Speech, thou tongue, thou voice, oh thou sacred informer, creator of the world, be kind and serve me well, that no idleness should pass my lips, nor any word fall to the ground and without bearing fruit.

Hierophantic Psychopompery

At Its Finest

I don’t want to talk about guns or mental illness or problems in the world. I want to go back to funny pictures from I Fucking Love Science, or Intelligent, classy, well-educated women who say F*ck a lot. I want to argue about the nature of enlightened attainment, and the pros and cons of Charismatic Hermetics and the Ecstatic path.

I don’t want to think about problems that simply cannot be solved with magic, therapy, words, reason, rationality, or heartfelt appeals to an allegedly better nature. I don’t want to think about how sometimes you can’t make things better, and that there are just some things that suck no matter how you look at them.

You Don’t Always Get What you Want

But this shit’s real. People hurt. The mind shattered by trauma doesn’t heal, doesn’t ever go back to not being broken and wounded, it just learns to function in spite of being broken. Like a vet with a missing leg, a prosthetic can help him function, or a wheelchair can get him around…

But “functional” is not the same as “healed.”

There is no cure for most “mental illness.” There is only treatment. Treatments include medication, which works a shockingly small amount of the time, or therapy. Successful therapy isn’t about getting rid of the blackness of the episodes, it’s about learning to get through the blackness to the light on the other side. It’s about getting to a point of being functional. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

A lot of my ecstatic posts lately focus on the joy of living. Joie de Vivre for the motherfucking win! Because I like being happy, and I like having fun. It’s exciting. And I found out some really cool ways to be happy and have fun this year that I want to write about and talk about and share, because being happy rocks, and I want you to be happy too! Because I’ve been around you when you’re miserable, and that sucks! Fuck that! Get happy, FFS!

But my focus on this stuff shouldn’t be taken as the entirety of the Hermetic path. Doing this stuff that I do does not guarantee all joie all the time. It doesn’t make all the bad shit go away. You still have to face it, and deal with it.

That is, in many ways, the actual point of Hermetics, and the best thing we can get out of this path: the tools to deal with things that suck, and the wisdom to use them effectively.

No one is going to buy anything I write, put the rites into practice, and never suffer any sadness, pain, fear, or trauma ever again as long as they live. But if I can pass on the skills and knowledge I’ve picked up that get me through the blackness, that mitigate the worst of the suck-ness, then I’ll consider it a win.

Bad shit happens, we feel terrible, and then we deal with it. We cope. We get through the blackness, and when it has gone past us, we turn and see its path, just like in the litany. We study it, observe it, and learn what triggered it, and we go after that with our magical rites, shoring up defenses, attacking the source, banishing people, or just finding ways to avoid the shit that sucks.

Avoiding Shit that Sucks

Hm. Quick tangent, but this is important:

Remember this: there is no problem in life that is too big to run from. At least, temporarily. You can leave the bad situation and get your head on straight. You can divorce the idiot. You can quit the job. You can live in a shelter. You can wash up on a foreign shore, and start a new life from scratch. You can go completely off-grid and live in the shadow culture that’s just around the corner of Everystreet, Everywhere, Planet Earth. It’s not going to be easy, but it might just be better.

You can always quit. And sometimes, that is the solution that works. We are told, “Never quit!” We are told not to give up, to keep trying to reach our dreams and goals, to never accept failure, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again! We have Edison’s failed light bulbs shoved in our faces. We are encouraged to be eternal optimists.

And I’m guilty of doing that, too.

But sometimes the only solution is to quit and go do something else. Something more fun. Maybe you’ll learn something that lets you finish this project later, or maybe this project just isn’t supposed to happen. Whatever. You’re free to go, you don’t have to stay. If dealing with that shit is something you’re supposed to do in this lifetime, it will no doubt wash back into your life sooner or later, right? So fuck it. Walk away for now, and when you feel better, think about it and how you’d use your magic to deal with it. And THEN deal with it.

