Rufus Opus

Posts by frredactumopus

Author: frredactumopus

  • Belial’s Gold Leaf Seal

    I’m working on a new method for making the golden seals for the Kings of the Goetia. New for me, anyway. I don’t know, maybe other magicians have been doing this for years. As far as I know, it’s all my creation though, so I’m taking credit for it.

    I carved Belial’s seal into an ordinary two-inch wooden disk, the kind you get from a craft store. I used the smallest little round carving ball dremel attachment I could find in my box. It may even have been intended for this.

    Oh, diamond grinding bits are great for quartz, not wood.

    So after carving the seal, I mushed it into Sculpey, some plasticene clay you can buy. You bake it at 275 (F) for fifteen minutes, and it turns to this weird harder-plastic that doesn’t bend or mush anymore. I pulled the wooden disk out, and had a nice little mold.

    I baked the mold for about an hour. I should have put it on a baking pan, but being the lazy magi that I am, I threw it on a piece of parchment paper (the baking kind) laying on the oven rack. Then I took it out and let it cool. Then I mixed up some plaster, and poured it in the mold, and let it set for a while.

    Sculpey has to be sealed with something water proof to make it water proof. Like paint or something. I didn’t do this, so all the water in the plaster just seeped out through the bottom of the Sculpey mold. I think it helped. I was able to pop out the plaster seal in an hour or so. One thing I noticed was that while baking, the Sculpey was still slightly malleable. Because this is the largest piece of Sculpey I’ve ever baked, it sort of drooped while it was baking, slightly misshaping the mold. So there’s a slight warp to the seal.

    I let it sit over night, and then I cleaned it up with a sanding bit for the dremel, drilled a hole in the top, and proceeded to attempt to leaf the damn thing in gold.

    With varying degrees of success. I bought this foil leafing kit that has a bottle of glue (they call it “size” but I swear it’s glue), a roll of foil, and some other stuff that doesn’t come into play right now. You put down the glue, wait for it to dry “clear” and then put the foil over it. You peel back the foil, and this plastic tape stuff comes away, and the foil is supposed to stick to the glue. Plaster, as you may know is white. It’s not easy to tell when a white glue has dried “clear” on white plaster. As you can see, it sort of almost worked.

    Also, the gold leaf is supposed to get into all the carved out cracks, right? But the foil stuck to the flat bits. So I used the handy 18 kt gold leafing pen. It turned out alright. Not great, but alright. I like the shininess of the leaf foil over the paint pen, but the paint pen has some real gold in it, while the leaf foil doesn’t.

    I really need to get a doggone working digital camera. I’ve been using my cell phone camera for this stuff, and it just doesn’t provide the clarity I want. It’s on my list of things to buy, as soon as the kids have all their back to school stuff, and things have quieted down on the home front.

    So, I will be trying again. There are some inherent caveats in this. It’s not all gold, for one thing, and that makes me less than happy. It’s plaster. It weighs hardly anything, and I’m afraid it’s going to break if I drop it, or chip, or something. It’s convenient for a one or two-time use, I suspect, but for a long-term relationship with this spirit, I’d probably suggest something a little more durable. Even gold-leafing the wooden disk would probably make for a sturdier talisman…

    Duh! I should have done that instead. Huh.

    Oh well. If I wanted to mass produce these things, I have the means, at least. Anyone want to buy some gold-painted plaster seals for the Kings of the Goetia?

  • 7 Planetary Spirits in a Week

    I’ve failed in this particular endeavor. I was attempting to work with one archangel of the planets (as listed in Trithemius and Heidrick’s resources) each day this week. I made it as far as Michael on Sunday. (Note: Michael is associated with the sun in Trithemius notes instead of Raphael. My own work with Raphael supports the Trithemius correspondences that put Michael in Tiphareth/Sun and Raphael in Hod/Mercury.)

