Posts by frredactumopus

Author: frredactumopus

  • Post Apocalyptic Living

    Jason and Gordon have been writing really cool stuff about the world we live in for the last couple of years. Gordon’s been at the whole Apocalytpic living thing longer, I think, but Jason’s always had that fundamental premise behind his work too. These are reasons I love them both.

    Jason wrote something incredibly lucid about the world we live in today. He sums up a lot of things that I’ve been seeing and thinking in a really understandable way, as usual. I really appreciate his insight into the politics behind the current events, it was a piece I’ve suspected but never really understood. Definitely worth looking into, if you want a comprehensive understanding of what’s going on.

    At the end of the post, Jason does something that’s so fucking Eristic at its core that it will go completely ignored by most folks, except for those with knee-jerk reactions.

    He dares to think for himself.

    The people at the top are cheaters and liars and play dirty. You might need to do the same. Use magic. Invent something. Be clever and mobile if you can. Stash gold in Singapore and invest in businesses in Mongolia. Hustle. Christ, lie if you have to.

    Remember the débrouillard posts I made a long, long time ago? Piracy, living outside the box… I stopped writing about it because of a comment Jason made, about how the first rule of dèbrouillard club is don’t talk about dèbrouillard club. I’m down with that. Figured you’d get the point and move right along.

    Hermetic Mage, you aren’t in society the way everyone else is. Your patron god, Hermes? He’s a trickster. You cheat at life. You are a magician. You use the knowledge of your self, your true self, your family connections, your divine nature to get ahead. You manipulate unseen forces to make Fate and Fortune your bitch.

    At least, you should. Doesn’t make much sense not to if you really think about it.

    Wake the fuck up, brothers and sisters. Life is what you make of it with the resources at your disposal. It’s (mostly) entirely up to you what you do with it.

    Jason’t post points out some shit you need to know about the world you live in. The closing comment is important to consider. I don’t think you have to lie, you have to tell the TRVTH. In a way that expresses the TRVTH to people in their language, vocabulary, taxonomy. Are you a brilliant artist with an understanding of complex marketing and design techniques? You could make a lot of money with that, if you could convince the hiring managers of that fact. You need to put it to them in language they understand, the same way you have to phrase your statement of intent in terms incarnate Archangels with little understanding of the viscera of human existence to get what you want. Jason’s got a friend who will vouch for your ability and skill set in a way that presents the TRVTH in terms the HR rats can comprehend.

    It’s time to live by your wits, ladies and gentlemen. It’s always been that time, but maybe the “New Normal” will provide sufficient catalyst to initiate the natural achemical reaction.

  • Why it Hurts

    [Edit: I started writing this when the linked posts were current. Things happened, and it’s just now getting posted.]

    Man, read these:

    Excellent stuff.

    Perspective. We need it.

    I need it.

    Jason’s original point, the thing I agree with him about… shit gets blown out of proportion when that shit’s the HGA.

    Pain. Suffering. Refining through the Fire. The agony of the attainment.

    It’s real. For some of us.

    For others, it’s not that bad at all. A couple students, a few fellow wise old magicians didn’t go through a ton of shit, just some minor shit, because they got the point quicker than I did. I bet Jow, with his appreciation of the important things in life, his honest gratitude, his humility, his kindness… I bet for people like him, it’s a walk down the beach, and the heat of the Sun is a pleasure, not a pain at all.

    Michael mentioned that he required his experience to attain the HGA, in a way. I needed the suffering of my initiation too. It was right for me. It was right for my first “student,” now long-time friend, who I “helped,” whose life fell to pieces as I encouraged him to do more magic and call down more fire.

    But people go through worse shit without ever conjuring their HGA. You know anyone over thirty who hasn’t had some shit to deal with, something traumatic, something huge that you think about and wonder if you’d be able to handle it? I’ve got magician friends with more experience and empowerment than me who I respect and love who are facing or have faced more terrible things than I can imagine being able to deal with. Shit that doesn’t just go away in a year or two.

