Inventory Time

Right now, we're in the Jewish mystical week between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the High Holidays. I'm not Jewish, but I'm human, and the High Holidays are meaningful in a human context that applies to me even though I'm a Hermetic Christian.

On Rosh Hashanah, I took the time to remember where I was a year ago, and where I fucked up, and who I fucked over this year. This week I'm repenting and atoning where necessary, and planning the year to come. On Yom Kippur I'm doing a Saturn rite to seal the plan in place, and then I'll be traveling to the spirit realm throughout the year to get help and support in implementing the plan.

In figuring out my plan, I went back to basics. Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here? What do I want? What has to happen to get me what I want? What spiritual aid will be most appropriate?

I am a human being, made in the Image of God. I am a magician, called to move between the spiritual and material realms to gain power and insight, to take my place as a manifestation of the Divine and resume my proper role of Creator and Maintainer of my world. I am directly responsible for most of what I experience. I am responsible for my reactions to the things I experience that are not direct manifestations of my decisions, thoughts, and actions. The things I experience this year will be the results of the things that I have done and will do, mostly.

I am the nexus point of the spiritual and material realms. Through me the world I experience is created. In the material realm, the Realm of Elements, the Ideas in the Mind of God take shape and form, the spiritual powers that contributed to the fleshing out of the Idea are reflected in matter. In the spirit realm, I am in all the heavens at the same time, in communion with my spiritual brothers and sisters. I am in a world in motion, where the powers and forces I deal with in the spiritual realm are at play. I am in the realm of the Effect, experiencing my spiritual and material realities from a constantly moving reference point of consciousness that travels across space and time under the guise of "now."

And most of what I experience already happened a few milliseconds before I became aware of it enough to react.

I am here to create and maintain my world. I gain the wisdom and power to do so through my spiritual practices. I get clues about the future through divination and direct revelation. I get clues about what I need to be focusing on from my desires, and my interests. I get clues about where my next projects will lie from my inspiration, my Muse, my Genius.

As for my plans, and what spiritual aid is necessary to accomplish them, well, you'll just have to wait and see. Let's just say this coming year is going to be a lot of fun.

Hermetic Magician, Keeping to Agrippa

Heh, Jason forever cracks me up. At Crucible, he had a tinge of jealousy because he and Andrieh were all over the place describing their paths, and I was able to sum it up by saying I kept to Agrippa.

But as I recently mentioned, I do chakra work too. And a lot of my spiritual understanding is heavily influenced by Crowley. And Taoism. And I did Eckankar and Soul Travel too. When he mentioned that I was all, Sugmad! Good times! And I've done GD stuff, and Modern Magic, and ADF druidry, and Celtic Wicca. I've been an Erisian Mystic, ever so much more advanced and understanding than those stupid Discordians. Chaos Magic? Well, yeah. Rootwork? Maybe sometimes, something similar. I use the oils made by root workers. I'm really fond of the charms of Pow Wow. I'm into charismatic Christian Kerygma magic, and I make use of various Catholic stuff in most of my rites these days.

My main goal is to accomplish the Rainbow Body of Dzogchen and become a Powerful Dead, like the Egyptians did.

But at Crucible, I was presenting an overview of using Hermetic Magic, based on Agrippa, to rule your world. So I kept it to that. It summed me up for the purposes of that particular space and time.

We're all more than a label can cover. I like "Magician" because it fits well enough, but I firmly believe all labels are lies, and no word can accurately and fully communicate the Idea it represents fully. Words are shit, but they're the best thing we have to communicate with.

Some Serious Magic

The Detroit Lions have sucked donkey shit for years in terms of being a professional football team.

Here's their record:

Year  Wins-Losses
1998     5-11
1999     8-8
2000     9-7
2001     2-14
2002     3-13
2003     5-11
2004     6-10
2005     5-11
2006     3-13
2007     7-9
2008     0-16
2009     2-14
2010     6-10

You'll note that the last time they even won more games in a season than they lost was in 2000.

Then some British kabalist, with as much interest in American football as any proper British man should have, picks the goddamned Detroit Lions to run a series of experiments on. "A Lion has Roared" he calls it.

In the last four games, the Lions have won, and won hard. They're facing the Bears next week, and they're favored to win. It's still early in the season, but right now the Lions are tied with the Packers for the lead in their division. In my opinion, that's pretty unbefuckinglievable.

