You are Cordially Invited to Participate in Seven Spheres in Seven Days: A Demonstration

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Rufus Opus

 is Happy to Announce 

the Commencement of 

A Seven Day Series of Planetary Magical Rites

involving the Daily Conjuration of 

The Intelligences and the Spirits 

of the 

Seven Spheres

Starting tomorrow at dawn in the Baltimore metro area of the Chesapeake Swamp, Rufus Opus shall begin the performance of Seven Days of Planetary Magic. He does this shit all the time, but is doing it up right on a massive scale. 

Just to prove a point. 

This is primarily aimed at bringing the Kingdom of the participating Magician into being. It's sort of a ... massive, global, group rite of empowerment and blessing. That lays the foundation for the manifestation of miraculous shit that no one will believe.

I'll be doing the Seven Gates Rites, using the seals of the Intelligences and the Spirits of the Planets to conjure the specfic aspects of the planetary forces to manifest the results through the spheres of the participants at dawn for a week. [Edit: forgot to tell you when you should do the rites: You will participate at any planetary hour of the planetary day.] As I perform the Rites, I'll be weaving us all together into a massive synergistic ball of awesomeness that spreads around the globe and transforms the world into a place of wonder and amazement. For those of us who participate, at any rate.

Most of my audience already has the Gates Rites. You guys are awesome, by the way, thanks for that. This rite has a several core basic purposes. To bless you and to keep you, to reveal the light of the face of god shining upon you and through you into your world. To make you happy. To release some extra powerful juju. For the joy of doing it on a massive scale.

And for a secret purpose related to tricking you into doing the Great Work and becoming the god of your personal world on purpose.

We'll be beginning at DAWN tomorrow. Sorry for the short notice, but oh well. It is what it is. Can't wait, people's lives are at stake. We can't wait for it to be convenient for you. We'll do it again, real soon. No worries.

[Edit: Again, you'll be performing the rite during ANY PLANETARY HOUR OF THE PLANETARY DAY. We're starting in Jupiter because it's Thursday, and I like Jupiter. Use this link, edit the location, and get the hours if you don't have it already.]

What do I look like?

Go Fuck Yourself

So I've noticed a trend recently. People are asking me what I think they should do. Moral questions of potentially significant impact. As if I were Jiminy fucking Cricket.

Of course I want to give really bad advice.

• Yes, you should totally marry her, you got her pregnant after all.
• Yes, I would TOTALLY conjure a demon for that. What could go wrong?
• No, she won't mind.
• Ooooh, Use your Saturn Talisman to capture one of the ghosts on the ghost tour in that crystal ball and take 'em home for experiments! That'll be SO FUCKING COOL!

And on a couple of occasions, I actually did give that really bad advice. Yeah... Sorry about that. I was, uh, just kidding!

And I laughed when I saw you actually did it, and then felt bad, and the follow up advice I gave to fix everything was totally sound and I'm glad it worked out for you bro!

But here's a clue: I am not the best person to ask about moral questions. I said it at Crucible, I strongly believe moral questions of right and wrong, shoulds, shalts, and shalt nots do not apply to magicians because we are beyond Good and Evil.

Magicians spend a long ass time going through the process of transformation. We reclaim our divine heritage, we become consciously aware that we are the images of God, the Creators of our World. We travel the heavens, talk to angels, demons, and gods alike. We look good, we feel good, and we know mysterious shit.

We see the consequences of actions better than other people. I think we have a different perspective of "now" than other people, once we've been through the Seven planetary spheres and integrated the forces of each. We see further, or maybe we just see the interconnectedness of the information-manifestation exchange system more clearly. I don't know.

But whatever it is, Good and Evil are never really either good nor evil, and are always without fail both at the same time. Magicians get this, intimately. Morality is relativistic, not absolute, just like everything else. It depends. Travelling through the Spheres and doing the Great Work teaches you the Dependencies that matter. It teaches you things about "Good" and "Evil" that make them laughable expressions of dualistic wordplay that does nothing to anything that matters.

Changing your opinion of a thing changes your experience of that thing, to a degree, but it does not change the thing itself. Change the thing itself, magician. That's what we do. We don't worry about how it's perceived, because we realize that's going to depend on a lot of factors. What matters to us is whether or not we are creating the world we want to experience. What we want.

The bottom line for anyone when it comes to moral decisions is whatever they want the most when they are put to the test. We pick the thing that we believe will bring us the most satisfaction. What we want the most. That's what we do.*

Now most of the time, when we figure out what we really want, why we really went through all the work of dividing and manifesting as if we weren't one big thing, we learn some really fundamental aspects to the idea of power, and how it is intimately connected to compassion. We aren't dicks about things we don't like. We might do things other people think are good or evil, but these interpretations are no part of our calculations or criteria for doing what we do.

We are solely focused on doing our will, fulfilling our fate, to love and laugh and create and enjoy.