    Shit. Happens. Regardless.

    My take is that it’s better to walk away with a spiritual assistant who can help me do the stuff my ancestors in the Hermetic current taught were possible with a supernatural assistant. Might as well get some magician goodies out of the suffering, you know?

    But I’m a shit-oriented person. Mostly because I don’t think I should have to suffer. Suffering sucks. I hate to suffer. I think I shouldn’t have to suffer, honestly, because I’m cool. I deserve better. I have a high opinion of myself. If I suffer, it ain’t right.

    As a result, when I suffer, it’s the worst fucking thing that can happen, and I bitch about it a lot. I’m like, can you believe it? I had to suffer? ME!

    But honestly, it wasn’t that bad. I lived through it. Lots of people have had worse shit to deal with than losing their girlfriends and their jobs, you know? I didn’t even lose my girlfriend. My relationship with my ex got really shitty and SHOULD have fallen apart, but I was stubborn in my stupidity, and held on to it anyway. And jobs, money… I had issues to work through with that. I’m over it. I have an awesome job. If I’m not over it, I’ll go through more shit, and end up with a more awesome job.

    Regardless I got my HGA, so whatever, I’m good.

  • Yay, Faith in Fate Debate!

    So Jason disagrees with me about FATE.

    Or… does he?

    Basically, I reject the notion that this is all some pre-written fucked up kabuki dance where  there are people we are meant to be with, things we are meant to do, and things we are not meant to do. If that fatalistic idea of God as micro-manager is true, then any alteration thereof is also part of that plan so it is not even worth thinking that way. If it is not true, then we have to take some responsibility for ourselves, including our initiatory paths.

    That’s the quote I’m aiming at. Especially the italicized parts.

    Jason’s expressing the belief that “fatalism” and “free will” are “opposed.” One must negate the other.

    But… think about it.

    Jason and I agree that there is the Body and the Not-Body aspects of the Complete Human Entity. There is something that continues to exist after the body is gone. Conjurations of the dead, exorcisms of the same, veneration of the dead as saints, ascended masters, or what-have-you tend to indicate the belief that the death of the flesh is not the end of the entity.

    The Body and the Not-Body coexist while we’re living. It’s an intimate partnership between two beings operating on different levels of existence. The Not-Body gets certain desires and necessities met, and the Body likewise gets to claim its due. It’s symbiotic, and it goes both ways.

    Does the Body have Free Will? Can it make me do anything it wants? Am I its puppet?

    Or is it Fated to do what I tell it to? Can it deny my commandments? Can it refuse to obey?

    The only honest answer to any of these questions is “sometimes.”

    And I say that’s because “fate” and “free will” don’t matter in the discussion of the human entity. It’s the wrong language to talk about the relationship between the physical and spiritual manifestation of the human being.

    I think the relationship between the Body and the Not-Body parts of the self is very much an analogy of the relationship between the Source and the Image of the Source, between God and Man. God-the-micromanager is really the Big Chief, and he really sets everything in stone the way it has to be. And then he manifests in it, and becomes His Own Self and Not His Own Self at the same time. He follows his will and materializes, becoming us. His Will manifests through “us” the same way “our” will manifests through the flesh.

    So is everything predestinated? I think so. But it can’t happen without us. Yes, it will happen, but as a result of us making it happen. And we do it because we really want it to happen.

    Fate? Free Will?

    Do you feel fated? Because I don’t. I feel like I get to do what I want when I want to. And things always seem to fall together as if there were a plan. A purpose. Maybe that’s my Body framing the experience so it can be processed logically and stored for increased probability of survival in a hostile world.

    Does it matter? Ultimately, it does not.

    Back to Jason’s main points:

    If that fatalistic idea of God as micro-manager is true, then any alteration thereof is also part of that plan so it is not even worth thinking that way.

