A quick plug

Mike Rock, familiar to many of my cohorts, but maybe not to all my readers, has started blogging. Again. Hopefully this time he will be more consistent, as he's one of those pacticing magicians I consider to be in the Invisible College.

His blog be here: http://blog.mike-rock.com


Among the feathers in his cap is his ongoing translations of the Picatrix from French manuscripts. When I made the 4th Pentacle of upiter, I used the colors of the planets and signs from the Picatrix, and it was his site that provided the info, if I remember correctly.

He's also been known to put the Hymns of Orpheus to modern music. Musician magicians fascinate me. I know and understand the "harmony of the spheres," but I've never heard it. I tried playing guitar for a while, and had to take a break (I gave my freaking guitar to the freaking Church in a fit of donative ecstasy; regret!).

The Invisible College

I mentioned it the other day in passing. It's not an original idea. It's a rehash of the "Invisible Hand" that "really" controls world events. The fact is, we (you, me, and magicians in general) have a ton of spiritual resources that are designed to influence world events. While it is true that the Great Work is about rising through the spheres and getting to be more "like god," or more fully in His image than we were to begin with, it's also about returning to the state we were created in, back in the Garden of Eden.

Basically, my belief is that there was one "positive commandment" given in the garden. One "Thou Shalt." The other was a thou shalt not. The positive commandment is this:

Tend the Garden

In my interpretation, that means original Mankind was the steward of the world. With the adoption of the concepts of "Good and Evil", we lost the ability to do this in the way we are supposed to do it. Through the accomplishment of the Great Work, we regain our standing with the source that emanated us. We return to the original partnership with God. Our realm of responsibility is all of Nature. That includes mankind, the spirits that influence manifestation, and everything we see, hear, feel, sense, touch, taste, defecate upon, and stub our toes on in the middle of the night.

I envision a group of magi that are practicing the Work in their lives. Not only spiritually, but practically. It already exists. Going forward, I'm going to formally recognize it as "The Invisible College." I started writing this a few days ago, and originally I was thinking of starting like an email list, or something like that for the practicing magicians in my circles of friends. Sort of a magical network for advice, somewhere to turn for quick references, and such-like other stuff that was private, and wouldn't end up getting plastered across the internet.

Then I realized we already do that, in IM's and off-list emails. It would be pretty redundant. One more email group to wade through.

So fuck that.

However, here are some of the notes I'd made in my original post-idea. If you're not in the "Invisible college" and want to be, here's the general idea:

The goal of the Invisible College is to get practical magicians to take over their sphere of influence. Take responsibility for it. Learn its needs, its wants, its desires. See what it is in our communities that are distracting people from performing the Great Work. See what's going on with the local environment. See what's being taught in local schools. Get to know the business circuits that light up the local economy. Look at how it integrates with the rest of the world, and take care of it.

Now, to do this "right", without your insane nephesh taking over and demanding everything be done for its own personal and private best interests, it is imperative that you get in touch with your personal representative of God. The Logos. You need to hang out with the Logos, learn from it, because it is the mouthpiece of God. You get your own little slice of Logos, the piece that is directly and perfectly suited to you in your current incarnation. We call it the HGA or Genius or Agatha Daimon. Get the equivalent of K&CHGA, and you have all you need to take over the world. Your world. Your part of the universe.

And the boundaries of your sphere of influence are determined only by the boundaries of your sphere of influence. That means you have full authority over all you perceive. (But you still operate within the limits of being an incarnated human being. No fireballs; at least, I haven't figured it out yet.)

Start with what you know. Your family, your friends, your job. Once you've got the hang of it, move outward in concentric spheres. Local politics, local charities, local fraternities. Get to know who is in each, what their influence on your domain is. Conjure the egregores and find out what they're up to, and whether the membership is doing what they're supposed to do to get the eggregore's plans fulfilled. Make sure the egregores' plans are in harmony with your HGA's plans for the world. If not, bind them, change them, or destroy them. It's your job to get rid of termites eating the pillars of the temple.

Something For God To Do - Prayer Wheels & Petition Boxes

Recently, Jason Miller posted that he has a petition box that he will place people's needs in. I'm not going to repeat his whole post, so just click on this link for more information.

Today I got one of those emails that people forward around to their friends. Chances are you've gotten it. It's the "Memo from God" that says:

"This is God.  Today I will be handling All of your problems for you.  I do Not need your help.  So, have a nice day."

I've gotten it before. Somewhere along the way though, someone added this neat little bit:

"P.S.   And, remember... If life happens to de liver a situation to you that you cannot handle, do Not attempt to resolve it yourself!  Kindly put it in the SFGTD (something for God to do) box. I will get to it in MY TIME. All situations will be resolved, but in My time, not yours."

Now I don't entirely agree with the whole "Let go and let God" philosophy this reflects. I mean, we're HERE after all, and we can do stuff, so I think it's safe to say that if we can, there's a reason. We're supposed to be doing stuff to affect our realm of influence.

But I like the SFGTD box. It's a modern cultural way to get back to petition boxes, like the one Jason made for Michael.

I'm going to start using the Prayer Wheel part of The Box to write out things that I want God to do. Since he has this thing about graven images of himself, I'll connect the 'trodes with something other than an egraved seal. Maybe I'll make a YHShVH or something out of copper wire.Oooh! One of those ubiquitous Jesus fishes might work, or just a simple cross. heh. I'm a friggin' genius. Of course.

Mediocribus Magis

From the Arbatel of Magick, Third Septenary, Seventeenth Aphorism:

Mediocribus Magis, mittunt de suis Spiritibus, qui in determinatis tantûm quibusdam negotiis illis obtemperent.

