Crystal Skull Dreams

Well, so far, so good. I've got a Legionairre from one of Bune's hordes embedded in the matrix of the crystal now. In addition, there's the physical link to Tezcatlipoca through the skull's mask. As a result Ive been having interesting dreams, and I've visited the realms of the Aztec Underworld.

Shockingly, as you may imagine, the dreams have been about... death. Not mine, but Death his own self, ye Grim Reaper has been wandering the dream realms with me. I haven't done anything particularly lucid or purposed in the dreams yet, but I'm happy with the results so far.

The end goal here is to have a talisman so potent from its associated entities that anyone who touches it, regardless of their training, has an immediate ability to communicate with the dead. I don't know how this will manifest with any individuals, since everyone seems to have a unique way of working with things like this, but I imagine tarot, iching, divinations, crystal scryers, and clairvoyants would all have their abilities heightened. I haven't done anything with it to contact a specific dead person yet, but it's on my list of things to do.

For now, I'm still performing conjurations, empowerments, and spending time each day tuning the crystal to the appropriate harmonies of the underworld.

New blog to add to my list of faves

Jason Miller, author of Protection and Reversal Magick, has a new blog that specifically deals with magic and the practice thereof. Titled "Strategic Sorcery," this promises to be one of the kinds of blogs that I love.

Jason has spent time in Nepal training in Tantric Magic. He's also a rootworker from Cat Yronwoode's tradition, and a traditional ceremonial magician who works magic from the pages of Agrippa, Trithemius, and several popular grimoires I'm sure. The dude is pretty awesome.

He's one of those online treasures that get really emotionally and spiritually appreciated by millions of people who never think to thank him by giving him a couple bucks each.

I believe he's also teaching a series of workshops on Strategic Sorcery as well. I don't have all the details, but I'm sure he'd be willing to pass them on to you at his earliest convenience, if you're near enough to benefit.

Tezcatlipoca and Dee's Aztec Mirror

Mr. Doctor Professor Patrick (OMG, total Spongebob moment... hang on... whew, ok...) Brought up a question on the previous blog that ought to be further expounded upon.

Dee's Aztec Obsidian Mirror came to Europe between 1527 and 1530, according to the British Museum's notes on his magic mirror.

I don't know if he ever used it in scrying the Enochian stuff, but he did use it for scrying some things.

So, Tezcatlipoca...

He's been popping up across my searches, weaving his smoke and mirrored way into my reality. I just sort of felt lead to put the mask on the skull, and it looks nice.

Tezcatlipoca, among other things, is the God of the night. He appeared in the form of a jaguar in many tales (get it, jaguar tales... tails...), and did other cool stuff that I can't remember. It's a cop out, I know, but Wikipedia's got a big article on him here, and I'm exhausted from putting together my garage today. Pulled all the accumulated crap out, and then neatly put it back in after sweeping. It doesn't SOUND like an 8-hour job, but it was.

The Garage, with all its cool space and alchemistical stuff is now officially "The Lab." I may be running local workshops on making talismans out of copper and tin. Eventually.

Anyway, I'm tarred (that's "tired" for the yankees). So no more typey.

Crystal Skull 1 - Roughly Finished

Behold the BLURRY CRYSTAL SKULL OF DOOOOOOOM!!!

The best camera in the house is my daughter's cell phone camera at 2.0 megapix. And she's twelve. But hey, I gots pictures! I ain't complaining!

For size comparison, that is a twelve-year-old girl's hand holding the crystal above a hardwood floor. The wood planks are about two inches wide, if that helps. It's rather ... smallish.

My spouse said it was "cute."

Nevertheless!!! It's awesome. I had worked after conjuring my Agatha Daimon and the Goetic spirit Bune. I was tingling from the whole experience, physically, and spiritually.

Quartz has some pretty cool occult properties on its own. Carving quartz is delicate work, it cracks and shatters. That's partially why it turned out so small. It's my first effort, and I learned a lot.