    Why isn’t it worth thinking that way? You’re doing what you meant to do, exactly what you want to do. And if you don’t want to do it, you can do something else, and you can’t fuck anything up, no matter what. Knowing whatever you want to do is the Will of God makes you more free and powerful than anything else I’ve experienced. And knowing that even if you’re “wrong,” it will be ok anyway?

    I think it’s totally worth thinking that way.

    And second point:

    If it is not true, then we have to take some responsibility for ourselves, including our initiatory paths.

    If it’s true, we still have to take some responsibility for ourselves, including our initiatory paths, because the Will of God doesn’t manifest without us making it happen.

    I’m a relatively powerful magician, in a lot of ways. I can make pretty much anything happen that I want to, within reason, almost always through totally “natural-looking” means, even though I totally cheat by calling on powerful relatives in high places who understand me better than I understand myself. 

    But the magic doesn’t do itself. The wands don’t up and cast the circle, the spirits don’t conjure themselves, and the whiskey doesn’t make itself a libation without my immortal will and my flesh working together with these material spirits, any more than the body fasts on its own to bring spiritual attainment, or the spirit wills to ascend on its own without the Source willing it to ascend at the same time.

  • The HGA and the Celestials

    So another of my students found that the fires of the Sun burn when you’re passing through ’em. I know that feel bro. It gets better.

    And the thing Jow wrote about celestials and K&CHGA that I read the last time I could get my head above the waters of my mundane job, it’s on my mind:

    Also if I am risking EVERYTHING in my life, I want a return at least equal to what I put in. If the risk is no home, no family, no job, and no sanity, I want the literal cash and prizes at the end of the book. I want my ass to fly, be invisible, demolish city walls, and have all the powers of a living God on earth. If I risk everything material, and human in my life, my whole material life’s work,  in an epic gambit for spiritual power and success, I want an epic reward. I do not want something that is “really useful”. Also, I do not want it to be a product of some spirits I’ve bound into servitude. I want that shit to be MINE.

    This is quintuple the case if what i want is a Mystic Union type experience. There are easier, safer, quicker less expensive, and more trustworthy ways of getting that.

    Also, the working highlights a problem with Celestial spirits. That problem is, that they are Celestial. They are alien to our experience. This can be problematic when said spirit is re arranging your life, and putting your feet to the fire.

    I love Jow. To pieces. He and Deb make me happy in spite of my own weird shit, like the rest of the people I consider friends.* That’s partially why it’s got to be said:

    Jow, really? What the fuck, man?

    Literal cash prizes? Yeah, you get those. Flying invisibly through the air demolishing city walls? Yeah, you get that too. And living god on Earth? Really!?

    Yes! Motherfucking Yes! Yes, yes, exactly that, YES!

    Ahem.

    That, too, is yours as a result.

    FFS.

    That’s why we do this shit. And it’s not just one lifetime, one incarnation, one instance of awareness, it’s for “everyone else” too, a bit. And it lasts fucking forever. FOREVER.

    Hell, font don’t matter.

    for. ever.

    And the Celestials are not alien to our experience. “THEY” are our brothers and sisters. They are our family. They are us, only without the flesh suit and all its concerns. They are us. We are them. Spirits in a material world. Thye have never been flesh, never been matter, but they have an intimate conscious understanding of what “flesh” and “matter” really means, an understanding that we need to remember to be whole.

    We already know the material life and lifestyle and all its concerns. Being human makes that imperative, and it’s part of the deal. We agree to pay attention to that in exchange for the experience of being incarnate. It’s not something we thought about beforehand, I don’t think, but it’s something I think we owe ourselves. Getting rich and well-laid is the least we can do out of gratitude to the Holy Spirit, for Christ’s sake.

    But remembering who we are and where we come from is important. The “Holy Guardian Angel” concept wouldn’t even be possible if we weren’t gods. Why the hell would a spirit of that power and ability assist us if we weren’t essentially fucking awesome? We’re totally worth it.

