Wednesday, July 24, 2013

eBook Piracy: A Request

Every once in a while, I discover my stuff has been posted to Scribd, or some other place. While I consider piracy inevitable, and I consider it a form of advertisement, I also submit takedown requests every time.

Most of the stuff I write in the eBooks is the result of my research and practice. The research is all free at esotericarchives.com. The experience you can get the same way I did, drawing out the circles and conjuring the spirits. I highly recommend it.

If someone wants to spread the things I teach, post a link to my blog, or to my eBooks page. Write a review on your own blog.

If you've got friends you want to share the stuff with, contact me and we'll talk about it. I'm on G+ and FaceBook. It's really easy to reach me.

That's all great, safe, and fun stuff to do that I strongly encourage you to try out for yourself.

But please, don't post my stuff online.

Thanks,

R.O.

Saturday, July 20, 2013

The Weight Loss Post

FaceBook folks know I've lost 50 pounds since last September, and I'm pretty happy about it. I figure I should mention it here for posterity's sake.

It all started last July when my now-ex-wife and I split up. I weighed over 225 pounds at the time. The night I left her, I went to a Motel 6. My hotel room was on the third floor, and there was no elevator. The first weekend there I ran up and down the stairs a lot, and my caloric intake dropped drastically. In fact, it consisted primarily of Tullamore Dew. I managed to lose a few pounds there right away.

A couple weeks later, I was in an efficiency apartment, down a very few pounds, and while I had lost some weight, I was still eating like crap, drinking a fifth of whiskey every two or three days, and avoiding exercise because I had some really bad experiences with it.

Specifically, I went to the gym, got on an elliptical, and within a couple of minutes had nearly died. I hadn't done any cardio in years, and years, and then some more years. It sucked. It sucked hard.

August, 2012... Fuck the Eliptical
So my approach wasn't very organized at all. I was losing some weight because I wasn't really eating, but I wasn't moving at all either, and I wasn't very happy. Over the last 12 years, I had packed on weight every time my ex did, because why not? She was overweight, and I kind of didn't give a shit what I looked like. There was a lot of psychic damage there on my part that I hadn't even noticed while I was in that relationship.

When I left and got seriously focused on my Work, I found myself unable to really look at myself in the mirror for long. When I did, it was only for the briefest of moments, and never at the whole of me all at once. Ye gods. The trauma.

Das Me, 24 September, 2012
Eventually, I met someone who was able to help me see there were better ways to live than what I was doing at the time. I went on what I called the "Babalon diet," and in a couple of weeks had dropped from 222 to 219. Not bad, not difficult, and for the first time in forever I felt really good about the idea of losing weight. It wasn't a bummer. It sounded fine. I was single, had just met a beautiful woman who lived on the beach, and damn, I wanted to look good with her come Spring.

So I started working out. Almost every day. The first week I managed to burn 125 calories a day, I think, without killing myself. It took me about 20 minutes to burn that many. The first day, it about fucking killed me. The second was immediately better. By the third day, I was having a whole lot of fun. I had discovered that working out got be really stoned after fifteen minutes or so. The next week I increased the difficulty and duration of my workouts, and I started to see some chartable progress. I kept up the basic pace, ate sensibly, started to lose some weight. I kept track, and this was my first month:


Up and down daily, but overall down 6.6 pounds at the end of the month. Not really drastic, but though I hadn't lost a lot of weight overall, I had lost visible inches, and I felt pretty good about myself. I kept going, and started experimenting more with my diet and exercise patterns, and it paid off. I wasn't losing a lot of weight quickly, but I started melting. Slowly, but surely.

October 2012, RO at Crucible
Suit's Starting to Get Too Big
After the first month or so, I started increasing the amount of my exercise. I went from 30 minutes of cardio to 45, and then to a full hour. And I started using the weight machines at my local YMCA. We had a really good set of machines there. I liked them a lot. I kept losing weight, and ate less, and drank, well... as often, but in less quantities. And the weight kept coming off.

November 2012, taken on a visit to Atlanta
And I looked better, felt better, and kept enjoying the scale more and more...


And the mirror more and more...
January, 2013
The next few months passed, and my weight loss decreased. I went from the machines to free weights, and bro, I even lift. I cut back form the hour of cardio a day as I started increasing my larger muscle mass, and I do a half hour now, three times a week usually, and we go on long walks on the beach and swim on the days it isn't raining.

We modified the diet a bit, and then we modified it again. We're tweaking our intake and recipes regularly. I outlined a weight loss booklet that I plan on e-publishing for a while, and eventually will include in the overall Applied Hermetics book I have planned. That will have a list of the foods we eat, and the exercise I've done to end up where I'm at today.

This morning when I weighed myself, I was at 171, down over 50 pounds from the 225 pounds I weighed when I began. I look better, I feel better, I'd last longer than a minute in a zombie apocalypse.

I'm not where I want to be yet. My initial target was 175 pounds, and when I started geting close I realized I hadn't really had any idea what I would look like at 175. I am now aiming for 160-165, and I'm focusing on sculpting my body shape now with targeted workouts rather than just melting off the outer layers of fat. It's fun. I look in the mirror and see new muscles changing the way I look, and I'm all smiles. It's kind of funny, and a lot of fun.

So... the magic part...

I didn't do much magic to lose this weight. I did some, early on, but not a lot. There are no Hermetic Rites of Awesome Magical Weight Loss I'm going to sell anyone, because honestly, I'd be lying to you if I said that's what did it for me.

Nevertheless, my weight loss is entirely the result of the magic I was doing at the beginning, and have continued to do to this day. I did magic to  pursue the Kingdom of God, here on Earth. I went through the spheres on a hard core quest to eliminate all that stood between me and my Source, me and my full potential as a human being. I was after blood, and lust, and life, and above all else, the JOY of existence. I went through every heaven, and returned to the Earth in power! I created my world as I saw fit.

And the weight loss... that was a part of it, but mostly a side effect of me learning what it means to be a creator god, made in the image of god, immortal soul of awesome power and potential in a mortal form capable of amazing and intense pleasures. The weight loss is an expression of my happiness, my joy.

I put together a set of pics of myself changing since last August, except for February because I apparently deleted all the pic of me from that month. The first was taken my first week after I left my ex. The last was taken a week or so ago, but is how I look today. I lost a half a pound since then, but yeah, das me today. You'll note I got rid of the hipster glasses, but don't worry, I discovered the hipster filter on my phone's camera...


It's been an amazing transformation for me, and the outer form I wear is totally reflective of the effectiveness of the stuff I do.

Success. Proof.

Do magic.