The heat from grinding it down was all focused at the tip of the crystal point, while it had one. I also dowsed it using a pendulum before carving it, and I'll be dowsing it when it's all the way finished too. It still needs more polishing, and the "mask" needs more work.

The mask, by the way, is a reference to the Aztec God of Sorcerors, Tezcatlipoca. I remember it by repeating Tez-Cat-Lip-Polka. His name translates as "Smoking Mirror," and he was the god they would work with to perform scrying acts in their obsidian mirrors. The god was often depicted either wearing the mirror, or having it for a foot. He had lost the foot luring the crocodile from the waters that he and Qetzelcoatl made the land out of in some of the Aztec creation myths.

The mirror used by John Dee was one of these Aztec Mirrors made out of Obsidian and brought from the New World. Chances are pretty good that it was at one time used by someone of high importance under the auspices of Tezcatlipoca.

So, we've got a nod to the god of scrying from the Aztec cosmology. Why? Because. The Google expedition on crystal skulls in general lead me to very specific skulls that were masks of Tezcatlipoca. I also got engrossed in Aztec creation myths, and I read most of the Popul Vu codex. Comparative theology never ceases to entertain me.

Since beginning to carve the skull, it has appeared unasked for in a visit to my astral temple, sort of like Bune was just there one day after I put my spirit pot together for him. I'm not surprised, as Bune has worked on this skull with me, laying down a communications network for the spirits of the dead. My Agatha Daimon was also on hand to imbue it with pure Divine Light, so it's more likely to draw whomever uses it towards God rather than away.

I'm going to keep this for a while and play with it, see what comes out of my Work with it. I performed some basic psychometry on the crystals before choosing them, and found the ones that would be the best candidates based on their "vibe." I'll be testing them again, and maybe even writing up some of the Great Work lessons I learned from grinding the skull itself. Shaping a brittle crystalline matrix using a rotary tool and diamond bits requires a finesse and a strength combined that is hard to explain off the top of my head.

Sorry if I'm all over the map on this post, I'm kind of excited.

Cool Stuff

Someone on the lists is selling off a bunch of stuff to fund a move. It's neat. Check here:

http://search.ebay.com/W0QQsassZheatherc717

One of the really cool items is this Phoenix Scepter:

As you may know, I've got kids. That means an ever-handy excuse to watch Cartoons. One of our family favorites is Tutenstein. It's from the Discovery Channel and integrates real archaeology with a fun supernatural plot line. Spoiled teenage brat zombie megalomaniacs. How can you go wrong?

One of the things the boy-king has because he's the Pharaoh is the "Scepter of Was." I couldn't help but notice the similarities. Heather, the person selling the Ceremonial Magic stuff, is a really detailed artistic person with a former passionate history for the whole Egyptian Thing. I'd be willing to bet there's a real scepter of Was that she based her image on. If the Phoenix Wand could do half the things Tutenstein's Scepter does, I say God Damn! Buy that bitch!

Bune Update

As I mentioned in the Crystal Skull post, I've been Working with Bune on making the carved skull into a tool to aid in speaking with the spirits of the dead in general.

In addition, I changed out the stuff inside the pot. It's been over a year since I last did that, and the raisins and dates were mostly turned to dust. I took out some sweet grass I had put in, and I removed about a thousand little steel BBs. I have no idea why I put them in in the first place, maybe something to do with them being brass-colored or something, but in retrospect it was pretty stupid. Iron is anathema to the spirits of the Goetia.

So now my Pot contains the following:

• Dirt and rocks from the local branch of my bank
• Four Herkimer Diamonds
• One Orgone Generator
• Lignum Aloes
• Decayed bio-matter from various raisins and dates mixed in with the dust
• Mistletoe (Venusian Herb)
• Vervaine (Venusian Herb)
• Coltsfoot (Venusian Herb)
• Three Rosehips (Venusian Herb)
• Myrtle (Venusian Herb)
• Three pinches of Abramelin Incense (Traditional from Soma Luna; It has Cinnamon in it, an herb of Venus, and he always likes it)

Now, it took me a couple of weeks to research these herbs and ingredients, track them down, order them and then have them get here. I bought a stone mortar and pestle to grind up the herbs together. On the day of the changing of the herbs, I cleansed the old stuff, picked out the uck, and re-interred everything.

