Well, today the Great Work died.

Not the real Great Work, I’m talking about the Yahoo group. It’s been on its death bed for a while, but it was fun, nevertheless, to visit. Sometimes it would sit up in its hospice bed and talk about magic, or the “good old days,” or have pieces of wisdom to pass on.

Today I woke up and went over recent messages from the group, and as usual there was little to do with the Great Work. There was an interesting thread on politics though. Obama and McCain. Both of the Moderators are Obama supporters, but one of them, “ILV” is a little more … bombastic and caustic in his support of Obama.

Someone stated her reasons for supporting McCain after ILV asked, and like a rabid dog, ILV attacked her mercilessly, claiming she had no ethics, was racist, and so forth and so on. The last thing he had to say about the subject was an insult to her, saying he should know better than to engage in a battle of wits with the unarmed. That kind of arrogance was completely uncalled for and way over the top.

I know the woman he attacked. Not personally or anything, but from other groups. She’s not as eloquent and trained in classical rhetoric as ILV is, but she’s a damned fine magician whose wit is proved in her Work, not her Words. Her ethnic heritage is racially diverse, to say the least. She’s had a shitty life. She’s had a run of really bad luck. Yet she still takes care of the oppressed. She’s a New Age spiritual healer and teacher, and she travels around the world performing exorcisms for people. She doesn’t get paid much for her services, and she’s downright poor. She really does it to help people. I don’t think she’s got everything 100% correct in her spiritual cosmology, but I know I don’t know everything either. It’s her heart for people that I admire. That’s the fruit of the seeds of the Great Work in action. You can visit her web site at www.astralhealer.com.

She’s not a Christian, as far as I know. This isn’t solidarity with Christians or anything like that. And it’s not worldly politics either. I don’t like what McCain has become this year. It’s like he gave up the straight talk and hard-line moderate-centrist stance he had in 2000 just so he can win. ILV pointed that out, and he’s right about that. If I bother to vote (I agree with the global view that the puppet on the left and the puppet on the right are on different hands of the same puppeteer), then it will be for McCain in hopes that after he gets in office, he’ll go back to being the maverick he was before. But that’s if I bother, and that’s not likely. If I really cared about politics, I’d go to the spirits that run the world, like John Dee did.

I left the group today because its leadership, the co-moderator ILV, acted like an asshole. I’ve talked with him off-list, and he’s a good person at heart. He’s a trained magician, and has a great deal of information to provide. He’s really smart too. But in his interactions yesterday with list members, he demonstrated a lack of objectivity, tolerance, and respect that is required to be a leader of diverse people.

Obama spent twenty years in a church that taught hatred. He voted with his presence and his finances in support of that church, and as a Senator, he sanctioned the teachings of his preacher by belonging to the church. He should have, as a responsible leader, recognized that the hatred being taught was unacceptable from any race. The fact that he didn’t until it threatened his ambitions is sufficient for me to realize his “hope” and “change” rhetoric is only skin deep, but his ambition goes all the way to the bone.

Me, I don’t sanction the leadership of the “Great Work” group anymore. Scarlet, the list owner, is too busy to monitor it herself. She’s not to blame here, except in her support of ILV as a co-moderator. I left another group she started and co-mods with ILV as well, Spirit_Summoning. Mostly for dramatic effect, as he didn’t have much to say there, but also for the principle. She killed the thread and the topic as soon as she became aware of it. She’s a good moderator, and this isn’t about her at all, beyond the fact that she kept ILV as co-moderator.

Part of it is for the current drama, to have a chance to make a stand that is somewhat meaningful. Part of it is old-fashioned revenge. I was co-moderator of the Great Work list for a while, but then I went off on a caustic and vitriolic attack on ILV when he started acting like the veteran of Golden Dawn egroups that he is. I got reprimanded, demoted, and put on probation. I deserved it. I wasn’t living up to the responsibilities of being a moderator for a diverse group of people. I didn’t behave the way a moderator ought to. Now ILV has fallen into the same trap I did, and I get to raise a stink over it. Yay for me!

The truth though, if I’m being really honest, is that I’ve lost interest in the droning of magicians who treat magic like a religion, with doctrines and dogma, but don’t use it in their lives. The Great Work list was intended to be a place where pursuants of the Work could discuss the Work. It’s become a place where believers in magic talk about stuff. That’s fine if that’s what you want, but it used to be the place I learned some very basic key concepts about the Great Work that lead me to where I’m at today. That group died to me today. (“You’re dead to me! Dead!”)

I’m considering starting a list for people to talk about doing magic(k). Something interesting to me, something that can challenge me to do more and be more. Something like Agrippa’s Magic in a Modern Age, or Traditional Techniques for Modern Magicians. Somewhere to talk about how we apply the teachings from the old grimoires in a modern context, without worrying so much about trying to pretend like we live in the 15th century. If I do, I’ll announce it here.

Oh, and tomorrow, look for the “how to get rich using magic” post. Or Thursday, if I don’t finish writing it today.

Hope all my American readers had a great Labor Day yesterday. Mine rocked.

I never cease to be amazed at how many people will bull-headedly argue that their interpretation of some aspect of magick is “right”, quoting from Abramelin, Agrippa, and Robert Fludd as if that made them correct. I’m leaning towards the belief that there’s pretty much no factoid about ceremonial magick that should ever be debated in terms of “Right” and “Wrong”.

Raphael’s location on the Tree of Life is a perfect example.

I got really interested in where Raphael belonged by way of the LBRP. I was reading through a Thelema-based book, and saw that Crowley had once stated that the LBRP puts the mage at the crossroads of Samekh and Pe on the Tree. I thought, great! So I looked at the Tree to see just where exactly that was, since I haven’t memorized the paths at all.