"To the Mediocre Magicians, they send their spirits to obey them in carrying out specific tasks." (My translation.)

Mediocribus can mean ordinary, normal, or average. I like "Mediocre," because it demonstrates something about magic that I tend to forget. For all the fun I have conjuring spirits and having them get me stuff and influence my world, that's just normal. For Magicians. It's to be expected.

Been Busy...

"You've been busy doing what, RO?"

Well, since you've asked...

I've been making a cool thing. The idea came up in a conversation about Goetic Circuits. Long ago, I blogged about how I think the spirits have a relation to electro-magnetic force, geo-magnetic force, and other stuff like that. Some places well known for being haunted have turned up abnormal geo-magnetic fields. The way the brain would have to interact with spirits is through electro-magnetic transference of thought. It all ties in together.

But that's a whole series of blog posts that I'll get around to someday. Point was, I think spirits have a connection to electro-magnetic forces, and looking at those seals of the Goetia, I'm reminded of circuit drawings. Now I don't know enough about electronics to know what the original circuit might have done. Maybe all the seals are parts of a giant computer, with Gold connectors, Copper wire, and so forth and so on. If they were plans for a computer, the details in the manuscripts we've received are trashed. It would take a smarter guy than me to figure that shit out.

However I can certainly wire a copper seal in line with a flashlight or a motor. That's nothing. Uncle Chuckie, as Inominandum posted, has this psionic seal of Solomon ray gun of death he makes. There's a video on YouTube. I think it's kinda lame. He has you put a paper seal in the battery compartment. And he has you hold the batteries and charge them up by thinking mean thoughts at them. :yawn:

No solder, no switches, no fun. Fuck that with an ugly stick, as my grandmother used to say.

So the other day, I got the wheels racing in my wee brain, and came up with a design. I wanted to run positive current through a seal and then on to actually do something. Light up a nightlight a friend and I thought would be neat. I got all the stuff to do this simple little circuit with, and then I figured I'd need to experiment first before plugging 110 volts through a seal in my basement.

So I thought I'd start small, grabbed a nose-hair-trimmer that we've never used, and took it apart. All I wanted was the battery holder, but what I found inside was even better. A little electric motor and an LED light. I gutted the thing, wired it up, installed it in a cigar box with a couple of posts to put the metal seal across, and voila:

That's a Table of practice in the middle. You can't see it too clearly, but the LED is smack dab in the center of the triangle. There's a switch on the front that lets you turn on the motor. The picture here was taken moments ago, and the shellac is still drying. And it's going to get more coats. The Table of Practice is based on Trithemius', altered a bit for my tastes.

Here's what it looked like before the stain. In these pictures, you can see some of the aspects better.

Here it is with a crystal ball on it. The Crystal ball is resting on a gold ring. I hadn't burned in the Table of practice yet in this photo. The electrodes sticking up on the left of the ball are hand made. I melted down some copper wire, just enough to form a ball on the tip, and then drilled holes in the box the diameter of the wire and slipped them in.

I've got a positive wire going to the electrode on the left, and the electrode on the right goes to the light. For the electricity to get to the light, some kind of metal must connect the electrodes. Last night I used my solid tin Jupiter Talisman. The light lit, and the crystal ball glowed, radiating light into my room as I slept. When I first turned it on, I started to feel like the air got more dense in the room. I conjured my HGA and asked him to open up and clear out the clogged parts of my astral body that were beginning to ache, and the feeling went away.

So what to do with the little electric motor thing? Jason Miller, a.k.a. Inominandum, suggested a "Tibetan Prayer Wheel" to spin the request out into the universe. Works for me!

There's a handy little switch on the front so I can either have the light on by itself, or the light and the motor running. I can't just run the motor, because the little thing that would make that possible is really tiny, and my hands were shaking. I couldn't solder the wires without slopping solder all over a bunch of other connections and ruining the circuitry. Plus I'd broken the three-way-switch that would have made it work without me needing to solder shit.

So how am I going to use it?

Well, there's scrying. That's easy. Throw a tin Seal of Jupiter on the 'trodes, and conjure Tzdqiel. Scry away. Should work for everyone else too, Copper, Iron, Lead, Mercury (blended copper-tin-lead-etc.), Gold, and Silver. I can put different kinds of crystals over it too. Spheres seem to radiate outwards. I had a crystal point over the light earlier, with a Bune seal across the 'trodes and my original seal that I made a couple years ago with my request for $7,142,867.14. It feels good with Bune on there. It's like a feeling of happiness fills the room.

I'm also going to use it during meditation along with this timer Jason posted. Judging by the feelings I've gotten while it's running with different seals on it, I'm thinking it will work as a good diagnostic machine too. If someone's got a Jupiter blockage in their sphere, like I did last night, they'll feel it when the Juptier talisman is on. Likewise the other planets.

Assuming the spirits feed on electromagnetic energy, this is a good way to reward them as well.

And I can change the battery pretty quick and easy too. The box is an upside-down cigar box with a lid that slides out.

Now that I've got the basics down with a low-voltage test rig, I'm moving on to the full-powered 110v job that plugs in without shutting down the neighborhood. This one will be incandescent, and likely no motor. The only electric motors I have that run on that much juice are from an old vacuum cleaner and an electric weed eater. Both are rather heavy, rather big, and rather loud. Heck, even the little nose-hair-trimmer engine is loud enough. (If you ever had those little monster trucks that you put a double A battery in and switched on, and they just went straight-ish when you were a kid, it's the same little motor inside.)

And it's totally NOT UL LISTED. It could blow up or start a fire. I'm no electrician, I'm just playing at home with a soldering iron and some solder.