Shifting Gears on Goetia

Ok, so after years and years (and years) of RO bashing Demon Magic, I'm shifting gears. It would be fairly typical for me to say, "I changed my mind, I was wrong" and dive right in, fuck the consequences, but that's not where I'm at.

See, the reason I stopped doing Demon magic is because it's dangerous. It works really well, but there's little room for error. For example, if I go to Raphael and ask him to bring me wealth in the amount of $4,000 by the end of the month, by any means necessary, as long as no one in my family got hurt, he immediately starts leading me in my mind through the means necessary to get what I need. He shows me what I have that is of value already, and demonstrates the means necessary to make the difference within the time constraints.

Bune simply said, "yes, I will do that," and a week or so later a faulty regulator caused a gas build up that flamed out and caught some stuff on fire that I'd left too close to the water heater. My first check from the insurance company was for almost exactly the amount I needed, a little more in fact.

While everyone got out alive and unharmed, and technically no one in my family was hurt, the stress was terrible. My ex about had a break down. My kids were fine, except for when their mom and I fought as a result of the stress. It was one of many times in the relationship we nearly got divorced, but I did magic to save the relationship, and we made it through that storm.

And I promised her I wouldn't do any more demon magic. It works, very well, and I really wanted to go deeper into it. I wanted to figure out if he could make a house fire, what else could he do? I mean that kind of manifestation is pretty damned awesome, if it can be contained and channeled properly. But I felt it was too risky. I didn't have room to fuck up, I had kids and a wife to protect and support.

A couple weeks ago, my ex and I separated. In May I started a new job, making  a ton of money, but working 16-hour days. I dropped a lot of the Kingdom Maintenance magic I had been doing, including the stuff that was keeping my relationship afloat. I might write a post about that some time, but not now.

As a result of these changes, I'm free to go back to the figuring out the demon magic I was practicing before.

However, I've learned a whole lot in the two years since doing that kind of magic, and I have a better understanding of how magic works in general. Effective magic is done in a balanced way, Working with the spirits of the celestial, terrestrial, and chthonic in a coordinated effort. I've been working with spirits of the dead and genii loci, and various elementals who aren't entirely demonic for the last couple of years, and I'm looking forward to including the demons in the mix again. I'm planning a series of rites to get back in the swing of things, conjuring the spirits to learn and get some minor assistance here and there, and then move onto more specific manifestation stuff.

But first I'm planning a full Hermetic Retreat.

Modern Goetic Grimoire, Available Again

Ok, so due to some recent experiences, I'm re-releasing the Modern Goetic Grimoire. It's a record of my personal practice in the Lemegetton's Goetia, my approach, my understanding, my experiences with the spirits, and the results.

Long time followers of my blog know that when I did some bad magic* with Bune for some quick cash, he burned my house down, and I got a little bitter. The first insurance check was almost the exact amount I told Bune I needed. the magic worked. I just REALLY didn't like how it worked. Because it threatened things I thought were important.

I've realized recently that a lot of what I thought mattered didn't, after all. Weird shit to go through, I tell you what. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

But in light of recent experience, I've come to realize that there wasn't really anything wrong with what happened. I just didn't like it. It was "evil," because it was "shit that sucked." But shit sucks anyway, magic or no. 

So if you buy it and use it, know that:

A) It worked great for me, really, really great, except I didn't like it.

B) You get what you ask for. That's not always a good thing.

C) It's not safe. The techniques I provide offer a buffer, but they don't keep you from being stupid.

I'm pasting the Buy Now buttons for Google and Paypal here below, but it can also be purchased on my eBooks page. The cost is US$12.95.

Paypal:

Google:

* Bad magic in that it was desperate, and poorly phrased on my part.

Goetic Blessings

I recently saw a comment on one of the message boards mentioning that someone added themselves to my "followers" list on the right over there, and that they soon received an unexpected windfall. I'm assuming I also managed to get my 10%.

It's got me wondering about online magic in general. I'm by no means a "cyber magician" or anything like that, but, apparently, blessings online can be passed along with triggers using Goetic Magic, at least. Innn-terrresting.

Goetic Dreams?

So after last night's rituals, I expected some kind of weird, post apocalyptic dreams.

I got the mayor of New Orleans, the Dem and the Rep Presidential Candidates, in my house instead. Ok, still weird dreams, but nothing apocalyptic. McCain seemed like he had Alzheimers. Obama was just too eager to please, and generally disgusted that I wouldn't fall under his sway. Mayor Nagen was trying to get money by contracting out repairs on our house without our consent. He was using a law that had recently passed, intended to bail out the housing slump, to push federally mandated repairs on the house, but my spouse had all the paperwork to prove we were exempt, and the mayor wouldn't listen. He wouldn't make eye contact, he talked too fast, and seemed really ... slimy.

Obama wouldn't stop making eye contact, like those paintings where the eyes are painted looking directly forward that look like they're always following you around. And McCain was surrounded by too many bustling "flappers," that he couldn't have maintained a train of thought, let alone eye contact.

Then I was riding a girl's bike with high handlebars. I had to pedal really fast up hill to get anywhere, and there was no gear shift. The handlebars were like chopper handlebars, but they went straight up so my arms were really uncomfortable. And of course, I was too big for it. Then I went around the block and came down the hill on the street parallel, and almost ran into this bitchy neighbor that was a conglomeration of several bitchy moms that I know of at our real-life elemetary school, and she said something snide, and I was like, "Do you REALLY think I want to be on this bike?" She got offended and ended up taking her too-many kids in the house.

It was weird, alright, but not really post-apocalyptic. After last night's dream, I think I actually trust Obama more. He at least seemed sincere in his desire to want my vote. Not that he represents me, my values, or my goals in life, necessarily, just that at least he came across as honestly wanting me to like him. McCain was just out of it. Lost, befuddled. I felt sorry for him. He seemed like he was on some kind of drug, like the Ism from that video Mike Rock posted the other day. His retainers kept him dopey and distracted enough so he wouldn't be able to pay attention to me, but they didn't want him to have enough time to really see where he was at either. Bah. Political dreams. Weird shit. At least there were no scary clowns or three-foot Santas.

But it wasn't particularly Goetic. I had conjured Ga'ap, alias Tap, and had a good conversation with him. The rite went really well, and I asked him to send me a dream if I needed more information. Either I forgot a dream, or I didn't need more information.

