when you're creating your world.

PayPal: Get out of the Morality Police Business

Like most human decisions, PayPal's efforts to curb sexual predation started out as a really good idea, but then they acted like idiots. Under their guidelines, the Bible and the Quran would be banned. Which you might not think is a bad thing, but it is. This is digital book burning. This is where it begins.

The Order of the Golden Drama Queen

"it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment"

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Oh boy, Golden Dawn soap opera fans, this season ought to be good!*

Now there's a 20-year conspiracy against the HOGD, and the puppetmaster will soon be revealed! Is it last season's villain, the dastardly Nick Farrell? Is it a character we thought was written out of the plot? Or someone we haven't seen? Are the writers going to keep the continuity of past seasons, or completely recast the entire history?

If it's one person behind all the things woven together as a decades long conspiracy, they'll have to have been around the GD since the 90s, pulling the strings of the Ciceros. They'd have to be really old now, unless...

It's a Demon! Or a vampire, vampires are kind of played out in the mainstream, but the occult community is ripe for a good vampire genre resurgence.

I'm betting it's a Black Brother though, he's been sampling from the early GD school's bag of tricks for the last couple of years, complete with new revelations from the Secret Chiefs. I'm hoping for something on par with Fabrato, one of the 99 Black Lodges or something, but I don't really expect anything that good.

[Edit: The plot thickens! I started this post yesterday, and went to publish it this morning and found that the post has been removed! Nick is worried that the Black Rosicrucians might have gotten to him, so he's thoughtfully re-posted the last message of David Griffin. I really hope it doesn't turn out to have been a test episode, a potential plot line that didn't get enough positive feedback from the test audience.]

[Edit 2: The post is back, thanks for the heads up, Satyr Magos!]

* Some people watch Jersey Shore and Real Housewives. Don't judge me.

We Need Liberal Christian Pastors

I'm reading through the Archdruid Report today, and I get to the part where he talks about the three theological based political perspectives of the 18th century, conservative, liberal, and eschaton immanentizers. The liberals taught at the time that society was getting closer to God's Kingdom.

I'm thinking of how the conservative right is basically 18th century conservatism at this point, in several pockets around the United States. I went to a Charismatic Puritan church for a while in my fundy days.

Society is ripe for 18th century values. What we need are 18th century liberal values to be taught from the pulpits of the churches, doctrine that the transformation of society towards an image of the Kingdom of God is the thing Christians ought to be doing. There's plenty of scripture to support it. Christians love to be challenged to do godly things, challenge a church to donate time and materials for a women's shelter, and they try to outdo one another in sacrificing whatever they can, if you put it to them in the right way.

Someone needs to balance the rhetoric that's hitting the ears of the evangelical world, give them an option to hear the Word of God taught from a nicer perspective. Mix in some Ecstatic Eastern Mysticism couched in language from the New Testament and belly dancing in the name of the Lord (call it Jesus-oom ba or whatever), and you'll make a mint, too.

Something like Archangel Foster's Church of the New Revelation would be great.

[Edit: Jason writes that there are indeed liberal pastors! Halleluiah!]

Update on the Course Offer

Well, that was a huge success. I cut the deal off 24 hours to the minute after posting it. The money I needed to get the car was raised in the first five minutes, and then the orders kept pouring in. I'm totally overwhelmed now, but I get a much nicer range of cars to select from.

I'm setting up a separate yahoo group to distribute all the course materials for this class, and once that's finished you'll all be getting invitation emails to join the group. Emails will be sent to the email address provided with the purchase. If you want a different email associated with the course material, join the group using the email you prefer. The invitation has a link to the web page, and you can choose to join using whatever email address or yahoo account you wish.

When you join, you'll get the ebooks. There are a lot. Work through them by color, Black, then White, then Green. Don't skip ahead, and don't read them all at once, there's a lot of material and you'll get swamped. Try to pace it one lesson per week.

Riffing on "When we Met the Neighbors"

Hope you've been reading Gordon's Whisky Rant series, because if you haven't, your life is shit. You probably knew it was shit, and now you know why. You're welcome. Catch up, and then hit this.

In Part 7, Gordon discusses his theories on what happened that led to us gaining a soul, and his theory is well explained in the post. I'm not repeating it here, read it yourself.

But I'd like to add a Hermetic aspect to the mix. The spirit-entity neighbors exist in a world that we all of a sudden started interacting with, claiming heritage from, and expected to return to when our bodies burned out. Gordon's looking at this from the bottom up, what happened that brought human beings to the level of consciousness to be able to interact with a world we can't see without assistance from spirits of various flora and fungi.

But let's look at what the Corpus Hermeticum says happened when humans gained a soul:

13. ... And after that he had well-learned their essence and had become a sharer in their nature, he had a mind to break right through the Boundary of their spheres, and to subdue the might of that which pressed upon the Fire.


14. So he who hath the whole authority o’er [all] the mortals in the cosmos and o’er its lives irrational, bent his face downwards through the Harmony, breaking right through its strength, and showed to downward Nature God’s fair Form.


And when she saw that Form of beauty which can never satiate, and him who [now] possessed within himself each single energy of [all seven] Rulers as well as God’s [own] Form, she smiled with love; for ’twas as though she’d seen the image of Man’s fairest form upon her Water, his shadow on her Earth.


He in his turn beholding the form like to himself, existing in her, in her Water, loved it and willed to live in it; and with the will came act, and [so] he vivified the form devoid of reason.


And Nature took the object of her love and wound herself completely round him, and they were intermingled, for they were lovers.


15. And this is why beyond all creatures on the earth man is twofold; mortal because of body, but because of the essential Man immortal.


Though deathless and possessed of sway o’er all, yet doth he suffer as a mortal doth, subject to Fate.


