Shit Works Out

I have a positive outlook on life, and I have found that this perspective, in turn helps me have a pretty positive life as a result. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. I expect life to be awesome because I can see how awesome life has been to me. I've experienced it, so I expect it, and sure enough, I find it.

But I have a positive outlook on life because I have shit work out in my favor all the time. It's really easy to be happy when you lead a charmed life. I'd like to give you examples, but I sound like I'm bragging if I do, and that's not cool. I've written it up a couple times, and the level of awesome in what's happened is so huge, I can't put it in any kind of nonchalant wrapping that makes it look like anything but braggadocio.

See, even that sounds terribly arrogant. Everybody doesn't lead a charmed life. Some people are in a lot of pain all the time. Some people are depressed, or have other forms of mental illness in varying degrees. I posted this picture the other day on FaceBook:

Fictional Life is Fictional

And one of my friends who is aware of the reality of mental health issues rightly pointed out that this isn't possible for a lot of people with depression. And he's totally right, this is a fictional character from a sit-com. It's entertainment, not real life.

This is a fictional character, but wouldn't that be awesome if it were possible to just do that?

For most people, people who aren't clinically depressed, most of the time it is possible. You just have to keep in mind that the quote up there is a summary of a lot more steps because it's funnier to say it that way, and it reflects Barney's character*.

You can go from sad to awesome for one very simple reason: shit works out. It's a basic principle of the universe at large. Sooner or later the things that we're worrying about work out. We make more money, we get what we need, the source of the problem goes away, something happens, and next thing you know you're not worried about issue A, you're totally focused on issue B, which has taken priority... Because shit worked out for issue A.

Knowing that shit works out is important. Since shit will work itself out eventually anyway, you might as well get rid of it now, eh? Why keep it around any longer than necessary? Fuck it, out the door!

First, you have to figure out what's making you sad. That's not as easy as it sounds. Hell, sometimes people don't even know they're sad in the first place, let alone why they're sad. It can be anything.

A good way to figure this out is to say to yourself, "God, I fucking hate ..." and then finish the sentence. You'll be surprised how quickly the brain leaps to fill in the blanks. Track that down and analyze it, where did it come from, no matter what it was. What do you hate about it, why do you hate it, how do you hate it, how long have you hated it?

Then look at what you can do about whatever's making you sad. Can you kill it? End it? Destroy it? Or maybe... fix it? Transform it, heal it? Is it a valid thing, or is it maybe you that's broken and you should maybe transform and heal yourself? What approach do you want to take to get rid of the sadness?

This is where magicians have an "in." See, we understand the chain of manifestation. We can see what kind of magic we need to do to accomplish the desired change. We know the paths of the the Devil, Temperance, and Death. We know the way to awesome lies through the gate of the Sun. We can craft the solution and implement it, transforming or eliminating the sad thing.

And when it's gone, we can make sure that what takes its place is something that is good, something we find to be awesome.

But even though it's that easy, it's not that simple, is it. I have a friend who I nearly stopped talking to over the autumn. He's in a bad situation, and has told me about how terrible it is for years. We talked about magical solutions to his issues, and he implemented some brilliant strategies. He crafted this awesome set of rites to get rid of what made him miserable, and they worked beautifully...

And he freaked the fuck out. I can't get into details, but all of a sudden the threat of that thing that makes him miserable being taken from him drove him insane. He undid all his magic. He could have said one sentence and ended a terrible situation, and instead he ensured that he would continue to suffer for years.

And then he tells me he's sick of his magic not working. I almost crawled through the phone to kill him myself. I couldn't talk to him for weeks. I was disgusted that he would do all that magic, have this amazingly obvious supernatural sequence of events happen to get him exactly what he asked for specifically, and then ruin it all at the last second.

Eventually I got to wondering how many times I've done that same thing. And I realized yeah, that sucks, but shit. People. We fuck up.

The results we think we want scare the shit out of us when they show up and explain that, oh yeah, everything in your world is going to change now, and you don't know how it all ends for sure. It might all end badly!

But it might all end awesomely too! Especially when you have invisible friends who help, secret occult practices that give you an advantage, and ready access to several kinds of alcohol!

In fact, I promise you that if you do magic to get rid of or transform the things in your life that aren't awesome, you will find yourself growing in confidence that you can, indeed, go from being sad to awesome. Because shit works out.

* Barney, who is a ...

wait for it...

wait for it...

awwww yeah, here it comes...

a magician!

Mage-five, come on!

How to be a Living God

Live like a god.

A couple of years ago, my friends and I started doing Jupiter magic once a week. A couple of years later, most of us are making a lot more money than we did when we started, and most of us are living dream lives.

It's no secret what we did. Conjured up a deity or intelligence or archangel of the greater benefic, said the Orphic hymn, meditated on a set of sigils, and talked about money and opportunities that came our way to each other.

The last part of the Orphic hymn is the part that became our statements of intent, a request for health and necessary wealth. Once a month we do the rites, some of us once a week. Blessings accumulated. Wealth flowed. The 'health' of Jupiter is a zaftig kind of health, so we all got a bit pudgy.

Money didn't fix anything. I was still in a miserable marriage for various justifying reasons, like for the kids, or for her health, or it's cheaper to keep her, or something. Always something. It was an unpleasant life, but familiar, and I really thought it was my fault things were bad. And in a way it was my fault.

Because I didn't leave. Divorce was scary. Splitting up was scary. The house we owned together, the kids we had together, the history we had together, all that made it really hard to split up. Divorce would be harder and more painful than staying, I thought.

Eventually things got so bad that it hit a crisis point. I was planning on leaving my ex when the kids were 18. Figured it was the best thing I could do for them. I had checked out of the relationship in my head, but was letting it zombie shuffle around for like a decade to avoid the expected painfulness of a divorce.

Of course it fell apart.

In July.

And everything went to shit. I crawled into a bottle for a week. Or so. I got a shitty one bedroom efficiency. I signed a terrible agreement with the ex hoping we would reconcile, because fuck, it was so different it hurt.

And I did a lot of magic. Magic to bring me and my ex back together.  It worked, but we still hated each other and couldn't handle it. So I did other magic, black evil magic, and it worked, and I had to call on Deb to teach me how to undo it, because it made me feel worse, not better.

And then I gave up on that life. Fuck it, said I. And I did more magic, seven spheres in seven days with the intent to be reborn, rededicated to the hermetic great work as I understood it.

And then shit got weird.

I started having fun. I drank and smoked and went to social events and met interesting people and did interesting things. I found out who I was without my ex and all the definitions I had taken on, husband, father, home owner. I discovered that the names I had let myself be called and internalized for 12 years were bullshit. I embraced a term I knew was right and fun, 'magician' and let it take me where it will, Schmendrick style.

Since then, it's been a trip. I do magic, my world gets better. I make a lot of money. My divorce goes well. My magnum opus is on track to manifest in 2013. I lost thirty pounds and have taken control over my body's shape.

It's pretty awesome.

It's not always fun though. I live in a shit hole apartment in Baltimore. I wept one night a couple weeks ago looking at it. I am an occasional emo wreck in many ways. I miss my kids, I worry about them. I have trust issues. Working out the divorce is not fun. Some days my ex hate-texts me for hours. Though I haven't in a while, some days I respond in kind.

