Happy Halloween!

Here's the actual Post. Those who subscribe to my blog got the title in an RSS feed with no post because I hit Enter after typing the title instead of Tab. Blogger happily published the post. Title. I hadn't even started writing yet. Sorry.

Now, for today's post:

Hopefully you finished yesterday's exercise. If not, do so before performing any of the following operations. It doesn't replace K&CHGA, but it at least prepares you for what's coming.

This being Halloween, the day of the year when the veil between the worlds is thinnest, it's a great day for Necromancy.

I'm going to be conjuring Bune to make spirits appear on their sepulchres. I have a favorite graveyard where I'd like to perform the rite, but it's out in the country, way the hell away from here. I'll likely settle on building an astral image of a spooky old graveyard and performing most of the communications with him there... Although, it might be fun to have a spirit pop up on Poe's grave while they're doing Pennies for Poe here in Baltimore. Hmmmmmm....

No, no, I'll keep it serious.

Ok, so here's the deal:

In the Lemegeton's Goetia, you're given the seals, circles, pentagrams, hexagrams, etc. that you need to perform the conjuration. The bad news is, you won't have time to make them if you don't have them. The good news is that you won't be needing them to conjure Bune.

Instead, you'll need to perform the exercise from yesterday. When you're done, read the descriptions of Bune from the Lemegeton's Goetia AND from the Pseudomonarchia. Meditate on it for a while, imagine how he might look as described in the grimoire. Next, draw out Bune's Seal.

When you're done, go back and read his description again. Draw the seal a couple more times. This time intone and vibrate his Name as you're drawing it. When you've got it down nicely (it took me a couple of tries to figure out how to draw it properly proportioned), get a fresh, clean, never-used piece of paper, and draw it again. Write his name above it, intoning and vibrating it.

On the opposite side, draw out the Pentagonal Seal of Solomon. Again, vibrate and intone the words as you write them in the corners of the pentagon, and as you draw the little seals. I start with "Abdia" and work around, then finish with "Soluzen" in the center. The last thing I do is write the Te-Tra-Gram-Ma-Ton around the Pentacle. I've speculated in the past that every time you see "Tetragramaton" in a ritual or on a seal, you should replace it with the actual "IHVH." This isn't possible for the Pentagonal Figure of Solomon. You need the Four-Lettered Name represented in Five syllables. It's an important key to the system, this Four-in-Five (imho). You might be able to use YHShVH as effectively, but I've never tried it.

Thread this paper and wear it as a lamen, with Bune's seal facing your chest and the Pentagonal Figure facing outwards. I thought this was weird at first, but it works well, and you don't really internalize the spirit, not any more than you do any other spirit when you conjure it. Having performed the exercise from yesterday, your sphere's vibration will be humming along nicely, and the more materialistic vibe of Bune's sphere won't bring you down too much.

Finally, use the Oration from the Pseudomonarchia to conjure Bune. Go on, go read it. I'll wait. Hmmm, hmm-hmm-hmmmm. Ok done? Back already? Too Christian for ya? (Picture Fr. R.O. laughing his ass off.)

Ok, for serious, it's almost too Christian for me. I get serious chills reading it. It's like Lon Milo DuQuette's chanting ceremony in Enochian Vision Magic, a long series of prayer and God Names, but with a lot more begging God to grant you the authority to conjure the Spirit. I've only ever said it all the way through aloud once, Vibrating and intoning the God names as I went along, and man, by the time I was finished, the air was humming with power.

The trouble is, I don't agree with the doctrine it represents in the slightest. I think the parts where it says the spirits were "cast down" or "thrown out of heaven" are misrepresentations entirely. The Divine Pymander explains that the "Evil Daimon" is sent to the impious to lead them into temptation and distraction from God to punish them for forgetting their source by making them slaves to their possessions. (In writing, that's called a run-on paraphrase, I think). Point is, the spirits are here, within the terrestrial realm like we are. The "Fall" is simply a reference to gaining more spiritual density as they approached the sphere of the Earth.

