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.

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.

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.

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.

-Wikipedia

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Microsoft Never Heard of Neuromancer?

Microsoft is looking for help developing applications for the home computer using the Kinect. They have the hardware interface designed, but one article I read that I can't find now suggested that they needed help coming up with ways to use the Kinect as a human machine interface. So they're offering start ups support if they're going to be developing new ways to use the Kinect in the PC environment.

I would just like to say... Neuromancer much? Build the fucking deck! And a wet jack. We're already living in the dystopian corporate culture Gibson so bleakly predicted in Neuromancer, we might as well get the fucking tech that goes with it.

Thanks!

Thanksgiving is about being thankful for all the things we have that are good in life. I've got a lot to be thankful for this year. You all are on my list of people I'm thankful for. Not only do you like me, you actually pay me to do magic for you or to teach you what I've learned! I love that. Thanks for making my life perfect.

My fellow occult bloggers, thank you for all your posts, the ones I love, the ones I hate, and the ones that piss me off the most, because they teach me so much. We have the richest community of magicians who all get along even when we don't. Totally fabulous getting to be alive with you all.

You know we're living through the kind of occult explosion the GD was part of in the last century, right? We're not in the desert of shit sources that people were in through the 1950s. We live in very exciting times. We are the Crowleys and Mathers and Regardies and Gurdjieffs and Blatavatskies of our age. Most of my close friends in the blogosphere are magicians who have far exceeded any of these in personal practice and wisdom. I really love you all, and I am humbled/honored/totally stoked/proud as fuck that I get to be a part of this family. Thanks for proving that human beings can be awesome.

And to Jove, I give thanks for all the health and necessary wealth we have received this year. May his blessings pour out on you and your families throughout the year. Next year, may we all be thankful we're millionaires.

Fama Fraternitas Fun

One of my genuinely favorite Golden Dawn bloggers, Morgan Drake Eckstein, has been writing about his interpretation of the Fama Fraternitas as it applies to making money on the Great Work. He started with an analysis of the English translation that earned him some grief, and then he followed up with a post about the how he's been told the English translation is flawed, and he makes some observations about whether the modern Rosicrucian (RC) movement in English speaking countries* is flawed as a result.

The posts sparked my interest. I've always been interested in the subject of money for the Great Work, especially because I make money off the skills I've gathered in pursuit of the Great Work. I also love a good manuscript mystery. That's my favorite part of grimoire and Bible study, getting into the root languages and being an amateur archaeological word explorer, like a linguistic Indiana Jones. What I lack in training and experience, I make up for in enthusiasm.

Specifically, he dissects the first two of the six rules "the original brotherhood bound itself by." The first is one that gets quoted a lot, and the second he applies to his interpretation of the first to support his argument:

From the English Manuscript Morgan quoted:

First, That none of them should profess any other thing than to cure the sick, and that gratis. 

Second, None of the posterity should be constrained to wear one certain kind of habit, but therein to follow the custom of the country.

Morgan masterfully reinterprets the first to mean that it's ok to be more than a pro bono doctor if you're a RC. He performed with the prowess of a professional Semantiad.** I'd have given him at least a 9.3 if it were an official competition.

Then the questions of the German manuscript's true meaning came up, and that's the part in the story where I showed up. I found this online version of the Gemran manuscript, and then I used Google Translate to render this result:

First No one should indulge in any occupation, to maintain as sick and do so in vain.

Thank you So Much, Google Tranlate! That's awesome.

So looking at that, I thought there was room for reinterpretation. You can pick apart the literal meaning of root words, add different endings on them and look at how the roots are used in other words, as Morgan did in his analysis, and with a little effort I can see how someone reading the German version could walk away with something different than the English version.

No one should indulge in any occupation? So no working for a living? Works for me!

To Maintain as sick and do so in vain? What the living fuck? I got nothing on that, and I needed better sources. So I googled "online German to English Translator" and ended up at PROMT-Online, pasted in the First Rule from the Fama, and it rendered this result:

Nobody should dedicate itself to another employment, than to maintain sick people namely completely free of charge.

Aha! Now we're getting somewhere. PROMT-Online has different intelligence driving it, and rendered something a little more comprehensible, and still used the same words. It makes sense! The English version was right all along.

The Fama's First rule is simply, "You shouldn't have any kind of job, or do any kind of work, except to heal the sick, and do it for free." I think it's literal, and stands alone. As such, I don't think Morgan's application of the Second Rule, though highly skilled, applies at all. But for the simple literal translation to work in practice, something's got to pay the fucking rent. We've got bills to pay and cats to feed, right?

I think there are two ways that would make this simple literal translation work. The first way it would work is if all  Rosicrucians are independently wealthy. If they've done the Work and have been through the Chemical Wedding, they'll have the secret of the Philosopher's Stone, and they won't exactly need any money now, will they? The Philosopher's Stone turns lead into gold! All the gold they could ever need.

That's my preferred source of their independent wealth.

It could also, however, be that the RCs were a fraternity of the wealthy elite, a gentlemen's philanthropist club, like when Bill Gates and Warren Buffet had that private billionaire's club meeting and asked them to pledge to give away half their wealth either before they died or at their death. Still cool, but not as romantic to me as having the Philosopher's Stone as the source of independent wealth.

The second way a literal interpretation of the Fama's First rule would work is if they just didn't worry about it. In my youth, I was a big fan of the idea that the Universe will provide. "If you need it," I said, "it will come. If it's not there, you don't need it." Another favorite phrase was "The Universe doesn't give unfunded mandates." Or "If the Universe wants me to do that shit, it can goddamned well pay for it."

And yeah, U2's famous phrase, "My God isn't short on cash."

The RCs could have just been wandering hippies, living off the things God provides. That would be a pretty extreme lifestyle, completely and totally based on faith. They were, let's not forget, devout Christians. In recent conversations on ethics with Jason, we were discussing the Sermon on the Mount. Having just recently reread it, I couldn't help but be reminded of Matthew 6: 25-26:

25 Therefore I say unto you, be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than the food, and the body than the raiment?
26 Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more value then they?