But things keep improving. It's a matter of perspective. Divorce sucks compared to hot red-headed sex, for example, but it is way less painful than living in a terrible relationship was on a daily basis. I have something good to think about every day, something awesome if I remember to look for it. Something that makes the bad shit not so bad, really. 

I figured something out, we actually buy our experiences, we purchase every moment we experience using the only currency that matters: our attention. What we spend our attention on becomes magnified in our experience. I can pay attention to how I spent 12 years sinking literally hundreds of thousands of dollars into a house, cars, clothes, and a really cool kitchen and now I'm starting over from scratch with nothing but a battered Volvo and not even a stick of furniture to my name, and I'm going to have a shitty time. I can pay attention to the fact that if this is what I have to show for my career, my life's decisions, my time and effort for over a fucking decade, then I am obviously a failure, right? I can buy that for myself.

Or not.

I can pay attention to the fact that I can write my epic books now without interruption or guilt. I can pay attention to how I do magic and shit works itself out in my favor (more on that later). I can pay attention to my lover, and how things started great and have only gotten better in that area of my life. I can pay attention to the fact that I'm in transition from one bad phase of life to whatever I want my life to be, with my imagination and work ethic the only limitations standing between me and complete domination of the entire universe.

So ... I feel pretty great most of the time, not miserable most of the time. For 12 years that was not the case! I didn't even know I was miserable or that I didn't have to be miserable. I didn't know life could be fun.

So I'm excited about it. If you are unhappy most of the time, I want to tell you it doesn't have to be like that so you can wake up and start having fun with me. Because it's contagious. And if everyone caught it, wow what a world, eh?

So here's the trick to being a living god:

Live like a god.

• Figure out what you want.
• Do magic to get what you want.
• Look for what you want to manifest.
• Do what it takes to get your results.

The last part is the hardest. You won't succeed most of the time because of that fact. Doing what it takes is not usually ecstatically blissful. It's usually boring, irritating, or fucking painful. It always feels like it's taking too long, and until you have what you want, you worry that you won't get it. Often.

That's normal.

Also, magic is like strength training. You do more magic and you can do more magic. But you don't start out a god-level magician. You get stronger, you learn to us it better, you aim for the right goals. It's a process.

And like developing muscles, you are usually sore from one initiation or another. You can pull a muscle working on it too hard, and then you have to heal. It hurts. You can't pull down forces of creation without them changing you, and change isn't easy.

It's work. But ... it works.

Motion in Motion

One of the things I stress in the Gate of Mercury is the flowing nature of the home-sphere of the Hermetic Magician. It's all about flowing, movement, exchange, transfer, embodiment, discernment, planning, processing, and above all, moving, going to, coming from. It's maps of the connection points, schematics of the process, but the process itself being represented in Mercury is the flow of information to and from its ineffable Source.

This flowing nature of our home sphere is important to keep in mind. It's a vital part of the Mystery at the core of Hermetics.* Our paths never stop. The "accomplishment" of the Great Work is a phrase we toss about as if it were possible to ever do more than finish up a part of it before moving on to the next. There is no end. As my gnostic friends say, "The Eucharist never ends!" That's important to remember.

We are constantly in motion, all of us, as long as we exist. We don't really stop moving. We're growing, shaping, changing, processing, evaluating, planning, executing. We are always doing something. Even when we are deep in no-mind meditation, we have not stopped anything necessary. Which is an understanding that is sort of the whole point of no-mind meditation, in my humble opinion.

In our magical paths, we are also growing and changing. Jason and I were talking about the Seven Spheres in Seven Days exercise recently, and he mentioned that we tend to forget that we didn't start out where we're at today, and the things we can do now were once intimidating for a reason. It's like weight lifting, the more you do, the more you can do. A weight that you could barely move today can be lifted easily by a future you who has built up the muscle over time.

And that's what I've done over the last few years, I've built up a pretty strong set of spiritual muscles. I did that by performing spiritual exercises regularly, as part of an overall goal, i.e. the "accomplishment" of the Great Work. That's still the framework of my operations. I haven't stopped pursuing the next level, and I do not think that I have "arrived" at any end goal.

I'm going to be talking about some crazy shit soon. I want to make sure that people understand the crazy shit I'll be talking about is taking place within the greater context of my performance of the Great Work. The Crazy Shit is a specialization, a subset of the overall Great Work, and it is by no means taking the place of my continued efforts to keep moving forward, onward and upward. It is a means towards a goal, not the goal itself.

Some of the stuff I'll be talking about isn't "safe." Well, honestly, nothing I talk about is "safe." Even reading my words here on the screen is changing you forever in small ways that will bear fruit in your life starting now. It's the nature of existence. Transmissions of information through symbol change the world. And change is never guaranteed to be safe, painless, or uncomfortable.

But the stuff I'm going to be talking about will be more dangerous than reading a blog post. Jumping into some of this stuff without having gone through the stuff I teach in the Red Work series of courses could cause some really unpleasant shit to surface if you haven't spent some time figuring out who you are, and how you relate to the forces I'm going to be talking about.

The actual intent of these exercises is experiencing joy by creating my universe to increase my conscious understanding of that essential interface at the core of my awareness. Knowing myself, as it were.

But remember, these exercises are part of the Work, taking place in an environment I've spent years developing, and as part of a greater process. This is like the process of creating rocket fuel, something cool and fun and dangerous to do, but still only a supporting process in the launch of the rocket. And the launch of the rocket is still only a supporting process of the primary mission.

I keep moving forward, modeling my practice and my understanding on the flow-motion of the home-sphere of the Hermetic path.

And I never. stop. moving.

* The Mystery is that we're like gates through which pass the Will of God from Above to Below, and the Experience of Existence from Below to Above at the same time, allatonce. It's in constant flow between the two, but really there's not two. There, you're illuminated.

The Prayer of RO

Speech, thou tongue, thou voice, oh thou sacred informer, creator of the world, be kind and serve me well, that no idleness should pass my lips, nor any word fall to the ground and without bearing fruit.

Hermetic Soteriology

Hierophantic Psychopompery

At Its Finest

Soteriology is the study of religious* doctrines of salvation. 

Salvation. That's a fun thing to think about, isn't it? What exactly does it mean? 

Who, or perhaps, what are we saving? From what danger or threat are they being saved? What does this "salvation" look like in real life? How can you tell if it worked?

In the Hermetic doctrines, we learn that people are gods, extensions of the First Father created to be an intelligent companion/vessel through whom the cosmos could be simultaneously created and experienced.** This answers that first question, who are we saving? We are saving humans. 

But what are we saving them from? What is the threat or danger? What problem is being solved by Hermetics? That's kind of more complicated. 

People live and die, creating and experiencing their world whether they know it or not. Remember, Hermetics teaches that our purpose is to simultaneously create and experience the cosmos, including, but not limited to, the material world. The most materialistic, unspiritual person you know, the dumbest clod-hopping troglodyte who has ever mocked you for having spiritual beliefs is no less a manifestation of god than you are, and has no less power to create and experience their world than you have. The most mundane people on the planet still make decisions and perform actions that materialize their world, just like you do. 

So the problem that Hermetics solves is not whether or not we are able to accomplish our spiritual purpose. The salvation of Hermetics is not the creation of empowered gods. That's totally not the problem.