I don’t think that should be your first option every time, but don’t toss it out of the toolbox arbitrarily. Just remember it’s an option you have available.

Most of the time though, quitting is way too extreme of an option. Sucky shit just crops up out of nowhere, and needs to be addressed. Most of the time, the best way to deal with shit that sucks is the tried and true magical approach.

Practical Hermetic Process of Dealing with Transient Evil (a.k.a. Shit that Sucks)

Evil needs darkness to survive, so you shine light into the situation: that’s the Sun. Solar rites scatter the darkness and reveal the things hiding in the shadows. It brings the evil to the surface where it can be seen and dealt with. The light of the Sun is enough to make most evil things wither and die immediately, or run to the hills where there is shadow. It gets rid of most shit right away.

But not always. Some shit, when revealed in the light, gets really mean and ugly, and goes on the attack.

Cut that shit with iron. This is the Martial rite. You get some help from the forces of Mars to defeat that evil shit like a boss. Legions of Martial Angels will fuck some pasty pale shadow-creeping crapulentities right the fuck up. And then they will form a hedge of protection around your sphere, all bristling with pointy swords and spears and missiles and rockets and cannon and guns that hurl pieces of the next sphere you go to when getting rid of evil…

Saturn, the sphere of DEATH. Mr. Grimm. This is the Greater Malefic, and there is no better place to go to learn the nature of an evil thing. Here you see how this evil was able to be born into your life, and the things that must occur for that evil to die in your life. All things have their beginnings and their endings defined in the sphere of Saturn.

Also, Saturn is your border, your defense, your wall of protection. Here you can make it much more difficult for the evil to assail you.

Note that the Saturn rites are focused on gaining wisdom, insight, understanding, and defense. Note there’s nothing said about sending out evil to get rid of evil. Note that well. There’s a reason.

The Sun, Mars, and Saturn. It’s a progressive approach that lets you triage the situation immediately, root out the evil, and then keep it out. At that point you go into healing and rebuilding rites of Jupiter, Mercury and Venus, reshaping things in your world through the Moon.

Practical Hermetic Process of Dealing with the Other Evil

Some shit isn’t going to go away, no matter how hard you try. There are some things you just can’t get rid of. Chronic, recurring shit that sucks. Other shit that just descends on you out of nowhere that leaves you devastated and wondering what … the … fuck …

The only effective way I’ve found to prepare myself to deal with the Big Bads in life is through the actual practice of the Great Work. It’s like training your body to be able to react well in an emergency rather than training for a specific event. You go through all the spheres regularly, you pursue god, you reclaim yourself, your race, your value, you take back your divine heritage so that when the evil comes, you are able to pull yourself together, put out the secondary and tertiary manifestations of the evil, and deal more constructively with the forces of things that you don’t want in your life that you can’t keep out.

As you do more and go higher, you’re able to integrate the forces that would otherwise bring you pain, and work around them, minimizing their negative impacts, transmuting some aspects of it, and finding ways to make it positive even though it fundamentally sucks at the core.

Passionate ecstatic pursuit of God conditions your spiritual muscles, and trains you to interact with things in ways that are beneficial. It teaches you to look for good things in bad situations, to see the world as your oyster, to be able to pick up on the potential opportunities that are lying behind the scenes in every situation. It raises your vibration and builds up the skills and tools to find your way through the bad and into the good. It gives you the power to create something better to take the place of the bad, to put it into perspective, to rob it of its power over you, if you can’t get rid of it entirely.

But that’s not easy, and it’s not all fun, and it’s not entirely safe.

But it is entirely awesome.

Regardless…

Shit things that suck are going to come into your life, and you’re going to have to deal with it, forever until you die. You have the power to do that, to deal with it. You have a framework of symbols and tools that let you channel the powers of the forces of creation. You have the phone numbers of the most amazing experts on the powers of creation ever.

You can’t make all the evil go away all the time. But you can always deal with it until it’s over.