    All that superhero Neo-controlling-the-Matrix bullshit, I fully believe it’s possible. It’s not easy, it takes some serious fucking work and intense devotion, and a lot of practice, and I’m not speaking from full experience, just partial, but I swear to God the First Father, if that’s what you want to do, I believe it’s possible. I’ve done weird shit consistently, and while I pursued it, the weird shit got weirder. I saw no boundaries of what could be done, with practice, and training by the HGA and other relatives in the Extended Celestial Family. I didn’t get that far, there are stories of folks who’ve gone further. I know I will go further.

    I think what worries people (I’m no longer talking about Jow or Skyllaros, but instead a mashup of all the people I’ve ever talked to and imagined talking to) about this process is the fear that they’ll lose their shit. Relationships, jobs, positions of comfort or respect, the results of a lifetime of study and practice… They’re afraid to put that shit up on the chopping block in exchange for the potentially empty promise of a “better” life. Especially when they see people who have allegedly been through the process talking about life as if they were still human, still struggling with being enlightened and kind and happy and successful, and remembering to manifest the lifestyle they want all the time. There’s no obvious difference in the lives of the magicians with K&CHGA and those without. Except the ones who’ve been through it have stories of pain and sacrifice.

    It’s true, the fires of the Sun burn away a lot of shit in your life. Solar initiations can suck.

    But nothing burns that you need. K&CHGA, the process of attaining the Supernatural Assistant, it’s not about the things you think matter, it’s about the things that really matter. The flames of the Sun are processed through the ritual, intelligently, by someone who loves you entirely because you are who you are. The heat of the Solar flame is directed specifically to the things that need to be refined, purified, tempered in your life.

    If the person you’re with is the person you’re meant to be with, the processes of the Work will result in the two of you being more tightly bound, more securely together, more focused on your reason for being together than ever before. It strengthens relationships that are good, it only destroys the ones that suck. I promise.

    If your career path is right for you, it will only get better. If it’s wrong for you, you’ll find yourself in a new career path in no time, amazed that you made it through the rough spots.

    It might hurt, transitioning between one lifestyle and another, it might be scary for a while, but the result is a refined, tempered, strengthened, repaired foundation for you to build upon.

    I might say K&CHGA is “useful,” but not necessary, but that’s because I think too many people have presented it as the penultimate goal of magic rather than an early stage. What I’m not saying is how fucking beautiful K&CHGA really is. I’m not talking about how my life changed forever in that moment. I’m not talking about how I get money on demand, or how I’ve learned to fly invisibly through the Aires, breaking through the walls that really stand in the way. SPOILERS!

    Could I have reached that without K&CHGA? Who knows? Not me. I think it’s possible, but I wouldn’t EVER trade K&C for any alternative. It’s great. Totally worth the risk of pain.

    Cause if you think you won’t suffer the pain of having the things you’re attached to threatened if you don’t attain K&CHGA, you’re not really thinking about what you’ve seen.

    * There are maybe 12, at any given time. I’m sure that’s probably a coincidence.

  • Escape Velocity

    In a recent post, Jason writes about five things modern Western Occultism needs to get over already. I agree with most of it, but with some comments. The five things are:

    1. The HGA
    2. The Goetia
    3. Wicca Bashing
    4. Quantum Physics
    5. System Hubris

    1. The HGA…

    I both agree and disagree with the notion that we need to escape the gravity of the HGA. On the one hand, it’s totally overblown in modern Western Occultism, or at least, it was until people started achieving it and talking about it. We should totally escape the gravity of the overblown myth of the HGA.

    But today we’re seeing a sea change where the HGA is concerned. People aren’t treating it like the final goal of all magic and expecting to get fully Enlightened when they talk to it once. And people are understanding it better too. It’s not a Gateway to Enlightenment, it’s an entity, a spirit, a familiar spirit. It’s your chief go-to spirit. It’s like Scirlin in the True Grimoire, or like the Head Spirit in ATRs. It’s also a lot like the Spirit Guide of the New Age movement, if you listen to it.