In the core Neoplatonic philosophy, we learn that the problem we have is that we have lost and forgotten our race and value.*** We live in ignorance of who we are. That's the problem. We behave badly and make things bad for ourselves and others because we forgot that we have the power to create and experience our lives. We do not fail to create our worlds, we fail to create our worlds consciously. 

Hermetics gives us a framework to reclaim our race and value. It provides the means to create and experience the universe on purpose. Like the god you are. This is the point of the Great Work. It cleans up the things that separate you from your highest potential, and it changes your consciousness in the process. 

And it is a process. You don't start out ignorant, and then have one thing happen that makes you instantly conscious of being a god. You hear about something, and you perform an experiment. During the experiment, you have an experience that confirms what you heard. The words have become a solid known thing because you have experienced it. This is "gnosis." 

Gnosis is the method of the Hermetic "salvation" process. We conjure spirits for this and that, and we learn more and more about them, how they work, and how we work. We learn about our relationships to them, and over time, we pick up their patterns, behaviors, and abilities. We change by interacting with them, by learning from our experiences, by getting to gnow them, getting to gnow all about them...

And it is a gradual process. It doesn't happen over night, and it never truly completes. You can finish phases of the Work, but as long as you're still in the flesh, you still will have the opportunity to learn new things, to experience new frontiers, and to create new things to experience. It never stops. There is no end in sight, and that's awesome, because ultimately it is the most fun thing we can do with our lives. It is always fulfilling, it never leaves you empty or alone.

And sometimes we are more aware of being creator gods than others. Some days we feel magical, other days we feel overwhelmed. Sometimes it's all bliss and fun and JOY, and other times it's walking through the necessary material steps to resolve an undesirable manifestation, and those times can be long and boring and not very fun at all.

If you think about them too much. Fortunately, as on long boring car trips, our Dad has given us things to keep ours minds off the monotony. As long as we keep on traveling towards the destination, it's fine to enjoy the distractions, in my humble opinion.

Just don't mistake the distractions for the end goal.

Someone asked me recently point blank, "Have you accomplished the Great Work?" I don't like to talk about it because as soon as I do, people will suddenly forget reading anything I've written above, or in any other blog post for the last 6 years, and will nearly hurt themselves in their eager rush to leap to the conclusion that I am an ego-enslaved delusional black brother.

I shit you not. 

I'm about to perform an experiment to demonstrate this on FaceBook. I am going to post the following as a status:

I have successfully accomplished the Red Phase of the esoteric Great Work. I have:
* Created the Philosopher's Stone
* Ground it into powder
* Projected it into the world
Behold, I heal the sick, raise the dead, and make the blind to see!
Thus am I the salvation of the world.

Watch what happens, and feel free to play along. I ask that no one mentions this blog post in the comments, and that if you have already commented, then found out that it was an experiment, that you do not go back and change or remove your comments in the interest of science. 

And remember, it's all in fun.

I find it absurd that anyone can read all the stuff I've written over the last six years and still think anything I write in an ecstatic state of gnowing I'm a creator god is somehow the equivalent of "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light, no man cometh to the Philosopher's Stone but by Me!" I mean, I put the "RO Bullshit Zone" warning right there on the front of the blog. Sic Magus cavete, let the Magician beware.

But here's the real deal: 

I, Rufus Opus, have accomplished the Great Work. 

I really have. I have completed the full cycle. I have taken my sorry lazy ignorant ass through the Black, White, Green, and Red phases of the Great Work, refining and perfecting myself until I created the Philosopher's Stone, healed the sick, and turned shit bricks into solid gold.

Some aspects of that statement are more literal than others.

Did I say I am enlightened, perfect, a manifestation of pure perfectly functional conscious godhead now and forever, in RO's name you pray amen?

Nope. I just said I created the Philosopher's Stone, and used it to heal my world and the people in it. It's not that big of a deal. It doesn't make me perfect or better than any man or woman on the planet besides the sniveling wretch I used to be. It doesn't mean the Work is finished either. Cycles repeat. A Stone I create today becomes the Prima Materia of the Stone I create tomorrow. It doesn't stop. 

Now, this post is working on your mind, making you think about things I'm talking about. Some of these things line up, some don't. You're figuring out which parts you agree with, and which parts you don't. Some people are focusing on the parts they disagree with, and are thinking up arguments. Others are focusing on the parts they do agree with, and are thinking up ways to test it, put it into practice, implement it.

But everyone is thinking about how they are creator gods experiencing the universe now. Remembering this fundamental TRVTH of your race and value is the core Salvation offered by Hermetics. By bringing it to you, talking about it, getting you to think about it, I have performed in a very small way the salvation of the world, and those within it.

Aww yeah, bitches! Ungh! 

But here's the thing: so what? It's what I do. I talk about magic, if you haven't noticed. I remind people they are gods and they can do magic to change their world. I teach an approach to getting good at it, and recommend other approaches that seem to work pretty well too. That doesn't make me very special. It's just me doing my thing. Some days I do it well, some days not so much. Just like everyone else.

I don't get any ego boost out of any of this shit. Being aware that I'm a creator-god is not an accomplishment for which I should be proud. It's like being proud of the color of your skin, or being proud of breathing, or being proud of taking a shit. These are all things that are natural. 

Rather, I get an ego boost out of doing it particularly well. When I create something really awesome that I LOVE to experience, I am thrilled to death, and love it so much. I am also grateful, and I don't lose sight of the role I play in relation to every other role played in the manifestation of my awesomeness, but I also don't sell it short. Ego boosts aren't all bad. You don't check your brain at the door, of course, but it's ok to enjoy it when you're awesome.

The trick is not to stop though. Never think you're finished, or that you've arrived. Never cease to strive for MORE, more fun, more pleasure, more joy, more awesomeness. Bigger badder better, even if it's just more bigger badder better experiences of no-thing-ness. Strive for excellence, strive to always do better than before. Hunger, thirst, yearn for perfection...

And most important of all ... 

Never.

Stop.

Moving.

* Religions relate humanity to spirituality through narratives, symbol sets, and rituals, among other things. They tell a story about how humans relate to eternity, death, and various rank and file invisible entities that influence the manifestation of the world. Whether you consider "Hermetics" a religion or just a philosophy and set of practices doesn't matter for the purposes of this post. The point is that "Hermetics" comes with a doctrine of salvation.

** See the "Neoplatonic Basics" series of blogposts, also available as an ebook or for free online.

*** New readers, note that "race and value" are not references to the flesh suit you are wearing or its unique genome. It is a reference to the race and value of the invisible god looking through your brain at the material world.

On Things that Suck

I don't want to talk about guns or mental illness or problems in the world. I want to go back to funny pictures from I Fucking Love Science, or Intelligent, classy, well-educated women who say F*ck a lot. I want to argue about the nature of enlightened attainment, and the pros and cons of Charismatic Hermetics and the Ecstatic path.

I don't want to think about problems that simply cannot be solved with magic, therapy, words, reason, rationality, or heartfelt appeals to an allegedly better nature. I don't want to think about how sometimes you can't make things better, and that there are just some things that suck no matter how you look at them.

