Saturday, December 31, 2011

Happy New Year

Well, still trying to finish up my clean up stuff with the NYNY Experiment. It's New Year's Eve, and I've got about 11 hours to do about 8 hours' worth of writing and rewriting. It can be done!

But I'm taking a break now to get a Happy New Year's post up because otherwise I'll forget, and I really wanted to wish you all the VERY BEST YEAR OF YOUR LIFE.

Personally.

Monday, December 26, 2011

Cosmic Currents Flowing Toward Increase

In other news, having passed the Winter Solstice, the days are getting longer. PLVS LVX, I said in the last post, More Light. That's a good thing for those of us stuck in the cold bleak wintery regions of the planet*.

Jupiter went Direct today, or it will sometime if it hasn't yet. Months of retrograde are gone, and we can again tap into the current of his blessings and expansion and have it be without detriment. This is good.

And the Moon is now Waxing. The time of the Unmanifest passing into the Manifest realms is upon us.

In the darkest hours of the coldest season, the momentum of the world shifts, and slowly begins to flow in new directions.

This Thursday, in other words, is a really good time to start doing some Jupiter Manifestation magics. Also, it's a good time to start that whole "Getting in touch with your HGA consciously" thing.

Do magic.

Create your world.

Like a boss.

* This year, not so bad. Sunny and warm right up til Christmas, the worst part was just the rain. I can handle cold rain. Global Warming: Terrible catastrophe, may bring the END OF THE WORLD, but also may bring Texas like weather to Baltimore. Gotta look on the bright side of things, yo.

Happiest of Hermetic Holidays

So I had a tearful Christmas night. I was listening to Oh Holy Night on the radio on the way home from looking at The Miracle on 34th Street here in Baltimore, and I started tearing up when it got to this part:

Long lay the world in sin and error pining
til he appeared
and the soul felt its worth
a thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices
for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn
Fall on your knees
Oh Hear the Angel voices,
Oh night divine
Oh night when Christ was born.
It was the "Hear, the Angel Voices" part at first. Because you know, I Work with them. They're awesome. They celebrated the night Christ was born, the choirs of the heavens filled the sky with the music of the spheres.

But the more I thought about it, the more the song made sense to me on a deeper level. Long lay the world in sin and error pining, til he appeared, and the soul felt its worth. It's the night the Logos took flesh to come down to the material world and show mankind once and for all there is no separation between Mankind and Godkind, that we are family, all twinkling manifestations of Light in Extension, and the darkness of the world cannot ever change that, no matter what we do.

I talk a lot about how the Enneads of Plotinus showed me how the point of the Neoplatonists was to reclaim the divine race of humanity, to discover its eternal value. That's the song's central theme. And I got it, that thrill of hope, and weary with the state of things in this world, I too rejoiced. Yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

So we've made it through the darkest part of the year, and now the days will grow longer, and the Sun shall return to us again. Each day, there will be more light. PLVS LVX. More Light.

I don't know how you celebrated making it through the longest night this year. I do know a substantial number of you readers don't celebrate the birth of Christ as the most awesomest thing evar, and I understand the many reasons for that.

But however you celebrated this year, I hope it was beautiful.

Now, get ready, because here comes the Sun.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Crisis!

Frankincense prices are going to be going up. Stock up now.

Also, if you live in areas where it will grow, consider planting some trees now. They're in danger of being lost due to over-harvesting and global climate changes, and just bad farming techniques. I don't think my area is warm enough year round to support them, but I'm going to try to raise some here. Maybe I can build them a shelter, or keep them in a greenhouse in the winter or something. Maybe global warming will change the climate enough to make it a viable crop around here, who knows.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Magic, Magic, Everywhere!

So a friend posted something on FB about how great it is that pacifiers were invented, and I got one of those weird interests in it, and googled the history of pacifiers. I don't know why it sparked my interest, but I just sort of figured they've been around forever because most parents learn on their own in the first couple of weeks that if you put your finger in their mouths, they stop crying and fall asleep. I figured humans have been using them for 10,000 years in one form or another, and I wanted to see what a neolithic pacifier might have looked like.

It turns out the modern pacifier goes back to the 1600s, at least. And look at this:
In England in the 17th–19th centuries, a coral meant a teething toy made of coral, ivory or bone, often mounted in silver as the handle of a rattle.[1] A museum curator has suggested that these substances were used as "sympathetic magic"[2] and that the animal bone could symbolize animal strength to help the child cope with pain.
Magic. It's everywhere. Why the fuck would I give a shit about the history of the human pacifier? I dunno. Seemed interesting at the time. And I found magic in it.