I'm watching this experiment with a great deal of interest. I'm looking forward to seeing the results at the end of the season.

Sports though? Really? What has the wins/losses of the Detroit Lions have to do with magicians? Fuck, if you don't know the answer to that one, shame on you. Simon Tomasi's blog is "Trainee Golem Builder." He's in training. He's experimenting, practicing. He's taken on a project that can have pretty obvious results. He's testing his skills, flexing his magical muscles. He's learning how to influence the world.

He picked something he doesn't really give a shit about (I don't think), American Football. It might not seem like a big deal, but Detroit's going through some major shit. They don't have a lot to be proud of right now. They don't have a lot, period. They're broke and desperate, the Somalia of the United States. A successful home team can be a morale booster that slops over into all aspects of the city's economy, crime, and future expansion. Every win brings a little bit of joy to Michiganders who have been consistently disappointed for a decade in their team's performance, in their treatment by the unions and the auto manufacturing companies, and their government. The indirect consequences of a winning season in Detroit could be huge.

Well begun, sir. And good luck.

Goddamn it Gordon

I'm on my phone posting this at 3:00 in the morning because I can't stop thinking of baroque magic.

If it's not baroque, don't fix it!

There, i said it. That was burning my brain.

But he's got me thinking. I use specialized language a lot. Hermetic stuff that is almost ro specific. Spheres and such.

After talking to different people in the flesh at crucible, I've remembered some things about semantics I had forgotten.

So for a while at least, i will be trying out plain english again. I'm going to be talking in ways anyone can understand, I hope. No guarantees on how long it will last, but we shall see.

Crucible Report

A fabulous time indeed!

I had one of the best weekends of my magical career this weekend. I finally got to meet Jow and Deb, excellent people, and I had a really interesting conversation or two with Andrieh Vitimus. I got to meet Kenaz at long last and hear him speak. Totally different than anticipated, still totally inspiring. I met Frater Servitor Lucem and his lovely wife Lavanah after years of correspondence and exchanged magic over the distances, and I am so relieved to tell you he is much better looking in real life than in his online pictures. He sent me a picture once that scared my son. I think he had a Palpatine lens on that camera.

I had long and interesting conversations with one of my Gents for Jupiter fellow members (who also happens to be among my top favorite students) and her wife, and she's awesome. Truly. I bet you solid money she's the only one of my students who could draw Kammael's seal from memory. Except maybe Victor. Absolutely brilliant.

There were several logistical issues that came up for me. Traveling plans will be better planned in the future. And I will hopefully not forget my laptop next time. Thanks Mr. Miller for letting me use yours. And thanks Mr.s Salem for introducing me to DropBox, which allowed me to have my presentation all available when I needed it instead of stuck on a hard drive two and a half hours away.

Perhaps the highlight of my trip was getting to sit in on three of Jason Miller's classes. I think it was three, anyway, the details are already fading into a blur of pleasant enjoyment and good times. Ok, two and a panel I shared with him. And we finally got to sit and talk for almost an hour uninterrupted. I plan to do that with him more frequently.

I've gotten to see Jason speak publicly four times now, and I've gotten to compare his teaching style to my own and those of other presenters. If you ever get a chance to attend a Jason lecture, you should make every effort to go. He drives the main points home without being an ass. Highly enjoyable, enlightening even. 

I was nervous, but probably shouldn't have been. I wanted a noobier audience for my presentation than I got, it turned out to be the people I didn't need to cover basics with, so half my presentation was something I could have skipped and moved on to the meat of daily practice and beyond.

Quick note on if you're the only presenter there in a tie: Don't be surprised when the conference members ask you when desert and coffee will be served, the only other people in the hotel wearing ties were, after all, waiters. Still, I think it was necessary for me to wear one. For personal reasons.

Oh, and the final lesson I learned: an hour and a half is not long enough to cover the entire Great Work and the role of the magician. I figured I'd have that bit done in half an hour and we'd have plenty of time to talk about projection and strategy. By the time I got to the Strategy part, I was reduced to... "Read Jason's book, and do it, it works."

Feh.

Anyway, there is video, and if it's as rough as I think it will be, fuck you you don't get to see it. I was rushed on the parts I wanted to take my time with.

But the good news is, now that I've presented publicly a few times, I'm more comfortable standing up in front of a camera and giving lessons in person. Expect video to play a stronger role in RO stuff in the future. So much fun.