And remember, sooner or later, everything ends.

If you order something from me that I have to send you by email attachment, do not bitch at me about not receiving it when you’ve got your fucking email settings set to reject email from unknown senders.

I’ll hold off on Enlightened because there’s baggage that I’m not ready to claim that comes with that word. For today, we’ll just talk about whether or not you’re Illuminated.

Most of the readers of my blog know how the universe works. Ideas from the “ABOVE” are made to manifest into the material realm “BELOW” where they are experienced before they return to the Mind from whence they came. Magicians are the folks who Hermes has seen fit to grant the call of teh magicrafts to travel between the “ABOVE” and “BELOW” working with the entities that also use Jacob’s Ladder to transit between the Earth and the Heavens. We’re all manifestations of the divine, we are lower-case gods, we are beyond good and evil and what we do is right because we do it, right?

A few of the audience are still struggling with that last part, and I totally understand; it’s not nice and it doesn’t fit in with what we’ve been taught by our spiritual systems, and there’s a whole LOT of room for misunderstanding and fucking shit up when you start tossing “good” and “evil” out the window. Yeah, “here there be dragons” and shit. Don’t go there without plenty of light.

But for the most part, you guys understand that we human beings create our reality, we make what we see in our minds happen in our worlds’ shared experiences. If you’ve done some practical magic that works, you know you’re a creator god who has the power to shape your world as you see fit. At least some of the time.

But fuck. We don’t act like it very often.

Part of that is because we’re always learning how little we know. As we progress, we learn a lot, and then we see how much more there is to learn. We get humbled by this, and pay more attention to what we want to learn than what we already know, and that’s awesome for learning new shit.

But what you already know is important too. It’s ok to act like you really are illuminated, a powerful and wise spiritual leader. It’s ok to behave as if you were really as empowered and experienced as you really are. It’s ok to be an Illuminate.

Take a look at your actions, are they bringing you the world you want to live in?

Take a look at your desires, are they what you really want?

Take a look at the harmony of your desires and your actions in your life. Do you do things to get what you really want?

You know how this all works. You really do. Thought becomes word, becomes plan, becomes action, becomes experience, becomes memory, becomes resource for future plans and actions and experience, on and on and on, and you’re the fuckin’ boss.

It’s ok to remember who you are, and what you’re here to do. It’s ok to be Illuminated.

When the light’s flowing through you, you won’t have to worry about the dragons, lurking in the dark.

The corners of the Universe are supported by what?

Those Four fixed signs, who else do they represent?

“the Greeks used to represent Dionysus in four distinctive forms: one as a bull,
one as a lion, one as an eagle and one as a drunken, joyful man!” –Thomas Gazis

And what’s that going on in the center there, with that woman and that snake? Who is She supported by the Serpent Fire? What is that in her right hand? What the fuck is it that is being expressed in Dionysian revelry?

But FRATER RO is nothing but AN EYE; what eye none knoweth.Skip, witches! Hop, toads! Take your pleasure! — for the play of the Universe is the pleasure of FRATER RO.

It took a full day to receive it all, to experience it in full, and to reach understanding.

It began in the morning, as I sat enjoying coffee and breakfast with Harper. We were talking about what we wanted to do today. We had been planing an evening conjuration of our favorite entity from the Theurgia Goetia for days. The temple space was already adorned in red roses, a seal embroidered, and an offering made. The lights flickered throughout the house, a now-familiar indication that this spirit was present and ready to interact with us.

And then it came to me, that prickling at the edges of my sphere. “I also want to do a Lunar rite today, something with Gabriel,” I found myself saying. It was Monday, after all, and there was something I needed from the Moon. No clue what it was. Just a feeling.

Harper smiled*, and we talked a bit about it, and the conversation turned. Soon it was time for her to go to work, and we each drew a tarot card of the day, as we are wont to do. I drew the Aeon of the Thoth deck, formerly Judgment. You remember the Judgement card, the one with Gabriel blowing his horn, raising the dead to their resurrection bodies, calling us to our Judgment Day, and beginning our new eternal life? That one. That one with Gabriel on it.