You Don't Always Get What you Want

But this shit's real. People hurt. The mind shattered by trauma doesn't heal, doesn't ever go back to not being broken and wounded, it just learns to function in spite of being broken. Like a vet with a missing leg, a prosthetic can help him function, or a wheelchair can get him around...

But "functional" is not the same as "healed."

There is no cure for most "mental illness." There is only treatment. Treatments include medication, which works a shockingly small amount of the time, or therapy. Successful therapy isn't about getting rid of the blackness of the episodes, it's about learning to get through the blackness to the light on the other side. It's about getting to a point of being functional. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

A lot of my ecstatic posts lately focus on the joy of living. Joie de Vivre for the motherfucking win! Because I like being happy, and I like having fun. It's exciting. And I found out some really cool ways to be happy and have fun this year that I want to write about and talk about and share, because being happy rocks, and I want you to be happy too! Because I've been around you when you're miserable, and that sucks! Fuck that! Get happy, FFS!

But my focus on this stuff shouldn't be taken as the entirety of the Hermetic path. Doing this stuff that I do does not guarantee all joie all the time. It doesn't make all the bad shit go away. You still have to face it, and deal with it.

That is, in many ways, the actual point of Hermetics, and the best thing we can get out of this path: the tools to deal with things that suck, and the wisdom to use them effectively.

No one is going to buy anything I write, put the rites into practice, and never suffer any sadness, pain, fear, or trauma ever again as long as they live. But if I can pass on the skills and knowledge I've picked up that get me through the blackness, that mitigate the worst of the suck-ness, then I'll consider it a win.

Bad shit happens, we feel terrible, and then we deal with it. We cope. We get through the blackness, and when it has gone past us, we turn and see its path, just like in the litany. We study it, observe it, and learn what triggered it, and we go after that with our magical rites, shoring up defenses, attacking the source, banishing people, or just finding ways to avoid the shit that sucks.

Avoiding Shit that Sucks

Hm. Quick tangent, but this is important:

Remember this: there is no problem in life that is too big to run from. At least, temporarily. You can leave the bad situation and get your head on straight. You can divorce the idiot. You can quit the job. You can live in a shelter. You can wash up on a foreign shore, and start a new life from scratch. You can go completely off-grid and live in the shadow culture that's just around the corner of Everystreet, Everywhere, Planet Earth. It's not going to be easy, but it might just be better.

You can always quit. And sometimes, that is the solution that works. We are told, "Never quit!" We are told not to give up, to keep trying to reach our dreams and goals, to never accept failure, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again! We have Edison's failed light bulbs shoved in our faces. We are encouraged to be eternal optimists.

And I'm guilty of doing that, too.

But sometimes the only solution is to quit and go do something else. Something more fun. Maybe you'll learn something that lets you finish this project later, or maybe this project just isn't supposed to happen. Whatever. You're free to go, you don't have to stay. If dealing with that shit is something you're supposed to do in this lifetime, it will no doubt wash back into your life sooner or later, right? So fuck it. Walk away for now, and when you feel better, think about it and how you'd use your magic to deal with it. And THEN deal with it.

I don't think that should be your first option every time, but don't toss it out of the toolbox arbitrarily. Just remember it's an option you have available.

Most of the time though, quitting is way too extreme of an option. Sucky shit just crops up out of nowhere, and needs to be addressed. Most of the time, the best way to deal with shit that sucks is the tried and true magical approach.

Practical Hermetic Process of Dealing with Transient Evil (a.k.a. Shit that Sucks)

Evil needs darkness to survive, so you shine light into the situation: that's the Sun. Solar rites scatter the darkness and reveal the things hiding in the shadows. It brings the evil to the surface where it can be seen and dealt with. The light of the Sun is enough to make most evil things wither and die immediately, or run to the hills where there is shadow. It gets rid of most shit right away.

But not always. Some shit, when revealed in the light, gets really mean and ugly, and goes on the attack.

Cut that shit with iron. This is the Martial rite. You get some help from the forces of Mars to defeat that evil shit like a boss. Legions of Martial Angels will fuck some pasty pale shadow-creeping crapulentities right the fuck up. And then they will form a hedge of protection around your sphere, all bristling with pointy swords and spears and missiles and rockets and cannon and guns that hurl pieces of the next sphere you go to when getting rid of evil...

Saturn, the sphere of DEATH. Mr. Grimm. This is the Greater Malefic, and there is no better place to go to learn the nature of an evil thing. Here you see how this evil was able to be born into your life, and the things that must occur for that evil to die in your life. All things have their beginnings and their endings defined in the sphere of Saturn.

Also, Saturn is your border, your defense, your wall of protection. Here you can make it much more difficult for the evil to assail you.

Note that the Saturn rites are focused on gaining wisdom, insight, understanding, and defense. Note there's nothing said about sending out evil to get rid of evil. Note that well. There's a reason.

The Sun, Mars, and Saturn. It's a progressive approach that lets you triage the situation immediately, root out the evil, and then keep it out. At that point you go into healing and rebuilding rites of Jupiter, Mercury and Venus, reshaping things in your world through the Moon.

Practical Hermetic Process of Dealing with the Other Evil

Some shit isn't going to go away, no matter how hard you try. There are some things you just can't get rid of. Chronic, recurring shit that sucks. Other shit that just descends on you out of nowhere that leaves you devastated and wondering what ... the ... fuck ...

The only effective way I've found to prepare myself to deal with the Big Bads in life is through the actual practice of the Great Work. It's like training your body to be able to react well in an emergency rather than training for a specific event. You go through all the spheres regularly, you pursue god, you reclaim yourself, your race, your value, you take back your divine heritage so that when the evil comes, you are able to pull yourself together, put out the secondary and tertiary manifestations of the evil, and deal more constructively with the forces of things that you don't want in your life that you can't keep out.

As you do more and go higher, you're able to integrate the forces that would otherwise bring you pain, and work around them, minimizing their negative impacts, transmuting some aspects of it, and finding ways to make it positive even though it fundamentally sucks at the core.

Passionate ecstatic pursuit of God conditions your spiritual muscles, and trains you to interact with things in ways that are beneficial. It teaches you to look for good things in bad situations, to see the world as your oyster, to be able to pick up on the potential opportunities that are lying behind the scenes in every situation. It raises your vibration and builds up the skills and tools to find your way through the bad and into the good. It gives you the power to create something better to take the place of the bad, to put it into perspective, to rob it of its power over you, if you can't get rid of it entirely.

But that's not easy, and it's not all fun, and it's not entirely safe.

But it is entirely awesome.

Regardless...

Shit things that suck are going to come into your life, and you're going to have to deal with it, forever until you die. You have the power to do that, to deal with it. You have a framework of symbols and tools that let you channel the powers of the forces of creation. You have the phone numbers of the most amazing experts on the powers of creation ever.

You can't make all the evil go away all the time. But you can always deal with it until it's over.

And remember, sooner or later, everything ends.

Oi!

If you order something from me that I have to send you by email attachment, do not bitch at me about not receiving it when you've got your fucking email settings set to reject email from unknown senders.

Are You Illuminated?

I'll hold off on Enlightened because there's baggage that I'm not ready to claim that comes with that word. For today, we'll just talk about whether or not you're Illuminated.