So really, don't ask me about whether a thing is good or evil, or if it's right or wrong to do something. You can't trust me to have your best interests at heart. Because I have my best interests at heart.

Instead of asking me what I think, figure out what the fuck YOU think. You're the one who has to experience the consequences of your actions. Go out and do the Work. If you want to take the trip I took, take my courses. If that's too expensive, figure it out from the Neoplatonic Basics. The e-books have the methods. Use the Genius and Evil Daimon book to get your Genius Name, use the Modern Angelic Grimoire and the Seven Gates Rites to go up and down through the spheres integrating the forces, read your Agrippa. There's even demon magic available.

If that's not your thing, find your thing and do the Work however you're supposed to. The way that gets it done. The way that is necessary for you. Whatever. Do the Work. So many of us are, and we want you with us too. Come on! It's fun ... having fun!

* That's a good technique to use to figure out what you want, by the way, in case you haven't figured it out clearly yet. Take a look at what you do. Those are huge clues right there about what you want out of life.

Dreamers, Romantics, Artists, Magicians...

Hey, take some time today and read Six Short Chapters of the Sacred Text. It's all in one blog post. Won't take you too long.

It's important.

Hermes Dancing

This morning as the Mercury hour of the Merury day rolled around, I tuned my awareness to our favorite Uncle Hermes to salute him with an improv hymn followed by a more formal conjuration and an Orphic Hymn. I got as far as looing up towards his sphere and saying, "Hail to thee, oh Hermes..." when I saw him dancing.

Like this:

See that grin? He's having fun, yo. This pic doesn't show it, but he's strumming a lyre with one set of hands, conducting the elements with another pair, revealing and writing, and laughing, and dancing. Dude's a happy guy.

My life is a lot more fluid and flexible these days than it has been ... uh, well, ever. It's less a choreographed symphonic production with a start, middle, and end than it is an ongoing wave. It flows in harmony with my desires, ambitions, and passions. It feeds them and grows from them. 

I saw it in a dream, it was epic. It ran parallel to the beach, and everyone else there was waiting for the ripples of its passage to ride in to shore on their little surf boards and boogie boards. They were safe there. But I paddled out hard to catch it full, and it took me up and carried me, and I found myself dancing to its tune as I woke, still tasting the salt air, glowing with the thrill of riding that wave.

This morning, Hermes showed up dancing, and smiling, and looking me straight in the eye, sharing the joke, sharing the joy and mirth with that thrilled expression, the cosmic, "I know, right!?" I looked back at myself and saw that yeah, I'm like that too. Hermes dancing, flowing, moving from one state to another, connecting, touching, interacting, plugging in. Never stopping, never losing step, always moving in time to the rhythm.

Hermes, draw near, and to my pray'r incline, angel of Jove [Zeus], and Maia's son divine;
Studious of contests, ruler of mankind, with heart almighty, and a prudent mind.
Celestial messenger, of various skill, whose pow'rful arts could watchful Argus kill:
With winged feet, 'tis thine thro' air to course, O friend of man, and prophet of discourse:
Great life-supporter, to rejoice is thine, in arts gymnastic, and in fraud divine:
With pow'r endu'd all language to explain, of care the loos'ner, and the source of gain.
Whose hand contains of blameless peace the rod, Corucian, blessed, profitable God;
Of various speech, whose aid in works we find, and in necessities to mortals kind:
Dire weapon of the tongue, which men revere, be present, Hermes, and thy suppliant hear;
Assist my works, conclude my life with peace, give graceful speech, and me memory's increase.

The Beast and the Harlot and You

Oh, there are so many things I could say about this one. Almost half of them are uninformed opinions that shouldn't be spoken in public yet, if ever, and the other half are none of your business...

I mean, they're Mysteries. Mysteries that you should totally go explore for yourself, at your earliest opportunity.

But there's one thing I can tell you about the two, the Beast and the Harlot... They are not just a couple of entities, and they are not just forces that manifest between two humans. They are these things, but they are also more, an image, an aspect, an avatar of you. And me.

The Beast, your flesh and bone, the Harlot, your spirit and mind, together taking in everything they can as they rumble through life, creating and destroying the world as they see fit in a bacchanalian frenzy of sensational experiences. They are the unkempt Holy Hermaphrodite, Hermes-Aphrodite conjoined in an eternal glorious fuck, an orgasmic unification that creates the current that runs the world. She rides him as he bounds about, and though she holds the bridle, it is often loose, and no one can tell who leads, who might be in control, or if either of them are even interested in the idea of control, or the idea of arriving at a destination at all.

That's you, brothers and sisters. That's me. On the inside.That's us when we resort to magic, every time. That's us crossing that threshold between us the experiencers and Us the Creators, that mad cackle of glee that almost-but-not-quite manages to escape as we feel the powers flow through us and the magic takes effect. It's wrapped in intent, and sheathed in desires, filtered through attachment, but at essence most raw it is the urge to have fun.

Lust. Passion. The frictional catalysis of the Work..