    The system of magic I practice is your basic European Renaissance conjure magic. While K&CHGA is not necessary for this system to work, I promise it makes it so much easier.

    2. The Goetia

    Hell yeah, I totally agree with Jason on that one. “Goetia” isn’t even a book, it’s a type of magic, like … Conjure Magic, Hoodoo, Necromancy, and so forth. Jake Stratton Kent has written a lot about this in Geosophia and The True Grimoire, and if you really want to understand “Goetia,” you’ve got to read what he’s written, imo. Goetia can be beautiful, but not if you’re talking about a single book when you use the word.

    3. Wicca Bashing

    Also totally agreed. I thought Wicca was stupid based on my experiences as a Wiccan in my teens. Turns out it wasn’t Wicca that was stupid, but teenage RO. In my adulthood, I had the good fortune of meeting some actual Wiccans who practiced it and had something to show for it. Joe changed my mind about it a lot, demonstrating that there is something of awe about Wicca, something that is totally and completely of Deity at work in the system, not just a bunch of pretenders and political statements about Christianity and Patriarchies in general. Jack also helped change my mind, showing me that Wiccans aren’t all basing their practice on fairy tales, and with Nicole, demonstrated convincingly that the ones who were working the Fairy Tales were probably doing cooler magic than me.

    4. Quantum Physics

    Yeah, just, yeah. Totally.

    5. System Hubris

    I had a bit of a problem with this one for a long time. When I started finding magic that really worked, really well in the grimoires, I was fucking bitter about the years I wasted on GD and Chaos Magic. I bashed both with equal vehemence, not because I had to bash ’em to make my system look better, but because I was fucking pissed, and didn’t want anyone else to waste their time like I did.

    But like Wicca, I met people who practice those systems and seem to get something out of it. I don’t generally bash the entire systems anymore. I haven’t bashed Chaos Magic since I found out it’s essentially Agrippa’s methods presented in early-90s slacker lingo. Nothing wrong with that.

    I’m still pretty bitter, though. Sort of like ex-Catholic Wiccans are bitter about their time in the Church. The more I try to write about how I’m over this one, the angrier I get. I’m ridiculous.

    So fuck it. I may very well bash the systems for being weak again in the future, but that’s just me and my issues with it. I know and understand that the system I practice is the very best … for me, and that others will find their happiness in the GD where I did not, the same way I find happiness in Christianity where so many others do not.

    But knowing and understanding this fact doesn’t make me over my personal bitterness that the GD system and its children didn’t work for me. I haven’t reached escape velocity on this one, not yet.

    But it’s not because I have to piss in someone else’s water to make mine taste sweet. It’s because I went to the well and drank their water, found it bitter, and then found a sweet well with pure water. One day I might get to the point where I can say, “Oh you’re drinking GD Water? Have you tried Hermetic Springs? I find it sweeter, myself,” but today I’m still in the “I drank that, and it tastes like SHIT!” phase.

  • The Dead are Everywhere!

    Duhn duhn duhn!

    Ok, so I wrote a big ass post about how my cultures sucks when it comes to dealing with the dead, and it was long and highly detailed and boring as shit.

    So fuck that.

    I did make a cool graphic for the post that would be a shame to waste:

    This shows how many of the different types of ghosts there are that I’ve run into on a regular basis. The names of the Dead above are based on the Roman classifications.

    I haven’t run into very many of the Powerful Dead, at least, not knowingly. They’re like the local Heroes whose tombs are visited regularly, offerings left for protection and aid. My culture doesn’t do that very much. These guys are like the Saints of the Cahtolic Church. Most of my readers are familiar with a few systems that work with the Dead these days, so I won’t go over it all again.

    Beneath them I put the Lares/Larvae with some coherence. They might remember who they were in life, and they might make good companions to magicians, or work well to protect the hearth and home if they’re like Ancestor spirits. You can hold a conversation with them, and they have more influence over the world.