Thus though above the Harmony, within the Harmony he hath become a slave. Though male-female, as from a Father male-female, and though he’s sleepless from a sleepless [Sire], yet is he overcome [by sleep].

We had finished our training in the Seven Spheres, mastered the portions of the spheres allotted to us as fellow children of God, self aware emanations of the Source, and we stepped down all empowered and took a look at the creation below. And Nature made a form for us, and we loved it so much we leaped into it and became one with it.

In the Bible, it's the same thing, pretty much. God makes the form, and breathes life into it. The Hermetic creation notes the separation between  the Form Maker, and places the act of becoming ensouled entirely in the hands of the Spiritual species of Man.

All of a sudden in the material world, as Gordon so clearly lays it out, humans become self aware entities painting pictures of the internal landscape of the human spiritual condition, burying people, and interacting with invisible spirits that, presumably, had been there all along.


Either way you look at it, something formed a shell that we liked, and when it was ready, we stepped through and started flying around creation in matter suits that were suitable for our purposes.

When you were reading the Whisky rant, did you notice the crazy sidebar? Here, let me refresh your memory:

(Crazy sidebar: Is this our ancestors encoding their email address into their terraforming spaceships? Is this how we check back in?)*

He's talking about entheogens and the built-in receptors that let us trip and see the spirit world consciously. Personally, I think this ability is there as a safeguard, a reminder in case we forget who we are, where we come from, and where we return when we leave the flesh. We knew going in that once you get tied into the flesh, it's easy to forget what we can't see. Like any prudent coder, or subsequent hacker, we made sure there was a back door safety hatch to keep in touch with our world and our family that are still over there. The entheogens are a satellite phone to the spirit world we came from.


So the neighbors that we met turn out to be the same terraforming ancestors. They were us the whole time. Our cousins and brothers and sisters from our home town. Death is a door to return there, and all this spiritual stuff about initiations and getting across the abyss, and the Book of the Dead that tells you what to do to get home are the ways back when we're done with whatever it was we came here to do. The Bhodisattva vow is taking the oath to keep working with folks who need help to get back home until we all get back in one piece, maybe.

I don't know for sure, but it's interesting to think about. It doesn't provide much in the way of "why" we're here, though. I think the hallucinogens are a good indication. We eat hallucinogens and drink and get high to experience life in different states. To the denizens of the spirit realms beyond the material, getting physical might like taking a little trip, a few years in dense matter to experience the process of manifestation, retaining the ability to influence the process, but keeping the focus primarily on experiencing the process as it unfolds. Getting into the flesh is us getting high, or rather, low. We're on a drug, and we're hallucinating.

 

If that's the case, I propose that for those of us in a position to do so, with the inclination and aptitude to make it happen, the primary aim should be making sure we have a really good trip.

 

* Read more: http://runesoup.com/2012/03/when-we-met-the-neighbours-the-whisky-rant-part-7/#ixzz1oG8zS9nf

The Favor of Kings

A lot of people go around the world feeling like ... well, I don't know, small. Insignificant. Afraid. Worthless. Unwanted, superfluous, an extra in the play of life that no one notices until they trip and screw up the lead's blocking.

It strikes all of us at some point, but knowing that everyone else feels small and insignifcant and afraid sometimes doesn't really make it any easier to live with when it's happening to you personally. In fact, I'm pretty sure it makes it worse.

Magicians throughout time and space have had to suffer this feeling, and at some point, one of them did something about it. Or maybe everyone eventually does something about it when they realize they can. I don't know. Whatever happened, we have the Favor of Kings, and it's pretty fucking sweet.

I first ran across it in my Demon Magic time. There, nestled in the attributes of Eligor, Orobas, Orias and Belial, I found spirits who brought the Love of Lords and Great People, and who brought the favour of friends and foes. Favor. Love. It means, quite simply, that these spirits can make the people in power, the people in your life like you, really like you. When people like you, they make ways for you to succeed. They help, they give money, they give time, they set up interviews with their bosses for you. And when the King likes you, everyone else has to at least pretend to like you, so it's a win-win, pretty much.

I've seen it in other places since then. I've found methods of accomplishing this result in my Work in all the spheres, with all the angels. Saturn makes you wise, and can put you in positions of influence with powerful people. Jupiter makes you Kingly yourself, and people like hanging out with Kingly types who are quick to laugh healthy, hearty laughs. Mars establishes you as a key person on any team with targeted goals. The Sun just fucking crowns you the Golden Child, makes you shining and brilliant, and people flock to you. Venus makes you inspirational. Mercury makes you eloquent. The Moon teaches you the ways of the Glamour.

And I tell you brothers and sisters, it feels good to be liked. It helps you get ahead in life when powerful people like you.

I've been busy at work lately. My contract was cancelled, and they benched me. That means they pay you from the overhead pile of cash until they find other work for you to do that's billable. If they can't find anything for you quickly, they fire you. So I've been relying on the Favor of Kings a lot lately. I got punted to a couple writing projects that were desperate, and I blew everyone away with my mad skills. I think my boss has kept my skills her little secret. Today during a boring meeting with a project manager in Atlanta, it slipped that I'm famous in DC, Atlanta, and my own Baltimore office among the management. There's nothing they've thrown at me that I haven't been able to handle like a boss. And I don't think I've done anything all that spectacular.

So find a way to tap into that. Conjure the archangel of your favorite planet, the one that rules your Sun sign is a good start if you can't think of any that you'd like to work with, and ask them to bless you with the Favor of Kings. Make yourself a talisman in the right hour, and ask them to bless it, and carry it around with you. You'll quickly find that people like you, for no apparent reason.

It's exactly like that feeling you get when you feel insignificant for no particular reason, but completely opposite. And totally worth the time it takes.