For those who don't know, I am officially a member of the OTO, and have been since January 2013. Some folks seem to be surprised, others not so much.
I thought I'd made it clear for years that I accepted the Book of the Law, I just had disagreements with the lodge structure because of all the stupidity I saw coming out of the various Golden Dawn Orders. I blamed the Kircher Tree.
Then back in August of 2012, I had a profound experience with the deity indwelling the priestess at a Gnostic Mass at William Blake Lodge in Baltimore, MD. (Oh my god, she's full of stars...)
Almost immediately afterward, I met the lovely Harper Feist, who happened to be a member. Some interesting things developed between the two of us (and continue to do so), and she was able to demonstrate to me that the OTO was not at all like the Golden Dawn orders I'd seen.
Since then, I've traveled to lodges in Sacramento, Florida, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, and attended NOTOCON IX. I have met Bishops and Minervals, Hermits, Lovers, and Men of Earth, and some guy with a harmonica who puts up with a lot of shit. I've become good friends with Thelemites in the UK, and New Zealand, and I've gotten to experience what Jason Miller inferred at last year's Crucible conference.
Anyway, I was initiated into the OTO last January, and I have recently been accepted into the A:.A:.. Someone expressed some surprise on the Gents for Jupiter group when they found out. A lot of you already knew. As Gordon put it, "There was writing, and there was a wall." But for those who didn't know, I figured I should just go ahead and make a general announcement to everyone.
As you may know, I recently had my second divorce finalized, and I've never been happier. I spent years in a really shitty relationship, trying to make it work when there was zero trust, layers of abuse, addiction, and all kinds of mental illness to deal with. I took on a shitload of my ex's issues, shouldering responsibility for things that I had absolutely no control over, and then dealing with the inevitable despair that came when no matter what I did, nothing improved.
Ugh.
I'm going over it all quickly because I hate that I was like that, but I also understand we all do that. We get attached to people who drag us down, and we try to make the other person happy by changing ourselves. It's human to take the blame for other people's damage, especially when you really want the happiness you hope to gain from being with them.
You'll probably notice that I'm pretty darned happy now. It's not just that I left a poisonous toxic relationship, or even that I met a responsible, beautiful, loving, sane woman to be with. Those things are both great, don't get me wrong, but they aren't why I'm happy.
If you've ever been in an abusive relationship, you know that getting away isn't enough to heal you. You still carry around atachments to the fucktard, and guilt that you somehow failed them, when they were the asshats doing the abusing. It's sick, but it's also normal. Don't feel bad if you're still stuck in it, it's a tar baby of the worst kind.
I got out of it though, and I can tell you how:
The MOTHERFUCKING SUN.
Hell yeah, all golden and shining and shit. All happy and dancing with cups and shit. All green hill thrusting up through a golden ring and shit.
Also, and here's the most important part: it's hotter than fuck.
Go to the Sun to burn away all that pain, all that shit, all those black sticky feelings, all the guilt, remorse, everything bad that got stuck on top of you. Go to the Sun, and be reforged. Let its heat melt you completely, melting away all the form and shape that you adapted and adopted to fit with the retarded fuckwad you wasted so much time with. Let the Sun be the forge in which you are remade, reborn. Go through that Solar Gate and embrace the heat, the light, the life it brings.
If you have the Modern Angelic Grimoire, do that rite to conjure Michael, and just pour your heart out to him. Michael loves us so much, there's a mystery behind it that is worth asking him about. It has to do with his name. Michael understands us in ways no one else will, and he's willing to help.
I have clients that need help with this kind of thing. Lots of clients. So many people who come to me are coming with baggage related to their past relationships that they really need to have consumed in the Universal Recycling Bin. It's an epidemic.
I'm offering an ongoing Solar-Venus rite on behalf of my clients. This rite will be focused on consuming the pain, attachment, and suffering people carry around with them from past relationships. If you want to be one of the people who participate, I'll need the following:
$75 - (Paypal link below)
An electronic version of your photo - Something recent, or of you as an infant that you don't mind me printing and using in the rite
Your birth name
When you buy the rite, I'll be in touch to get your information via email.
Lo, the time approaches wherein RO shall release upon the ready and waiting world the fullness of the ROpocalypse! Whence shall ye see the fullness of the things he hath planned for thee and thine...
It's still a work in process, but the framework is up and running. I've made a few more talismans available, and put together some additional services. There's a lot more on the way.
It's still in need of photos and other things... but I just couldn't wait any more. I had to get it out of 1990. anymore. I have a lot more tweaking to do before it's where I want it to end up, but at least you can start to see the outlines of what's going to be rolled out.
Soon.
But that time is not yet. So many friggin' things left to do!
Getting back to it now, in fact, but I wanted to start driving traffic to the site so I can check my analytics scripts and make sure it's working right. So go check it out!
I fully recommend Jason's course because I can see the effects it has on our shared students. A lot of my students are also his, and I can always tell which ones have also been through his course. They get the practical applications of things a little better, and they're better prepared to take what I provide and turn it into an effective approach to living.
If you look over at the blog list on the right of my actual blog page, there are several that belong to people who have been through both of our courses. It's no coincidence that these are also the ones who are providing useful content, interesting explorations of the arts, and finding amazing ways to apply traditional magical techniques in modern ways.
I found this today, and it's a great analogue of what I think happens when we do the conjurations of the Great Work.
In this example, what we think of as our "selves" are represented by the table under the oscillators. They are the foundation of our experience in this spiritual, mental, and material existence we call life.
Our lives when we get started on the Work look like the oscillaors when they first get going, out of harmony, kind of chaotic, a lot of din.