The Sun Comes Up, It's Tiw's Day Mourning

If your'e not a Cowboy Junkies fan, the blog title might not be as entertaining as it was for me.

This morning was picture day at school. Lots of hubbub, not a lot of time for Work around daybreak. I don't know why, but I'm attracted to Martial work in general lately. I've been barely resisting the urge to curse people on principle. There's a ... I don't know, a violence about things in my life, not like a destructive violence, but a strong urge to wage war for the things I think are right. Politics, work, my Great Work, I just want to DO stuff, there's a pressing urgency to DO stuff.

Like the Box, and the Bune Radio. I want to create, empower, direct, and dominate my world. Not yours, mine.

The song I stole the title for today's post is about a woman going through that emotional stage of missing her ex-lover, but at the same time, enjoying the new-found freedom she had forgotten about. I was mostly looking for a song that had Tuesday in the title. (Tuesday comes from Tiw's Day, the Norse God of War, which of course was Martial in nature. You prolly knew that.) There's also a connection to Fall, leaves falling, the season changing, and although I'm going to miss Summer, I'm finding things about this season that I'd forgotten about, and that I like.

Like Tiw's Day. It's Tiw's Day, Mars Day, and I'm ready for some action. Mars plays an important role with Saturn in the Goetia, and I had a strange apocalyptic dream the other night that I'm beginning to suspect was a Goetic spirit trying to get my attention. The build-up of whatever's trying to get my attention is getting so thick I can feel it in the air around me. It's almost like a frustration, but it's like a palm's width outside of my body.

So tonight, the Sun's coming up and it's going to be a Tiw's Day Mourning. For something, or someone. Might be some part of my self that has to die, or be subjugated to my "True Will;" it might be something else. I'm definitely going to be Working some Goetic spirits, regardless. Maybe Tap into some forces and see what's been going on and what's to come.

Muahahahaaa.

The Bune Radio

Ok, so Fr. POS wrote about playing rock music for his Goetic compatriots as a reward. [Edit: It wasn't his idea, I don't think, it was HIS GAL's idea; she gets a lot of groovy ideas. It was a conversation wtih her that resulted in the Box I made.]

Since I'm on a bit of a Mad Scientist binge lately, and because I had a clock radio that no longer clocked but still radioed, I took his idea and made a Bune Radio.

I took apart the clock and removed all the components related to the clock part that didn't work anymore. (I found residue of spilled something in the terminals and a lot of corrosion, and instead of cleaning it, I fried the clock trying to figure out how the LEDs worked; lesson learned: don't use a 9V battery to test lights that run on 4VAC. Sigh.)

Left with just the radio, I wired a copper Bune seal in line with the wires going to the speakers. I tuned it to a rock station, and played it for a while. Then I explained that when he gets me a specific dollar amount, I'd play it as a reward for a specific period of time.

I'm also thinking I could use it as an audio-scrying device. I can tune it between stations and get some good white noise going on, and observe what I "hear" coming through.

Goetic Kings

As I commented before, I learned a lot about how engraving seals of spirits gets them into your sphere. What I didn't realize at the time was that when you are dealing with Goetic spirits, you don't leave them around with nothing to do. Because they will be themselves. It's important to remember that "idle hands are the devil's work shop." Or however the cliche goes.

So I made these 9 seals for someone. The seals turned out beautifully, and I wrote all about how wonderful it is to get to know the spirits by drawing their seals. Beautiful, useful, intelligent stuff, if I do say so myself. I wrote in detail about how when you draw the seal, you have begun to conjure the spirit. The spirit is there.

But I didn't think about what it means to have a Goetic King hanging around with nothing to do. They were themselves. The one that can bring a man all the love he desires until he's had enough, Beleth, also happens to be adept at starting fights between lovers when she's not busy. (Or he. I'm pretty sure it's a she. I get this vision of a harpy, smirking to Herself, like a Sugmad bird.)

So one day it hits me, there's some serious shit going on in my life. I never have shit. Well, I actually have a lot of shit to deal with. Rather frequently; the unpleasant side effects of living in a physical body that happens to be run by a paranoid psychotic who lives only for the pleasure of the moment. I'm talking about the Nephesh, not "me" the Ruach. I'm pretty much perfect, it's that crazy bastard under the hood that freaks me out.

But there was more shit on the road than usual, and the nut driving wasn't dealing with things very well. The Nephesh is lost in a fit of road rage that's left him blind from the froth spattering his face as he swears incoherently at other drivers, it's pouring down rain, and there are potholes the size of minivans in the road. While I've been sitting there in the back seat, carefully polishing these nifty talismans, finding a nice cigar box to ship them in, writing long emails of advice and warning to the buyer, I'm literally driving on the fucking railing, and did I mention there's a thousand foot sheer drop just past the railing? All of a sudden, I wake up and smell the shit burning.

So yeah, you betcha, I called my HGA. It hit me during of deep meditation. I was in one of my frequent moments of pure Zen, when I realized that I REALLY needed to talk to HGA. You know, deep in trance. My consciousness was in perfect equilibrium, not knowing, not thinking, just being. Finding Dhayana, achieving complete harmony with the celestial spheres...

Ok, so I was playing Guitar Hero. It might at least have been Carry On My Wayward Son by Kansas, but I don't really remember. Anyway, I sat up straight(er) and hit pause. (Didn't want to ruin my 100% streak.) Closed my eyes to slits until just a touch of light filtered through. Took my consciousness through the back door escape hatch and entered the Astral Temple.

"HGA?" sez I, conjuring him by Name.
"Yo?" he answered in all his transcendental wisdom and resplendent Glory.
"WTF!?" sez I.
"Demons, fool!" He graciously aswered.

Ok seriously, I conjured my HGA, and he showed me what was going on, showed me that I knew better, pointed out the damned blog post that I had said what was happening to me would happen to the careless magician and everything. He also showed me some pictures, and this is where it gets meaty.

So I had these Nine Spirits hanging out. (Nazgul much? No thanks, I'm trying to quit.) They were bored, they reverted to their natural inclination. Driving people nuts with distractions from the world. HGA shows me how they're these... blobs of undirected forces in my life. They were mushing me, prodding my sphere by their presence near me.

And he sez, "Put them to Work."