    Beneath them are the hordes of the restless dead. They’re convenient for magicians, but for most of society at large, they suck. They cause anxiety, and magnify mental illnesses that relate to the functions of the amygdala. I think many depression and anxiety disorders are related to this class of the dead. Everyone gets anxious or depressed some of the time, but it becomes a disorder when it lasts for long periods of time, or incapacitates you in some way.

    These are the spirits I think should be regularly exorcised. They don’t bother me or my family because I’m a magician and I’ve set up my kingdom properly, but most people don’t know much about this kind of thing. The number of people with a practical eschatology is extremely small.

    In my neighborhood, we’ve got some people celebrating the Dies de las Muertes, but it’s not like a festival of the dead, it’s just an excuse to get drunk. Halloween used to be about the dead, but these days it’s about kids getting the kiddie equivalent of their drunk on with piles of candy.

    I’m all for partying and shit, I’m not saying we should stop drinking, or dressing our kids up in cheap costumes and gathering loot because the days are supposed to be holy or anything.

    But these holidays served a practical purpose in the community, they cleaned out the accumulated weak/obnoxious dead. I drove down to Virginia a few weeks ago, and some of the little protestant rural towns we went through were heavy with the dead. Modern funerals are for the living, not for the dead. Pastors don’t bother praying a spirit to heaven, and their “consecrated” grounds don’t really seem to do much to keep the dead from walking. The air was thick with ’em in some places.

    Now this makes magic a lot easier to do for magicians. It just takes a little Martial/Saturnian Work to get them to focus on making what you want happen. Most of ’em are weak and pretty useless on their own, but you get enough of them working on something you want, and they can be highly effective. I think it’s pretty rad that you can get a spiritual army together that can shake the foundations of the world using a simple nine-day rite.

    But with my established relationships with other spirits, it’s never been necessary.

    For non-magicians, it just sucks. They don’t know they’re haunted, let alone what to do about it. Red wine and xanax get a lot of people through it, but a regular cleansing would be better for them in the long run. I’ve started exorcising my secular friends when they start going loopy. It’s nothing formal that they’re aware of, but when someone in my circle of acquaintances starts exhibiting symptoms of a nervous breakdown, I perform a rite on their behalf to get rid of any Larvae that might be infesting their spheres. I figure it can’t hurt.

    I’m careful not to accidentally get rid of any positive dead that might be around. I’m not going to just banish everything, blind to the fact that for thousands of years humans have had beneficial relationships with their dead. I know I don’t know everything about people’s personal spiritual lives, and I certainly don’t need any pissed off ancestor spirits gunning for me.

    But I do my part to shrive the shades that would have been shriven if my stupid culture wasn’t more interested in getting drunk than living well. I’m not doing this out of the goodness of my heart. I personally have benefited from helping out my subjects. It makes my kingdom run more smoothly when the people in it aren’t being driven nuttier by the shades of the dead.

  • If I posted…

    If I posted the kind of blog posts I have time to finish these days, they would be like this:

    Boundaries are good.

    Exorcism is good. More people should exorcise and get exorcised. Cause there are GHOSTS fuckin’ everywhere!!!

  • Getting Ideas

    Everything that is, everything that was, and everything that will be began as an idea.

    That’s a core premise of Hermetics. To apply Hermetics to our daily lives, we’ve really got to understand this fundamental core premise. This basic fundamental core premise. I mean, it’s so core that it bears redundancy. Hell it bears everything. That’s the idea of a base, a fundament, a core.

    And a “principle” too, when you think about it.

    They come first. Princeps. Before everything else.

    Ideas.

    Where the fuck do they come from? The Mind of God, the Nous of the Hermetics and their Neoplatonic kin? I picture a darkness so perfect and sublime it has never known the light, even though it is the source of all light. A black pool of pure consciousness without limit.