Instead of going through all that, I suggest you perform yesterday's exercise, draw the seal and the Pentagonal Figure as noted above, and then close your eyes and imagine yourself in a very detailed graveyard, standing within a circle containing the names and symbols from the exercise. Picture yourself standing before the grave of the person you want to speak with. See their name engraved upon the stone in your mind's eye. See the inscription of the date of birth and death, if you have that information, or simply know you are standing before the grave of the person you seek to contact.

Say something along the lines of the following:

"Bune, thou spirit of the Lemegeton and the Pseudomonarchia, I [your name/motto here] conjure you to this land of the Dead by the most holy names inscribed within this circle. Come now from whatever part of the earth, under the earth, or upon whatever wind you ride to appear before me now. I conjure you here by the name Adonay, and by Hagios, O Theos, Iscyros, Athanatos; Paracletus, Alpha and Omega, and by these three secret names: Agla, On, Tetragrammaton, that you at once fulfill what I desire."(1)

In your mind's eye, you should see him appear. If he doesn't, then picture his seal (good thing you drew it so many times) beaming out from the lamen around your neck (you are picturing yourself wearing it, yes?). See the seal projected between yourself and the grave of the person you are seeking to communicate with. Vibrate and intone (or SING! - that's for Mike) his Name, and as you do, see his Name form in flaming letters around his Seal. Really pump the Seal full of the power that resonates with his Name. Then repeat the conjuration, picturing the Seal transforming into Bune.

I don't think you'll need that much, frankly. When I conjured him into the Spirit Pot, I just said, "Bune, are you here?" and heard a solid "Yes" in response, a thought that originated from outside my head, sort of from behind my ears on both sides. Like he communicates through the hippocampus part of the brain.

When he's present, say something along the lines of:

"Bune, I have conjured you here to cause the spirit of [person's name] to appear before me upon their sepulchre (that's a grave). Will you do this for me now?"

Bune will likely say he will, because he likes to do that kind of thing.

Let him sort of fade into the background scenery, and look up on top of the sepulchre you've imagined. I see a little candle flame that grows in brightness, hovering above the stone. When it's finished growing to whatever size it grows to, begin speaking to the spirit. "Are you [name]?" is a good place to start. If you're a Christian, have it say "Jesus is Lord" to affirm it is who it says it is. Thelemites have success making the spirits say something out of the Book of the Law; Jews may have success having it swear by Tetragrammaton that it is who it claims to be. You can try banishing pentagrams, but I think they're hokey, and you'd likely banish the spirit. Invoking pentagrams seems like a really seriously bad idea when working with the Spirits. I'm not GD, so I dunno what to tell you if that's your thing.

Assuming it passes the test, begin to talk to it about whatever it is you've conjured it for. Ask where that will was stashed, or who your real father was, you bastard.(2) Ask what he meant when he wrote that confusing chapter in the Three Books of Occult Philosophy, if you're conjuring Agrippa. Ask who shot him if it's JFK. Ask whatever you want to know, about the after life, the present, the future, whatever you think this spirit would be able to answer knowledgeably. I wouldn't ask Marie Antoinette the finer points of calculus, but I might ask Poe to recite some of his more recent poetry, or ask Einstein what he thinks of Hawking's theories about black holes. Not that I'd understand it very well, but still.

When you're finished, thank the Spirit for their time, and bid them to go in Peace. Thank Bune for his help, and bid him go in peace, bringing no harm to any you know or love, and remind him I still need that $7 million.(3)

After you've done all this, take some time to ground yourself out. Perform that exercise again, to cleanse any death-vibes from your sphere that might be hanging around. Place the lamen somewhere and light a votive or tea light candle as a gesture of thanks to Bune. Take a bath. Brush your teeth. Play with your hematite, iron pyrite, steel blade, jet, obsidion, or amethyst. Roll them around between the palms of your hands, extending your awareness into them, picturing yourelf floating in the center of whatever stone you have.(4)

Then come back and post your experiences in the comments below, or send me an email. If I include this post as a chapter in a book that ever gets published, I'll throw your experiences in the "Anecdotes" appendix, with permission, of course.