Most of the readers of my blog know how the universe works. Ideas from the "ABOVE" are made to manifest into the material realm "BELOW" where they are experienced before they return to the Mind from whence they came. Magicians are the folks who Hermes has seen fit to grant the call of teh magicrafts to travel between the "ABOVE" and "BELOW" working with the entities that also use Jacob's Ladder to transit between the Earth and the Heavens. We're all manifestations of the divine, we are lower-case gods, we are beyond good and evil and what we do is right because we do it, right?

A few of the audience are still struggling with that last part, and I totally understand; it's not nice and it doesn't fit in with what we've been taught by our spiritual systems, and there's a whole LOT of room for misunderstanding and fucking shit up when you start tossing "good" and "evil" out the window. Yeah, "here there be dragons" and shit. Don't go there without plenty of light.

But for the most part, you guys understand that we human beings create our reality, we make what we see in our minds happen in our worlds' shared experiences. If you've done some practical magic that works, you know you're a creator god who has the power to shape your world as you see fit. At least some of the time.

But fuck. We don't act like it very often.

Part of that is because we're always learning how little we know. As we progress, we learn a lot, and then we see how much more there is to learn. We get humbled by this, and pay more attention to what we want to learn than what we already know, and that's awesome for learning new shit.

But what you already know is important too. It's ok to act like you really are illuminated, a powerful and wise spiritual leader. It's ok to behave as if you were really as empowered and experienced as you really are. It's ok to be an Illuminate.

Take a look at your actions, are they bringing you the world you want to live in?

Take a look at your desires, are they what you really want?

Take a look at the harmony of your desires and your actions in your life. Do you do things to get what you really want?

You know how this all works. You really do. Thought becomes word, becomes plan, becomes action, becomes experience, becomes memory, becomes resource for future plans and actions and experience, on and on and on, and you're the fuckin' boss.

It's ok to remember who you are, and what you're here to do. It's ok to be Illuminated.

When the light's flowing through you, you won't have to worry about the dragons, lurking in the dark.

Super Advanced Drunken Magus Style

The corners of the Universe are supported by what?

Those Four fixed signs, who else do they represent?

"the Greeks used to represent Dionysus in four distinctive forms: one as a bull, one as a lion, one as an eagle and one as a drunken, joyful man!" -Thomas Gazis

And what's that going on in the center there, with that woman and that snake? Who is She supported by the Serpent Fire? What is that in her right hand? What the fuck is it that is being expressed in Dionysian revelry?

But FRATER RO is nothing but AN EYE; what eye none knoweth.Skip, witches! Hop, toads! Take your pleasure! -- for the play of the Universe is the pleasure of FRATER RO.

Gabriel, the Aeon, and the Shamanic Death Trip

It took a full day to receive it all, to experience it in full, and to reach understanding.

It began in the morning, as I sat enjoying coffee and breakfast with Harper. We were talking about what we wanted to do today. We had been planing an evening conjuration of our favorite entity from the Theurgia Goetia for days. The temple space was already adorned in red roses, a seal embroidered, and an offering made. The lights flickered throughout the house, a now-familiar indication that this spirit was present and ready to interact with us.

And then it came to me, that prickling at the edges of my sphere. "I also want to do a Lunar rite today, something with Gabriel," I found myself saying. It was Monday, after all, and there was something I needed from the Moon. No clue what it was. Just a feeling.

Harper smiled*, and we talked a bit about it, and the conversation turned. Soon it was time for her to go to work, and we each drew a tarot card of the day, as we are wont to do. I drew the Aeon of the Thoth deck, formerly Judgment. You remember the Judgement card, the one with Gabriel blowing his horn, raising the dead to their resurrection bodies, calling us to our Judgment Day, and beginning our new eternal life? That one. That one with Gabriel on it.

His vibe was upon me, and I laughed.

The day passed. I turned the remains of a rotisserie chicken into soup. We had started boiling the carcass the night before for stock, thinking of cooking lentils in it, or something. Sliced carrots and onion moved on thermal currents among the bones and skin and fat as it bubbled on the stove. Before she had left, Harper and I had decided it would not do as stock, but must become soup. I strained the stock, separating the bones from the meat and veggies, Harper's familiar assisting me in the task as a good feline co-chef should. To the fridge went I, and scavenged more veg to toss in. Fresh spinach leaves, and leftover cauliflower from the night before. Sliced mushrooms. Some long grain black rice, a handful of quinoa. Salt, of course, and coarse ground black pepper. Rosemary and ever so little oregano, ground in the palm of my hand.

Harper came home for lunch, and we ate the soup that had turned out so well. I was surprised how delicious it was. At how a well-picked pile of bones could be transformed into something so wonderful. The essence of the old transmuted into something new, something even better than it was before. The rotisserie chicken was good, don't get me wrong. But the soup was so much better.

I had a conference call in the Lunar hour in the afternoon, and so I couldn't conjure Gabriel when I wanted. Harper and I chatted online about conjuring him out of hour, and I was about to do so at the close of the business day, when client needs took precedence over my own. I ended up spending a couple hours performing a Hermetic Diagnosis in the temple instead. Harper returned home, and we worked in parallel on the things we needed to do into the evening. We broke for dinner and a bit of a movie, before returning to the Temple to conjure the spirit of the Theurgia Goetia. She took the role of seer, and we received the information we needed to receive.

And it was time to ground out and go to bed, but I felt it again, at the edges of my sphere. I checked the time before we left the temple, and it was still within the third hour of the Moon. I conjured him, Gabriel, and we received the vision, heard the voice. It wasn't any more strange and wonderful than any other conjuration we performed. Images in the crystal. A statement received, "this dream is real," a reference to something that had happened on the weekend. No further communion that I recall now, beyond that silent hymning that goes on when Magicians and Spirits spend time together.

And we went to bed, and we slept.

And the dreams came.

"This is how you must explain the quality to others," he said, showing me an aluminum or steel block being machined into a piece or a part. "You cannot see the finished piece by looking at the block of metal. It is shaped in phases. You cannot see the finished function of the form if you look at it before it is complete. It happens in phases. And there are two of you, and the process must be aligned, coordinated."

And I woke. And again, I slept.

And again, the dreams came.

"You are remade. You are reborn. The trumpet has sounded, and you are raised from your graves. Your flesh is transformed. Your bones taken, and you are recreated into a new thing. You were dead. You were decayed. Your corpse was picked clean. But now you are made anew. The old you remains within the new, but transformed. You are given a new body, an eternal body. You are Judged, and rewarded. You receive the power and responsibility of the Saints of New Jerusalem."

And as he spoke, I saw it was so. I experienced it in the dream. I had lived a life, and I had died. I was bones. A clarion call woke me, and I rose, shaking the dust from my bones. And I was made anew, given a new life in which to accomplish Joy.

"The 'old Aeon' has passed, that life is over. You are dead to those things that came before. You have died, and you are being remade. What you are now is not the end. You cannot see the finished function of the form if you look at it before it is complete. It happens in phases. And there are two of you, and the process must be aligned, coordinated."

And I awoke again, the vision complete, understanding received, and transmitted over coffee from a bed shared with my lover.

* Something happens when she smiles. It's not just me. Other people see it too.

Puttin' on yer Gear

I was reading through the latest Astrological forecast by Austin Coppock, and I got to thinking about some of the stuff he was saying, and how it impacts me personally. Because that's what people do. When they read forecasts. And horoscopes.

