On Getting Roasted on the Inter-tubes

This morning I awoke to a concerned message from a long-time friend and mentor about the ongoing roast of me and everything I do or say on the internet on a tumblr site. I was like, no, no worries, it's fine, and went on with my day.

Then I got another concerned message from another friend, and then another from someone who was expecting old school RO thunderous cursings and retribution involving demons and public disgrace and so forth and so on. 

So with the third time being the proverbial charm, I'll go ahead and address it:

Julio has spent a lot of time making fun of me on the internet lately.

GASP! 

But ... 

So what? 

I've seen his posts, and they're funny. I get where he's coming from. That shit I said about the Kybalion would have set me off in 2006:

Rufus Opus: “The Kybalion is a, you know 19th century, early 20th century distillation of, you know, 12000 years of emanationist evolution of thought, you know, belief systems.  It's come down to us from, you know, the Chaldeans, you have, eh, uuh, the Persians. It’s a very ancient system”

See this Link for original.

I would have posted blog posts about it, with cussing and swearing and mockery galore. I hated the Kybalion with a passion for a ton of reasons that were totally valid to me at the time. 

Then I went through the Seven Spheres, reclaimed my race and value per Pymander, accomplished the Great Work, created the Philosopher's Stone (and he makes fun of me for saying that too, and that's also ok), and now I regularly provide the Panacea to the sick, the old, and I bring healing to the world.

Like in the deal.

And my opinion has changed, and it's informed by some other stuff these days. And maybe I'll get around to explaining that when I have time, if I feel like it.

So I get where he's coming from. I'd have made fun of me too, back in the day, and you know what? 

It worked. 99% of my readers reading this are only reading it because I challenged and mocked almost all the well-known icons of the occult community at the time, and carved out a niche, and made a name for myself, and then in that niche I was able to offer courses, and conferences, and ebooks, and talismans, and I got published.

The "Challenge established authorities to get attention" schtick is exactly what I did to establish the very "Rufus Opus Brand" that I'm so pleased with today (and irritates people to acknowledge that's what we do with this stuff). 

So how can I legit give him shit about this? 

And besides, he's not wrong to challenge me on this shit. The things he's mocking should probably be mocked. I've said some silly things over the years, and recently, and no one gets a pass on things just because they have a reputation or some silly brand they've worked towards establishing. 

Mostly his mockery is expressing a dogmatic traditionalist grimoire practitioner's view towards the kind of living Hermetic tradition I practice, and it's not new, folks. Traditionalist grimoire practitioners were telling me I'm wrong years before Julio could sign into Disney.com without his mom's permission, and they had better arguments than snide gifs. 

But they weren't nearly as amusing about it as Julio is.

It's honestly ok to come to different conclusions about how magic is done. The important thing to me is that the magic is done. If Julio has already, or ever does start creating a magical corpus to promote the practice of magic as he understands it and uses it to change the world, then honestly any aggrandizement he gets from roasting me is worth it. 

We get a world that is being created by magicians on purpose, and that's all I ever wanted.

So yes, thanks folks, I am fully aware that Julio can't go a week without talking about me on the internet, and honestly I'm flattered that he thinks my opinions on things are so important to the community that focussing his attentions on me will serve to advance his own brand, and I sincerely wish him all the blessings in his Work. 

HF-RO: Conjuring the Seven Spheres in INDY!

Ahoy, me beauties!

The lovely and talented Harper Feist and your devilishly handsome, illuminated, (and not to mention modest) blog poster Rufus Opus will be appearing in Indianapolis on April 23, 2016!

That's right, the Midwest Americans! We're coming to your
town, we're gonna party down, we're an American Occult Specialist Team Focused Mostly on Hermetic Conjure, and Angels, but We have been Known to Do Demons and Bar Mitzvahs with enough notice!

Harper will be discussing the Art of Scrying that is essential to make any of this stuff we do work. Harper has an instinctual understanding of communion with the invisible world, and has developed a series of techniques that put her "in the zone" to be able to interact with the entities we call into our crystals. She'll be discussing methods of moving out of the way, the cultivation of an internal emptiness, and the premise that the entire human body is a sensory device that the spirit world will use to commune with you, if you're paying attention.