    By Monday, I was exhausted. I was working with the archangels of the planets in the planetary hours of the planetary days. Due to my work schedule, I was waiting until 3:38 or 3:39 a.m. each night. The day time hours fell when I was at work, and the earlier night time hours coincided with the time I spent with my family.

    The results of my Saturday working with Tzaphkiel of Saturn were very pleasant. Previous expereinces with Saturn had been unpleasant, and depressing. For this operation, I started with the LBRP, went on through Liber Samekh to invoke my HGA, and then performed the evocation of Tzaphkiel. The results were immediate.

    Tzaphkiel appeared in the shewstone, and I stated my intention, to integrate the energies of saturn into my magickal sphere. Tzaphkiel agreed to help with this, and I felt the saturnine energies flowing into me, pooling in my fore-arms (of all places), like a weight was applied directly to my muscles and bones. Tzaphkiel explained the use of that energy as part of the operation.

    Sunday I worked with Michael, following the same pattern. I got a false spirit the first time who wouldn’t enter the consecrated shewstone. I banished and conjured Michael again, this time with the desired result. I asked for him to help integrate the energies of the sun into my sphere, and he agreed. The feeling was again physical as the solar essence entered my sphere. This time I felt it in the base of my lungs, and Michael explained that the key to accessing solar energies was in the breath. The four-fold breath excites solar energies (inhale for four seconds, press the breath down in your lungs for four seconds, exhale for four seconds, wait four seconds, and repeat) in your sphere.

    Monday I made a half-hearted attempt to contact Gabriel, but I fell asleep. Tuesday I was going to work with Gabriel and Kammael to “catch up,” but I figured it was a bad idea, and chose to stop the operation there for now.

    Working with each planet for as little as one day seems to give useful results, but not a lot of depth of understanding of each of the planetary powers. I started to understand the binding aspects of Saturn, and its application in assiah, but before I really integrated the energies, I was on to the Sun. In the future, I’ll pick up with Luna, but spend more time than just one day integrating lunar energies, and so forth throughout the planets.

  • Spirit Conjuring Overview

    Due to recent experiences at the Spirit Summoning yahoo group, I’ve decided to write a quick, down and dirty introduction to spirit conjuration. You won’t be a pro after reading this, but you will know enough to start asking the right questions, and maybe conjure a spirit or two. No promises on it not eating you though. Especially if you’re not a Christian.

    That was a joke.

    To conjure a spirit, you have to know a couple of things. Who are you to conjure a spirit anyway? Why should they answer you when you call them? What are you going to tell them to do? How can you be sure of success?

    If you know those things, you’re ready. If not, read Agrippa’s Third Book of Occult Philosophy. Skim the bits that don’t make sense yet. Go back and re-read those parts some other time. Get familiar with the basics of magical conjuration.

    To conjure a spirit, you need its seal and/or its name. You’ll need some method of communicating with it. You’ll need to know what its native pantheon is, and who it answers to in that pantheon. Here’s a hint: If you’re not in the pantheon somewhere, don’t work with that spirit. In traditional grimoires written from a Christian perspective, we get to conjure spirits because we are the “angels” of the Earth, and we have a place in the hierarchy. In Pagan stuff, if you weren’t an initiate into the Mysteries, your place in the pantheon was “target.”

    Once you’ve got the spirit’s name and/or seal, draw it out on paper and wear it on your chest. You can engrave it in the appropriate metal, or color it according to the spirits’ favorite color scheme, or whatever details you want to add to make it more effective, but at least start with the Name/Seal on paper on your chest.

    Now you’ll need to know its superior in the hierarchy. If you don’t have this, have a damned good reason to call the spirit anyway. Like, “Tezcatlipoca, I conjure you as God of Sorcerors to aid me in my sorcerous warfare against Magician X! You, oh God of Sorcerors, alone have the power to destroy him” and so forth. Convince them that they need to be here, or that they’ll get something out of the deal.

    If you’ve got the name of their superior, use it to conjure them. “In the name of God IHVH Tzabaoth I conjure you, Archangel of Venus ANAEL to appear before me in this crystal…” and so on.