There's been a ton of debate in the Christian world about whether this should be literal or figurative, and I won't go into it here, but the fact is, some people live as if it's literal, and they do manage to survive, and at times, to thrive. I'm not as good with other religions, but I believe this basic spiritual truth manifests in many different traditions. Throw it all away and let God provide all your needs, according to His riches and glory. Go be an itinerant monk who wanders around helping people, penniless, but always able to somehow get by. Like Cain in Kung Fu.

It's a radical notion, and one better suited to the young without responsibilities to meet. I did it for a while, but honestly, it sucks. The universe did provide, but not at the quality to which I'd become accustomed. There are times now when I look back through the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia and think if I didn't have kids, I'd live that way now...

But the fact is I went hungry a lot, could barely sleep,*** and ate a lot of food loaded with extra salt peter at shelters. I joined up with a clan of old hippies on a commune in Texas for a while, and that sucked too. Communal living. I still shudder thinking about it. Everyone in your space all the time! Feh. Give me doors.

The fact is, I'm too materialistic to want to live that way myself. And there's my family. They deserve better, and I've got the skills, talent, and intelligence to be able to provide better. The Universe does indeed provide, but it provides nuts, berries, and meat that runs faster than you do, and if the weather's shit and there's no vegetables, you're going to die. And that's ok with the Universe. It's balanced, natural, and harmonious. Spiritually sublime.

Fuck. That. Shit.

So, my opinion is that the Fama's First Rule really means you shouldn't work for a living, you should only heal people, and you should do it for free if you're a Rosicrucian. It's a great rule, because for it to be true, some very powerful magic has to take place: either the you've got endless wealth at your fingertips, or you've got to be completely in harmony with the materialization process of the Universe.

And that's ONE of the reasons I don't consider myself a Rosicrucian. Like other Mystery traditions, I think it's got some cool stuff in it, but it's not a system I'd throw myself into completely. My studies and practices have a lot of shared truths with those of the Rosicrucian tradition, and I can use the images of RC to interpret my experiences in Hermetic Initiations, but that's because my tradition and theirs developed in the Hermetic current. They're a formalized facet of the current that is different than mine.

I think the First Rule is the goal, to perform magic until you no longer need to work a profession to make a living, and you can devote your time to healing the sick without charging anyone anything. I sometimes think I'm at a point where I could do that, but honestly, I'm afraid to try to live that way. There are too many people depending on me to take that large of a risk.

So I keep my job, and I sell magical services and consecrated talismans and lessons, and I try to get ahead enough to not have to work for a living so I can do this full time, free, without jeopardizing my kids' future. I'm making progress. I can see how it would be possible to conjure for a living, conjuring the things we need directly and then just having it sort of work in our favor, but it would take discipline I'm only just now developing. Maintenance. Strategy.

If I can find out how to just manifest the things we need consistently, I'm there. I'm all over it. Until then, I'm not an RC, though this research has me comparing the rest of the verses around Matthew 6:25-26 and comparing it to the rules of the Fama. Rule 2 is reflected in verse 28, for example. And Morgan said the RCs are forbidden from living beyond the time God gives them, and verse 27 says something about how worrying about it doesn't add a day to your life. Interesting parallels there.

* I'm including the United States, even though there is some debate from the UK about whether Americans speak English or not.

** Like an Olympiad, but more meaningful.

*** Little known fact, homeless people get very little sleep. That lifestyle is hard, and frightening, and highly stressful. You can't always trust the people you're with, and you can't afford to sleep deeply. It's high, high stress, all the time. And it's dirty as shit.

Building up and Maintaining

I was finishing up a Hermetic Diagnois for a client today, and when I was talking to Tzadqiel of Jupiter about some of his financial issues, I was told that there was little that could be done to increase the Jupiterean forces in the client's sphere until he was out of Retrograde, which doesn't happen until December 25th. There were things he could do to improve the general well being of the client, but for this one specific plan the guy had in mind, there wasn't going to be any outpouring of new blessings until after Christmas.

I was also told that if the client would have done the Jupiter rites before the retrograde, there would have been more Tzadqiel could do now. It's like when you're building a house, there's a part of the work that has to be done when the weather is clear, but once you've got the frame built, you can cover it in plastic and keep on working on the plumbing and electric even before the roof is put on if necessary.

Now there have been other clients who needed Jupiter Work during a retrograde, and it was no problem. Maybe they had less specific aims in mind, or maybe they had laid enough of a foundation while he was Direct to be able to work with during the Retrograde. Or maybe this one client's natal chart leaves him personally susceptible to Retrograde Jupiter, or maybe the other clients' natal charts left them with the ability to receive Jupiter blessings no matter what the astrological weather was like. Chris Warnock or Austin Coppock would be able to decipher the details better than I can, I have no doubt. There are so many variables to take into account.

In general though, it seems like its a good idea to do the foundational building up Work with a specific planetary power while they're direct, and then maintenance Work when they're retrograde.

A panacea that would address all the variables regardless of their causes would be a regular regimen of working with the planetary powers. If you cycle through the seven planets on a regular basis, communing with their Intelligences, working with the powers of the sphere, you'll have a good momentum built up that will assist you when something unexpected pops up.

Awww, Kitty!

I thought this phrase summed up the relationship between magician manipulating manifestation, and the actual manifestation itself:

"Sometimes you can control it. But other times it's going to do what it wants and you have to roll with it."

What's the Endgame?

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

- H. L. Mencken

Fascinating comment on Débrouillard Magique from EKB:

That said, how is this essentially different from the rave-ist chaote scene in the 90s? Contextually, it's quite different. Essentially, I'm not seeing much to distinguish it from the Mondo2000 reading magical thinkers as they built the Valley start-ups that busted in August 2000. Other than making loads of cash (note the term used), what's the endgame?