I'm going to be talking about the traditional Hermetic cosmology, the role of the Seven Planetary Spheres, and about the intent of my book to transform its users into fully activated and actualized human beings, with all the divinity that comes along with that.

After, we'll create some talismans, and conjure the spirit of the hour and day to consecrate them, to strengthen our foundations, to expand our borders, and to reveal the hidden knowledge we need to better understand who we are, why we're here, and how to get that thing done.

This event began its life as an invitation to discuss the book the local Indy OTO group, Anabasis Encampment, about the conjure book "Seven Spheres," but it's becoming kind of a thing. People are coming from Kentucky, Tennessee, New York, and Ohio so far for sure. Most of them have been friends of mine for years, and it's totally not just an OTO event anymore.

It's a party, bitches! I'd love to have as many people show up as possible, we don't get out as often as we'd like to see the coolest of the cool.

When:

Saturday, April 23, 2016 E.V. at 10 AM - 4 PM EDT

Where:

Sacred Path
1818 W 57th St, Indianapolis, Indiana 46228

Full details can be found at this link:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1567534966870042/

Tickets are $25, and seating is relatively limited. I'll be bringing copies of my book to sign as well. If you're interested, send $25 to treasurer@anabasis-oto.org with a note explaining it's for the HF-RO Seven Spheres event.

On the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear

Jason Miller recently committed the blasphemy of suggesting that the Litany against fear has been over-done in most modern cultural references, and as much as I love my brother, I take offense at that particular implication, because my brothers and sisters, this one can never be over-done.

Can you say it with me? From memory?

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Why the fuck is this the thing it is? Why is it so important that it gets brought up by every would-be  mystic god-king of their own lives? Why is it so damned important to us?

Well in point of fact, it addresses the most basic issue that stops all of y'all from doing the things that you're capable of accomplishing if you'd just get over that shit. And I'm saying that because I use it all the frickin' time, and it has LITERALLY changed the course of my life.

Before every interview for jobs I wasn't qualified to perform, I said that motherfucker.

Before every date I wasn't qualified to attend, I said that motherfucker.

Before rituals, before turning in tests for esoteric orders, before going into some scary-looking initiations, I said that motherfucker.

Because fear is the thing that stops everyone. It is the core of every problem every woman and every man upon the Earth faces.

And it's even worse than I ever thought it was when I was just using this litany thing for mundane tasks. I started meditating a couple years ago. I put my usual all into it, and I became a pro right away. That is, it took a couple of years to see the real fruit that comes from regular meditative practice.

I found the thing in my head that's always talking. The part that just. won't. shut. the. fuck. up.

And if you haven't found that part of yourself, start meditating. It's key to that whole "know thyself" thing that people pretend isn't Western Mystery Tradition.

So you know what that little thing is saying most of the time? It usually starts with "What if..."

What if she's sleeping with someone else? What if they're going to end your contract? What if your ex is abusing the kids? What if your choices are screwing up your kids lives? What if you screwed up that one kid forever? What if they figure out you're making this crap up as you go along? What if you're wrong?

What if you're wrong? What if you're wrong? What if you're totally and completely wrong?

It's not fear, even. It's just anxiety. And it's vital to humanity's existence. We need fear like we need to breathe. It keeps us alive. It focuses our awareness to the things we need to pay attention to so we don't fuck our lives up a lot more. We need fear. It is our first warning system. Fear is a tool.

But it triggers too big of a response, as anyone who's had to go through a panic attack, or lived with people prone to them can testify. Uncontrolled fear is crippling, and it's rarely in proportion to the crap we have to deal with. We're still evolving past the animal instincts, and it's a necessary thing to get over those aspects of what we are.

I like the idea that we're extensions of a cosmic consciousness, and we're all nodal consciousnesses plugged into some convenient monkey bodies who managed to contact our immortal spirits through the convenient interface of hallucinogenic fungus, but I don't talk about that a lot because it's cray-cray.