    Then you talk to the spirit. Tell it what you want. Check to see if it’s who you expected (make it say “Jesus is Lord” if you’re a Christian). See if it can do what you want it to do, or if there’s another spirit that’s better suited. Get a personal seal and/or name.

    When you’re done, tell it goodbye. “Thanks ANAEL forstopping in, I had a great time, come back when I call you by the name you gave me and the seal, and if I even imagine the seal and say your name, be with me immediately. In the name of IHVH Tzabaoth, go in peace.”

    Do something physical to ground yourself out. Hold a hunk of Iron Pyrite, Hematite, or go outside and stand barefoot in some dirt. Take a bath. Imagine you’re a piece of rock, molten in the earth’s core, oozing up through a crack in the ocean and then hardening as the sea water sizzles against your skin. Whatever works for you.

    That’s a spirit conjuring overview. Most of the rest is details, and you’ll pick them up in researching each grimoire’s internal structure. After a while, you won’t use the grimoires because you’ll already have made contact with the spirits, and they’ll be guiding you directly. It’s neat.

  • Spirit Conjuring Overview

    Due to recent experiences at the Spirit Summoning yahoo group, I’ve decided to write a quick, down and dirty introduction to spirit conjuration. You won’t be a pro after reading this, but you will know enough to start asking the right questions, and maybe conjure a spirit or two. No promises on it not eating you though. Especially if you’re not a Christian.

    That was a joke.

    To conjure a spirit, you have to know a couple of things. Who are you to conjure a spirit anyway? Why shou

  • Bune Update

    As I mentioned in the Crystal Skull post, I’ve been Working with Bune on making the carved skull into a tool to aid in speaking with the spirits of the dead in general.

    In addition, I changed out the stuff inside the pot. It’s been over a year since I last did that, and the raisins and dates were mostly turned to dust. I took out some sweet grass I had put in, and I removed about a thousand little steel BBs. I have no idea why I put them in in the first place, maybe something to do with them being brass-colored or something, but in retrospect it was pretty stupid. Iron is anathema to the spirits of the Goetia.

    So now my Pot contains the following:

    • Dirt and rocks from the local branch of my bank
    • Four Herkimer Diamonds
    • One Orgone Generator
    • Lignum Aloes
    • Decayed bio-matter from various raisins and dates mixed in with the dust
    • Mistletoe (Venusian Herb)
    • Vervaine (Venusian Herb)
    • Coltsfoot (Venusian Herb)
    • Three Rosehips (Venusian Herb)
    • Myrtle (Venusian Herb)
    • Three pinches of Abramelin Incense (Traditional from Soma Luna; It has Cinnamon in it, an herb of Venus, and he always likes it)

    Now, it took me a couple of weeks to research these herbs and ingredients, track them down, order them and then have them get here. I bought a stone mortar and pestle to grind up the herbs together. On the day of the changing of the herbs, I cleansed the old stuff, picked out the uck, and re-interred everything.

    During the time I was working on gathering and researching Venusian herbs, and then after I had ground up all the herbs together and placed them next to me in the pot, I noticed some results.

    I attribute these generally passive results to just working with the herbs of the planet in a magical capacity. I don’t attribute it to Bune specifically.

    Regarding Bune, he seemed pretty happy with the changes. Less than a week later, I received a job opportunity through email that could result in a doubling of my income for at least three months. One cannot beat that with the proverbial stick.

    Assuming all goes well with the interview (the first two interviews have gone swimmingly), I’ve just got to point out that even in the midst of a really bad financial time with Jupiter in Capricorn, here I am making a fortune. If I land the job and everything goes well, it will be a couple of weeks to a month before the income actually doubles. Maybe that’s part of waiting for the expansion in measured steps that the Jup-Cap placement requires, but it’s also how things manifested when Jupiter was in Sag.