    In the Hermetic mythos, at least, the way I remember it at the moment, this Infinite Dark Consciousness created existence as we know it by contracting itself a bit, by removing itself from a part of itself, while leaving some parts of itself behind. When everything was One Mind, and there was no material realm, that One Mind had to permeate everyfucking thing. Nothing could exist except itself because it was perfectly balanced and unified and  undifferentiated. By removing most of itself from a part of itself, it created the material realm. What we play with in our under-matter-scuba-meat-suits is Infinite Mind without the fullness of the rest of Mind within it.

    And this happened because the Mind had an Idea, and that Idea was The Physical Universe.

    And then many things came to pass. Governors came into being, each one an Intelligency, a Mind that was the self aware aspect of one of the engines of existence, echoes of Aspects of that Mind. Man came into being, an Idea Spoken, and we took the shape and form and aspect and image of that First Father, Nous, the Mind that Thought, and Spoke.

    And we came to Earth, and we had Ideas of our own, and we set about speaking them into being in our own little worlds. And that’s Kingdom Management, using the powers of our racial heritage, our divine nature, our birthright-by-right-of-being-God’s-Images, to create and maintain our material and spiritual realms.

    If the Earth were Down and the Mind of God were Up, the whole projection of Ideas is Downward into Matter from the Mind of God.

    Makes sense, we think we’re in our heads at the top of our bodies, and we project our thoughts and intents through our bodies, most of which is below us.

    I personally think we are awarenesses that exist above and slightly “behind” our brains, but not in the material world, and we use the brain as a steering wheel for the car that is our flesh. Sort of.

    Still, we’re pushing our Ideas downward.

    The path of spiritual attainment is the movement of awareness up this Down-Pointing Process, remembering who we Are, all the way up to the Nous-Source of the Mind.

    Ok, if you’re still reading, good on ya’. I haven’t had time to blog in a while, so I’m feeling rusty, especially in the get-to-the-point department.

    When I do my Kingdom Management stuff, I take my Idea for what I want to have happen up through the seven Spheres of the Planets, and past the Pleroma, and deep into the Mind of God, where all is darkness, and “I” only exist as a reflection of an Idea. From there, I express the Idea downwards, rushing like a current downwards, through the spheres, gathering boundaries and blessings, the firm will to exist, igniting in flames and light, from which it is engendered and flows into the details and components that take final shape before passing to the Elemental Kingdom of Earth, a fully formed honest-to-god material thing, or situation, or desired result.

    That’s what’s happening, the high-level process, but I do this by meditating and through prayer, reaching upwards with my awareness to my source, focusing through praise and intent to the highest of realms. I express the Idea through rites and ceremonies in each Planetary Sphere, or Zone.* That’s the Way Hermetic Magicians do it.

    But think about it for a minute.

    Where did this Idea of “mine” come from? It came from the Mind of God, just like I did, and just like everything else did. When I take my idea up to the layer of Mind-awareness and drop it off and slide down through the Planetary Chain of Manifestation Halfpipe like a stoned snowboarder, I’m not taking something of my own up a path, I’m simply tracing it back to its source, and maybe empowering the Idea into being by paying specialized attention to it, making it happen. The inspiration is sourced in the Divine. The decision to make it be is made in the material, and the magician peels back the layers of the Idea that it gained, and then adds more layers on top of that to make it real.

    I’m a friggin’ yo-yo. Or I’m on some kind of spiritual trampoline, descend, hit-bounce, ascend, descend, hit-bounce higher, ascending, descend, hit, use that to go even higher…

    I’m getting dizzy just thinking about it.

    This is why I don’t focus on the metawoowoo. I’ll stick with the metajuju.

    Ideas. They come from the Great I AM. We are that. They come from us. They really are “our” ideas. From Ourselves-Made-Perfect.