What's different in the Peak Oil movement today vs. the 70s? There's a lot less oil, and it's got more traction.* Essentially, I would say it is not different, other than we're older, heavier, and have more kids. And we do different drugs to modify our serotonin levels.  Society trends in 15-20 year cycles, each generation adapting a bit, growing stronger and more effective. Consider it a continuation of the current, if you like. We're older, smarter, and we've got better magic than we had back then. We've can remember what happened 25 years ago now, when we weren't even 25 years old then.

The endgame... What has the endgame ever been? To get from where we're at today to the moment of our death in a manner that makes us happy, satisfied, and proud of what we've accomplished with our time on the planet. Figuring out what that means to us, and then actually doing it is, imo, the Great Work.

* Less oil... more traction...

Débrouillard Magique

Note: The inspiration for this post came from last Thursday's Jupiter Working. I perform the Gate of Jupiter regularly, at least once a month, and usually weekly. The morning after the rite, I woke up to some notes I'd left myself from the Working, and the things Tzadqiel had showed me.

System D is a slang phrase pirated from French-speaking Africa and the Caribbean. The French have a word that they often use to describe particularly effective and motivated people. They call them débrouillards. To say a man is a débrouillard is to tell people how resourceful and ingenious he is. The former French colonies have sculpted this word to their own social and economic reality. They say that inventive, self-starting, entrepreneurial merchants who are doing business on their own, without registering or being regulated by the bureaucracy and, for the most part, without paying taxes, are part of "l'economie de la débrouillardise." Or, sweetened for street use, "Systeme D." This essentially translates as the ingenuity economy, the economy of improvisation and self-reliance, the do-it-yourself, or DIY, economy.

- The Shadow Superpower, Robert Neuwirth

A while back, Jason Miller was talking about jealousy of the named path and whether magician or sorcerer were the right terms for what he does.

I would like to propose that perhaps a good term for him is débrouillard. When I read the description of the débouillard, my first thought was that it's exactly the kind of person I am, and shortly thereafter identified Jason and many of my other friends online in the occult community as also being débrouillards. It's  what I like about them most, the central shared trait that draws me closer to them in particular than others. 

I'm not the best at it, by any means, but I'm an opportunist who can see money to be made in most situations. I'm an entrepreneur. While I prefer to use the system that presents the least risk, I'm willing to weigh risks against return on investment and make the most beneficial choices as necessary. I have no qualms about resorting to System D to supplement my income and my needs. I've learned enough about how life works from the spiritual level to know that the official regulated economy is really all based on an agreement made between those with weapons and those without, usually. The official economic system is a shadow economy anyway, aimed at benefiting the rich elite rather than all who participate. 

The way System D works is just like magic. We work with the entities of a hidden system to accomplish our desires. One could even accurately say System D is the Occult Economy. Heh. It's ours.

So I was thinking about how débrouillard magic would look in practice. The way I see it, there's two phases to focus on to be successful at integrating myself into the $10 trillion global economy:

a) Making Connections in System D so you can begin working with it more

b) Blessing the fuck out of business opportunities within System D once you get established
c) Keeping the activities occult

For part a), I've got a rite to the Moon, Venus, and Mercury in mind. Part b) would be an extensive operation working with the spirits of all seven spheres, and Part c) would be more Lunar magic.

Lucid Dreams

First, this:

see more Rage Comics 

Next, this:

Ok, so a friend of mine was asking about lucid dreaming the other day. He recently acquired the Supernatural Assistant (SA), and had been through some intense Solar initiations. He's also been through the planetary initiations, and is going through what I interpret as the Green Phase of the Work, where the magic comes to life and you really start doing it and learning about how to use it effectively. It's my favorite phase of the Work, personally.

The first thing he wants to do is Lunar Work. Specifically, he's got a hard on for Lucid Dreaming. He conjured up all the spirits of the Moon and his SA and asked for a lucid dreaming experience. He was serious about getting that lucid dream. His SA confidently assured him that he would be successful, and that this kind of thing was right up his alley, no problem providing the experience, it will happen. So he went to sleep.

No lucid dream.

So he came to me with his concerns that it might not be the SA he's actually contacted, because he didn't get the results he wanted instantly as promised. I explained that what he asked for was a skill that takes a while to develop, and that means it's going to take discipline and practice to get good at it.

People don't generally believe they can conjure a spirit and it will transform them immediately into a Banker, with a degree, experience, wardrobe, and position in a bank they've held for years. Yet when it comes to spiritual attainments, we sometimes think they can just instantly transform us into Ascended Master Priest Kings overnight. I do it myself, all the time, in spite of my experiences.

So I talked him through the process I went through to attain the ability to dream lucidly, explained the things I learned from my experiments, gave the tips and tricks I could. I encouraged him to do the work that results in lucid dreams, and to let his spirit do its work, give it a couple weeks before jumping to conclusions. I "level-set his expectations" so he would get the most out of his experience.

Sort of like Patrick Dunn, Aaron Leitch, Otter, and Jason Miller did for me after I made contact with my SA. It made me feel good to be able to help.

So after talking to him about his plans and his goals in Lucid Dreaming, I found myself getting a little wood over it too. A little teak. I've been doing an ongoing lunar rite for the Astral Warrior Talismans (which should be shipping this weekend), and my sphere's abuzz with the powers of the Moon in general. Why not? I thought.

And then things got weird.

In good ways.

I tuned into a dream the first night, opening an Astral Vortex and stepping through after saying the Magic Words, and it was epic. As soon as I stepped into myself, I remembered the dream had been going on for months. I've been leading an entire life in a dream, doing things that I didn't know about while awake because I haven't been paying attention. I was fully aware of all the plans I'd made in the dream realm, and I remembered everything I had done over the last few months to accomplish those plans. I remember it now consciously, and I've been busy.

I felt a bit like Tyler Derden, but without the confusion and amnesia phase.

