Magical Panacea

Friends! Have I got something for you. If you're like me, and I know you are, you are in a world that is not entirely fun, aren't you? That's because life on Earth, in the flesh like this, well... it sucks sometimes. Usually when we're not paying attention to things we were supposed to be tending, but at other times too. It's like there's something inherent in incarnation that requires that sometimes things just aren't friggin' awesome.

But we don't have to stay there for long, thank god. We have the technology, we have exactly and specifically the cure for that which ails you, brothers and sisters. 

Try New and Improved Red Stone!

It's a magical wonder, a panacea that brings healing, peace, and wholeness to us... wherever we may be. It extends life, it restores youth, it calms passions and cleanses apathy! 

Don't just take my word for it, listen to this:

• Got a Sickness?
• The world's greatest diseases... escaped! 
• Sadness?
• Driven Away!
• Distress?
• Driven Away!
• Evil and hurtful things?
• Also Driven Away!

But wait, that's not all!

• Feeling lost in the Dark?
• The Red Stone leads to the Light!
• Feeling set about on all sides in a desert wilderness?
• The Red Stone leads to a Secure Habitation!
• Plain old fashioned Poverty got you down?
• The Red Stone brings a free and ample fortune!

Not bad, eh? Who wouldn't want one? This was the sales pitch for the Philisopher's Stone* from the Golden Tractate of Hermes Trismegistus. I totally would have gone for it. 

And I did. Hook line and sinker, I took the bait and got dragged from my dark and cold wet depths into a bright and scary world where I could barely breathe. 

Fortunately, you don't need air up there.

I made a study of the Alchemical phases, and examined what exactly happened in these experiments. I looked at what happens in the Hermetic path to reclaiming divinity, and saw that it could easily be mapped to the alchemical phases.

I got to work testing my theory with the easiest model of the spheres and the process of ascending through the heavens and descending in power I could find. I started with the Primum Materia, that is, me, and I set that shit on fire, let the smoke rise up as an offering of prayers, to be a sweet smell in the heavens as I watched the things inside me burn.

And seven years later... I did it. I completed the Work, I created the Stone, and I ground it into a tincture, and I have used it to heal the world. It's still got sickness, but in the lives of those I touch, I spread healing, reminding people who they are and what they are capable of achieving with a little intent, planning, and right action. 

The Philosopher's Stone, what it is, what it does, this is an important thing to understand, in my humble opinion. The making of it is supposed to turn you into a really super wise person, and it does, but it doesn't perfect you. No one claimed that it does. You aren't any more a manifest Buddha than you were before you started the Work (nor any less). You don't automagically become a Secret Chief.

But over the years, you learn what makes you tick. You learned who you are, how your damage creates more damage in your self, and you found ways to work through your shit. You kept dissolving your issues layer by layer until you found out what they really were underneath (I'm lonely) and behind all the false masks (I'm scared) and odd disassociative emotional spans (I miss You). You found the answers, visited the interior of the earth, and went even deeper, deep enough to dream in brilliant colors you have never seen, deep enough to join a million people for a wedding feast, deep enough to reach out and touch the face of the one who made you...

And you see it in everyone else around you too, the same core issues, and you can help. You see the darkness you labored in, you know how to turn on the lights, the everburning lights. You have the words to help the ones who need to hear them, if you choose to speak them. 

You learn the value of health and how to foster it in a way that creates opportunities for miraculous wondrous cures. You learn to eat right and exercise because it gives you magical power and authority over your life**. You learn to phrase your healing rites in a way that focus on the desired outcome instead of the steps that you think should lead to the desired outcome. You learn when to Work with Raphael, the Healing of God, and when to Work with Michael, Who Is Like God. 

And you learn to get rid of sadness. You learn that the people who let you down are just ... well, they're just like you. You get compassion. Not forgiveness, necessarily, because just like you, they could have learned to treat you better, but at least you understand, and you're released from taking it personally. As well as protected from letting it happen again. You've learned that the things that eliminating situations that make you sad make room for happiness, and that makes the times when you do see the sad stuff ever so much bearable.  And even revelatory regarding the nature of sorrow and joy.

And your stress just goes away. I think it's great that the Golden Tractate was concerned about stress, don't you? They knew even then that it was a killer. They knew it comes from not knowing how things are going, that basic, "I'm scared" that hasn't been defined or mitigated. The Work shows you who you are, reveals the things you worry about and why, and it gives you the answers you need to keep that stress from coming back. 

And it brings a sense of security. In the Gates rites, I walk people through the rites to build up a Kingdom by performing the planetary magics of initiation and manifestation that I learned about on the way. Work through them, and in a year people are talking about how their lives have changed, their incomes increased, bad relationships dissolved, great relationships found, and prosperity and health the hallmarks across the spectrum of results. 

Cash, yo. Money. The stuff you need to get by, and have a little left over for just in case. 

These things all come to those who pursue and create the Stone. They are the holy Side Effects of the Great Work. We get to have a lot of money and health and enjoyment, and we can help our friends when they are unhappy. When shit happens to us, we are equipped to appreciate the value and get rid of the useless parts of it more quickly than others. Shit happens to us less because we tend to be more proactive in getting what we want, and we understand the work necessary, and we enjoy doing it because it is fun to build reality, like it's fun to work out and grow muscles and shape your flesh as you will.

The true treasure though, the real reason we do it isn't listed at all in the sales pitch. The real reason we do it is something even better, something beyond words. It's pointed to in the word JOY, it's indicated... but there's something higher found in the frictive sweaty work of manifestation. Something higher and hotter and more amazing, a gnosis that feels like the release of the floodgates that you only feel consciously in rare sphincter-relaxing moments in life.

Sing the rapturous love-song unto me! Burn to me perfumes! Wear to me jewels! Drink to me, for I love you! I love you!

* This, O Son, is the concealed stone of many colours, which is born and brought forth in one colour; know this and conceal it. By this, the Almighty favouring, the greatest diseases are escaped, and every sorrow, distress, and evil and hurtful thing is made to depart; for it leads from darkness into light, from this desert wilderness to a secure habitation, and from poverty and straits to a free and ample fortune. - The Golden Tractate of Hermes Trismegistus

** want a whole post on that? bet it would be fun to write.