    When we Get Ideas, Ideas that we really want to make happen, it’s important that we do so. When you get an inspiration to do something, anyfucking thing, it is vital that you make it happen. It’s not just some whim or passing fancy, it’s really what you should do, if it appeals to you. When you really want something, that’s a good sign that you should do something to get it. It’s like God-Mind-Code for “Instructions on what you should be doing with your life right about now.”

    And really, One cannot go against the Word of God.

    * I like the term “Zone.” Expect to see it again.

  • SharePoint Sucks

    Kingdom Management never ends.

    My new job pays well, but it’s very time consuming, and I’m doing things I’ve never done before with a very tight deadline. It’s hectic, and the learning curve is steep. I’m building a document monitoring system out of SharePoint, and not even the latest version. It’s like trying to make a space shuttle out of legos. The end result might look like a space shuttle, from a distance, but get too close or try to actually get to space, and… you’re gonna have a bad time.

    So, I’ve conjured Cassiel of Saturn for occult wisdom (figuring out SharePoint reminds me a lot of trying to figure out Enochian Magic). I also worked with him on time management, making my work hours more productive so I can meet the impossible deadlines. I’ve also Worked with Raphael of Mercury to help me figure out the design solution and where to find a big enough hammer to pound this mofo into shape. I’ve done other rites with the other planets to keep things under control and my efforts successful as well.

    Having the seven planetary talismans made and on hand all the time is super convenient. It gives me a way to at least influence every aspect of my manifest reality, and in many cases to be able to control it entirely. I’ve been particularly impressed with the abilities of some Saturn Spirits under Cassiel to provide access to the key pieces of information I need in a timely manner (JIT – Just in Time). There’s been a lot of synchronicity and deja vu involved today. Definitely something I needed.

  • Happy RO Day!

    I started writing this on my Birthday, May 13th, but I got distracted and forgot about it. So… uh, Happy Belated RO Day… from… RO. Yeah.

    Well, another year’s gone by, and I’m going through yet another Solar Return. Happy Birthday to me!

    Someone wished me a Happy RO Day on Facebook, and I like it. When I die, I want my feast day to be on May 13th. People should give each other encouragement, and gifts on this day, and I will bring as much prosperity and healing and occult power and wisdom as I can to those who celebrate my feast day. 
    When I die, that is. 
    There’s a reason my death is on my mind. I’m getting old. My hips hurt if I sleep on them wrong. I just said that. And it’s true. I’m slowing down, I can’t keep up with all the stuff I could keep up with just two years ago, let alone 20. My goatee is flecked with silver hairs. My daughter said to me the other day, “Dad, I know why you’re going bald,” and I was like, I’m NOT going bald. She got a serious thoughtful look on her face, and said, “Dad, I know why your hair is growing further apart now.” 
    And it’s not just my body, it’s my mind. I can’t think as quickly as I used to. I talk to a few young guys who are my students and friends, and I can see the difference between us. They’re on fire to do as much magic in as short of a period of time as possible, and I’m all, dude, wait, hold on, prepare more, build your way up, take your time, this is going to end weakly if you’re lucky, and hurt horrifically if you actually succeed in all the initiations and K&CHGA stuff you’ve done this week. 
    And then there’s hangovers… My god, hangovers. I didn’t really know what those were in my 20s and 30s. I thought I did, but turns out, I was wrong.


    They’re much worse.
    But on the plus side, with age comes a lot more benefits than aches and pains. I get to sit back and laugh when, despite my warnings, the noobs go boom. I know how to manifest shit they can’t even dream of. I have the wisdom to plan, the experience to execute the plan, and the stamina to keep on working through the shit times to get to the end. I’ve been through enough Shit Seasons to know they’re temporary and not to give up when it gets shitty.

    And these days I get to plan a lot bigger than I used to. World domination isn’t just a pipe dream anymore. I’ve already started, and it’s totally working. My current milestone is to change the face of modern occultism, to connect modern magicians with techniques of Hermetic practice that will blow the doors off their LBRP and Middle Pillar exercises.

    So far, so good.

    In 17 months, expect something Really Big.