Samekh lies between Yesod and Tiphareth, and Pe lies between Netzach and Hod. To understand it better, I wanted to see which Archangels were in the sephiroth. Raphael was attributed to Tiphareth, so you’re facing Tiphareth when you do the LBRP. Gabriel is in Yesod, so Yesod lies behind you. No problem. Michael is in Hod, and he’s in the south, so that’s over on the right. I got a little confused until I figured out you’re standing head-inwards into the Kircher diagram of the Tree of Life. It was still (sorta) making sense.

Then I get to Netzach. That’s all that’s left, but there’s nothing about Uriel being the Archangel of Netzach. Ok, sez I, Uriel isn’t the Archangel of Netzach, it seems to be some guy named Haniel, or Anael in some people’s texts. What gives? Why don’t we call Haniel instead of Uriel, if Crowley’s right?

My first response was that Crowley must be wrong, no biggy. But if the LBRP isn’t based on the tree of Life, where does it come from? So I researched it until I found that it comes from the Bedtime Sh’ma, a little prayer that Jewish people said before they went to bed at night. The archangels are the four archangels that surround the Throne of God. That’s why it’s Uriel, has nothing to do with the Sephiroth at all.

I was a little disappointed to find out that this banishing ritual I’d been using for years, that had worked wonders at clearing out sacred space, foiling clumsy magickal attacks from the people I pissed off in my bi-polar approach to existence, and banishing a myriad of entities was nothing more than “Now I lay me down to sleep” with some pentagrams thrown in.

But I’d stumbled across something ELSE in my efforts. I ended up going over the attributions of angels to sephiroth going from 777, Bill Heidrick’s Magical Correspondences, on back to Agrippa’s 3 Books of Occult Philosophy and the writings of Robert Fludd, a contemporary of Agrippa. Bill Heidrick pointed out that the attribution of Raphael and Michael flip according to the source, and I figured if I went back far enough, I’d find a definitive answer.

But no one had an authoritative basis for their claim. It was all hearsay. Agrippa recorded in one set of books what was available to ceremonialists of his time, but it was based on hearsay more than practice, and he says at some point, if you find I’m wrong, by all means, go with what you find.

Eventually, I figured I’d just evoke Raphael and ask him. I started with the LBRP, then “drew” his name in Hebrew letters the way you “draw” the pentagrams in the LBRP, and waited for him to show up.

When I told someone how I was doing the ritual, they said I was tainting my results by doing the LBRP first, and I should just do a straight evocation, with no prejudice. For three or four nights I did this, and got really wonderful visions from Raphael explaining where he belongs.

(Hod, by the way. He directs the flow of the energies of Mercury into Malkuth through Yesod.)

So what I learned from all this, besides where Raphael belongs, is that it doesn’t matter who said what, or what logical paths people have put together to get to the conclusion that Entity X “IS” in Sephiroth Y. You can’t trust anything in print to be the bottom line truth, and anything you find out on your own is subject to being only as much of the truth as you really need to know at the moment.

Morning, folks. Just a reminder… this blog is for you to learn to accomplish the Great Work. I like to try to make money off it sometimes, because it’s fun. Money is a marker system, keeping track of time and worth and value and everything like that. It’s fun to use it as a mundane scorecard for my magical Work. Not that you have to be rich to be successful, I’m just saying. It’s fun. For me. When I’m winning. It sucks when I’ve let things slip, but it’s always recoverable. So far. Your mileage may vary.

But what’s even more fun for me is when I get emails or comments about how people are using the experiences I’ve had to further their own Work. I’m trying to show people that magic is relatively easy. Any bumbling bafoon can do it. EVEN ME. You don’t have to be a highly skilled artist to do this stuff. Your Work can look ugly. Ugly works too.

Looking at the requirements of making all the stuff you need to do magic “by the book” is intimidating. But if you’re willing to experiment, and keep some basic safety mechanisms in place, your experiments won’t be any more dangerous than any other mad scientist on your block. And you’ll have invisible forces helping you, grateful that you’re putting them to work.

And let’s face it folks, the Spirits are a lot more forgiving and flexible than we like to pretend. If you don’t have silver, draw a Moon Talisman on a blank piece of paper. You can consecrate it to the Moon by drawing her planetary sigils around the border if you like. The spirits will work with that. Wands and Daggers and Cups and Disks are fun to collect. Planetary talismans are fun to make. But they aren’t the magic. They aren’t required to do the magic. What’s required ultimately from any magician is little more than a pen and paper and a whole lot of ambition. Aim for God, and if you only come close, hell, you’ve come a long way.

The other day someone sent me an overview of what they’re working on, a bit of their setup, and they talked about a technique they’re developing to cast silver. It looks really interesting, and I can’t wait to see his work. Awesome stuff. Made me feel really good, because one of the reasons I talk so much about how to do stuff is to get people doing it. Finding other magical crafters is fun. So if anyone else has any special neat tricks they’re working on to produce some powerful artifacts, feel free to let me know. Heck, start a blog about it and email me a link. I’ll publicize you to the fullest extent of my abilities.

4-11-06

Introduction

Welcome to the Head for the Red blog. The title comes from the four stages of the Alchemical Great Work, Black, White, Citrine and Red. In the Red Work, the final stage is reached, and the base elements are transformed into the Philosopher’s Stone.

That’s my goal, to reach the Red Work, and this blog is going to record my thoughts, ideas, and experiences along the way. I hope to play the Hierophant here, or at least to record the wanderings of one Hermit and his experiences. I figure I’m still at the Black stage, and I’ve got quite a ways to go before I get to Red, if I ever do, but I have no qualms in striving.

Fr. R. O.