So to use fear as the tool it should be, we need things like the Litany. It friggin' works. It gives you something to do to calm down the monkey mind and let you think. It can get you out of bed in the morning. It can get you through the job interview. It can get you to talk pirate to the lover you want to bed. It can shut down all those "what ifs" the monkey mind throws at us, and gets us to a point where we can take a look at the actual situation without all the exaggerated crap that the triggered fear response tries to make of it.

It puts us in a place where we can take control of a situation in which we are otherwise victims.

Left Hand Path Consortium Removes Controversial Speaker

Quietly, and with little fanfare, the International Left Hand Path Consortium has removed a controversial speaker from its list of presenters. Augustus Invictus, a Libertarian senatorial candidate from Florida, had been invited to speak at the conference on the subject of magick. When it became public knowledge, it sparked an online debate.

You see, Invictus' online presence (and some statements made by the former chair of the Libertarian Party in Florida, who resigned over Florida Libertarian's failure to denounce his candidacy) left many believing that he held fascist and racist ideals. Comparing, for example, his twitter feed and his facebook pages to the Wikipedia description of "fascism," it looks like he intentionally took all the agreed-upon criteria of "fascism" and set about ensuring he had something present that fulfilled the obligation. His decision to speak at American Front, a white supremicist organization left him looking racist as well, despite having fathered four children with his hispanic wife.

Laurie Pneumatikos, the conference organizer, stood fast by her decision to host him in spite of calls for resistance by Antifa-Atlanta. This organization is a local extension of the anti-fascist group that had allegedly attacked one of Invictus' supporters and destroyed property they believed belonged to him during a visit to Portland, and who protested his presence in Canada, successfully getting him detained at the border and sent back to the United States.

Laurie's reasoning was simple: freedom of speech. Regardless of whether people agreed with him or not, she believed he had the right to say what he thought. Even when presenters Taylor Ellwood and Ken Henson publicly bowed out rather than be identified with him, she stood by her decision. In the face of my continued impassioned rhetorical statements in various media in opposition, she stood by her principles.

It was her Will to create a conference that taught the magical principles of the Left Hand Path, and as far as she was concerned, his political beliefs were separate from her intent to have him at her conference.

Ultimately, his removal from the roster came as a result of his own words. He apparently posted a long invective against me and anyone else who was protesting his presence. He acknowledged he was considered a fascist, and rather than deny it, attacked all who didn't agree with his politics for being afraid of what he represented, comparing us to swine, and sheep. In his rant he called on his detractors to come to the conference armed, with his post culminating in a challenge to actually kill him.

At this point, Laurie recognized the danger of having this person at her event. His invitation of violence against his person at her conference had legal ramifications that were just too much to accept. His vehement response resulted in her decision to remove him from the list of presenters.

It's worth pointing out that it had nothing to do with outside pressure from the likes of me or anyone else. She did not cave in to the opposition. She judged him by his own actions, and determined that he was not only a controversial person politically and ideologically, but also a person who seemed intent on bringing harm and violence to himself, and perhaps others.

To my knowledge, there has been no word on whether the speakers who withdrew over his presence will be invited back to speak, or who will replace Invictus at the conference.

While I respect Laurie's choice to stand by her principles, I am also pleased that he will not be given a podium to address the world with his toxic views.

In his vehement denunciation of those who disagreed with him, he mocked the attempts to shut down the conference over "words." I would suggest it's a very poor magician who doesn't appreciate the power of words to change the world. It was, in the end, his own words that eliminated him from the conference, words spoken in response to words from folks like me. Words are a powerful thing indeed, and should be respected.

Laurie has worked hard to establish the Left Hand Path Consortium as a place where occultists can gather and receive instruction from people who are effective and knowledgeable, where beliefs across the spectrum of the occult are presented equally. I am confident that her decision has only furthered her aims along these lines. This year's conference quality has been immensely improved by her decision.

On the Responsibilities of Conference Organizer to other Speakers in the Occult Community

To begin, I'd just like to say, Jake Stratton-Kent is always getting me into trouble, and this, as usual, is actually ALL his fault. And that's one of the reasons I love him so much.

He posted a link to an article on his Facebook page recently with the comment "douchebag" about how a known racist with fascist tendencies is going to be speaking at an international "Left Hand Path" conference.