If the board under them were static, that is, fixed and unmoving, unpliable, they would remain that way. But because they are on a moveable surface, watch what happens:
Similarly, as we perform the Work, I think we are made more pliable, and move with the motion. We harmonize, and slowly one part begins to get together, and then it spreads to the rest of our areas of our life until everything is working together. Of course, there's always that one pink one over on the right that seems to be completely out of sync for a bit, but eventually even that gets its shit together.
You'll note there are no hands interfering and manually making the things harmonize. Any kind of interference wouldn't really help, it would just make it take longer to harmonize. By working on the substrate, making that pliable and able to transfer the oscillating energies, the stuff built on the base just sort of automagically comes into harmony.
"Seek first the Kingdom of God, and all these things are added unto you," is how Jesus put it. go after God, your source, go after cleansing the stuff that keeps you rigid and inflexible and non-adaptive, get rid of the things that hinder the flow from the Source through the Spheres, into the World, through our Senses, and back up to the Source through us as experience, and everything just sort of comes into balance and harmony.
And then when the motors wind down, you can start again.
Back in January, I did a post about my friends who had cool stuff to promote. At the time my fellow Gent for Jupiter and long time friend and counselor Monsignor S.R. sent me a manuscript to pimp for everyone's benefit, and I friggin' totally forgot about it until he reminded me today.
Sheesh.
Angels at your Doorstep is a little eBook on the conjuration of elemental angels, and a quick and insightful overview on working with each. It doesn't cost a lot, it's straight to the point, simple, and easy. The methodology is incredibly tight and direct, and it would make a good companion piece to the Modern Angelic Grimoire in terms of its direct tone and style and ease of implementation. This is exactly the kind of magic I like. Quick and easy, no heavy lifting to get what you need gathered together to get immediate responses to your conjurations.
I didn't recognize the sub-angels, so I took some time to conjure them and interview them personally this afternoon. I was very impressed with each. They responded quickly to their names and seals, and filled the conjure space with a sense of their presence. They resonated well with my expeirence in the elemental realms, and seemed extremely competent in introducing people to the material realms. My HGA confirmed their potency and authenticity.
I asked each their function, and they each indicated they ruled the elemental properties of the material realm. I tested them a little further, and even did a little Work with one of them on some issues I'm having in my own sphere at the moment. I'm quite pleased with the experience, and will be making some more permanent seals to Work with them again in the future. I've been meaning to get some handy elemental angels in my portflio of useful spirits, and here this was the whole time.
I'm also going to be recommending one of my clients work with these spirits right away. This is just what you need to get some assistance in learning how to bridge the spiritual to material gap.
I can't recommend this little booklet enough. For $2.99, you can't go wrong. You'll spend more on a cup of coffee, and it won't do you nearly as much good.
So a very talented artist, who has done some amazing custom work for my upcoming site redesign, has submitted a T-Shirt design to "Designs by Humans." They have this policy that you have to receive an undisclosed number of votes to have them even consider printing the shirt. Getting a ton of votes doesn't even result in a guarantee of getting your design printed.
But it's the first step.
So I really want this shirt, and I'm not above using my status as Flamen Dialis to get what I want. I think it's that cool.
So I posted a deal on FaceBook that I'll make here too:
CLICK THIS LINK AND VOTE for the design, and I will intercede on your behalf with Jupiter tomorrow morning at dawn during the morning rites.
Note that you have to register with the site to vote, it's not just a click-click-done thing. That's what earns you the honorable mention. You help my friends, my friends help you. Like the mafia. Or Hermetics. :D
Anyway, I'm doing the rites tomorrow morning, so hurry up.
[Edit 9/12/13: Wow! He went from 29 to 95 votes in one day! Thanks much! After reading the names of 40 people during the rite this morning, I asked for the spirits to continue to bless anyone who votes for this design. I won't be reading that many names again any time soon though, so don't worry about sending me the screenshots of your votes. Just know that you'll get the blessing if you place the vote. And seriously people, thank you so much! This rocks so hard! WOOOOOOOOOOT!!!]
[Author's Note: I'm writing my ass off. I've got to finish the clean-up of the manuscript I'm going to have published through Nephilim Press so I can move on to the web site redesign and then the ROPOCALYPSE. I'm on the part of the book where I've summarized the method of accomplishing the Great Work that I practice, and honestly, I need a break from the manuscript. Writer's Angst is much worse than Writer's Block. And a brief interlude is good for me, and this is stuff I felt like putting in the book that maybe shouldn't be there, maybe it should, I dunno. But here it is.]
I do the Great Work, the creation of my world, the dissemination of my methods, practices, and results to the world at large for one single, solitary reason:
It feels good.
I spent two hours this week in ritual. Not nearly enough, considering all the stuff I've got going on, but still, two hours. They were amazing.
Nothing feels as good as it feels to conjure the spirits, to bask in their presence, to feel them cleansing away the junk that builds up when I spend more time in the material realms than the ethereal ones. Nothing feels better than having my angst and frustrations melt away as I recall who I really am, from the eternal perspective. Nothing feels better than taking my place at the altar and calling up my friends and family from the old country. Nothing feels better than setting events in motion that will result in the manifestation of my Will upon the Earth.
It is such a beautiful feeling. It is peaceful in a way that can't be described. It is powerful, but quietly so. It is personally gratifying, individually fulfilling, but it's also a momentary reunion with the collective entities that fashioned the world, a reunion with the Powers that be. A meeting of the really Old School Bon Vivants.
And when we're all working together to shape a thing into being, or when we're all together enjoying a thing that we've shaped, it's a taste... a hint, a flavor, a scent, a reminiscence that isn't quite word-able that points back to how it's all being processed by some greater thing that is more than the sum of all of us, and more than any of us, and it's just beautiful.
For those who don't know, I am officially a member of the OTO, and have been since January 2013. Some folks seem to be surprised, others not so much.