This New Year, New You thing Deb's doing is important. Radical transformation of your life through applied magic. Magic's in the cracks and crevices of every aspect of existence because it's how the universe works.

And we have the privilege, the honor of being called to this, chosen to be magicians. Everyone doesn't get that calling. Everyone doesn't get shown the keys to the manifestation process of the universe. We're a specialized elect group among humanity. Shamans, priests, magicians. We stand as the fulcrum between the worlds Above and the worlds Below, we speak things into being, encapsulating the invisible inspirations and ideas into symbolic form that take on layers of existence as they come down the chain of manifestation into being.

That's my model, anyway, basically the water vapor cycle. Ascend, condense, fall, evaporate, repeat, but it's magic and not water.

Whatever model works for you, use it. Create your world.

Friday, December 16, 2011

Losing Weight, like Magic

Eighth Sphere magic is really good for weight loss. Last year around this time, give or take a month, I was around 220, and by the end of winter I was back up to around 230. Spring hit and I lost some weight, and I went on a diet, and I lost some more. I made it down to 217, and then started creeping back up until a month or so ago.

Before Thanksgiving, I decided I wasn't going to get fat this winter. I weighed myself then, and I was at 226. It was getting colder, and I knew I wouldn't be doing much exercise, and the holidays were coming. So I did some magic, 8th Sphere style.

I went into myself and raised my metabolism, ever so slightly. I did it by meditating on it for a couple of minutes. Pictured the chain of manifestation from the Idea world of the Nous to the manifest corpulence, and just sort of raised the vibration of the body manifestation current a bit so it would result in a slightly higher metabolism. You wouldn't believe how very subtle the changes were. Sooooo subtle.

And then I just went about my business. I ate holiday food, ice cream and pie and more pie, and cookies and cakes and egg nog til I was sick once, and then I had a little more pie, because I like pie.

And this morning I'm looking in the mirror after showering, and I wasn't disgusted by my front proportions. As much. So I weighed myself at work,* and I'm down to 213. Two weeks ago I was at 216. Considering the millions of calories I ate, I've got to say, not bad.

Do I recommend it? No, it's dangerous. Taking conscious control over shit that's designed to be autonomous can lead to fucked up bullshit, like blown livers. I know how to fix anything I might fuck up, I go to Raphael of Mercury for shit I don't understand about health, and he takes care of me, or clients. So having a strong relationship with the Archangel of Mercury leaves me with the confidence to make those kind of adjustments, in really small amounts, but I don't advise it to anyone else.

But man, it's convenient.

Pie.

*I don't own a scale. If I need to know how much I weigh, I'll find one somewhere. If it's that important. Oh, and work has a scale for their Biggest Loser contest, which they cancelled because the Virginia office and the Baltimore office were getting really evil with each other in the competition.

Business Booster Reports

I suspect a lot of my friends and colleagues secretly think I'm insane when it comes to the Business Booster rites.* I charge $1,200 for it. That's one thousand, two hundred dollars right there. Insane, right? Who's going to invest over a grand in magic?

Smart people. That's who.

 I got this update today in my email:
Just wanted to update you on progress. So far my productivity increased, I estimate it's worth approximately 15,000 per year net income. I also just received word I will be receiving an additional 16,000 per year for some new areas of responsibility I will be taking on (requiring at most 4 hours of work per month). Overall [the Business Booster rite is] resulting in approximately a 15% increase in net annual income.  So basically if a person is willing to work hard,  and do the magic work, the business booster program is a no-brainer for wealth enhancement. 

Your program has been great and I wish for others to tap into this financial method in these times of the tight economy.

15% increase in net income? So if he invested $1,200, and he's getting back $32,000, the Return on Investment (ROI=(Gain on investment-Cost of investment)/Cost of investment) the client saw is about 25:1. Not too shabby!

Now, not everyone has the same degree of success. My initial trial run test subject increased his business by a lot more, while another client in very different circumstances saw very little in the way of wealth, although they did manage to break even (which was also a huge increase, as he'd been losing money before the rite).

Another client brought me in at his business's inception, and he's still in the exploratory phase of launching the business. He hasn't seen any large windfalls, but his success rate has been consistently high. He's in FOREX trading, and with the volatility of the global economy, I understand his conservative approach. I'm saving up some money to invest with him when he gets things going, and then I'll be blessing the FUCK out of his work. Weekly.

But the people who have taken the rites seriously, done their part to draw down the powers and build on the foundation we lay down in the Saturn Rite have consistently seen really incredible increases in profit. 15-30% increases. In this economy.

You better believe I do this for myself. Cha-Ching!

