Trust Me...

Traditional KBL Merkavah

BJ Swain, Deputy Lodge Master of Blake Lodge in Baltimore is providing a course on traditional Merkavah this week. I should have plugged it earlier, but you know how things are.

For more information, please click this link.

BJ's a frickin' genius, one of the best Thelemic Magicians I've had the pleasure to meet. His experience and knowledge of occult practice and the accomplishment of the Great Work is a rare combination, and worth seeing in action.

Brain Dead

I can tell my stress levels are increasing because my brain isn't working right anymore. I can't write, I can't focus, and my meditations are annoyingly interrupted by thoughts of television and work. Television shows I have no interest in, even. Work issues that aren't even issues. It's weird how the brain deals with shit.

Even though the spiritual exercises I've been doing help, I'm still waking up feeling like I'm stuffed in cotton. The things I write seem dead. I've had three or four posts I've tried to write that just come out sounding like shit. Total shit.

The most annoying part is that I'm aware of the problem, I've taken steps to alleviate it, but I'm still feeling fuct in the head. It's like being smart enough to know you're not as smart as someone else, only the someone else is you yourself. Not that I'm all that bright most days, but still. I'm only partially functioning. It sucks.

I probably need more vitamins. Since moving into the hotel, my favorite food has been delicious chicken alfredo from this little delivery joint around the corner from the hotel. Man, damned good food, and it's all comforting and starchy. There just isn't a lot of Vitamin B in the pasta, cream, or butter they use to make it.

Delicious butter. Mmmmm.

I'm going through the whole mental process of dealing with the fire. It's a lot like the stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, the whole Kubler-Ross model. Being a magician makes it easier, I think, but I still go through the phases. It's weird how they hit about different aspects of my life throughout the day. I find myself in denial about some things, bargaining about others, depressed about some, and accepting about still other aspects of it.

Anyone pick up interesting dietary suggestions to help deal with "any form of catastrophic personal loss"? Or anything else that would help get me past this crap? Especially the brain-dead feeling that seems worse today than usual.

Please post 'em in the comments, yo! My brain NEEDS you!

Cthulhu lives!

Just got word from the people cleaning my stuff, and the hand-made Cthulhu I got from Suzanne Illes LIVES! It was cleaned and cured from all the smoke damage. Woot!

Happy New Year and Stuff

Happy New Year!

[Insert warm sentiment and well wishes here.]

Well, it's been a busy end-of-the-year, as you can imagine. I just got around to setting up the yahoo groups for the Hermetic Merkavah and Supernatural Assistant courses starting tomorrow. If you signed up, check your inbox. If you meant to sign up and haven't yet, email me at frredactumopus@gmail.com to save your spot in the course. I'll be shutting down enrollment next weekend.

I'm a little frazzled with the events of my life. It's not fun losing everything to fire and smoke, and even though I know deeply that things will be alright eventually, and I'll end up coming through this "smelling like a rose," there will be days of nausea and angst to come. I've been doing a lot of contemplation of my Source and I've managed to maintain a pretty level outlook on things in general.

You know what, I don't have a lot of time to post today, I've got a lot going on, but damn it, this is important. I tried writing a decent post about this a few times, and I can't find the right words to make it a masterpiece, so I'm just going to put it out there the way I see it, it's important, I think.

People have said I have a good outlook. One dude said I'm a "happy bastard" because I have a lot of spirits helping me. A few people have suspected I'm in shock, and they were probably right to a degree. But the truth is, I've seen fucking eternity stretching out for-fucking-ever, and while I deal with the bullshit and walk out my part in it to get to the best end-result possible, it's a given that this crap will pass. As a result, I have a positive outlook on things.

Eventually, no matter how much bullshit you've got to deal with, it ends. You either die and go back to eternity, or you live and things get better. There are days of feces, and there are days of bliss. You put up with the feces to get to the bliss. That's my core philosophy when it comes to dealing with crap. I'm a magician, and I'm not bragging or anything, but come on, this isn't that bad, really. It's a huge opportunity to start over, re-evaluate priorities, and set things right that weren't before. I can design my entire lifestyle based on what I know works and what doesn't now. I have a clean slate at my house, no bills, no mess, no piles of crap to take out of the furnace room before it catches on fire. It's already too late, you know? I've written it off, and moved on to where I'm at.

One of the main reasons people get into magic is to make their lives better. It provides a means to deal with the crap that comes with life, a means to change the world and ourselves. I gives me a perspective on my life that brings peace. It gives me tools to engineer things better, and to react to things better. It doesn't make life perfect, but it makes things better.

This is how I think magicians respond to things in their lives. Ideally, I'd have avoided the situation magically, but I can't think of everything, and I have sorely neglected divination for years. There's no means in my daily life for spirits to provide warning, and even if they did, I would have ignored it and gone on to getting more money a few weeks ago. Priorities were a little skewed, and I had no frame of reference to even notice it.

Things have changed. That's what happens. Life goes on, and we get on with it as long as we can. I still can, so I do.

Anyway, happy new year, may your life be blessed with Peace and Prosperity. But especially Peace.