I read through his stuff every week. I love it. He includes planets that I don't believe in (Pluto doesn't exist), but in spite of such modernistic adaptation, his predictions are solid and reliable. I have yet to read a forecast that isn't accurate in my personal life in some way.

Now, I don't take it all literally, as if everything he says will come true for me personally. If you read it carefully, he doesn't even phrase shit that way. Instead what he does is explain the effects of the astrological factors that are going on throughout the week, and how they might impact someone who was not aware of the forces, and was not prepared.

For example, Mercury Retrograde is over Monday. How was your Mercury Retro this cycle? Calamitous? Lovely? Didn't even notice it? Personally, I had a few Mercurial issues arise, and when they did I conjured Mercurius. I had  martinis with him after he got me out of a bureacratic snarl I'd fallen into. Later in the week, I felt some Mercurial tension, and made another offering to him, not asking for anything, just spending time in his presence and giving him some gin. Things smoothed out rapidly. I was talking to a friend/student, and she was having some issues, and I recommended some Mercury work, and later she wrote thanking me, saying it was just what she needed.

See the trend? Bad astrological weather causes discomfort, so magic is done to make it better. I can do that, my student can do that because we have relationships built up with these spirits. We aren't the average oblivious folks suffering the pressures of the Fates.

Ok, shift gears. When you're packing to go on vacation, or travelling for business, you'll check the local weather forecast of the place you're visiting to get an idea of what to pack. If the forecast is for rain or snow, you'll pack your rain gear and rubber boots, scarves and warm hats and coats. You're not stupid. That's why you check the weather.

Astrological forecasts are the same way. When he talks about the Venus conjunction with Saturn on Monday, he talks about how the forces at play are going to influence you. Pay attention to that shit, it's important. Knowing what the forces will be influencing you to do, plan to accommodate them. Forewarned is forearmed.

If you were paying attention when Saturn went into Scorpio, you read Austin's warnings about what to expect in general over the next couple of years, and you've already planned on harnessing those forces and putting them to use in your Great Work rather than being their victim.

Do the forces at play have a tendency to build pressures up in relationship? Defuse those pressures now. Talk to your partner about stuff, check in with them, see how they're feeling, talk about how you're feeling. If someone you love is being snappish, defensive, or overindulging in pleasures to deal with the pressures, you understand they're under the influence of the weather, and you can guide them to more creative solutions.

And this applies to any kind of divination too, not just Austin's awesome astrology. Tarot readings, gematria, conch shells or crab claws, the things you see are mostly influences that you have to deal with, adjust yourself to interact with. It's a weather report, and if it's going to rain, you put on your rain gear.

And what I've found lately that works the best is a mix of specific requests as necessary, and propitiation rites in general at an appropriate time. A martini poured for Mercury in a Mercury hour on a Friday helps a lot. Scotch that tastes like graveyard dirt when Saturn's being all afflictive can do wonders. General propitiations work well enough, specific requests are also good. I found I had prepared well for the Venus Saturn stuff when it came to my favorite and most important relationship, but other stuff all fell to shit because I had only prepared in one area of my life. It doesn't just rain on you when you're with the person you love when it rains. It rains on you wherever you go. Oooopsie! quick rite to Anael (on the fly, in fact, and done astrally, and sealed with some port), and things were instantly better across the board.

Put on your gear when you know it's going to rain, magician. It only makes sense.

Epic Moments

OK... I'm sitting at a bar at the airport waiting for my flight, having calamari and my second Bombay sapphire martini on my way from freezing rain in Baltimore to beautiful sunny Florida, where a red haired goddess awaits my arrival, and i get a notification that I've received money for doing the stuff I love to do.

Just thought I'd mention it.

Cause this is what it can be like.

Black Friday: Red Work

Hey all, you could spend all your money on material goods that make you happy for a little while, or you could spend your money getting the foundation necessary to live in intentional enjoyment of your life. I mean really, which would you prefer?

To make the (obviously right) choice easier for you, the complete Red Work series of courses (normally $275) is available through this blog post only for $175. This sale is good from now until I get around to editing the Buy Now button out of it later. I'll keep it up at least through Sunday, but as soon as I get around to remembering it afterwards, this sale is over.

Happy Thanksgiving!

On this Thanksgiving, brothers and sisters, I strongly urge you from the highest celestial heavens and the deepest chthonic caverns, do not be thankful for shit that sucks.

Do not dress up those things that bring you misery 364 days a year as blessings. Do not pretend you are happy if you are not. Do not justify putting up with scorn, ridicule, hatred, or abuse by focusing on some fantastical reward in the far off future, or in hopes that if you suffer long enough, patiently enough, things will just get better.

No, instead be thankful that you are intelligent, brilliant shining stars made in the image of God. Be thankful that you have received the power to create your world. Be thankful that you know better, that you can do better.

Be thankful that if you woke up today, you have everything you need to change your world completely. To make it brilliant. Beautiful. Fun. To find love, and happiness. To bring light and liberty to your world.

If this holiday secretly creeps you the fuck out, there's a reason. 

Change that shit.

Amen.

Rufus Opus is Not a Prophet

Rufus Opus is not a prophet. Or he's a false prophet.

Rufus says everything you do will eventually lead to things being all right. Just do your will, and you'll be good. You'll gain riches, love, your will, etc.

A prophet tells you everything will go to hell if you don't repent. You must turn away from yourself, and turn back to God (the Source, the Divine, whatever). Maybe it will go to hell even if you do what the Divine wants. See Jeremiah chapters 14, 28.

I'm not saying that what Rufus says isn't correct, or useful. I'm not saying he can't be an inspiration. 

I am saying that Prophet is not his title. And to you I say: If you are not inspired, even sent, by the Lord to warn of calamity, do not claim the title of prophet. If you speak of peace, you will be proved false, for the Lord did not send you. 

I have met prophets, men and women sent by God to warn of calamity. They've been correct, but they were not nearly as personable as RO is. He's no prophet, he's not nearly disagreeable enough.

- Monsignor Scott Rassbach 

I am totally a false prophet. And I should be stoned, dammit! Why am I not stoned?

He's totally right, in every way. I am not a prophet, in case you thought I claimed that. I do not claim that. In fact, if you start acting like I'm a messiah or a guru, you will be receiving your very own electronic version of this quote going forward, or a link to this blog post. I am not a prophet.

What I am is a Magus. Of the Ecstatic Hermetic type. I like the passionate pursuit of power and transformation. I love the burn of the dross as it is consumed, the charred hot dry smell of purified ME in the morning. I love to stand in the power of the forces of creation, and feel it rise up within me in harmony with the power in them and course through me, and into the universe at large. I love watching it take shape in my life, the lives of my clients and students, the lives of my friends who come along for the ride.

I'm a bit of a junky.

When the juices are flowing, God is in his Heavens, his Angels surround you, and You are in your place, and all is right with the world. There's nothing wrong then. You're plugged in, and your will is manifesting, you aren't even thinking anymore, you're just sort of thrilling with the rise and fall of the music as it dances in time to the motions of your wand, like conducting the biggest and best orchestra ever playing the Ode to Joy, or the 1812 overture with full cannon accompaniment. It's fucking awesome, and I love it. And I want everyone to feel it.