I recognized the guy, he pulled a huge nutty in 2013, couldn't handle some initiatory stuff/Enochian Aethyr Scrying he was going through, and declared himself the Second Prophet of Thelema, and the Successor to Aleister Crowley in a massive email to just about everyone he could think might care (they didn't) with an attached 2-meg PDF file of his "proof" which he claimed was Class A material, as in, on par with the Book of the Law, Liber 65, Liber VII, etc.

Standard implosion that you basically can expect narcissistic megalomaniacs to go through if they get the urge to use Occultism to express their mental illness?

Perhaps.

Harmless nutter who shouldn't really matter?

Yea, probably.

Except... Wait for it.... Wait for it... A couple of years later, he's running for the Senate... As a Libertarian... In Florida... To replace Marco Rubio... And he's so toxic Canada wouldn't let him in to speak.

CANADA. Wouldn't let him in. To speak.

You couldn't make this shit up if you tried.

So apparently, the organizer of the conference saw "controversial occultist running as a libertarian with racist-fascist views" and thought, oh YEAH, that's what I want to see! And then she got all bent out of shape when people were like, dude, no, don't give fascists a pulpit, that's how we got WWII, remember?

Now, as an occultist who's been invited to speak at this conference in the past, [Edit: Apparently, they are denying ever inviting me to speak at the conference, AND SENDING THE POST TO THEIR LAWYERS FOR REVIEW, but I remember being invited to speak in Indianapolis, I was looking forward to it because my friends would be there, but then I couldn't make it because of kid visits and other issues and had to decline, but I can't find any proof that I was invited at this point, so it might never have happened, or I just didn't think I'd need to keep that kind of thing, so ... whatever] I was like, oh my gosh, no way. I checked the other speakers attending and was like, guys, do you know what's going on? In retrospect, I should have not tagged them publicly in a post on FB that gets broadcast to a couple thousand people who are in our shared circles of magician friends, that may have been a dick move, but it was sincerely about, "Hey, you know what is going to happen if you go to this with him, right?"

Because I happen to know the value of our reputations in the occult community. Basically, that's all we've got. I spent years building up the "RO Brand," and when I was making a decent income off my magical studies and practices, that reputation is all I had to make my sales. It was my brand's integrity that got me invited to speak, publishing contracts, book sales, and a decent supplementary income on the side.

Even more importantly though, I'm all about making Hermetics available to people to change their lives for the better, mostly because I want to live in a better world. The people I want to reach care a lot about things like racism, fascism, and not being part of a plot to establish a megalomaniac's dictatorship over the American people.

No one is going to listen to me if I get associated with racist fascist douchebag.

But it's not just personal loss that matters. When we attend these events, we are giving an implicit blessing to other people who show up to speak at the event. When Fr. Lux ad Mundi of Thelesis lodge invited me to speak on angel magic the first time, he was saying to his lodge members that Rufus Opus knows his shit and can teach us things we need to know. He was putting himself on the line, saying my presentation had value to the community. Had I shown up and made a spectacle, it would have reflected poorly on him.

Likewise, Arthur Moyer put his reputation on the line for Crucible by inviting me to attend, and Jason Miller's support of my work had a lot to do with that. They were both condoning and supporting whatever I had to say, one by inviting me, and the other by speaking with me.

But when you go to one of these things and there's one person who is, for example, publishing things about neo-masculinity and "men's rights," and another whose senatorial campaign twitter feed is 90% racist posts, and the other 10% is a furthering of his goals to become the next Mussolini, it starts to look less like an occult conference and more like a gathering of douchebags.

And your name is on the list, right up there with them.

Fortunately for me, I had some friends let me know that I was on a list of people to speak at a conference with a known stalker who had a history of domestic violence and abuse towards women. He'd been expelled from at least one Order, if I remember right, and the first thing I did was tell the conference organizer that I wasn't going to speak with him at any event. You lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas, after all. This organizer was like, oh crap, yea, didn't know that, he's off the list. And it was done.

And that's the way it should be. Conference organizers have the responsibility to know and understand that they are representing the brands of everyone attending the show. they need to do the vetting of their guests, know what they represent, and understand how that will impact the reputations of everyone else at the event. They need to have some standards about what it is they will accept, and let people know what that is.