    So I’m more convinced than ever that the astrological timing doesn’t apply to the spirits of the Goetia. They are sub-lunar in my cosmology, and this result seems to reinforce that. A friend’s HGA told him specifically to ignore the astrological timing when working with Bune, so this kind of confirms that.

  • General Updates

    If you’ve subscribed to my feed, you’ll note that only the first bit is coming through now instead of the whole blog post. You have to click the link to see the full post. I know it’s a pain in the butt, but people were posting the entire blog on different web sites with their own Google adsense stuff all over it, so they were profiting off my work. Sorry, I don’t play that game.

    After seeing the cool new skin over on the Conspiracy of Pleasure, I couldn’t take my blog’s color scheme anymore, so it’s been updated.

    There’s no more adult content warning. I’ll try not to cuss as much. I changed it because Google’s adsense content crawler was checking the warning page to see what kind of ads to display, which is why for months you’ve seen ads for blogs instead of magic-related things. Lord willing, that’s going to change now, whenever the Google bots get around to this site again. Now that I’ve said Google a hundred times in this post the ads will all be about Google. :Sigh:

    Enought technical skullduggery. Back to the Great Work!

  • General Updates

    If you’ve subscribed to my feed, you’ll note that only the first bit is coming through now instead of the whole blog post. You have to click the link to see the full post. I know it’s a pain in the butt, but people were posting the entire blog on different web sites with their own Google adsense stuff all over it, so they were profiting off my work. Sorry, I don’t play that game.

    After seeing the cool new skin over on the Conspiracy of Pleasure, I couldn’t take my blog’s color scheme anymore, so it’s been updated.

    There’s no more adult content warning. I’ll try not to cuss as much. I changed it because Google’s adsense content crawler was checking the warning page to see what kind of ads to display, which is why for months you’ve seen ads for blogs instead of magic-related things. Lord willing, that’s going to change now, whenever the Google bots get around to this site again. Now that I’ve said Google a hundred times in this post the ads will all be about Google. :Sigh:

    Enought technical skullduggery. Back to the Great Work!

  • General Updates

    If you’ve subscribed to my feed, you’ll note that only the first bit is coming through now instead of the whole blog post. You have to click the link to see the full post. I know it’s a pain in the butt, but people were posting the entire blog on different web sites with their own Google adsense stuff all over it, so they were profiting off my work. Sorry, I don’t play that game.

    After seeing the cool new skin over on the Conspiracy of Pleasure, I couldn’t take my blog’s color scheme anymore, so it’s been updated.

    There’s no more adult content warning. I’ll try not to cuss as much. I changed it because Google’s adsense content crawler was checking the warning page to see what kind of ads to display, which is why for months you’ve seen ads for blogs instead of magic-related things. Lord willing, that’s going to change now, whenever the Google bots get around to this site again. Now that I’ve said Google a hundred times in this post the ads will all be about Google. :Sigh:

    Enought technical skullduggery. Back to the Great Work!

  • Ex Drama, Mortis


    Out of the Drama, Death.

    Ok, I’m not a Latin scholar. Canum Latinum, that’s the best I can do with my current skill sets. Maybe Ill get the Rosetta stone software for Latin. In the mean time…

    Out of Drama, Death.

    So I went from being bored with lists to starting shit on them. I got a moderator warning. And the mod totally likes me, too. She’s put up with my shit for years, and when I get a mod warning from her, I know it’s usually warranted. So I check myself.

    This time, I was already aware that something was off, but I hadn’t really done anything about it. Do you get like that? You know there’s something “off” in your sphere or alembic or whatever your metaphor for your spiritual existence, but you don’t bother with figuring out what it is right away because your really just don’t feel like it?

    That happens to me more often than I like. So what’s going on? I haven’t done anything lately that I don’t usually do. I’ve been slipping in my ascension through the spheres. There’s been nothing new to report in any of the spheres for months, it seems. Like I ask the archangel of the sphere if there’s anything I need to work on, and it’s like, no, and I’m all, thanks, please continue to integrate the forces of your sphere into mine, and he’s like, yeah ok, and I’m off to the next sphere. Same old same old.