I remember now that the reason I've been so tired lately when I wake up is that I've been working my ass off in the Dream. I remember doing some specific things that fucked up my back in the dream, and I had this excruciating back ache for three days afterwards. This happened twice in the last two months. In my waking life, I've felt distracted, tired, and unfocused. I couldn't seem to get my shit together long enough to make any headway on several important projects. I was annoyed in general, but I wasn't really aware of it enough to address it as an issue. I was stressed, but it was a background stress I couldn't put my finger on.

It's irritating to have spent so long in a fog. This morning, I woke to dense fog all around, except over the highway where fast cars had cleared the air. I drove through a tunnel in the fog bank all the way to work. It was fascinating. In the midst of the fog there's a current of motion and activity that has cleared the air, but to participate in clarity, you have to keep in motion.

In the Dream, things are always in motion, and I'm directing things like a conductor or an electrician conducts the flow of sound or electricity. It's sort of like plumbing too. And weaving. Only all at once, keeping time to a beat and a rhythm that's been going since the beginning of time. The tides are echoes of the heartbeat of the World.

In the waking world, things are always in motion too, but sometimes I feel a lot less like a conductor, and a lot more like someone coming into an art film student's movie in the middle and trying to figure out what the fuck is going on.

Things are making a lot more sense now than they were. I can sense more of how things are interconnected between the activities in the Dream and the experiences here below. The flow of manifestation between the realms sounds a lot like the flow of blood through vessels in the brain.

The Moon sphere on the Tree of Life is Yesod, meaning the Base. She is the consort to all the planets, receiving each of their seeds and bearing them to fruition in her womb, manifesting the things Above here Below. Things emerge into being, attain fullness, and pass slowly away, returning to the realm of the Unmanifest.

It's our base of operations. Our astral realm is the Idea that is represented on the Altar. Our elemental tools, our spiritual assistants are there to be worked with. When we do the rites down here, we're doing them up there at the same time, in more detail and purity.

Being aware of what's going on up Above isn't something that comes without work and exercise. When we conjure the spirits and ask for initiations, we receive spiritual exercises to perform. For lucid dreaming, you don't even have to conjure the spirits, they've already been recorded in lots of different places. Conjuring the spriits will help, of course, but it doesn't replace doing the exercises that lead to mastery. Meditation, Contemplation, Rituals, and the mundane task of remembering to write shit down every morning for a few weeks, or in the middle of the night when you wake up. The exercises build connections in your brain so you can remember what's going on and interact with it more directly. It's training for the mind. 

And watch out for the Shadowlurker.

A quiet run

There's a quiet run on the banks going on across America.

A quick point on ancient aliens

Ok, Jack wrote something that needs to be said and understood about the Ancient Aliens movement. He raises a massive issue that really needs to be addressed, and not in the Ancient Astronaut crowd specifically, but in my sphere, your sphere, and every magician's sphere.

One of the arguments the Ancient Astronaut crowd often puts forward is that "If we could just barely do it today with all our advanced technology, how could those primitive tribes have possibly managed it?" In this argument, "primitive" doesn't just refer to the technology, the tools they have, but also to their minds, their intellectual capacity. Modern folk start with the assumption that because we know more about how the world works, our intellectual capacity is therefore much greater than those primitives.

It's not. The human brain hasn't changed much in the last 10,000 years. Advanced maths and sciences might not have existed back then, or they might have, but the brains we have today performing complex astronomical calculations are the same brains they had back then. The difference was the level of technology and the level of effort increase because they didn't have machines to do the work. They had slaves. They could look at the world and figure out how to drain a swamp and build a pyramid, as Jack points out.

Modern brains are not better adapted to processing higher maths than the brains of the people 10,000 years ago. The pyramids prove it. We tend to think you can't do advanced geometry without a scientific calculator, but we're wrong. They were doing complex equations with sticks and rope, and modern folk have the audacity to say they weren't smart enough to build the pyramids. Whatever, dumbass.

But the Ancient Astronaut core belief is that human beings have been visited by extra-terrestrial entities across time who brought advanced technological and other inspirational ideas. That fundamental belief is something I agree with entirely, I just don't think they were physical aliens in space ships. I think they were the same spirits that bring us things like Enochian systems of Magic.

Aliens, Ancient Astronauts, and Astral Entities

The other day on Augoeides, Scott postulated that aliens abductions are visits to the Astral Realm. I think he's right, of course. I've written about the Occult Ties to Ancient Astronauts before. For a long time, that was the most popular post I'd written.

But the subject fascinates me, the ties between extraterrestrial intelligence and human beings. Especially magicians.

Venusians? Yeah, I talk to them. I call them the Tharshisim, the angelic choir of Venus, and I work with them under the auspices of Anael, the Intelligence of the Planet.

Extraterrestrial beings from Sirius? Agrippa says:

Under the greater Dog-star, they made the image of an Hound and a little Virgin; it bestoweth honor and good will, and the favor of men, and Aerial spirits, and giveth power to pacifie and reconcile Kings, Princes, and other men: Under the lesser Dog-star they made the image of a Cock, or of three little maides; it conferreth the favor of the gods, of spirits, and men; it giveth power against Witchcrafts, and preserveth health

Magicians work with "aliens" all the fucking time. Aerial spirits indeed. This isn't new stuff, this alien interface. I don't have the knowledge or experience to do a full-on mapping out of all the alien lore to traditional occult sources, but it's there for those who have the time and interest. A friend of mine is planning a book about this kind of thing, and he's much more aware of the alien conspiracy theories than I am. I'm looking forward to his writings as soon as he starts producing them.

I'm not saying the spirits we work with are "really" aliens as we understand aliens today. I just think the spirit realm manifests in peple's lives, and they frame it using the symbols that work. One node on The Current might be Alien Conspiracy Theories and Newage Channeled Wisdom. Hell, Tesla got a lot of insight from aliens.