Ok, sez I, I can do that. And I get this vision. I'm at the center. There's this greenish background, like the color of a mini-golf green. Only it's like it's behind a sheet of smoked glass, or like some graphic artist had inserted a layer of barely opaque black over the top of it, and I was standing in the middle. Around me facing outwards were the Nine Kings of the Goetia. If you've see The Dark Crystal, it was like that. Me and HGA were in the center, and they were radiating outward.

It was sort of like the picture above, looking down. It was more like the picture below, from a side view.

So that's what he was telling me to do. Put a circle of the Nine Goetic Kings around me. Then I got this other vision. Like the picture above, seen from the top down, but from each of the Kings extended their servants. Every spirit under their control was lined up, radiating outward. It was really cool.

Ok, sez I, I'm not about to do a full conjuration of nine Goetic Kings, no friggin' way. And certainly not all at once, that's just plain stupid. I've got enough shit to deal with just from drawing their seals. Also, I'm right in the middle of this song, and my Ring of Solomon's all the way in the other room with the silver pentagonal figure...

"No. Now."

Clear and to the point, HGA doesn't let me off the hook. "Ok," I think at him, "but no way I'm doing this alone."

"Never; never have, never will."

So we conjured all nine Kings, gave each specific instructions, and lined them all up. It took a while. There was no stink, the Kings were amiable enough. They seemed to settle into the ... right ... places. Weird to explain. And everything has worked out perfectly since then, with no massive adaptation to having this kind of force around me all the time. Of Course.

Now, for fun, superimpose a Tree of Life over that side-view image up there, with Tiphareth at the top of the column. The base of the column rests in Malkuth. The Nine Kings are nestled right at Yesod. Neat huh? That wasn't even on purpose.

Learning Goetia the Easy Way - Kinetic Meditation

I sold a set of the plaster seals of the nine Kings of the Lemegeton's Goetia last week. The images in this post are scanned wooden blanks that I used to make the Sculpey molds for the plaster casts. I discovered some flaws in my process, but it all worked out in the end. I had to soak the wooden seals in oil to get them not to stick to the Sculpey. The "size" used to make the gold leaf stick to the seal gets rapidly absorbed into the plaster, so the leaf doesn't stick to regular plaster, unless you use all the size, and then you can't make out the engraved seals. I'm trying a polyurethane seal now. As soon as they dry, I'll see if a couple coats of poly seals up the plaster enough for the glue to stay on the surface. (Edit: It worked!)

But that's not the point of the post. Just passing along information I've picked up. The point is this:

I have learned SO MUCH about the personalities of the Kings of the Goetia by engraving their seals. I worked from the online version of the Goetia primarily to get the seals. I like some of Crowley/Mathers more stylized seals, but there's something more authentic, more "down and dirty" to the seals on Joe Peterson's site. They were carved into wood, I think, or were drawn by an unsteady hand. They look "lived in." The seals in the Crowley/Mathers translation are too perfect to be made by the hands of any but the most practiced or naturally talented craftsmen. I'm neither.

But to engrave a seal into wood, you have to know it pretty well. I drew each seal a couple of times, getting the feel of the proportions, learning how it was "supposed" to go. Then I had to scale it to two-inch disks. At first I tried doing it all technical using graph paper and rulers and protractors and compasses like I was some kind of master draftsman. Things kept turning out wrong. They looked straight, and the proportions were technically accurate, but they felt wrong. So I went back to free-hand drawing, and it worked much better.

As I drew the seals, I found myself immersed in each one's details. Little circles that might have marked the beginning or ending of their name on a Kamea, crosses and daggers, hearts, tridents, and classic demon tails with the pointy barbed tips. I saw how the seals were expressions of each spirit, direct revelations of themselves to people. I saw how tracing each seal was itself an act of conjuring the spirit. I understood Nazca Lines, Pictographs, and the development of writing from the moment we took on fleshly form through James Joyce.

(It stopped at James Joyce because, frankly, NO ONE UNDERSTANDS JAMES JOYCE. That was the point of Ulysses, and all the Bloom freaks out there can't prove anything. It was just bullshit.)

But in tracing out the seals by hand, you are joining with the countless aeons of other people who have evoked this spirit, from the crazy drunk blonde in Australia getting revenge on some shiela to the African engineers of ethnic cleansing, to the Popes of France. I mean, you're joining together with bastards and kings from across time to conjure up the spirits of hell to get what you want. You're entering the myth, becoming the myth, and making it real. It's some powerful stuff.

I've come to understand why people think the Lem's Goetic Spirits are manifestations of the human psyche. It's more than "They don't know what the fuck they're talking about." Honest. I can grow spiritual compassion.  Anyone can. If they want.

It's because they do the magic, and they feel parts of their brain warm up when they trace the seals. They feel the shift in the vibration of their spheres that comes when you start drawing out seals. They attribute it wrong, of course, but that's fine.

(Note: "Of Course" almost always denotes SARCASM, or that which should be mocked. And not just when I use it. That's what it "really" means for everyone. Watch tomorrow, and every time someone says "of course," you'll see that whatever they're referencing is completely worthy of endless ridicule. When I use "of course," I do it on purpose. Unlike those dweebs you work with. They don't know what they're doing, they're barely fucking human. Of course.)

When you put that pen or pencil to the page, and move it along the ancient pathways, you immediately get the attention of the spirit you're working with. It checks in on you and sees what's going on. If you seem like you've got something interesting going on, it sticks around and helps you understand its seal a bit more. You feel where the guy recording the Seal was coming from. You get the feeling that you know where he messed up and had to leave it that way because it was close enough and he was out of parchment. You get the feeling you know how to extend something just right.

So how do you know it's "real"? I mean, how can you tell a spirit is influencing you, and it's not "just" your ego thinking it knows better than the grimoires? Do it a lot, and you'll get what I mean. Do it with different seals. Draw them out, and pay attention. Here's what I mean:

Balam. He's got this three-humped B, an arrow, what looks like an IAO permutation, a trident and a spear-thing. Oh, and a pointy pointy tail. The three-humped B has these little squiggles coming of the top and bottom where the humps meet the vertical line. They could be artistic flourish, or they could be the remnants of the starting and stopping points of the spirit's name on a Kamea, or Tablet of some kind like the Great Table of Enochian Magic, or the Tablets of the Planets in Agrippa. You can't tell by looking at it, and it's apparent that the one in the manuscript at Joe's site is drawn freehand. The squiggles are disproportionate. You can't tell if it was on purpose or not. I went with my intuition on this one, and made the squiggles more reflective of one another. It was that feeling I described above.