During the time I was working on gathering and researching Venusian herbs, and then after I had ground up all the herbs together and placed them next to me in the pot, I noticed some results.

I attribute these generally passive results to just working with the herbs of the planet in a magical capacity. I don't attribute it to Bune specifically.

Regarding Bune, he seemed pretty happy with the changes. Less than a week later, I received a job opportunity through email that could result in a doubling of my income for at least three months. One cannot beat that with the proverbial stick.

Assuming all goes well with the interview (the first two interviews have gone swimmingly), I've just got to point out that even in the midst of a really bad financial time with Jupiter in Capricorn, here I am making a fortune. If I land the job and everything goes well, it will be a couple of weeks to a month before the income actually doubles. Maybe that's part of waiting for the expansion in measured steps that the Jup-Cap placement requires, but it's also how things manifested when Jupiter was in Sag.

So I'm more convinced than ever that the astrological timing doesn't apply to the spirits of the Goetia. They are sub-lunar in my cosmology, and this result seems to reinforce that. A friend's HGA told him specifically to ignore the astrological timing when working with Bune, so this kind of confirms that.

Crystal Skulls

So, a couple of days ago I was sitting here in my computer chair, where I spend most days, and for some reason, I found myself thinking about Crystal Skulls.

I saw a special on Crystal Skulls on the History channel, or Discovery, or something like that a few months ago. I suppose it was timed to coincide with the latest Indiana Jones film, which I haven't seen. What I remembered specifically was that the skulls were most likely created in the 1800s using modern tools according to modern forensics, and that regardless of the origin, people report having strange experiences around the crystal skulls.

I had a lot of experience with the New Age movement in my youth. I owned Melody's Love is in the Earth book. I read her description of every rock my local store had in stock. I had some pretty fantastic experience playing with the "energy" of the stones. So I know that Quartz crystal acts as an amplifier of whatever energies it comes in contact with, and that there is something to the whole crystal movement.

I also understand the way the human mind guides spiritual interactions through the use of symbols. I don't prescribe to the information or psychological models that try to explain magic in terms of pure human mind, but the tool of the magician is the symbol. I know the skull is a powerful image in anyone's mind, and that it has all kinds of associations that would result in a crystal carved into that shape attracting specific spirits. These spirits would be affecting people in exactly the ways that crop up in the reports of strange phenomenon surrounding the crystal skulls.

So I have this dremel tool. It's modern technology at its finest. If a crystal carved in the 1800s as a fraudulent antiquity can accidentally result in spiritual experiences, then what would a crystal skull carved by a magician under the auspices of a particular spirit be capable of?

So I popped over to the local occult store and bought three pieces of Quartz. Two were mostly-clear points, about two inches long by an inch and a half wide. The third is rose quartz.

So what I'm doing is carving these pieces of quartz into skulls. I'm no great artist, and this is my first attempt, so it's a bit rudimentary. It makes the point though.

The point to these crystals is to make it easier for the owner to contact the spirits of the dead. I figure it will be useful to necromancers and mediums. As I begin each carving session, I conjure Bune to imbue the stone with his powers of making spirits appear. Things are progressing nicely so far. I haven't had any weird results yet, but the thing isn't finished either.

Here's a crappy picture of where I'm at so far. As you can see, the crystal point is still attached, and the skull is only roughed out. I'm considering leaving it as is, and just polishing the crap out of it until it shines like the top of the Empire State Building. (Yes, I just made a Little Orphan Annie reference.)

When it's ready, I'll be selling these little babies on my Products and Services page at my web site.

Click This Link or the Title of this post to see a selection of articles written about the Crystal Skull phenomenon.

Ex Drama, Mortis

Out of the Drama, Death.