And I'm a fatalist. Amor fati, Love your fate. Fate, Will, same fucking thing. Everything you do will work out. It will work out faster if you know what you really want. You could sit there and wait for shit to change, or you can just change shit. It's your choice, your will.

What do you want to do? That's your fate. What you end up doing, that's your Will.

The only thing that changes with this magic stuff, really, is what you're paying attention to, and the technology you use as a result. Eventually, shit happens in your favor, wealth and health and love just fall out of the fucking sky whenever you need it. Spirits you don't even think you need to conjure pop up and make themselves known, and then turn out to be exactly what you needed right when you needed them. Gods bring a touch of divinity to everything you do. You start rubbing off on people just by being near them.

Weird shit.

Happens.

A lot.

Other shit falls from the sky too, especially at first, but it gets better, and better, and better. And then it's fun. Really fun.

It's not a perfect life all the time. Shit gets wrecked for me as much as it ever did, and I still have to deal with it. But I find I'm happy Working on whatever I'm doing these days, whether it's cleaning up leftover shit piles from bad decisions in the past, or diving into the brilliant mysteries of the gods...

I'm not happy about everything all the time, but I get there as soon as I start applying what I learned about using magic to create and influence my world. I don't get what I think I want every time, but I do get something interesting, and I learn a bit more about how to do things.

It's a passion in and of itself.

So in summary: RO is not a Prophet. Just a Magus.

Exploring a new Service

So I've been talking to some students and clients lately about offering a Hermetics based counseling service. Sort of a live version of the Hermetic Diagnosis, but more dynamic, personally focused, and, well, live. I'm thinking 60 minute sessions. They have to be coordinated carefully and scheduled in advance. 

If you're interested, the cost will be $125 per session. Contact me via email and we'll make arrangements to speak, either via Skype, or some other kind of technology.

Everything I've Ever Done*

On the post about how you really are Moses when you say the magic words, The Unlikely Mage asks:

"So then is sin, for a magician, to ignore or repress that yearning to express their will?"

It's a good question. So it gets a full post essay on the Sins of a Magician.

Crowley said the "word of sin is restriction" in the Book of the Law. That one gets quoted a lot, even though it's talking about fucking, really, and fucking a lot the way you want to, in context, because fucking is cool.**

Sin is a useful concept within religious thought. In my Chrsitian (Protestant, Calvinist, Puritanical) system, "Sin" is any act that keeps you away from God. Applying that to Hermetics,  yeah, ignoring and repressing the yearning to express your will is sinful. Not expressing your Will obviously keeps you away from God, right? It's not doing it right, it's doing it wrong, it's bad. It's evil. It's sinful.

Sin implies a punishment, because it's been used as a means to control people instead of as a means to bring them spiritual enlightenment. Folks who did this had less interest in having an enlightened populace than a terrified one. Whatever, the use of the concept of "sin" to control instead of inspire has rendered it pretty useless. 

People don't understand that "sin keeps you away from god" is the total punishment itself. Being away from God sucks. You can only know that if you've been around him though, and it doesn't make as much sense to folks who haven't felt the presence of god personally loving them up as it tumbles around you, in you, through you to bounce laughing out your vocal chords.

And really, think about it. Can magicians sin? I've explained that we're beyond good and evil, right? I meant it. I'm serious when I say that shit. I can give you several applicable soteriologies from my Hermetic belief, if you want to know why sin doesn't exist for us. 

The folks who did the Seven Spheres in Seven days with us got a taste of exactly what I'm talking about, though. That was pretty awesome. They tasted the powers of the planetary spheres, the forces of creation. They experienced these powers. They felt them flow. They got a hint that they are all gods put here on earth to manifest their reality. They remembered collectively that they are visiting gods from other worlds here on individually missions of extremely sensitive personal import.

There's no sin, magicians. There's just what you do. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. That's it, that's the Law. There's just what you Do, what you Will. There ain't no middle ground. Those things are one thing, Do/Will. What you DO... that is what you fucking WILL. 

So what kind of god are you? A shitty mean small minded ignorant one? A benevolent force of joy and wealth? A frenzy of illuminating madness spreading amongst all who touch the hem of your garment?

You are expressing your will all the time, in everything you've ever done, in everything you ever do, everywhere you've ever been, everywhere you're going to. ***

Magic teaches us to do it better. We learn who we are by observing what we do. We do things to get what we want. Sometimes the stuff we do works, sometimes it's broken. We learn to fix the things we do that don't get us what we want, we change our approach using the wisdom, techniques and powers of the forces of manifestation. We learn to be ourselves better, more intentionally by becoming aware of what we're doing.

* If you don't recognize the title reference, click the link, you poor unfabulous person.

** Just wanted to point that out to the Crowley haters... You hate a guy who wrote a holy book about how cool it is to fuck. Seriously. Think about that some time.

*** Awww yeeeeeahhhhh!

I am Moses, your Prophet

"I summon you, Headless One, who created earth and heaven, who created night and day, you who created light and darkness; you are Osoronnophris whom none has ever seen; you are Iabas; you are Iappos; you have distinguished the just and the unjust; you have made female and male; you have revealed seed and fruits; you have made men love each other and hate each other.

"I am Moses your prophet to whom you have transmitted your mysteries celebrated by Israel; you have revealed the moist and the dry and all nourishment; hear me."

The Stele of Jeu the Hieroglyphicist, Translated by Hans Deiter Betz.

Who is Moses, the Prophet of Osoronnophris?

Das me. 

(Das you too.)

You are of a people not like the people you have been raised with. I know you've noticed. There's something different about you.

You were cast adrift among the rushes, raised by natives of this oppressive land, but your real people have always found a way to reach you, to draw your attention to the signs and wonders of your home world, the miracles your people can experience regularly by right of birth.

One day you learned you were not of the oppressor's native race. You learned that you, in fact, were the spirit of the oppressed, and enraged, you murdered that which oppresses. Though maybe none saw you murder the oppressor, you imagined all around you could see your guilt, that you are indeed an alien, and you ran, you hid, you blended in as best as you could.

But Moses didn't get a break, and neither do you. It might have taken a while, but you met your burning bush, and accepted your fate. Or maybe you haven't yet, but I tell you, it's coming. It might take 40 years. I honestly hope not. They're coming though, those serpent flames that speak to you and tell you you're not free to do what you want, but if you think about it a bit, you'll be able to do what you will.

And you'll do it. And you'll understand that damned desert god, Osoronnophris, who none has ever seen, and you will receive the mysteries that were celebrated by the Israelites, mysteries of cleansing, of selection, of holiness and a spiritual status. You will understand your place as a child of that Source of Light, of your existence as Light in Extension, and you will do what you must.

Because you can.

One is the Magus

"For Unity doth most simply go through every number, and is the common measure, fountain, and original of all numbers, contains every number joined together in it self entirely  the beginner of every multitude, always the same, and unchangeable..." - Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book 2, Chapter 4.

