We interrupt the regularly scheduled nothing new or magically oriented topics brought to you by Head for the Red for the following important News Item:

Have you ever wondered why exactly the spirits are so helpful? For years I suspected there was some plot or conspiracy behind what was going on, from the GWB to the Illuminati. When I went through a fundy phase, I was convinced they were demons trying to lead me away from Christ (never mind that they all pointed me back to Christ anyway). In my secular human phase, I assumed the advanced technology of some members of society was being used to manipulate otherwise talented individuals to keep them from interfering with the plan for interdimensional control.

I think I’ve finally got it figured out. It has to do with their intrinsic nature. Each of these spirits is a self-conscious non-corporeal intelligence. It was created (or emmanated) in order to direct a current that influences manifest reality. For instance, Jupiter is an aspect of God that is assigned to dignities, prosperity, and offices of authority. Venus is an aspect of God that has influence over the domain of the heart. They each have a set of skills and talents that they’re really good at.

These spirits are helpful because that’s what they do. They want to spread love, or assign dignities. That’s what they exist for. While they have general work to do, every time a specific mage calls upon them or their representatives, they have the opportunity to work with another intelligent aspect of God that wants to communicate with them. It brings them joy.

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.

I’ve recently joined a new yahoo group called EllenLlloyd. This group is dedicated to the Ancient Astronaut Theory, that the earth has been visited and continues to be visited by beings of an (or many) advanced civilizations who have either influenced or are directly responsible for the advancement of human civilization.

I generally try to stay away from our Alien-conscious, UFOlogist cousines. I believe I have a better understanding of the phenomenon they report interacting with than they do. I’m sure they believe the same about occultists in general. However, I am not willing to reject their theories altogether. There are some amazing overlaps of our particular fields.

For instance, today Ellen posted an article she recently wrote about the Everlasting Lights found in ancient tombs and reported above the temples of the ancients. Her article is good, and I recommend reading it if you have a few minutes to spare.

A few months ago I was researching the Portae Lucis, the Portal of Light ritual. The goal of this ritual is to raise the tincture of the sphere of your soul by making contact with Binah-Saturn. It’s very similar in effect to the Abramelin Ritual for making contact with your Holy Guardian Angel, and also similar in effect to Crowley’s Liber Samekh. The goal of the ritual is to establish and empower a higher connection to the Divine source, sort of. I had first read about this ritual in an interview with Jean Dubuis by Mark Stavish at the Alchemy Website.

In seeking more alchemical lore on the building of Houses of Light and Portals of Light, I found a treatise called The Everburning Lights of Trithemius. As most people who know me are aware, I am extremely fond of Johannes Trithemius. He was an abbot of a monastery who taught Agrippa, wrote some of the foundational texts on communicating with spirits, and wrote the original tale that became known as Faustus. Having read parts of the Steganographia and having practiced from the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals, I thought this treatise would be about the angels or spirits, and that it would be an allegorical reference to these entities as the “Everburning Lights.” Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a recipe for creating physical lights that one of his students had recorded.

So today, when I read Ellen’s article, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the overlap between our fields of study. I personally believe that the “Ancient Astronauts” and the “Angels” or “Spirits” of the occultists are the same entities. For proof we have Crowley’s Alamantrah working that resulted in LAM making his appearance, and the subsequent UFO phenomenon that occurred after Crowley established contact with that dimension’s beings.

By the way, that’s one of the many reasons I don’t combine alcohol, hashish, cocaine, ether and ritual magick. You just don’t know what you’re going to end up doing. But Crowley was a pawn his whole life, god bless him.

Jack Parsons, father of the Space Age, did what he could to create a “Moon Child” or a Nephilim in his Babalon working. Plato was the first to say that every man and every woman is a star. Well, every man anyway, and that if you’re not a rational man, you get reborn as a woman… That’s not my fault. Read Timaeus sometime. Good stuff.

Additional evidence is found in this Everburning Lights phenomenon. Where did Trithemius learn how to create these lights? We know from the other writings he is famous for that he was experienced in contacting the entities that travel between planes that we do not normally physically experience. His methods (or at least methods attributed to him) for contacting the angelic spirits work. I’ve spoken with Michael, Tzadkiel, and Haniel using the practices discussed in the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals (by the way, you need to include the sigils from the Magical Calendar and the method of creating Talismen from Agrippa’s Book 4 of Occult Philosophy). The spirits of the Goetia and the Arbatel are useful for a lot of mundane things, but I find it extremely interesting that their primary functions are not to provide physical results, but to provide information.

I believe Trithemius learned to make the lights from the Spirits. Those who believe in the Ancient Astronaut Theory believe the Everburning Lights are evidence that aliens have visited the planet and given us extra-terrestrial knowledge. What better term exists for the information we receive as magicians from interviewing the spirits than “extra-terrestrial?”

This doesn’t mean I believe the spirits “really are” aliens, or that there are no interstellar or inter-dimensional civilizations that influence humanity. Looking at the occult cosmologies of the ancient pagans, gnostics, and occultists around the world, I find it hard to believe that any magician would discard the theories of the Ancient Astronaut crowd completely. Our cosmologies are remarkably similar. Invisible entities bringing knowledge to mankind for our betterment, or for their own purposes. Think about it, what’s the difference between the theories of Niburu and the Annunaki compared to the deliverance of the Qabalah to Abraham by Ratziel?

The chief difference is that we as magicians continue to interact with these entities, while those of the Ancient Astronaut crowd seem to think that the aliens will be returning in some distant future. Then again, I’m not that familiar with the Sitchin followers and whether they believe the Ancient Astronauts are still working with particular individuals.

Jason Miller’s got a neat post about his recent experiences with St. Expedite. One of the things that caught my interest is that in his blog post, Jason mentions that he suspected the work was failing when it began to seem like he had been hit with a prosperity spell. He says:

I had all the signs of a prosperity spell being cast on myself, which could mean one of two things:

1. Just from working with that kind of mojo, I picked up some good juju.

or, more likely…

2. The Saint could not accomplish his task so all the energy was just zinging around like a stream of water hitting a wall.

I haven’t had anything like that happen, and I’m jealous. I want a ritual to not work and result in me getting prosperity too! Is that so wrong?

I don’t know of any rituals I’ve done that haven’t worked. Lots haven’t worked the way I expected at all, but I’ve always had some kind of result. Sometimes they try, but the spirits just aren’t of the proper type to address the problem you sent it to deal with. Some Venus spirits are great at delivering riches. Others are not. Haniel won’t necessarily make you rich, but if you try and it fails, you can ask him which Venus spirits would be better for this kind of thing.

Maybe my problem is that I don’t think of that as a failed ritual. I consider it an incomplete ritual. Every rite I’ve done has lead me to new rites, and a single ritual rapidly becomes an ongoing project, like the Bune spirit pot thing.