Vine. The Peterson seal from the manuscript is just ugly. In trying to copy it out, I understood why. If the original dude recording the seal didn't grok the spirit, then he would make the kinds of mistakes that were made. It's got seven "humps," and one in the manuscript is heinous. It has an out-of-center cross coming down, and you can tell it's just not right. There's little circles inside this one part that don't line up with anything. I tried "fixing it" the same way I tried with Balam's seal, and it just didn't work. I stylized it, I made it my own, I tried rulers and measuring so each hump was equidistant, I tried everything I could think of to make it look right, and I still had this empty feeling, like a void where the "Eureka!" should have been.

Then this warm inspiration hit to check the Crowley/Mathers seal. I did, and I saw how it had been presented, and what the "right" way was. I remembered something Belial had shown me about his seal, and it all clicked together. The seal is a picture of a crown, or a helmet, or a mask. As soon as I understood what it was, I was able to sketch out the seal just "right." That feeling of correctness that flooded me left my arm hairs standing up.

See how the techniques were different for different seals, and yet still informed by one another? That has become a hallmark of the spirits in my Work. In my day-to-day existence, I find a way to do something, and I use it from then on. Like in Microsoft's Word, you can do the same thing like a bajillion different ways. Some are faster than others, some are actually logical, sort of. I'm using the techniques I developed in Word when its releases were still numbered. Even if I find a faster, easier way to do something, once I've learned how to do it I usually stick with it. That's how I am in myself.

When I'm being informed by the Spirits, I can feel them offering new ways to do things, and they appeal to me. It's a very subtle thing about myself that I've noticed in my getting to know me, and I can tell when I'm not doing things the way I normally do. That's why it's so important to Know Yourself.

Someone posted on the Solomonic group the other day that they wanted to learn the Goetia. Almost everyone on that list is an author or aspiring author, and they're almost all interested in the Goetia. The archives are fabulous resources of excellent information. I can't recommend enough that people interested in learning Goetia should go out and research other magicians that have worked with these spirits to familiarize yourself with their experiences. From Lisiewski and Konstantinos to Jake Stratton-Kent's pact work to Moloch the Radionics Sorceror. From Poke Runyon to Lon DuQuette. From the liberal chaos magical blogs to the conservative reconstructionist traditionalists of the world. From Chris Warnock to Pat Zalewski. Crowley, Mathers, Agrippa, hell even Levi.

But not Dion Fortune. Not ever her. And don't read the Kyballion. I mean it. If you do, do not ever quote from it. Chances are very, very good that you're misrepresenting it, and it's misrepresented to start with.

Read, read, read, and read between the lines, with one ear cocked and listening to the Voice of your HGA, Genius, or the Holy Ghost of your belief system. Listen from your spirit to the spirits of the authors, not their personalities, but their experiences that lie behind their words. Separate the message from the word the way you have learned to separate the voices of the spirits from the voice of your own mind. Study.

But... A faster way is available. Draw the frickin' seals! Read the description of the spirit. Draw it's seal. Write out its description. Draw its seal. Draw its seal again. Draw it some more. Buy a dremel tool and some wooden blanks from Wal Mart. Make sure you've got a steel cutter tip of some kind, the smallest spherical ones work best for me. Wooden disks are in the craft department. They have squares, circles, triangles, and a ton of selection of just wood stuff for crafters. I bought a boat to paint for fun for a buck too. Pick up some of that. I don't care what it's made of, this is kinetic meditation we're talking here. It's not an actual conjuration and communication with the spirit. It's a tactile communion with it instead.

Anyway, once you've got the sketching of the spirit seal down to an art and science, then sketch it on the wood. Engrave it. Start by tracing over the design lightly with the tip of the tool. Focus on how the tool behaves as you work with the grain of the wood as opposed to how it behaves when you work against it, or worse, if you're trying to engrave a curve diagonal to the grain...

(If a dremel tool is out of your financial budget, get a wood burning tool. It's like $12. Wood's cheap. Scrap works for this. Go without lunch for three days, or dinner. Save $12 and buy a damn tool. It's an investment, you cheap bastard. Some readers of this blog might not even make $12 a month, and that's shitty... but I'll bet you have SOMETHING you can engrave wood with. A knife. A nail. Be creative. Adapt. Or you'll never be a decent magician. Nothing works exactly as described, ever. Get used to it and make do, or give up and go get a job. And a shower and a haircut, you hippy.)

As you focus on the crafting of the seal, you'll find your mind detaches itself from the process, but it remains silent. The process of engraving the Seal draws the attention of the Spirit it represents, and you become aware of its presence. Pay attention to information that comes to you at this point. The spirit is watching you engrave the seal, and talking to you as you make each part. A scene unfolds, or you hear a story about that part of the seal. You understand what each part of the seal represents within the textual description of the spirit. It becomes illustrated in a way that it wasn't before.

Now, when you're ready to conjure the spirit, you know a bit about it. You've Worked with it a bit, and your sphere is being affected, adapting to the new vibrations. It is incorporating the harmonies of this new entity. You're performing a part of the Great Work, adding a crescendo to the overall melodies of existence.

Oh, before you do any of that, you should work with your HGA. I mean, do the same thing. Figure its Genius Name and write it a few times in every magical script you can find a reference to on the internet. Focus on Agrippa Book 3, chapters 29 and 30. As you do, you'll get to know the spirit. Engrave its seal or Name in wood, or metal, or something. Make a talisman. This communion with the HGA is essential to your work with the Goetia, in my opinion. In my Work as a magician, I strive to be the fulcrum between the manifest and unmanifest. As you work with the goetic spirits, your sphere adapts. Keep Working celestial spirits to maintain your position relative to God. Don't lose sight of the big picture and your place in it, or you'll end up in a "wasted burned out nut job" phase of the work, and that's no fun.

(Kittens make terrible blog helpers. In case you were wondering.)

Thar be Gold in them thar Grimoires, Arrrrrrr...

Pirate treasure hunters. For the duration of this post, ye do be pirates, arrr, and pirates searchin' fer the treasure hidden in them thar grimoires...