Ok, I'm not a Latin scholar. Canum Latinum, that's the best I can do with my current skill sets. Maybe Ill get the Rosetta stone software for Latin. In the mean time...

Out of Drama, Death.

So I went from being bored with lists to starting shit on them. I got a moderator warning. And the mod totally likes me, too. She's put up with my shit for years, and when I get a mod warning from her, I know it's usually warranted. So I check myself.

This time, I was already aware that something was off, but I hadn't really done anything about it. Do you get like that? You know there's something "off" in your sphere or alembic or whatever your metaphor for your spiritual existence, but you don't bother with figuring out what it is right away because your really just don't feel like it?

That happens to me more often than I like. So what's going on? I haven't done anything lately that I don't usually do. I've been slipping in my ascension through the spheres. There's been nothing new to report in any of the spheres for months, it seems. Like I ask the archangel of the sphere if there's anything I need to work on, and it's like, no, and I'm all, thanks, please continue to integrate the forces of your sphere into mine, and he's like, yeah ok, and I'm off to the next sphere. Same old same old.

Plus there's been a slew of 12-year-olds in the house for the last month as my daughter has started making friends around here after a year. They're fun, alive, full of life and potential, and annoying as shit. AND they eat a lot. I can't keep a bag of cheesy poofs around to save my life.

I spent a couple of weeks fixing my spirit pot with Venus-based herbs. Bune's been enjoying it, and I have an opportunity to double my income that manifested a couple days after adjusting the contents of the pot.

I've also been developing an interest in crystal skulls. More on that in a bit.

Let's see, there's been a horrible astrological conjunction for the last couple of weeks too. Saturn and Mars have been conjunct in Virgo for a while. That's a lot of heavy, malefic energy pouring down on us. Venus and Mercury have been combust as well.

So basically, I'm just hitting a "plateau." You know, like a mountain, but with a flat top. It goes from a steep climb that takes a lot f focus to a flat, plain expanse that doesn't take hardly any effort to traverse, and nothing really happens. You can see for miles if anything's approaching, and... it can be rather boring if you're more interested in climbing.

The maintenance phase of the Work in between the times when you do something major are like plateaus. Lots of magicians stop at a plateau. The daily grind distracts them from the Work because nothing's really going on, and they get frustrated, so they start making drama for themselves to have something interesting going on.

And that's what I've been doing. The way I see it, creating drama is a negative means of providing entertainment. It doesn't get me closer to God. I don't find myself sharing anything particularly useful to anyone by being a contentious bitch. I'm not putting my energies into purifying anything by starting shit on lists, that's for sure.

So after taking a quick inventory, I changed tactics. Instead of just starting shit, I decided to actually talk about things of substance. Instead of grumping around, I've found an interesting side project to occupy my time. It doesn't take any specialized knowledge that I haven't already got, it's just putting the techniques I've developed to date into practice in another realm. I'm monitoring my internal feelings too, to see how I'm doing, and why I might be feeling pissy in each moment that I feel pissy. It's been an interesting exercise so far, and I've only been doing it for a day.

It boils down to reacting to how I feel vs. creating a scene that makes me feel a particular way. I don't like being a bitchy magician. I don't like it a bit. So I seek my pleasure, and that comes from being what I really am, a manifestation of God, taking part in the creation of the World. It's a great attitude adjustment. Remembering your race and value, that you are of the divine Race (REGARDLESS OF SKIN COLOR), and your Value is determined by whether you're actively participating in Creation or not.

So out of Drama, Death. Death is change, mortification, decomposition, and breaking down the useless shells into something fecund, nutrient-rich, and pathogen free that will make the flowers grow. Or the Oak, or the corn, or whatever you plant in it. Even a Rose. The bitchy pissy magician must die, be digested, and refined for the next stage of the Work.

Awesome Friends

Did everyone see the awesome comments my friends left to the latest post? You see why I love them so much?

Oh, and sorry Kieth, I thought I published your comment when it came in. It was still sitting there this morning.

Enduring unto the end...