(1) Adapted from the Heptameron, see Joe Peterson's notes on the Oration and Conjuration sections of the Lemegeton's Goetia. Really, you should be familiar with how the orations go anyway.
(2) Just Kiddin'! I'm sure you're not a bastard. Not that there's anything wrong with that if you are (you bastard)
(3) Ibid. If you mention me during this rite, I'll personally hex you so bad you'll be dead by dawn. Then I'll eat your soul.
(4) If you're using a steel blade, don't roll it between your palms; that would be stupid. As in all magical rites, DON'T BE STUPID.

More on Kinetic Meditation

In a previous post, I talked about how important it is to draw the seals of the spirits, and about how as I carved the seals of the different spirits, I would feel their presence in the room or within my sphere of influence.

I've been reading Enochian Vision Magick by Lon Milo DuQuette. I hadn't read it before writing that post, and he couldn't have read my post and written about the same idea, but nevertheless, he talks about the same thing in the book regarding the Enochian Angels. He talks about how as you write out the Sigilum Dei Aemyth, you are building it into your sphere. He doesn't put it that way, but the same idea is reflected throughout the book. He talks about how making the tools of Enochian magic programs the magician, and prepares them to perform the magic. It's like an initiation into the system.(1)

But today I'd like to talk about the Magic Circle, specifically the names found in the one from the Lemegeton's Goetia.(2) It's possibly the most thorough protective circle I've ever seen. Understanding that circle is key to being able to work with the spirits of the Goetia. It builds around the magician a miniature representation of all the forces of all the spheres between here and the throne of God. It places the magician right smack dab in the center of the manifest and unmanifest universe. It represents the path of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes. It is key, in my opinion, to all the other forms of grimoire magic that are available.

The circle shown to the right is from Crowley-Mathers' The Goetia. I've made it as large as possible, but it's still hard to make out the details. Plus it's in Hebrew.

The names and planetary symbols in the outermost circle are taken from Agrippa's Scale of the Number Ten. Joe Peterson points this out in his notes on the Magic Circle. Prior to actually making a life-sized circle, I never bothered trying to read this information. I figured I had either read it before in Kraig's Modern Magic, or it wasn't that important. I assumed an LBRP would be fine for years. I had no idea what I was doing.

When I finally made the circle, I began to understand why this thing is so important. As I painstakingly painted each name or office, I went further into a sort of trance-like state. Lon talks about how he gets into a trance state by tapping the letters of the Table of Practice in the Enochian book while chanting the names of the letters aloud. I understand; this is a powerful technique. I wasn't even chanting the names or offices, I would simply say them aloud to myself while I was painting them so I wouldn't forget them and have to go back to my notes. (They were all the way across the floor on the other side of the garage, after all.)

By the time I was finished, I was in a zone unlike any other I had been in before. I ended up screwing up some of the names, and had to re-prime the circle and start over again, and I haven't finished it yet, but that's beside the point. The point is, it's a form of kinetic meditation.

So let's go over the names in the circle. As noted by Joe, the names and offices of the circle are taken from Agrippa's Scale of the Number Ten. The names included are:

• The Ten Names of God
• The Ten Names of the Sephiroth
• The Ten Orders of the Blessed According to the Traditions of Men
• The Ten Angels Ruling
• The Ten Spheres of the World

Only nine of each are listed; the Lemegeton specifies that they begin at Eheyeh and end at Lavanah.

I don't use the Tree of Life as my primary working model. I prefer the Ptolemaic geocentric model of concentric spheres centered on the earth. It doesn't really matter though, because I still have ten spheres to work with that match up to the ten Sephiroth pretty well. When I wrote out my circle, I kept the ten names of God, but eliminated the names of the sephiroth. I wrote the Names of God in Celestial Script, my favorite version of the Hebrew Alephbet.