Abramelin, the Holy Guardian Angel, the Agatha Daimon, the Nativity Angel and Other Important Things that Must be Discussed

Prior to finding any gold, and really, I can't stress this enough, you need K&CHGA. You aren't going to get anywhere as a pirate without a ship, or a sea, or a map, and a magician without K&CHGA is exactly that. You aren't going to find the kind of success I have found without it.

I used Liber Samekh and the complete and total intention of conjuring my HGA. Every night, or every other night, I would sit on my couch, light some Abramelin Incense (from Soma Luna), anoint my forehead and temples with Abramelin Oil (also from Soma Luna), and I would perform Liber Samekh in my Body of Light.

In other words, I imagined a temple. I stood within it and performed an LBRP. I then performed Liber Samekh. When I got to the hard parts to remember, I cracked my eyes and read the printed rite, while trying my damnedest to keep the Temple and Body of Light in my mind's eye at the same time. After that I'd meditate a while, stilling my thoughts and waiting for some kind of response. Then I'd perform another LBRP and call it a night.

A couple of weeks into it, I met my HGA and we started hanging out formally. At that point, I got the spirit's name, and it agreed to come whenever I called it by name.

Now, you don't have to perform Liber Samekh to get K&CHGA. You can also contact your Nativity Angel, who can foster a relationship with your HGA. You can contact Agrippa's "Genius," which I believe Aaron Leitch equates with the Nativity Angel for the same purposes. You can acquire a Supernatural Assistant using the Greek Magical Papyri. You can go to a pentecostal worship service and get slain in the Spirit of God. You can perform the Abramelin rites (I would use the Dehn translation of the Book of Abramelin).

The point is to get in touch with the "Good Familiar" who has the authority to Speak For God into your life. I recommend reading through Bill Heidrick's "An Abramelin Ramble" a couple of times, reading Crowley's Notes on Liber Samekh, and reading the descriptions of the Good Daimons and Familiars in the Greek Magical Papyri. I believe the Dehn translation of the Book of Abramelin is a must-read for every modern magician who has been spoon-fed the concept of the HGA that we've inherited from the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley. Mather's Introduction to The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage is also required reading, in my opinion.

Take all these points of view together and look at the differences and similarities in the descriptions of the experiences. Get to know the authors of the work as best as you can. There are biographies of Agrippa, Eleazar of Worms, Crowley, and Mathers all over the place. Read through Heidrick's other stuff to get a grasp of how he writes and what he means when he puts phrases together in different contexts. Try to see where the authors were coming from in their presentation of their experiences with these entities.

When you do, you'll find that you have an inventory of reports that you can use to help understand your own experiences with the entity that has so many names. You'll be able to fill in the gaps that aren't apparent in the writings of these authors as you develop your relationship with this spirit. You'll be able to see what parts of Liber Samekh were just Crowley being Crowley, and what parts are effective techniques derived from thousands of years of practice.

The cool part is this info is all online. I've got links above to everything I've mentioned. The only thing not free is the Book of Abramelin. You should also get Tyson's modern translation of Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy and read it a chapter at a time. That's optional, but it teaches you more about magic than the rest of your occult library combined.

Goetia Gold

Now, assuming you've got that bit of business out of the way... You do be ready, arrr, for ye next steps.

Get ye the Map to the Treasure. I used the Lemegeton's Goetia. I went through the spirits and found one that brought riches to a man. Bune. That's good. He brought eloquence too, and I'm a writer by profession, and that makes sense to me. something about spirits on sepulchres. Ok, whatever. I needs me some riches and I needs me some good talkin', the rest is fer whatever, y'know?

I made a "Spirit Pot" based on Aaron Leitch's article at the Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition. I got a pot from Goodwill, brass, had a lid. I drew up the Seal Solomon used to bind the spirits in the vessel. I printed a Triangle of Art from a drawing on the Internet. I wrote out the stuff that was supposed to be on the side of the pot on thin strips of paper, licked them, and plastered them with spit to the side of the pot until I had a chance to get my dremel tool going and engrave it properly. I used 777 (that was a mistake, arrrr) to get some corresponding materials to line the pot with, herbs, associated "weapons", and I threw in some dirt and rocks from a local branch of my bank.

I threw it all together on a Thursday, lit some purple candles, and conjured Bune. I asked him to live in the pot. He was thrilled at the idea. I asked him to bring me riches in the amount of $7MUSD, and change. I drew up his seal with the prayer "Bring riches to the man [my name] in the amount of [an exact amount to the penny that I had come up with to cover the lifestyle I wanted based on the house, the cars, and the income I wanted left over after bills were paid]." I licked that and stuck it to a purple seven-day candle. When it burned out I wasn't rich yet, so I stuck it to another one.

A few months later, when that wasn't working, I tried just lighting anointed candles near his pot, and left the seal I'd been licking for months in the pot. It had started to taste pretty gross. Oddly enough, my health improved after that. Must have been magic, I'm sure.

So fast forward through several increasingly better jobs, a house, vehicles, and some Exorcisms and other sepulchre-related stuff to the present. A couple of weeks ago, I saw a statue I wanted to be able to buy. It would have cost $30,000. I was pissed that I couldn't just buy it, and also that for TWO YEARS almost, I had been dicking around with Bune, and there were months when the money I had left over after paying bills and everything was like $35. Sure, I had everything on the list I had made and shown Bune all that time ago. But I never got the lump sum amount that I needed to get set up for life.

Arrr.

So I turned to my left from the computer I work at, and there is my Spirit Pot housing Bune. "THIS! This is what I want, Bune," I said. "I want to so rich that I can see something that costs $30,000 and be able to BUY IT on the spur of the moment without it even DENTING my finances.

That was on a Friday. By the next Monday, I get an email from a relative with an awesome opportunity. It's going to take work and savvy to make this as profitable as possible, but not THAT much work. See the link for an explanation of the opportunity I got if you're interested.

That's my story, my advice, and my experience. This is what I would do if I were you:

• Get K&CHGA
• Read the Goetia and the Pseudomonarchia
• Make a Spirit Pot
• Fill the pot with the herbs and other items that are related to their assigned planet or attributes (Use Skinner's Complete Magician's Tables instead of 777)
  
• Engrave the sides with the right words
• Leave off the seal that binds them to the pot so they can get to work
  
• Conjure the spirit and ask it to get in the pot
• Develop a relationship with the spirit
• Tell it you want it to bring you SO MUCH WEALTH that large purchases won't make a difference to your net financial worth
• Watch for opportunities
• Take risks to get rich only if the risks are not going to bankrupt you

That's it. The last line is just advice. Will this work for you? It should. There's no reason why it shouldn't, that's for sure.