His vibe was upon me, and I laughed.

The day passed. I turned the remains of a rotisserie chicken into soup. We had started boiling the carcass the night before for stock, thinking of cooking lentils in it, or something. Sliced carrots and onion moved on thermal currents among the bones and skin and fat as it bubbled on the stove. Before she had left, Harper and I had decided it would not do as stock, but must become soup. I strained the stock, separating the bones from the meat and veggies, Harper’s familiar assisting me in the task as a good feline co-chef should. To the fridge went I, and scavenged more veg to toss in. Fresh spinach leaves, and leftover cauliflower from the night before. Sliced mushrooms. Some long grain black rice, a handful of quinoa. Salt, of course, and coarse ground black pepper. Rosemary and ever so little oregano, ground in the palm of my hand.

Harper came home for lunch, and we ate the soup that had turned out so well. I was surprised how delicious it was. At how a well-picked pile of bones could be transformed into something so wonderful. The essence of the old transmuted into something new, something even better than it was before. The rotisserie chicken was good, don’t get me wrong. But the soup was so much better.

I had a conference call in the Lunar hour in the afternoon, and so I couldn’t conjure Gabriel when I wanted. Harper and I chatted online about conjuring him out of hour, and I was about to do so at the close of the business day, when client needs took precedence over my own. I ended up spending a couple hours performing a Hermetic Diagnosis in the temple instead. Harper returned home, and we worked in parallel on the things we needed to do into the evening. We broke for dinner and a bit of a movie, before returning to the Temple to conjure the spirit of the Theurgia Goetia. She took the role of seer, and we received the information we needed to receive.

And it was time to ground out and go to bed, but I felt it again, at the edges of my sphere. I checked the time before we left the temple, and it was still within the third hour of the Moon. I conjured him, Gabriel, and we received the vision, heard the voice. It wasn’t any more strange and wonderful than any other conjuration we performed. Images in the crystal. A statement received, “this dream is real,” a reference to something that had happened on the weekend. No further communion that I recall now, beyond that silent hymning that goes on when Magicians and Spirits spend time together.

And we went to bed, and we slept.

And the dreams came.

“This is how you must explain the quality to others,” he said, showing me an aluminum or steel block being machined into a piece or a part. “You cannot see the finished piece by looking at the block of metal. It is shaped in phases. You cannot see the finished function of the form if you look at it before it is complete. It happens in phases. And there are two of you, and the process must be aligned, coordinated.”

And I woke. And again, I slept.

And again, the dreams came.

“You are remade. You are reborn. The trumpet has sounded, and you are raised from your graves. Your flesh is transformed. Your bones taken, and you are recreated into a new thing. You were dead. You were decayed. Your corpse was picked clean. But now you are made anew. The old you remains within the new, but transformed. You are given a new body, an eternal body. You are Judged, and rewarded. You receive the power and responsibility of the Saints of New Jerusalem.”

And as he spoke, I saw it was so. I experienced it in the dream. I had lived a life, and I had died. I was bones. A clarion call woke me, and I rose, shaking the dust from my bones. And I was made anew, given a new life in which to accomplish Joy.

“The ‘old Aeon’ has passed, that life is over. You are dead to those things that came before. You have died, and you are being remade. What you are now is not the end. You cannot see the finished function of the form if you look at it before it is complete. It happens in phases. And there are two of you, and the process must be aligned, coordinated.”

And I awoke again, the vision complete, understanding received, and transmitted over coffee from a bed shared with my lover.

* Something happens when she smiles. It’s not just me. Other people see it too.

I was reading through the latest Astrological forecast by Austin Coppock, and I got to thinking about some of the stuff he was saying, and how it impacts me personally. Because that’s what people do. When they read forecasts. And horoscopes.