The names of the Ten Orders of the Blessed (this refers to the Ranks of the angels in each sphere) that are used in the Crowley-Mathers Goetia are the Hebrew names. I used the names from Dionysius. (These names appear in the same row of the table on Agrippa's Scale of the Number Ten.) Dionysius helped me understand a lot about the celestial spheres, and how to work with them as a Christian. I believe they are translations of the Hebrew names of angelic ranks or orders, but I don't know for sure. If you look through the descriptions of the spirits of the Goetia though, you'll find they are sometimes referred to as being of the order of Powers, or Thrones, for example. These are Dionysius' terms, not the Hebrew terms. It sort of seems to be more appropriate to stick with the Dionysian terminology, at least to me.

For the Ten Angels Ruling, I left Metatron and Iophiel as the angelic rulers of the spheres of the Primum Mobile and Fixed Stars, respectively. I haven't worked with either before, and have mostly kept to thespheres of the planets in my Work. The rest of the angel names were fine, except for Michael and Raphael. I still use the Trithemian attributions, with Michael in the Sun, and Raphael in Mercury.

Between each sphere, you place a cross, represented here with a + sign. When I was finished, I should have had:

+ AHYH Seraphim Metatron Sphere of the Primum Mobile + YHVH Cherubim Jophiel Sphere of the Fixed Stars + YHVH ALHYM Thrones Tzaphqiel [Planetary Symbol of Saturn] + AL Dominations Tzadqiel [Planetary Symbol of Jupiter] + ALHYM GYBR Powers Kammael [Planetary Symbol of Mars] + ALVH Virtues Michael [Planetary Symbol of the Sun] + YHVH TzBAVTh  Principalities Haniel [Planetary Symbol of Venus] + ALHYM TzBAVTh Archangels Raphael [Planetary Symbol of Mercury] + ShDY Angels Gabriel [Planetary Symbol of the Moon +

I don't remember exactly what I had messed up now. I think I had put the Principalities on twice and skipped the Virtues, or something like that. I had also run out of room, and my font size was rapidly shrinking. While it would have remained usable, I wanted it to look better than that, so I let it dry and then had the kids paint it white again.

Now, based on this exercise and the resulting state of mind (even typing it now, I've entered into a different perspective than I normally operate from), I've come up with the following exercise. It's fairly simple, and it results in a harmonizing effect within your sphere of influence.

You'll need a compass and a blank piece of paper to do this all yourself. I'll throw together an image you can print too.

You want to draw 11 concentric circles, each a half-inch wider than the previous.

You'll be writing out the names of God, the Orders of Angelic hosts, the Rulers of the Angelic hosts, and the symbol of the sphere in each circle, once from the center moving outward, and again moving downward.

In addition, as you write out the names of the Angelic Rulers, for a little added umph, you can include the sigils of each angel of the Planetary Spheres.

In the next image, I've got the names of God, the Orders of Angels, the sigils of the Planetary Angels where available from the Magical Calendar (reproduced in PowerPoint to avoid copyright issues), the Angels' names, and the Planetary symbols for each sphere.

In the center sphere, write out your name or Magical Motto. As you write it out, vibrate the name in a low chanting voice. In the circle above, write out the God Name for the Sphere of the Moon, vibrating the name as you write it and picturing the letters in your mind's eye at the same time. Write out the Order of Angelic host next, and again, vibrate the name. It feels a little silly vibrating "Angels," or at least it does to me. If you prefer the Hebrew names of the orders, they're in Agrippa's Second Book of Occult Philosophy, Chapter 13. Next draw the seal of the Angel of the Sphere and his (her, its) name, again vibrating the name as you do. Finally draw in the symbol of the planet, or Sphere of the Zodiac/Prime Mover while vibrating "The sphere of [insert appropriate planet/sphere here]."

Do this going up from your name through each Sphere. When you get to the top, go back down, this time drawing a cross at the front of each list of the sphere's attributes as you vibrate all the names again. When you get back to the center, you should be feeling something pretty groovy.

There are a host of other ways to do this. This particular exercise harmonizes your sphere, and prepares you to work with the grimoires of the Lemegeton in general, and specifically the Goetia. I'm interested in how others experience this, if anyone tries it. Feel free to leave comments about your experiences below, or email them to me directly if you want them kept private.