And if it doesn't, feel free to contact me. AFTER you've tried it out on your own and have some informed questions to ask. Like, "I read the Goetia, do I HAVE to have all that shit?" Not like, "Can I have some money to buy all the stuff I need to do the work?"

And if you want me to pay me to do magic on your behalf because I'm SO successful... I'm totally going to refer you to other people. Like Jason Miller. He does work for people. I'm not up for it.

I'm leaving my blog up and intact. That comment I made about taking it down, publishing it, and selling the info to make even more money was just greed speaking. Refer to my archives, and learn from my experiences. I'm going to keep writing here too, even when I'm rich, because I'll be able to focus more on the Thaumaturgical stuff when I'm not worried about making the mortgage payments. That's the goal, anyway.

Plaster Cast Talismans of the Goetic Kings

Well, everything's all set. I'm now taking orders for plaster casts of the talismans of the Kings of the Lemegeton's Goetia. They'll be leafed in gold-colored foil, not real gold for now. After I get some overhead capital built up, I'll invest in some real gold leafing.

For now, I'm selling at $4.95 each, or $35 for a set of all 8.

Email me if you're interested. I'll get it set up on my web site later this weekend or some time.

This is not the "how to get rich" using the Goetia post. I lost steam on that article, and it's going to be pretty long. I might just post it as a web page on my site. I dunno. I'll keep you all updated.

Everyone's Tired of Bune...

I mentioned that I was engraving a quartz crystal with Bune's sigil to a friend, and he was like, "Bune, again!?" He suggested that I might need to be careful about obsessing over one particular spirit, and mentioned that the Goetic spirits have a reputation for getting magicians obsessed.

I mentioned to my spouse what I was doing, and she said something like, "Bune Bune Bune, all you work with is Bune."

I guess that's the image I have because I write so much about him. I've been in a relationship with this spirit for almost two years, and I'm very happy with his work in my life. He's the only spirit of the Goetia that I have a long-term relationship with, via the Spirit Pot. So I talk to him a lot, and I talk to you about him a lot.

However, he is not the only spirit I work with. I'm working on Belial's seal, as well as the other 8 Kings of the Goetia. I've worked 18 of the 72 Spirits altogether from that particular grimoire, but mostly it's been one-time rites, or simple conversations. I'm also working with the Archangels of the seven heavens on my spiritual alchemy. They get a lot more face time with me than Bune or any other Goetic spirits. I have a personal relationship with God. We hang out and have fun together.

Then there's my HGA, with whom I've been exploring the Seven Heavens, and working with to understand his role in a magician's life better. He's not only a Guru to bring you to the edge of the alleged Abyss between the Supernal Triad of the Tree of Life. He's also a familiar spirit that has authority over the Sub-Lunar spirits. He can directly bring riches, love, peace, joy, happiness, prosperity, and everything else material you need to perform the Great Work in comfort and style. He can help you perform what Psychics call "Remote Viewing," and he can help heal people who are ill. Dude's pretty cool.

So as you can see, I do a lot more Work with other spirits than Bune. I talk about Bune the most because he's usually the one I turn to for money, and the fact is, money is always needed for something when you're raising three kids. Even when my income covers bills, mortgage, and consumables, there's college funds, trust funds, and our own retirement funds that need cash to grow. And the Lab needs equipment.

Which brings me to the crystal I engraved with Bune's seal. After the Crystal Skull experience, I decided to stick with just a Bune Legionairre in the stone, totally focused on bringing the owner of the stone riches. It's not finished yet. So far, I've got the crystal roughly shaped the way I want it, and the sigil in the stone.

There are two Seals for Bune in the Lemegeton's Goetia. It says in the grimoire that the first (top over on the left) is not as effective as the second (bottom over on the left), but I believe this is only a reference to its effectiveness in contacting the spirit the first time. After that, the first Seal is as effective for marking things as "Belonging to Bune" as the second. The first seal is also much easier to carve into things, like wood, metal, or stone. The second is easier to draw than to engrave or carve. Since the crystal is so brittle, I picked the first seal to engrave in the stone. It's got more straight lines, and less detail to try to capture.

Like I said, it's not finished yet. I need to sand it again to get a better polish on it. I need to flatten the base a bit. I tried to make an ink to darken the engraved seal so it stood out more when you look at the stone. I made the ink by grinding up some venus herbs, then roasting the ground herbs on a metal sheet over a candle flame. As it blackened, I stirred it, reground it, and roasted it again until all the herb mass was charred. Then I mixed it with olive oil, and tried to put it into the engraved seal, and it sort of worked. It's not really an ink though. More of an oily mass of ground charred herbs. Imagine that.

The stone's got a spirit in it though, a spirit working for me. Last week, I got $750 in incorrect bank fees returned to me, stretching back to May of the previous year. Job offers abound. If enough people want inexpensive plaster seals of the Goetic Spirits, I might be able to pay for an unplanned vacation. Life, as they say, is good.

Belial's Gold Leaf Seal

I'm working on a new method for making the golden seals for the Kings of the Goetia. New for me, anyway. I don't know, maybe other magicians have been doing this for years. As far as I know, it's all my creation though, so I'm taking credit for it.

I carved Belial's seal into an ordinary two-inch wooden disk, the kind you get from a craft store. I used the smallest little round carving ball dremel attachment I could find in my box. It may even have been intended for this.

Oh, diamond grinding bits are great for quartz, not wood.

So after carving the seal, I mushed it into Sculpey, some plasticene clay you can buy. You bake it at 275 (F) for fifteen minutes, and it turns to this weird harder-plastic that doesn't bend or mush anymore. I pulled the wooden disk out, and had a nice little mold.

I baked the mold for about an hour. I should have put it on a baking pan, but being the lazy magi that I am, I threw it on a piece of parchment paper (the baking kind) laying on the oven rack. Then I took it out and let it cool. Then I mixed up some plaster, and poured it in the mold, and let it set for a while.

Sculpey has to be sealed with something water proof to make it water proof. Like paint or something. I didn't do this, so all the water in the plaster just seeped out through the bottom of the Sculpey mold. I think it helped. I was able to pop out the plaster seal in an hour or so. One thing I noticed was that while baking, the Sculpey was still slightly malleable. Because this is the largest piece of Sculpey I've ever baked, it sort of drooped while it was baking, slightly misshaping the mold. So there's a slight warp to the seal.