I just left one of my online message groups today. I had joined because someone invited me there, and it was a Rosicrucian forum so it looked interesting. I've been reading about alchemy to get ready for this upcoming series of blog posts I'm noodling over, and I thought I might get some insight into some symbols or something.

Man, what a let down. A couple days into it, I had received about twenty or so posts about the nature of Will. Great topic, wonderful exchange of ideas and opinions and theories, and all that. These people were smart, witty, and nice.

But I'm so bored with that kind of talk. I mean, this is stuff that we went over in like metaphysical kindergarten. I'm at a point now where everyone is saying the same things I've already seen other people say before. Sometimes they've been said better, other times they've been said worse. It doesn't matter much to me, I'm bored either way.

I'm a little concerned. This is the stuff that I thought would be passionately interesting. I'm finding out that no one's got anything to say that Solomon didn't already say in Ecclesiastes. I used to think that if more people did magic, I'd have more to talk to about stuff. I'm finding out that isn't true.

Caring less and less about more and more. That's what seems to be happening as I continue in my work. I'm thinking I must be going through either a stagnation or putrification phase. If so, the solution to the problem would be steady and progressive addition of Mercury, Air, and whatever other alchemical symbols for that might be.

What gets me about all this is the damn time it takes. 30 weeks for the Stone, if you use lead and don't mind poisoning yourself and everyone you "project" onto later. Just "Putrification" can take 6-12 weeks. Dissolving faesces, recondensing, blah blah blah.

Oh well. Perdurabo, as they say. There's nothing more important to do with life, after all. The trick is to keep the heat steady.

"Found" Wealth

I was looking at our budget lately, and "found" a lot of cash that I was spending way over and beyond sanity. I'm a Taurus, and what can I say, I like to eat out. This was WAY too much though, and putting a brake to that and some other odd spending habits I had developed unawares, I've managed to save about a grand a month. Wouldn't you like to get a $1,000 a month raise?

I get them all the time, because I'm cool.

Just kidding. I get them because I use magic. And that is pretty cool.

I found the money by going over my portfolio through my online bank. It groups things together for me based on how I use my Debit Card. Since that's pretty much all I use to spend money these days, it works out pretty nicely. I was doing a periodic budget check, just to see where we were at compared to our goals, and also to figure out why we seemed to have such a shallow pool of funds to dip into for extravagant summer vacations.

The Great Work needs a periodic check-up too. Every once in a while, we need to sit down and see how our Philosopher's Stone is coming along. What Work have we been focusing on over the last few months? What results have been coming out? Has this brought us closer to our long-term goals as magicians, or has it been a distraction? Has our recent Work provided insight requiring us to adjust our long-term goals?

I ran a quick check-up on my own progress in the Work lately, and found some wealth I could have by making a few minor alterations in the way I use my resources. It got me thinking about how I apply the techniques I've learned in my secular life to my magical practices, and specifically to the Great Work in general. I started thinking about what is required to be able to do what I do, and I realized there's a whole SERIES of blog posts I can write about this. How many people are trained in applying the best practices of Project Management to the Great Work?

Obviously, we'll need to have a few things in place to be able to do this kind of thing effectively. We'll need to have a long-term goal, for example, and a plan to get from where we are to where we want to be. We'll need a way to review our recent Work.

The Long-Term Goal for most magicians is the accomplishment of the Great Work. Most folks have a general idea of what this means, and chances are I've posited a few interpretations of my own over the years on this blog. Essentially, the Great Work is modeled after the Alchemical process of turning a base element into a finer, more purified substance which then is capable of transmuting other substances on contact.

This process has a few stages to it. We can use these stages as mini-goals within the overall goal, and chart our progress accordingly. Off and on, I'll be adding details to this particular line of thought. At the moment, I'm thinking it will cover:

• The Great Work, yet another definition
• The Stages of the Alchemical Great Work
• How to Accomplish Anything Successfully Every Time

The last one will be huge.