(1) I think we're working within the same current on this kind of thing, he and I. I'm sure he's much further along than I am, as well he should be after practicing as long as he has. While it's neat to find the ideas I'm having and the foundation of my own magical practices reflected in his work, you know, like a confirmation that I'm doing something right, it's also frustrating. Eventually I'd like to be a published occult author, but the way things are going, it'll look like I'm parroting his work. I'm totally not. I swear I didn't read about this before, it's based on my experiences. So is his stuff. I guess that magicians that do similar work have similar results, reach similar conclusions about how the seals and circles work within the magician. Shocking, I know.

(2) I'd like to take a minute to thank Joe Peterson for putting all these old manuscripts on his site. They have helped me incredibly over the past two years, and whatever blessing I have to give I give to him in thanks.

On Geomancy

You may remember the Geomantic Tumblers I recently purchased from Witchdoctor Joe (lord don't let the check bounce [Edit: too late. Sending cash.]). I've been using them as single-roll indicators. Ask a question, roll, check the meaning, and go with that as an answer. It has worked well enough (100% accuracy on things I can prove), but it's not that different from flipping a coin.

The other day, talking to Fr. S.L., a brilliant man, prone to long monologues on political topics, but otherwise a decent fellow (for a liberal), the subject of the geomantic tumblers came up. He said I needed to make four rolls, get the Mothers, then get from them the neices and nephews and uncles and step-cousines twice removed... I didn't know what he was talking about, if you can't tell.

It seems there's an actual divination method associated with Geomancy that I had no idea about! Checking Joe's instructions, I found that I was supposed to be looking for more details on geomancy from certain sources. Ignoring my arcane Googlemancy techniques, I decided to simply go to the web sites Joe suggested.

From one of them, I think it was Greer's site, I found a link that generates all the family members you need to do a reading (like Agrippa details in his On Geomancy book) based on the values of the four mothers you put into the program. You throw the tumblers four times while thinking of the question, recording the results of each throw. Put the values of each row into the sixteen blanks, and click "Generate Points" and wha bam! Instant results, witnesses and Judge included!

So, having learned this technique for getting more detailed readings, I have already employed it to my advantage. Asking questions about various topics covered lately, I found the Arbatel spirits are Celestial and Terrestrial combined, a bit of both; I found that today's job searches can generate new work in the price range I'm looking for, but it depends on meeting with the right people. (I did some Mercury Work with the Box to ensure I met the right people.)

Anyway, it's a nifty addition to this magician's tool kit, and I can't thank Joe enough. Buy lots from him.

Arbatel Spirits

In recent conversations with Fr. POS and Optimystic, the subject of where in the cosmology the Arbatel spirits belong has come up. They both place the spirits in the celestial or super-celestial realms. Personally, I think they're more like the Spirits of the planetary tables, that is, terrestrial reflections of the celestial governors.

Opti pointed out the Arbatel says: "They are called Olympick spirits, which do inhabit in the firmament, and in the stars of the firmament..." (from aphorism 15). He also pointed to Aphorism 16, which says:

There are seven different governments of the Spirits of Olympus, by whom God hath appointed the whole frame and universe of this world to be governed: and their visible stars are ARATRON, BETHOR, PHALEG, OCH, HAGITH, OPHIEL, PHUL, after the Olympick speech. Every one of these hath under him a mighty Militia in the firmament.
   
[...]

So that there are 186 [196]7 Olympick Provinces in the whole Universe. wherein the seven Governours do exercise their power: all which are elegantly set forth in Astronomy.

(From Joe Peterson's Twilit Grotto, The Arbatel.)

So the question remaining to my mind is "What is the Firmament?" Aphorism fifteen identifies their inhabitation as being both in the firmament and in the stars of the firmament. Why do both have to be mentioned? Opti interprets it as the super-celestial heavens. He could be right. He provided a dictionary definition that seemed to say the heavens. In Old Astronomy, the term meant "The orb of the fixed stars; the most remote of the celestial spheres."(1)  That would place these spirits clearly in the super celestial realm, thus ending the debate.