And as word spreads among the business community (really slowly, because who's going to admit they use angels to improve their business over a martini power lunch?), and the clients start getting bigger and richer, I'll be able to charge more and more for this.

Heh.

Heh heh.

Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

I love it when magic works like it's supposed to. Like in the deal.

* Probably for other things too, but that's a thousand other posts.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

NYNY: Prompt 1 - Make Way!

GTFO the way, RO's coming!

That's how I figure the universe feels whenever I start getting organized.

The first prompt of the New Year, New You experiment is about Making Way, clearing out the old crap that stand in the way of whatever we've got planned.

I posted three of my major projects I'd like to tackle this year, and when I stilled my mind enough to really think about getting started on it, my mind just sort of shut down. See, I'm a busy guy. A very busy guy. Back in April I started doing major Jupiter rites on a regular basis, and the expansion and flow of blessings came right in. A lot. And brought a lot of work with it.

So I need to clear things out before I even have the space to think about starting anything new. The major things I've got to get done are finishing up the Red Work series of courses, and a ton of client work.

I do, however, have a ton of work to do on my car and house...

Actually, I have a ton of work that needs to be done on my car and house. There's a difference.

See, I'm not a mechanic or a handyman. I'm the unmechanic, the unhandyman. I tried to replace my broken window on my car last night and broke the door. So I have a broken window and a broken door now instead of just a broken window. I have holes in my walls from when I tried to fix the handrail on the steps. I have holes in my ceiling where the plaster fell down when I tried to fix the paint that had bubbled when my air conditioner's condensation pump blew a hose. I have holes in the plaster on the walls in my living room from trying to hang curtains.

I'm a writer, not Bob Villa. So I'm going to write some money-making stuff and pay someone else to do that shit. Know your strengths, know your weaknesses, and make your strengths support your weaknesses. For me, that's writing paid copy.

After I finish the Red Work series of courses, and the client work.

Clearing out my headspace is a bit more difficult. I've got stress from work, and stress from home. My day job is in a precarious position at the moment because America's Congress SUCKS MOTHERFUCKING DONKEY BALLS. My contract was cancelled because the automatic cuts that went into effect last time they couldn't set aside their differences and run the country impacted Medicare, and my job was to come up with a way to save $10.2 billion. We were making progress, but not quickly enough, so they canceled the project and told Obama they'd save the $10.2 billion somewhere else. So I need to do some magic on that, and get something lined up to pay the mortgage next year that's a little less sporadic than online occult sales.
My home-based stress is just your normal father-of-three crap. November 21 is my son's birthday, followed by Thanksgiving, my daughter's birthday December 12th, Christmas, my spouse's birthday January 14, and my other daughter's birthday January 25th. I hate November through January. The stress has been known to overwhelm me.

But the solution to this problem is to catch up on the client work. For example, by doing the Hermetic Diagnoses for other people, I travel the seven spheres and spend hours in contemplation and meditation, communing with the spirits. That in and of itself is really good therapy, and it melts the stress. Other client work will further get me done with stuff.

So those are my plans for Making Way for the projects I have planned.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

How to post links in comments

With Deb's New Year New You thing going around, people are posting links in google's blogger comments that you can't click on.

I'm guilty of that. But I don't like to have to select the link, hit copy, go to the browser address bar, hit paste, then hit go when I could just click a link.

So here's how to post a link in a comment on blogger:

Type this:

<a href="

Then paste your link.

Then type this:

">

you'll have this:

<a href="http://link_address.com">

Or this:

<a href="www.link_address.com">

Now type the text that you want to link to the site. Like "My blog post participation."

then type this:

</a>

Altogether, you'll have:

<a href="http://link_address.com">My blog post participation.</a>

And it will look like this in the preview of your comment:


My blog post participation.
 

And then you can add "HTML Programmer" to your resume.

Monday, December 12, 2011

New Year, New You: I'm in!

Deb is acting on the prompts of her Genius again...

Duhn duhn duhn!

One thing I've learned is that when the Genius starts kicking a magician, interesting times are on the way.

So what's it all about? Basically it's all about doing magic like a motherfucking boss. Living as a magician. Using the powers that we've earned through our spiritual progression to make the world what we want it to be. Acting as if what we believe were really true. Here's how she put it in her post:
Get up, get up!  Don't miss this moment.  Create magics great and small, mundane and mystical.  Find everything you've been looking for, mysteries revealed in every form of divination and song and when you fuck it up, when you are too tired to try, bring each other up from bloodied knees to get back up smiling.  You are all made of stars and you have stardust in your veins.  Do something about it.