When you find out that someone on your guest list has been, for example, barred from entering Canada because they are fascist trouble makers, you need to let the other conference speakers know what they're getting into. You need to make updates to your event, and send emails to the speakers as the speaker list changes, letting us know how our topic will fit in overall, and giving us the opportunity to decide if we really want to associate our Work with the intent of your thing.

And if your intent is to give people with racist and fascist agendas a podium to speak to people who are paying to hear this person speak, you need to make sure that's clear in your description of the event in the first place. Not just for the speakers, but for the attendees as well.

So, since I'm planning on putting together some conferences in the future, my "lessons learned" from this situation is:

1. Define up front the intent, theme, and standards of the event.
2. Invite only those speakers who will aid and abet the accomplishment of the intent of the event.
3. Research the histories of the speakers to ensure they won't smear the reputation of my events, or the other speakers presenting at my event. Controversial speakers aren't to be avoided, per se, but they need to be noted as such so other speakers can make informed decisions about their attendance.
4. Send out the list of speakers with the results of that research to the other speakers, with updates as the list changes. 

Now I know that's actually a lot more work than it looks like. I'm on a staff of people working on an event right now, and honestly, putting together a conference is hard. Venues, contract negotiations, budget, speaker proposals, travel reimbursement, registration coordination, web site development, online social media promotions, and managing the inevitable crazed haters who will try to use your event to further their interests is a lot of work. Adding on researching your presenters to see if they are nut jobs and letting other presenters know about potential impacts to their reputations is just adding a lot more work.

But it's necessary, and fair to the presenters.

"RO, what happened to your ebooks and classes?"

I've been getting this question a lot lately, so I'll address it publicly.

I don't sell them anymore.

I joined the A.'.A.'. a couple of years ago, and as I went through the actual Work involved and earned the degree of Neophyte, I came to realize that I was charging money for A.'.A.'. teachings, or rather, things that you learn in the A.'.A.'. as you do the Work.

But the things in my courses and ebooks are incomplete, and lack a context that adds to the overall experience of the Work, it turns out. I didn't have a problem charging for that information when it was my hard-won knowledge that I deduced by conjuring spirits and performing the Great Work. I sweat it out in hard labor, and figured my experiences were worth money, and if you wanted to do it yourself, go to esotericarchives.com like I did and figure it out.

But as I progressed through the Work of the Student, Probationer, and Neophyte, I've come to appreciate that I was doing it the hard way before, and the "pioneer" approach left a lot to be desired. Having the things I was teaching others in intense outpourings presented to me moderately in the context of actual spiritual practices changed my opinion.

And the A.'.A.'. stuff is free. Charging for an incomplete system that doesn't give you as much as a free system in Applied Hermetics felt ... skeevy.

Also, there's a thing about Rosicrucianism being about healing the sick, and that gratis that applies.

So, if you can get your hands on copies of my old stuff on the interwebs for free, go for it, but know it's not as good as the A.'.A.'. stuff you can get for free. The A.'.A.'. stuff is harder, in some ways, but it's a lot more complete.

It's not for everyone, of course, and there are built in spiritual ordeals that every Student, Probationer, and Neophyte must face (probably the rest too, but I can't speak to that yet) and overcome. But it presents things in a way that make sense, and lead you from understanding to understanding, while giving you practical methods of integrating the forces you're tapping into along the way.

If you think you can handle it, the A.'.A.'. group I affiliate with can be found at www.onestarinsight.org. There are others, but imo, this is the group that makes the most sense.

IVth Pentacle of Jupiter

I happen to have a few extra 4th Pentacles of Jupiter that I made back in 2013 when Jupiter was in Cancer, as per the requirements in the Key of Solomon. I've been sitting on them because you can only make them every 12 or 13 years or so, and I figured they'd be worth more in 2019 than they are now.

But I have some minor issues that a little extra money would help with, so I'm going to part with two of these beauties for $450 plus shipping for each.

Note that there are only 2 available at this time.

I will be raising the price on the remaining stash as time goes by.