A Spirit Pot for a Duke of the Goetia

After years of having people ask me where to find similar pots to the one I used with Bune, I've decided to put together a basic "kit" to build your own spirit pot. I found a brass hinged potpourri holder at a second hand store, and I'm engraving it with the appropriate language to make it a Brass Vessel.


I've also gathered the herbs together that one would put inside the pot for a Duke.

I'm creating a silver Pentacle of Solomon, and a copper blank suitable for a Duke's Seal. If someone has a specific Duke they want to work with in mind, I'll engrave the seal on the blank for them with my dremel tool, or they can engrave it themselves.

I'm thinking of offering this kit on eBay. I'm not sure how interested people would be in it. The silver seal alone should probably go for at least $50, even though it's not fine craftsman quality. I melted it myself and hammered it into a piece large enough...

Anyway, I've got some other ideas I may have to implement on that front. It's over an ounce of 99.999% pure silver, and it's going to have a few hours worth of work done on it before I'm finished.

If this blog post generates enough interest, I'll go ahead and offer the kit on eBay, and the highest bidder can have it. I'm open to suggestions on what the starting price should be. Email your questions or comments by clicking this link, or just comment below.

Goetic Conjurors

I'm planning a blog that has many authors. If you've ever conjured a goetic spirit, I'd like you to write your experience. I don't care if you follow the spirit model, the postmodern model, an atheistic or psychological model. I don't care if you're a Christian Conjuror, a Chaos Magician, a Wiccan, or a Sorceror. All I ask is that you have conjured a spirit and can explain how it went to people. I can help edit if you need it.

The goal is to create a single place where people can compare working magicians' styles, practices, and results. I personally think we'll end up with similar conclusions about how they work and what their capabilities are, but I'm sure everything else will be different.

I'm thinking short posts that can be read in a few minutes. I'd like to see in each article the following touched on briefly:

• Initiation - What started this specific conjruation? Why did you conjure this spirit?
• Planning - What did you do to prepare for the rite? What circles did you use, what incenses, offerings, candles, colors, etc. went into preparing for the rite?
• Execution - When and where did you perform the rite? What did you do in the rite? What did the spirit say, or what did you feel, or see, or smell?
• Monitoring - What were the results after you did the rite? How did they manifest?
• Closing/Lessons Learned - How did it all work out when you considered the ritual fulfilled? What were the lessons you took away from this rite, and how will they affect your future spirit conjuration projects?

Can you tell I'm a PMBOK-trained Technical Writer?

If you're interested in contributing, email me.

Time Scale?

I explained how I look at my role as a magician to someone the other day, and they said they had never seen a magician with the same perspective I have on time. I thought I was on the same page as every other magician.

Where does our authority as magicians come from? Have you ever wondered?

I've been saying for years that I am a manifestation of the LOGOS, and as such, have a place of authority over the spirits of the physical and spiritual planes. I was wrong.

In the Corpus Hermeticum, in the Divine Pymander chapter, Man is not the Logos. Man is created by the First Father, the Prime Mover, completely like itself. Man meets and is loved by all the seven planetary governors, and breaks through into the manifest realm to see what's going on there. He sees his own reflection, and falls in love with it. He enters a form shaped by Nature out of love for Man, and is therefore of two natures, immortal and mortal for the sake of Love.

So Man isn't the Logos. He's just the image and companion of the First Father. Interesting! Man still has the love and authority of the seven governors, and the Logos, but it's because we are the image of the First Father that we have any authority over the spirits.

It doesn't change anything functionally, but it does open new doors for exploration.

So my authority over spirits as a magician comes directly from my original creation and the relationship formed between myself and the Seven Governors, the Logos, and all their minions at the dawn of time. I was created to be a companion to God, to be his reflection, and I'm only here in this realm of Nature out of love, because I see my Father in his Works.

Where does yours come from? I know not everyone operates on the Christian Neo-platonic scale, but isn't your basis for being able to perform magic grounded in eternity? Is my time line so different than everyone else's?

I'm going to be asking my postmodernist friends about their perspectives on this, to see if it helps me understand something I'm missing.