I read through his stuff every week. I love it. He includes planets that I don’t believe in (Pluto doesn’t exist), but in spite of such modernistic adaptation, his predictions are solid and reliable. I have yet to read a forecast that isn’t accurate in my personal life in some way.

Now, I don’t take it all literally, as if everything he says will come true for me personally. If you read it carefully, he doesn’t even phrase shit that way. Instead what he does is explain the effects of the astrological factors that are going on throughout the week, and how they might impact someone who was not aware of the forces, and was not prepared.

For example, Mercury Retrograde is over Monday. How was your Mercury Retro this cycle? Calamitous? Lovely? Didn’t even notice it? Personally, I had a few Mercurial issues arise, and when they did I conjured Mercurius. I had  martinis with him after he got me out of a bureacratic snarl I’d fallen into. Later in the week, I felt some Mercurial tension, and made another offering to him, not asking for anything, just spending time in his presence and giving him some gin. Things smoothed out rapidly. I was talking to a friend/student, and she was having some issues, and I recommended some Mercury work, and later she wrote thanking me, saying it was just what she needed.

See the trend? Bad astrological weather causes discomfort, so magic is done to make it better. I can do that, my student can do that because we have relationships built up with these spirits. We aren’t the average oblivious folks suffering the pressures of the Fates.

Ok, shift gears. When you’re packing to go on vacation, or travelling for business, you’ll check the local weather forecast of the place you’re visiting to get an idea of what to pack. If the forecast is for rain or snow, you’ll pack your rain gear and rubber boots, scarves and warm hats and coats. You’re not stupid. That’s why you check the weather.

Astrological forecasts are the same way. When he talks about the Venus conjunction with Saturn on Monday, he talks about how the forces at play are going to influence you. Pay attention to that shit, it’s important. Knowing what the forces will be influencing you to do, plan to accommodate them. Forewarned is forearmed.

If you were paying attention when Saturn went into Scorpio, you read Austin’s warnings about what to expect in general over the next couple of years, and you’ve already planned on harnessing those forces and putting them to use in your Great Work rather than being their victim.

Do the forces at play have a tendency to build pressures up in relationship? Defuse those pressures now. Talk to your partner about stuff, check in with them, see how they’re feeling, talk about how you’re feeling. If someone you love is being snappish, defensive, or overindulging in pleasures to deal with the pressures, you understand they’re under the influence of the weather, and you can guide them to more creative solutions.

And this applies to any kind of divination too, not just Austin’s awesome astrology. Tarot readings, gematria, conch shells or crab claws, the things you see are mostly influences that you have to deal with, adjust yourself to interact with. It’s a weather report, and if it’s going to rain, you put on your rain gear.

And what I’ve found lately that works the best is a mix of specific requests as necessary, and propitiation rites in general at an appropriate time. A martini poured for Mercury in a Mercury hour on a Friday helps a lot. Scotch that tastes like graveyard dirt when Saturn’s being all afflictive can do wonders. General propitiations work well enough, specific requests are also good. I found I had prepared well for the Venus Saturn stuff when it came to my favorite and most important relationship, but other stuff all fell to shit because I had only prepared in one area of my life. It doesn’t just rain on you when you’re with the person you love when it rains. It rains on you wherever you go. Oooopsie! quick rite to Anael (on the fly, in fact, and done astrally, and sealed with some port), and things were instantly better across the board.

Put on your gear when you know it’s going to rain, magician. It only makes sense.

OK… I’m sitting at a bar at the airport waiting for my flight, having calamari and my second Bombay sapphire martini on my way from freezing rain in Baltimore to beautiful sunny Florida, where a red haired goddess awaits my arrival, and i get a notification that I’ve received money for doing the stuff I love to do.

Just thought I’d mention it.

Cause this is what it can be like.

Hey all, you could spend all your money on material goods that make you happy for a little while, or you could spend your money getting the foundation necessary to live in intentional enjoyment of your life. I mean really, which would you prefer?