I let it sit over night, and then I cleaned it up with a sanding bit for the dremel, drilled a hole in the top, and proceeded to attempt to leaf the damn thing in gold.

With varying degrees of success. I bought this foil leafing kit that has a bottle of glue (they call it "size" but I swear it's glue), a roll of foil, and some other stuff that doesn't come into play right now. You put down the glue, wait for it to dry "clear" and then put the foil over it. You peel back the foil, and this plastic tape stuff comes away, and the foil is supposed to stick to the glue. Plaster, as you may know is white. It's not easy to tell when a white glue has dried "clear" on white plaster. As you can see, it sort of almost worked.

Also, the gold leaf is supposed to get into all the carved out cracks, right? But the foil stuck to the flat bits. So I used the handy 18 kt gold leafing pen. It turned out alright. Not great, but alright. I like the shininess of the leaf foil over the paint pen, but the paint pen has some real gold in it, while the leaf foil doesn't.

I really need to get a doggone working digital camera. I've been using my cell phone camera for this stuff, and it just doesn't provide the clarity I want. It's on my list of things to buy, as soon as the kids have all their back to school stuff, and things have quieted down on the home front.

So, I will be trying again. There are some inherent caveats in this. It's not all gold, for one thing, and that makes me less than happy. It's plaster. It weighs hardly anything, and I'm afraid it's going to break if I drop it, or chip, or something. It's convenient for a one or two-time use, I suspect, but for a long-term relationship with this spirit, I'd probably suggest something a little more durable. Even gold-leafing the wooden disk would probably make for a sturdier talisman...

Duh! I should have done that instead. Huh.

Oh well. If I wanted to mass produce these things, I have the means, at least. Anyone want to buy some gold-painted plaster seals for the Kings of the Goetia?

Goetic Magic

Everyone should read the Goetic Magic blog.

http://goeticmagic.blogspot.com/

Brother Boyle from the Conspiracy of Pleasure blog has been posting a few interesting tales, and I've received an email from Yuzuru detailing his conjuration experiences with the four archangels of the LBRP. I'm cleaning it up a bit, but it should be posted soon. I'm including it because it's technically a sub-lunar rite, sort of, depending on how you look at it.

I'll be updating it more frequently too, lord willing. I invited most of the people I know to co-author the blog, but most folks have worked primarily with celestial spirits. I'm surprised, personally, because I thought I was pretty average, and I've been doing this goetic stuff for a couple of years now. Most folks into Magic that I tend to befriend are into the Great Work, and don't seem as interested in goetic stuff as I am.

However... I expect the posting to pick up as soon as people start reading it. Something about being read makes folks want to participate.

Bune Update

As I mentioned in the Crystal Skull post, I've been Working with Bune on making the carved skull into a tool to aid in speaking with the spirits of the dead in general.

In addition, I changed out the stuff inside the pot. It's been over a year since I last did that, and the raisins and dates were mostly turned to dust. I took out some sweet grass I had put in, and I removed about a thousand little steel BBs. I have no idea why I put them in in the first place, maybe something to do with them being brass-colored or something, but in retrospect it was pretty stupid. Iron is anathema to the spirits of the Goetia.

So now my Pot contains the following:

• Dirt and rocks from the local branch of my bank
• Four Herkimer Diamonds
• One Orgone Generator
• Lignum Aloes
• Decayed bio-matter from various raisins and dates mixed in with the dust
• Mistletoe (Venusian Herb)
• Vervaine (Venusian Herb)
• Coltsfoot (Venusian Herb)
• Three Rosehips (Venusian Herb)
• Myrtle (Venusian Herb)
• Three pinches of Abramelin Incense (Traditional from Soma Luna; It has Cinnamon in it, an herb of Venus, and he always likes it)

Now, it took me a couple of weeks to research these herbs and ingredients, track them down, order them and then have them get here. I bought a stone mortar and pestle to grind up the herbs together. On the day of the changing of the herbs, I cleansed the old stuff, picked out the uck, and re-interred everything.

During the time I was working on gathering and researching Venusian herbs, and then after I had ground up all the herbs together and placed them next to me in the pot, I noticed some results.

I attribute these generally passive results to just working with the herbs of the planet in a magical capacity. I don't attribute it to Bune specifically.

Regarding Bune, he seemed pretty happy with the changes. Less than a week later, I received a job opportunity through email that could result in a doubling of my income for at least three months. One cannot beat that with the proverbial stick.

Assuming all goes well with the interview (the first two interviews have gone swimmingly), I've just got to point out that even in the midst of a really bad financial time with Jupiter in Capricorn, here I am making a fortune. If I land the job and everything goes well, it will be a couple of weeks to a month before the income actually doubles. Maybe that's part of waiting for the expansion in measured steps that the Jup-Cap placement requires, but it's also how things manifested when Jupiter was in Sag.

So I'm more convinced than ever that the astrological timing doesn't apply to the spirits of the Goetia. They are sub-lunar in my cosmology, and this result seems to reinforce that. A friend's HGA told him specifically to ignore the astrological timing when working with Bune, so this kind of confirms that.

Enduring unto the end...

I just left one of my online message groups today. I had joined because someone invited me there, and it was a Rosicrucian forum so it looked interesting. I've been reading about alchemy to get ready for this upcoming series of blog posts I'm noodling over, and I thought I might get some insight into some symbols or something.

Man, what a let down. A couple days into it, I had received about twenty or so posts about the nature of Will. Great topic, wonderful exchange of ideas and opinions and theories, and all that. These people were smart, witty, and nice.

But I'm so bored with that kind of talk. I mean, this is stuff that we went over in like metaphysical kindergarten. I'm at a point now where everyone is saying the same things I've already seen other people say before. Sometimes they've been said better, other times they've been said worse. It doesn't matter much to me, I'm bored either way.

I'm a little concerned. This is the stuff that I thought would be passionately interesting. I'm finding out that no one's got anything to say that Solomon didn't already say in Ecclesiastes. I used to think that if more people did magic, I'd have more to talk to about stuff. I'm finding out that isn't true.