Astral magic is tricky, and it's easy to run down crazy wild rabbit trails acting on the instructions of the Cosmic Stupids you can (and do) run into in that realm. Alien conspiracies and channeled writings from various star groups are likewise tricky to wade through, you never know which housewife from rural Florida is just making shit up to make a buck and which one is actually receiving blue prints for hyperspace technology and antigravity drives.

But regardless, I think we traditional occultists can learn a thing or two from the Alien Abduction crowd. They're going up and interacting with entities and getting the shit scared out of them. We go up there and get all this spiritually useful information. But we don't ask about technology much, we tend to think these entities are trapped in the angel-demon categories and expectations of the Renaissance. In fact, they have access to all kinds of clean energy solutions and sweet ride technology.

If I had a better set of technological symbols to work with, I'd take a look at it further myself, but I don't. I don't know electronics well enough to give them the symbolism they need to work with. Dee received the Enochian materials the way he did because he had a penchant for cryptology, and it's a system that works well for the cryptographic minded among us today. Likewise, folks with training in modern technology should be able to receive systems from the spirits that integrate more than the rudimentary electronics I've got working for me in The Box.

And when you start looking deeper into the spheres, and get into the Eighth Sphere, you see things that aren't really very easy to put into words, but would make a lot more sense to your average alien conspiracy theorist than your average traditional occultist. It would totally confirm their worst suspicions, I'm sure, but only because they don't have the framework of neoplatonism to put it into perspective.

Why you Need Occult Authors to Tell you Right and Wrong

Jason wrote that magical ethics are as bad as regular ethics, fucking just... whatever, do what you're going to do already, and don't worry about what the author says about it.

As happens on occasion, I may appear, at first, to disagree with him

The fact is, you don't know right from wrong, and you're really not capable of figuring it out. You might think you know right from wrong, but you don't. You just think you do.

Here's proof: Killing is wrong, right? Yeah, killing is obviously wrong. Except for sometimes. When you really start thinking about it, there are some situations that make it ok. Self defense, justifiable revenge, war, or capital punishment are obvious ones, but also... eating. You don't eat without killing something, right? Or did you just mean killing people is wrong? Or maybe only killing animals is wrong, but it's ok to kill plants to eat. Because if you don't, you're killing yourself slowly by starvation... and suicide is wrong.

Right?

Ethics... you may really think you have them. A code guides you through the conundrums of life, and yeah, maybe it's a LITTLE relative and subjective, but basically you know right and wrong, and you do your best to do the right thing when you feel like it. Most of the time. I mean, even people with ethics that don't mesh with the rest of pop culture's ethics still generally do what they think is right, don't they? On some level?

Jason had skin in a game and cursed a business, and he says it's unethical, and he's right, it's against the objective standard of good and evil that our culture holds the proletariat to in public... But there's another kind of ethics that he followed that goes deeper, the ethics of business. He was paid to do a job, not to ask questions about its right or wrongness.

But if you're worried about whether or not something is right to do, then you do indeed need to be told what's right and what's wrong. If you're stuck in duality, if you haven't grasped the truth that the Universe appears both Good and Evil while it's actually neither, then you're going to need codes of conduct to keep you from fucking yourself and others up. You need rules. You need to be ruled.*

Also, there are really stupid people in the world who think that doing things that are evil is cool. The teenage rebellion factor. They don't realize that the things people call "evil" are really just "things with unpleasant consequences." They think there's something holy to be found in dark paths and wicked pursuits.

And some of them find it, whatever, more power to them.

But here's the fucking thing: there is no right or wrong, there's only what you do, and the consequences, and whether you're happy with them or not.

Everything else is motherfucking bullshit, a lie to keep you bound to the feeding trough like the good little fat piggy you are, until they're ready to eat you. Smoked, salted, fried, chopped, baked, diced with asparagus, red potatoes, and alfredo sauce. That's right, you're a ham slice. In shrink wrap, sitting on a shelf waiting to be consumed, staying carefully in the boundaries you have to stay in until someone gets hungry.

You know how bad the economy is? It's not. The economy that can be measured, that can be regulated, that can be taxed is falling to shit, it's true, and that gives us lots of graphs and charts and headlines we can look at and freak out about, and demand more laws to make it all better.

But there's another economy that's doing great. System D. Read that article, brothers and sisters, it's where the real profit will be made for the next decade while the ethically challenged are arguing over who should be taxed more and who should be regulated more. Those not bound by ethical constructs are going to be the real winners, the way they always are. And it's not necessarily evil and damaging to anyone to participate in that kind of thing. It's really helpful, when you get down to brass tacks, and it makes the world a better place for a lot of people.

* Kings aren't worried about ethics. They do what's "right" because it's beneficial to themselves and their subjects. It's the benefit to his subjects that makes it right, not an ethical rule about it.

Daimon Trap Field Report

Hey all, Rose wrote up a field report on the results of the Daimon Trap thing I make for people's Evil Daimons. Basically, I make a talisman of the Evil Daimon in steel, binding it therewith the forces of Mars. Then I encase that in lead and bind it with Saturn. Then I put a Secret Seal of Solomon over the top of that. I've made a couple of these for people, and received private reports of their success in the lives of the recipients.

I didn't ask Rose to publicly make the field report, she volunteered, and I'm very grateful. I didn't know the back story at the time, I was just contacted about putting together the Daimon Trap, did a divination that indicated success, and went forward from there. It's neat to see how the work manifested in her life. 

Ascension without Forgetion

In the previous post, I talked about The Current and Miracle Juice. I mentioned the Current flows across all times and space, popping up in different cultures as different practices and interpretations.

No matter what node you go through, you find yourself in a strange spirit world, compared to the material world of the senses, and it's filled with all kinds of entities. You find spirits of animals and objects, spirits of the land, spirits of Gods and spirits of the dead. This land has its own topology, its own natural laws. There are regions of similitude that visitors from the lands of forgetful flesh would find on the other side, with spirits in harmony with the powers represented there.