"Geometrical Figures also arising from numbers, are conceived to be of no less power. Of these first of all, a Circle doth answer to Unity, and the number ten; for Unity is the Center, and circumference of all things; and the number ten being heaped together returns into a Unity from whence it had its beginning, being the end, and complements of all numbers. A circle is called an infinite line in which there is no Terminus a quo, nor Terminus ad quem, whose beginning and end is in every point, whence also a circular motion is called infinite, not according to time, but according to place; hence a circular being the largest and perfectest of all is judged to be the most fit for bindings and conjurations; Whence they who adjure evil spirits, are wont to environ themselves about with a circle." - ibid, Book 2, Chapter 23

"Thou art God," Mike repeated serenely. "That which groks. Anne is God. I am God. The happy grass are God, Jill groks in beauty always. Jill is God. All shaping and making and creating together — ." Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

"Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration—that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves." - Bill Hicks

Seven Spheres in Seven Days: Phase II

[Meant to get this out this morning, totally got lost in other stuff, my bad. Will extend this thing another week though if you missed it.]

Last week was awesome. Those of you who joined in the rituals and festivities know what I'm talking about. Those who watched from the sidelines know what I'm talking about. Its fun, it's exciting, and the current we've got going right now is fuckin' huge. I just checked it this morning, and ... yeah. Good times this week.

Now, here's the deal if you want in: you have to have the Gates Rites. If you're a student of the Green Work course, you have all seven of the Gates Rites. If you bought all the courses at once in a special deal a while ago, you've got all the Gates Rites. If you don't have the Gates Rites, they can be purchased at my ebooks page.

If you missed a couple rites the first week, or if this is your first week, now's a good time to get started. I'll be doing one more week after this, to get anyone starting late a chance to go two full weeks with some direction and guidance.

Today's the day we launch Phase II for the folks who've spent the last week packing their spheres with the powers of the planets. I put together some mitigating filters on the forces to keep folks from getting fully burnt out if their spheres weren't prepared for the forces, and it was still a little rough on a couple people. Pay attention to that shit. Those are the planets you need to Work with more.

Phase I is about pumping in the powers to create a critical mass. Phase II is focused on preparing you for the Eighth Sphere. The Eighth Sphere is the sphere of silent hymns. I'll try to write more about that on the plane today. For now, just know that it's the sphere of the Mansions of the Moon, the Fixed Stars, andthe forces that are directed through this sphere downwards are just-barely crystalized Ideas from the Mind of God. Moving from this sphere to the Ninth moving up requires a transformation of the self into the form of a "Power." More on that later.

In the Eighth sphere, we learn to Hymn in Silence. The Hymns are hymns of CREATION. We are creator gods, and the most holy form of worship is the creation of our world. Hymning in silence seems, from my experience, to mean that we get apply the forces of creation at will through methods such as imagining a shape or form, tensing a muscle, and paying attention (focusing awareness) to a certain thing happening. t's an immediate thing that has a great deal of potential.

That's the downward-facing stuff, which is awesome, because that's like our day job, what we do while we're incarnated. We create the material world as we see fit. All of us, magicians and non magicians alike are creator gods, creating our reality second by second, thought by thought, paying for our experiences in the coin of our realms, our attention.

But when we're done with our day jobs, we go home to our lover. That's where the real payoff of this is for us.

In Phase I, we catch glimpses of the power, we get that ecstatic blissful rush, we experience God in extension. It's awesome. It brings tears to your eyes sometimes, other times it feels like you could fly, or set the world on fire and dance among the coals. It's a rush, the magic-high, and it's fuckin' awesome.

And while that's necessary to be the Creator God of your world, it's not the really really good stuff. That's just a taste. The Feast remains higher, and can be found by turning your attention to where those forces of the planets come from.

Phase II is about revealing to you the next level of the Source of all things. You catch the scent of your quarry in the seven spheres, but in the Eighth, you begin the Hunt. You're chasing after the big prize, and when you get the scent in your nose, see the signs of its passing, nothing will stop you from catching your prey. Phase II is preparation for the Hunt for God.

And oh, sweet brothers and sisters, such a beautiful hunt it is. Because he's also hunting us, and is greatly desirous to be found, the conssumate lover

FB Discussion Group for 7 Spheres

At Jason's suggestion, I created a group to discuss the results of the rites:

http://www.facebook.com/groups/218911701573258/

Please join if you're participating and want to share in the discussions.

After the First Rite...

Review of the Plan

Ok, so here's the plan...

Method

Non-RO Participants:

At some point during the day, you will perform the Gate Rite of the day. Today is Thursday, so you will do the Gate of Jupiter. You will perform this rite in ANY of the Jupiter hours available today. Check THIS WEBSITE to get your local planetary hours, or buy their Hours app from the app store on your phone. Worth the investment!

The default settings for their site is London. If you live anywhere else, click THIS LINK to change the settings. If your city isn't listed, pick a place that has the same sunrise as yours, or pretty close. If you want to add your own city, scroll down a bit and look for the Interactive Location Selector link. That lets you pick where you live using Google Maps.

Note on the Rites: Suits, Ties, Liquor and Cigars first thing in the morning is not for everyone. That part is a nicety, not a necessity. What matters is doing the rite. Use whatever you have available. Substitute as necessary. The closer to the original you can get, the better, but whatever.

The KEY pieces are the conjuration rite, the hymn, and meditation on the Seals of the Planets. Use the Seals on the right in the Meditational Contemplation section for this. That's what I'll be using to draw us together.

RO Participants

I'll be performing the rites at dawn. I'll be doing the same rites that you do, but I will be including a part where I specifically Work on getting the forces of the planets integrated into your spheres specifically to prepare you for the Eighth Sphere Work.

The Secret Purpose

It's not that secret. I'm doing this to bring some miracles to town. I did this for a week, and had my whole direction in life turned around. I did it for another week, and had my life strapped to a rocket and launched to the stars. I was reborn, remade, and revivified. I really want to tell you how amazing my life is, but I can't. So I'm just going to show you what can happen with a little magic, and brothers and sisters, this is a LITTLE magic. This is just aimed at making you a more complete person, that is, more able to do what you came here to do. Wait til you get to the part where you start using it to create your world.

My main intent though is to demonstrate how awesome magic is. To demonstrate the value of doing it daily, across the whole spectrum of the spheres, not just one or two throughout the week. I hope it inspires folks to do it again the next week. I'll be doing this again next week, by the way, so don't panic. One week of these rites changed me. Two weeks changed my entire world to ... utterly cool awesomeness.

I want that for you too. Understand that I'm taking you home, and showing you the places you used to play before you were a kid. I'm reminding you where you came from. I'm showing you your awesome family members, and how you're one of the spirits that create the world, not just the observer monkey trapped in circumstance.

In my experience, there will be a spectrum of results. Some people will have awesome coolness like I have, others will get jack shit. Most people will be somewhere in the middle, seeing things happen in their favor, but not necessarily a blatant miracle.

Wherever you fall on the spectrum, know this is a week long intensive, and it will be followed up by another week long intensive. Take it in stages.

OK, Jupiter hour. It's showtime. See you soon.

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

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Rufus Opus

 is Happy to Announce 

the Commencement of 

A Seven Day Series of Planetary Magical Rites

involving the Daily Conjuration of 

The Intelligences and the Spirits 

of the 

Seven Spheres

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

Just to prove a point. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do I look like?

Go Fuck Yourself

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

Of course I want to give really bad advice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dreamers, Romantics, Artists, Magicians...

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

It's important.

Hermes Dancing

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

Like this:

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

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

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

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

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

The Beast and the Harlot and You

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

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

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

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

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

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