Regular readers of my blog know that's what I'm all about, and it's how I live my life. I do magic for everything. I do magic on my kids to help them at school, I do magic on their teachers and administration, I enchant my local government and neighborhood businesses, I enchant the fuck out of my company, and there are literally no issues in my life that I have not done some kind of magic to influence at some point. My car runs on magic.

I started living this way a few years ago. Last year, I got a bit more organized, but I'm behind on several aspects of the projects I started. I have several major magical projects underway, including but not limited to:
  • Consciously Integrating the Forces and Lessons of the 8th Sphere
  • Continued Kingdom Management
  • Centers for Applied Hermetics
There are other less major things, but these are the largest things on my list. They're already in process, but I think they'll count for this project. I'll make the parts public that I can, and I'll be responding to her prompts as they arrive.

I'm really looking forward to seeing where this goes. It's not often I get a chance to participate in someone's Genius-prompted-excursion that doesn't involve dipping into the High Weirdness, and I feel really at home there.

So what are you up to? Ready to jump on in and do magic like a boss?

Sunday, December 04, 2011

Opening the Book of Lambspring

Plug Saturday continues! Though technically it's Sunday now here.

It is with great joy that I get to review the latest work by Fr. AIT, of Heavens within Earth and the Book of Coelius fame, founder and expounder of the Ordo Octopi Nigri Pulveri, true Priest of Kronos, and generally Good Egg.

He told me about The Opening of the Book of Lambspring before it was published, and I got an advanced copy and spent a few hours going through it with him, comparing notes and exploring the symbolism of the images. It was a good afternoon. It was one of those moments where we got to talking like old school Hermeticists. We didn't always agree, but we each had something really cool to bring to the table for discussion. If you've  had a chance to talk shop with someone who's done as much Work as you have, you know what I mean. We were riffing off each other's insights as we harmonized with the Emblems and talked through what we saw.

But I'm probably getting ahead of myself. First, a bit about the Book of Lambspring. It's a series of alchemical images that reflect different phases of the Great Work pictorially. Each image captures the phase of the Work, but all in the language of the birds. The imagery that is meaningful if you're a fellow alchemist who understands the Ideas behind the forms they take. But there are few on the planet comfortable enough to claim to understand it, and fewer among those who have any right to make that claim.

Fr. AIT is among the ranks of those who know the language. He provides an analysis of each of these images, an interpretation as seen through the eyes of the Hermetic Magician. It's one of the most interesting pieces of occult information I've had the honor of working with this last year, in fact. Each image is a key to a phase of the Work. Each image is a gate as well, but more on that later.

Many of his interpretations are based on his personal experiences and training within the Golden Dawn Order to which he belongs. And he wrote during and after an incredible initiation based on the mythography of the "Great Rite," so there's a lot of emphasis on the holy sexuality of these images. He provides such broad hints at the mysteries of sex magic that anyone with an inclination towards deciphering the hidden meanings will find their way paved and easy, and won't have to jump sacred fences and score tech in back alleys the way I had to. Here's a hint: there's no jacking off over sigils involved.

I rarely mix sex and magic these days, though when I do, it sends out seismic waves that make the richter scale.* In our conversations about the meanings of the emblems, I tended to focus less on the sexual interpretations than he does, but that doesn't mean he's wrong in any of them. Everything he says about each emblem is true. I prefer the parts where he sticks to the straight "Hermetic Magic" interpretations, though I suspect he'd argue they aren't as separate as I like to think. And he might be right.

I found it incredibly useful to treat each Emblem as a Gate. I would turn each emblem into a small astral rite, passing within each, becoming a part of the image, and seeing what it meant from within. Most of my observations lined up perfectly with Fr. AIT's, and where there were differences, there was still harmony.

This book touches on the deeper mysteries of the Alchemical process, and what it means to magicians attempting the Great Work through magical practice. It's definitely on my list of things every magician should read at least once, though in all honesty you could spend a lifetime exploring each image, comparing experiences, and applying the lessons of each.

*That's hyperbole right there. That earthquake was a coincidence.

Saturday, December 03, 2011

Deb's Having a Sale!

It's Plug Saturday!

Well, not yet, but it's about to be.


Deb's announced a sale over at Charmed I'm Sure. I ordered some stuff right away. Aurora's Mojo Hand Feeding Oil will be used ritually, often, and Britania's Basil Money Drawing Oil too, for other things.  

Support your local* bloggers this year! Keep the money where it's going to do the people you care about the most good.

If anyone has anything else they'd like plugged, let me know. I'm into supporting people I know and like instead of corporations who pay their CEOs 45 times their average employee's salary.

* Local being a metaphor, we're in your house entertaining and educating you, so that's local enough.