The visitors came back and made maps of the spirit realm, calling it the Underworld in regions where caves revealed vistas of beauty and color, and spewed gasses that made you see things, or calling it Heaven in regions where the sky goes on forever and the night's stars are not obscured by humidity. In every culture we see the same kind of thing, a place populated by our dead, and various angels, or demons, or gods and their assistants.

In each culture, there are some living humans called to act as intermediaries to the denizens of this other world. Some of us have an affinity to that place while we're alive, and we talk to and work with tribes of the entities of that place, and we learn to manipulate the stuff of that world and this as a consequence of our travels and study in that world. Shamans and Goets, Magi and Prophets walked with angels and geniuses and deities, fought those spirits who dwelt in dark places and fed on the pain of the living, and passed on messages from the dead.

For over ten thousand years, we've been doing the same things with this stuff, in whatever ways we learned from our cultures or remembered vaguely from previous incarnations. Today we're still doing it the same way the shamans did it. Symbols and forms, chants, plants and trance, animal skins and viscera, minerals, aromas, and orations. We dream dreams and see visions, we sit in Silence and return to our Source, we speak the Word and create the World.

In a recent post, Jack spoke of a hidden tributary into the underworld, the river Mnemosyne, or Memory. Memory is important stuff. Through the lens of neoplatonics, we see that the point of what we call the Great Work is to remember who we are and where we come from. Reclaiming your divine Race and remembering your eternal Value. This is the route we take when we don't want to fall prey to the effects of that other river of the Underworld, the river Lethe, the river of forgetfulness.

You ever have those brilliant epic dreams that run for weeks at a time, or throughout your entire life, but when you wake up all you can remember are vague visions of huge dogs in battle armor, and that still makes sense somehow? And you know how we have to go into a trance to "recover" our past life memories, and even then there's a strong chance most of the memory is made up anyway? There's a veil of forgetfulness that we have to get through, or past, or over in some way to be able to remember what we experienced when we return to the realm of the senses.

I think the River Lethe is the spiritual representation of this forgetfulness. It speaks to the existence of some layer between the spirit realm and the sensate realm that makes us forget who we are and where we come from when we incarnate. You have to cross that barrier carefully to retain what you've recalled. Rituals and trance states are techniques we use to dampen its effects.

But there's another aspect of it that affects us in our Great Work. While we're in the flesh and moving up through the heavens, kickin' ass and takin' names, we go further into the realm, sometimes even to its Source. It's a long journey, and we spend more and more time there, and it gets more of our attention and becomes more real to us in many ways than the physical realm we live in. I think that's ok, to a degree, because the eternal realm is our true home.

But we can forget about the physical realm and all that's going on here if we aren't careful. That river Lethe works both ways. Part of the whole Kingdom thing I've been on about since April has been focusing on taking what we learn Above and applying it here Below. Using the Current to shape our world. The point isn't wealth, that's a consequence. The point isn't control, that's an understanding, a perspective. The point is being wholly whole, at home in both realms, aware on multiple levels of our reason for being here.

In fact, the point isn't even about two levels at all, it's about understanding there's one level, and parts of it seem one way while you're in them, and parts seem another way when you're in them, but it's still all on big thing flowing and twisting and turning and churning. Being whole, letting your actions here below be an expression of your actions up above.

I think in the process of learning, we spend a lot of time in the spiritual realms, studying, achieving, receiving, remembering. And it's probably a good thing too, because it takes a while to learn stuff. But eventually youremember where you're also at, in the physical world, and you take what you know about the nature of the world and use it to shape the things you experience. You join the physical and the spiritual to the chariot and get them to pull you to your destination, whatever that might be.

The Current

Ok, so Jake Stratton-Kent has done some phenomenal work in tracing back Goety through the mists of time in Geosophia and True Grimoire, excellent work I highly recommend you purchase and study these books, referencing them regularly. I think in historic context, it ranks right up there with Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy, and gives an insight into Agrippa that you just can't understand without integrating the worldview Jake reveals.

As I've been reading through them, I keep on getting this warm glow, and the hairs on my arms stand up. He tracks our history of magic back to the animistic beginnings that resemble Shamanism more than any other system, and pieces it all together from surviving historic documents. He then builds a story around the pieces of historic remnants that reveals a mystery about the current we Work with as magicians of every type.

The following graphic is my interpretation of this current we're working with, and how it's manifested in societies and cultures across time. I could throw on a bunch more nodes, but I think this is a good representation of what I'm talking about. It's one current that pops up again and again, putting on the faces and facets of the culture and time it's manifesting in.

I think of the current as Miracle Juice. It's what fuels all the miracles in all the religions, what condenses as self-aware Angels and Demons, Gods and Spirits with powers and realms and specialized spheres of influence. It's what provides the Heat in our internal spiritual Alchemical Process of the Great Work. It's the ecstatic state we feel, the force that shapes the Quintessence of existence. It is the Nous and the Logos and all the celestial, terrestrial, and chthonic spirits, all at once, including us. When we plug into it and direct it with our minds and bodies through symbol, word, and rite, it's that ecstatic thrill of being and moving in tune with the creation of the Universe, it's the power that flows through us and turns into what we experience, revealing the Nature of God, and the God of Nature.

In our various practices and approaches, we dip into the current at different points, through different interfaces. We go through whatever filters harmonize with our own preferences and experiences, but we tap into the same current. Jason used to accuse me of speaking about magic as if the way I did it was the only one true way, and in the exuberance of my successes, I may indeed have done so on occasion, inadvertently. I always understood at the core that what I was talking about was my interface with this current, and when I criticized other people's approaches, I was talking about how their interfaces are limited in some ways from accessing some aspects of the current. I'm sure equal criticisms can be offered about my own approach. They'd be wrong and naive, of course, but they could still be made.

But fundamentally, it's the same current. Each interface provides access to specific aspects of the current, and they can be mingled and adapted harmoniously in different ways to get more of the current. Even this is an interpretation, so take it with a grain of salt.