I'm stubbon though. I looked up the meaning of the word in more detail, and found from Easton's Bible dictionary this(2):

from the Vulgate firmamentum, which is used as the translation of the Hebrew _raki'a_. This word means simply "expansion." It denotes the space or expanse like an arch appearing immediately above us. They who rendered _raki'a_ by firmamentum regarded it as a solid body. The language of Scripture is not scientific but popular, and hence we read of the sun rising and setting, and also here the use of this particular word. It is plain that it was used to denote solidity as well as expansion. It formed a division between the waters above and the waters below (Gen. 1:7). The _raki'a_ supported the upper reservoir (Ps. 148:4). It was the support also of the heavenly bodies (Gen. 1:14), and is spoken of as having "windows" and "doors" (Gen. 7:11; Isa. 24:18; Mal. 3:10) through which the rain and snow might descend.

Based on this, and the very Biblical tone of the Arbatel, I believed the Arbatel spirits are within the realm of matter primarily. The physical planets and sphere of the physical stars is certainly not what is referenced by the spiritual spheres of the neoplatonists. If we travel to Mars for colonization, the martian settlers won't be considered to be in the sphere of the wandering stars, will they? All matter is within the sublunar realms, and the planets and stars serve as signifiers of their relative positionings in the divine or ideal realm. The actual spheres of the planets and fixed stars do not manifest physically.

Knowing I could be wrong, I performed some divinations that indicated I was partially right and partially wrong. The Arbatel spirits have qualities that make them both Super-Celestial entities, and terrestrial entities. They seem to be, based on divination, a combination of the Spirits and the Intelligences from the Kameas of the Planets in Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy.

So, based on the research, conversation, divination and meditation, I've decided I won't be ordering the spirits of the Arbatel around like servants. Instead, I'll keep my approach formal, as if  it were one Vice-President speaking to another within a corporation. By divine right, magicians are granted the abiltity to petition the spirits of the Arbatel, but there's no real authority over them provided in the grimoire. Instead, the only authority they are answerable to is God himself.

This rather helps explain why so much of the Arbatel focuses on your behavior. As a Christian saved by Grace, this behavioral thou-shaltism smacks of righteousness by works rather than by grace. That is, you do nice things and you get rewarded. I'm in Martin Luther's camp, that salvation is by grace through faith alone. Works, good deeds, being nice to animals and not splashing panhandlers in the rain while cackling gleefully at their misfortune... that's not going to get you anywhere with God, who says the righteousness of man is as menstrual rags before him. (mmmm, tasty.)

But we aren't talking about salvation, atonement or being in a right relationship with God. We're talking about magic petitions to spirits for direct intervention. Maybe you do have to be all righteous and pure to get anything out of the Arbatel spirits, and they don't see the Cross when they're measuring up whether you deserve their blessings or not.

hmmm. Well, it's something to think about, anyway. But like I said, I'll stick with the Goetic spirits for now. They recognize your position with God via the sacrifice of Christ readily enough.

Notes:
1. "firmament." Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary. MICRA, Inc. 29 Oct. 2008. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/firmament>.
2. "firmament." Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary. 29 Oct. 2008. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/firmament>.

Administrative stuff

See that Email the Author link below? If you've ever used it, please note that it hasn't worked the whole time it's been there until now. So if you sent me any emails, I wasn't ignoring you, or too busy. I never got them. Thanks to Fr. POS, I found this out and addressed the issue. Feel free to contact me about any posts, comments, or whatever. I made a couple of friends I IM with now through that very process.

Oh and another thing, if you leave a comment on my posts, chances are I'll answer them in the comments below. There's an option for you to subscribe to follow-up posts, so if you want to see my response, check that box. Otherwise you'll forget for months and when you get back to it, you'll want to carry on the conversation and I'll have no idea what you're talking about.

I think that's everything for now.

Happy camping.

Oh, P.S. I've been getting a lot of "I admire your work" emails. Please do not feed the ego. It's large and takes manly steps while walking already. The fact is most of my stuff is fun and utilitarian, but there are artists out there that deserve more credit.