    Plus there’s been a slew of 12-year-olds in the house for the last month as my daughter has started making friends around here after a year. They’re fun, alive, full of life and potential, and annoying as shit. AND they eat a lot. I can’t keep a bag of cheesy poofs around to save my life.

    I spent a couple of weeks fixing my spirit pot with Venus-based herbs. Bune’s been enjoying it, and I have an opportunity to double my income that manifested a couple days after adjusting the contents of the pot.

    I’ve also been developing an interest in crystal skulls. More on that in a bit.

    Let’s see, there’s been a horrible astrological conjunction for the last couple of weeks too. Saturn and Mars have been conjunct in Virgo for a while. That’s a lot of heavy, malefic energy pouring down on us. Venus and Mercury have been combust as well.

    So basically, I’m just hitting a “plateau.” You know, like a mountain, but with a flat top. It goes from a steep climb that takes a lot f focus to a flat, plain expanse that doesn’t take hardly any effort to traverse, and nothing really happens. You can see for miles if anything’s approaching, and… it can be rather boring if you’re more interested in climbing.

    The maintenance phase of the Work in between the times when you do something major are like plateaus. Lots of magicians stop at a plateau. The daily grind distracts them from the Work because nothing’s really going on, and they get frustrated, so they start making drama for themselves to have something interesting going on.

    And that’s what I’ve been doing. The way I see it, creating drama is a negative means of providing entertainment. It doesn’t get me closer to God. I don’t find myself sharing anything particularly useful to anyone by being a contentious bitch. I’m not putting my energies into purifying anything by starting shit on lists, that’s for sure.

    So after taking a quick inventory, I changed tactics. Instead of just starting shit, I decided to actually talk about things of substance. Instead of grumping around, I’ve found an interesting side project to occupy my time. It doesn’t take any specialized knowledge that I haven’t already got, it’s just putting the techniques I’ve developed to date into practice in another realm. I’m monitoring my internal feelings too, to see how I’m doing, and why I might be feeling pissy in each moment that I feel pissy. It’s been an interesting exercise so far, and I’ve only been doing it for a day.

    It boils down to reacting to how I feel vs. creating a scene that makes me feel a particular way. I don’t like being a bitchy magician. I don’t like it a bit. So I seek my pleasure, and that comes from being what I really am, a manifestation of God, taking part in the creation of the World. It’s a great attitude adjustment. Remembering your race and value, that you are of the divine Race (REGARDLESS OF SKIN COLOR), and your Value is determined by whether you’re actively participating in Creation or not.

    So out of Drama, Death. Death is change, mortification, decomposition, and breaking down the useless shells into something fecund, nutrient-rich, and pathogen free that will make the flowers grow. Or the Oak, or the corn, or whatever you plant in it. Even a Rose. The bitchy pissy magician must die, be digested, and refined for the next stage of the Work.

  • A Week-Long Walk

    Ahh, the waxing moon. Maybe I’m just superstitious, I don’t know, but I certainly do feel better in general. With Mercury going Direct in the same week, I feel pretty good about things in general.

    This week, I plan to work with each of the archangels of the planets in their appropriate hour on their appropriate day. The goal is to achieve better balance and integration of the energies of the spheres. I’ve spent the last month or so obsessing with Jupiter and its denizens in the different worlds, and I got to a point where everything I saw was related to money. I’m pretty sure my pupils had become dollar signs.

    Many thanks to the people who have pointed this annoying trait out to me. The point of my work is to head towards the Red Work after all. So to get myself back on track, I’ve embarked on this particular course of action. I began Friday with a discussion with my HGA, and then last night worked with Tzaphkiel to integrate the energies of Saturn into my sphere. Later today I’ll be working with Michael to integrate the energies of the Sun.

    This week, expect to see posts of the results of my Works.