The current itself has no culture of its own, it touches on many cultures and manifests however it needs to in each. Root doctors, Goets*, Charismatic Christians, Sufi mystics and Victorian Ceremonial Magicians are accessing the same current to accomplish their miracles and synchronicities, they just access it through different nodes.

The nodes they use are like lenses, filtering out some aspects of the current, and focusing specifically on other aspects. Our practices, our approaches distill the Miracle Juice into the stuff we want it to be, and like any distillation process, the final taste is influenced by every step of the process along the way.

The current has no ethics. It is neither good nor evil, it simply is. Parts of it are light compared to other parts, which in turn seem dark. But this dualistic perception of the current is false. It's a lens we put on it to see different parts, but angels aren't always good, and demons are nice to little old ladies who live alone on the edge of town.

In the Astral Warrior's Handbook, I mention that in an astral combat, the magician stuck in dualism will be limited in what they can bring to a fight. What I meant by that is if you're an Angelic Hermeticist who only works with Archangels and their legions of spirits, or a Demonic conjurer who only uses the True Grimoire, or even a balanced Solomonic magician who's at home with Angels and Demons alike, you're still limited to Angels and Demons, supposedly "Light" or "Dark" spirits with whatever kinds of effects they're capable or comfortable manifesting.

If you've seen through the illusion of Light and Dark, recognizing that both are looking at the Current through different parts of a single lens, you're not limited to the constraints of the lens.

And ultimately, we all create our own lenses, our own nodes. Mine is mostly Hermetic, Neoplatonist, with a balanced relationship with the "terrestrial" and "celestial" spirits alike, while leaving the "infernal" spirits alone unless necessity demands. But it's hoodoo-ish too, and Catholic, and Charismatic Christian. There are necromantic aspects, Orphic aspects, and bits and pieces of Crowley and Thelema in there too. And there's even stuff that's been personally revealed to me by extra-galactic entities with more tentacles than Cthulhu. Shh.

We aren't limited by anyone else's lenses. Jack wrote about some of the objections people have made to his path over the years. In reading it, I was shocked to think people were really that naive and spiritually unaware, but then in the comments he explained a lot of those objections came from his youth, presumably from other youths. I hope. Because he's living in the land of stupids if they're still saying shit like that.

You can't judge other people's lenses. It's stupid. You can critique them, help those who are interested build better nodes that get them access to different concentrations of the Miracle Juice than they've got now, but only if they're interested. Otherwise, it's really none of your business.

And cultural appropriation issues... "This is my lens, you can't look through it because you're white/black/green/unholy/uninitiated/circumcised/uncircumcised..."

Some of that shit's valid, some of it's not. The current has no culture. As long as it's harmonious and gives me a better view of the current, I'll look through whatever lens I want to, because I love the Miracle Juice. I won't pretend I'm something I'm not, and I won't hack, slash, and burn for profit the holy traditions of people who give a shit about that kind of thing, but in my personal practice, it's all fair game.

 * That's the Goets who are the goetic magicians. Read Jake's books for enlightenment on the proper usage of the terms. A Goet is a name for a type of believer who works with spirits of the underworld, which didn't used to just mean chthonic or dark, the Underworld contained the Celestial Heavens and all their denizens. I'm simplifying a lot. Jake tells it better.

Astral Warrior Vortex Talismans: Halfway There

A couple of weeks ago, I offered the Astral Warrior Vortex Talismans for sale that I talked about in the Astral Warrior's Handbook. Four people leaped on the chance to purchase them at $45 each, which turned out to be a real bargain. Come to find out, the price of Herkimer Diamonds has gone way, way up since the last time I bought them. Nevertheless, a deal's a deal. That'll teach me to check costs BEFORE setting prices in the future.

Lesson learned, prices updated.

Here's the first batch sitting in the consecrated bowl:

You can't really tell because the water is clear, but there's a layer of water over them. The water is Moon Water, purified water that was consecrated to the Moon on a Full Moon by the Intelligence and Spirit of the Moon. I made up a batch on the Super Moon night, but my wife dumped it out. I still get a little angry when I think about it, so I try not to.

This Moon water was from the last Full Moon. I made it on a Monday night, technically the day before the Full Moon, but she was bright and beautiful, and it was a Moon day, and a Moon hour, so I took advantage of the situation.

The bowl is silver plated, and I engraved the seal of the Inteligency of the Intelligence of the Moon in the bottom, the Seal of the Moon from the Table of the Moon on the inside top, and the seal of the Spirit of the Moon, much smaller on the bottom. I engraved the name of the Intelligency of the Intelligence of the Moon in Celestial Script on the bottom of the bowl as well. It's now a pretty potent Lunar Talisman in and of itself. You can see the engraving a little clearer here in this picture:

I'm not quite as good at engraving things nicely as Frater Ashen is, but I think it turned out pretty well. It hums with power, and that makes me happy. It's shiny bright on the Astral.

So I consecrated the talismans to open a vortex to the Astral whenever anyone holds it in their left hand and says the name of the Intelligency of the Intelligence of the Moon. It's a mouthful. "Malcha betharsism hed beruah schehalim." Try saying that five times fast. Or even one time slowly. Mal-ka-beth-ar-shism hed Bare-uach Shech-hah-leem is the best I can do at trying to spell it phonetically. I have to say it slowly, and have it written down in front of my to even do that to this day.

Having a complicated activation phrase is a safeguard to keep it from activating accidentally. I have kids who like shiny things, so I'm careful like that. Plus using the Intelligence name seems to be a useful thing in and of itself anyway.

After consecrating them, I set them out where they can absorb the powers of the Moon for a full cycle. At each quarter, I take them down and perform a consecration rite over them. Yesterday was the New Moon consecration, so I took the time to take some pictures for this post, and to let those who ordered them know they are indeed being worked on, they just aren't ready yet. Next Wednesday is the third Quarter, and the following Thursday is the Full Moon, and they should be shipped out the Saturday after that, so probably November 12, unless by some miracle I can get to the post office on Friday. It could happen.