Caring less and less about more and more. That's what seems to be happening as I continue in my work. I'm thinking I must be going through either a stagnation or putrification phase. If so, the solution to the problem would be steady and progressive addition of Mercury, Air, and whatever other alchemical symbols for that might be.

What gets me about all this is the damn time it takes. 30 weeks for the Stone, if you use lead and don't mind poisoning yourself and everyone you "project" onto later. Just "Putrification" can take 6-12 weeks. Dissolving faesces, recondensing, blah blah blah.

Oh well. Perdurabo, as they say. There's nothing more important to do with life, after all. The trick is to keep the heat steady.

"Found" Wealth

I was looking at our budget lately, and "found" a lot of cash that I was spending way over and beyond sanity. I'm a Taurus, and what can I say, I like to eat out. This was WAY too much though, and putting a brake to that and some other odd spending habits I had developed unawares, I've managed to save about a grand a month. Wouldn't you like to get a $1,000 a month raise?

I get them all the time, because I'm cool.

Just kidding. I get them because I use magic. And that is pretty cool.

I found the money by going over my portfolio through my online bank. It groups things together for me based on how I use my Debit Card. Since that's pretty much all I use to spend money these days, it works out pretty nicely. I was doing a periodic budget check, just to see where we were at compared to our goals, and also to figure out why we seemed to have such a shallow pool of funds to dip into for extravagant summer vacations.

The Great Work needs a periodic check-up too. Every once in a while, we need to sit down and see how our Philosopher's Stone is coming along. What Work have we been focusing on over the last few months? What results have been coming out? Has this brought us closer to our long-term goals as magicians, or has it been a distraction? Has our recent Work provided insight requiring us to adjust our long-term goals?

I ran a quick check-up on my own progress in the Work lately, and found some wealth I could have by making a few minor alterations in the way I use my resources. It got me thinking about how I apply the techniques I've learned in my secular life to my magical practices, and specifically to the Great Work in general. I started thinking about what is required to be able to do what I do, and I realized there's a whole SERIES of blog posts I can write about this. How many people are trained in applying the best practices of Project Management to the Great Work?

Obviously, we'll need to have a few things in place to be able to do this kind of thing effectively. We'll need to have a long-term goal, for example, and a plan to get from where we are to where we want to be. We'll need a way to review our recent Work.

The Long-Term Goal for most magicians is the accomplishment of the Great Work. Most folks have a general idea of what this means, and chances are I've posited a few interpretations of my own over the years on this blog. Essentially, the Great Work is modeled after the Alchemical process of turning a base element into a finer, more purified substance which then is capable of transmuting other substances on contact.

This process has a few stages to it. We can use these stages as mini-goals within the overall goal, and chart our progress accordingly. Off and on, I'll be adding details to this particular line of thought. At the moment, I'm thinking it will cover:

• The Great Work, yet another definition
• The Stages of the Alchemical Great Work
• How to Accomplish Anything Successfully Every Time

The last one will be huge.

A Spirit Pot for a Duke of the Goetia

After years of having people ask me where to find similar pots to the one I used with Bune, I've decided to put together a basic "kit" to build your own spirit pot. I found a brass hinged potpourri holder at a second hand store, and I'm engraving it with the appropriate language to make it a Brass Vessel.


I've also gathered the herbs together that one would put inside the pot for a Duke.

I'm creating a silver Pentacle of Solomon, and a copper blank suitable for a Duke's Seal. If someone has a specific Duke they want to work with in mind, I'll engrave the seal on the blank for them with my dremel tool, or they can engrave it themselves.

I'm thinking of offering this kit on eBay. I'm not sure how interested people would be in it. The silver seal alone should probably go for at least $50, even though it's not fine craftsman quality. I melted it myself and hammered it into a piece large enough...

Anyway, I've got some other ideas I may have to implement on that front. It's over an ounce of 99.999% pure silver, and it's going to have a few hours worth of work done on it before I'm finished.

If this blog post generates enough interest, I'll go ahead and offer the kit on eBay, and the highest bidder can have it. I'm open to suggestions on what the starting price should be. Email your questions or comments by clicking this link, or just comment below.

Goetic Conjurors

I'm planning a blog that has many authors. If you've ever conjured a goetic spirit, I'd like you to write your experience. I don't care if you follow the spirit model, the postmodern model, an atheistic or psychological model. I don't care if you're a Christian Conjuror, a Chaos Magician, a Wiccan, or a Sorceror. All I ask is that you have conjured a spirit and can explain how it went to people. I can help edit if you need it.

The goal is to create a single place where people can compare working magicians' styles, practices, and results. I personally think we'll end up with similar conclusions about how they work and what their capabilities are, but I'm sure everything else will be different.

I'm thinking short posts that can be read in a few minutes. I'd like to see in each article the following touched on briefly:

• Initiation - What started this specific conjruation? Why did you conjure this spirit?
• Planning - What did you do to prepare for the rite? What circles did you use, what incenses, offerings, candles, colors, etc. went into preparing for the rite?
• Execution - When and where did you perform the rite? What did you do in the rite? What did the spirit say, or what did you feel, or see, or smell?
• Monitoring - What were the results after you did the rite? How did they manifest?
• Closing/Lessons Learned - How did it all work out when you considered the ritual fulfilled? What were the lessons you took away from this rite, and how will they affect your future spirit conjuration projects?

Can you tell I'm a PMBOK-trained Technical Writer?

If you're interested in contributing, email me.

Outgrowing the Goetia

Someone mentioned on a list that "When you really know yourself, the Goetia is not needed any more." Personally, I think that's one of the more retarded, but also self-explanatory statements I've ever seen.

I use the Goetia style of magic because it is an effective means to accomplish mundane Work. There are things you need to have done, and you need to have them done by spirits who are closer to the material realm than the Angels and Intelligences of the celestial spheres. When you "know yourself" as a magician, you also know what your role is in the manifestation and maintenance of creation. If someone hasn't figured out that their role as a magician is going to require them to perform Goetic magic on occassion, then, well, ok then. There you have it.

But why would someone think that? Once again, people have watered down Magic to include some really weak and stupid thoughts. If the nimrod that posted the above statement had spent more time studying where he came from and his celestial and material brothers and sisters, he'd know a lot more about himself than he does. But in "Knowing himself," he hasn't bothered to look beyond himself.

You CANNOT "Know Yourself" if you do not look BEYOND your SELF.

Bad news, narcisists, it's not all about you.