But going forward, the talismans will be $75 plus shipping instead of the $45 plus shipping I originally charged for them. I've updated the blog post with the Buy Now buttons on it, so it will charge the updated price when you click on it from now on. I've also pasted the buttons below for easy access.

If you'd like to get in on the next cycle, you have until Wednesday, November 9th to place your order. That batch won't be ready until December 10th, which is the night of a Full Lunar Eclipse. Hmmm. Those might be a little dark. I hadn't thought about that. They'll still work, but they may be better suited to those on the Chthonic end of the current we Work.

As always, the method is provided here free. You can make your own for the cost of materials, and all the stuff you need to know to conjure the spirits is available at www.esotericarchives.com in chapter 22 of Book 2 of Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy and the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals attributed to Trithemius.* Or you can use the seals from Agrippa's Tables of the Planets with the Modern Angelic Grimoire, and that works too. If you're more comfortable with the Archangels instead of the Intelligences and Spirits of the Tables of the Planets, Gabriel works just fine too. I would much rather people made these things themselves, honestly, but I understand not everyone has the time, materials, or confidence in their initiatory authority to do so. And I like to make teh monies doing something I love to do instead of things I hate to do.

The silver bowl is from Goodwill. I had my spouse pick up a couple of silver bowls last time she was dropping off outgrown clothes, and I'll be offering the other one engraved and consecrated for $150 (plus shipping) soon after the next Full Moon. If you want it, email me, and I'll update this post when it's no longer available.

I'm also updating my blog links so people can order these things from the blog site whenever they want.

Happy travels, Astral Warriors!

And for the Google users:

*Speaking of which, Bryan Garner will be releasing his work on this technique soon, and I've seen advance copies. Very well done, I must say. Definitely something I'm glad I've read, and I'll be reviewing it in more detail soon.

Feed Changes and thoughts on Piracy

Hey y'all, a couple years ago I found a site that was scraping my feed into their own blog and using it to draw traffic to their ad site. Motherfuckers. So I cut the feed back to just the first few lines, and you had to come to the blog to read it.

Wil Wheaton recently posted on G+ that he doesn't read feeds that do that. I was all, "but someone scraped my blog wah," and then I started thinking about it.

Originally I was mad because someone was drawing clicks to their ads when I had my own ads on my blog, not fair!

But then I quit putting ads up here. Fuck adwords, they don't pay shit. I make a lot more on eBooks and talismans and stuff than I ever would on ads. And ads make a blog look cheap. Chintzy. So I pulled them and put up ads for my own stuff.

And honestly, if anyone scrapes the blog feed, it's still free advertising for me, so fuck it.

I've had a fundamental attitude shift about piracy and word-theft in the digital age. Most of the people who steal and pirate aren't going to buy my books, even if they couldn't get them for free somewhere. But if the magic they use works, they're going to talk about me on forums and to their friends, and then the next book I release will sell more copies. It builds up business revenue over time.

So while I do not condone pirating my shit, and I will submit requests to remove any of my digital content from any sites making it available that I find out about, I'm not seriously hating on anyone who pirates from me these days. I've lifted all the curses I put on those who might upload my work to file sharing sites, though if you see my Modern Goetic Grimoire floating around, it's dangerous stuff on its own, regardless of any curses. I might just make that available again, I've been having deep thoughts about all that shit lately. I blame Jake.

It's funny how many people come to my site using the search terms "restitution for piracy" though. Heh.

All curses are lifted and you're forgiven, you dirty pirates, but next time I release an eBook, you'd better buy a copy.

If anyone gets this post in a feed, let me know if the whole thing's coming through now instead of the summary. I think I fixed it, but I may need to go into feedburner and change some occult setting I've forgotten about.

Yesssssss!

Blogger and Google+ are syncing up. Yes.

We are teh Borgs!

Call me PaROnoid

From "Obama: All US Troops Will Leave Iraq by Year's End.
The War is Over"

Ok, so just in time for thousands of currently-peaceful OWS protesters to be hitting the streets of America in non-violent expression of their disgust with corporate America's involvement in government, the "war" in Iraq ends and 50,000 US troops will be coming home.

50,000 combat veterans with specialized training and direct combat experience in urban guerrilla warfare.

How convenient is that?

Expect the "National Guard" to be deployed. Hopefully it's just paranoia, and that will never happen, and it won't get any worse for us than it did for the hippies. Hope for that.

But prepare for the worst.

The way I see it, the 1% has a couple of factions. The Warren Buffet/Starbucks faction that supports higher taxes (because they STILL make more in profit in a year than the 99% make their whole lives) and job creation because it's a nice way to spend their money and it shows the 1% are Americans too. The Others are the old school Hawks, who believe they earned their money, worked hard for it, and by God, they aren't going to give up a penny just because the lazy unwashed rabble are protesting that life is hard.

The problem is, the Hawks have the law on their side. They wrote most of it, buying or renting senators and congressmen (on both sides of the aisle) to vote it into law. The Government is legally required to defend them from rioting mobs.

So in your magical preparations, take these things into account.

And be careful with your magic. There are things called "unintended consequences" that you have to manage and mitigate.

In fact, if you're new to this whole political magic thing, please don't go running in binding everything the social media funny posters say are evil. One guy I know mentioned "binding congress." I don't know what he meant by that, but imo, congress is already bound, bound to corporations, self interest, greed, and ideology. I'd rather see them freed from that, freed to govern, empowered in righteousness (the real kind), graced with wisdom, inspired to brilliance. Wouldn't it be awesome if for once in history, the day was saved by about 535 Americans governing for the common good?

Be careful. Don't make things worse. Just because someone made an image and posted it to FaceBook doesn't mean it's right, true, or even applicable in your personal politics. Do some research, find out what the reality is, so you can target your focused changes at things that will make it better for everyone.