[Edit: After seeing a couple of the comments so far, I want to make it clear up front in this post that I’m not intending this post as a criticism of Ian’s project, it’s an observation of my own hypocrisy.]

I’ve been following Ian Corrigan’s development of his “Court of Brigid” rites with a great deal of interest. He describes it as an “effort to develop a ritual spirit arte that applies the general principles of Euro-Grimoiric methods using the Druidic Order of Ritual and inside a pre-Neoplatonic, Indo-European mythic cosmos.“

I’ve got conflicting perspectives on the whole thing. Intellectually, it’s fascinating to see what he’s doing and to read his results. I’m very interested to see what happens when he gets to the conjurations of the spirits of the “Courts” he’s identified. In my opinion, the proof of his concept will be demonstrated in his results in that specific aspect of the rites.

But personally, I find the whole thing fundamentally distasteful. In the ’80s and ’90s, it was really popular to make up your own flavor of Wicca. Faery Wicca, Dancing with Dragons Wicca, Lord of the Rings Wicca, it didn’t matter what theme you picked, you just took the basic novice-grade GD-derived rites and substituted the God-Names and Elemental Representatives with whatever you wanted. As recently as 2008, Raven Grimassi published a book on how to make up your own Wiccan tradition. It’s a standard practice in Neopaganism, with roots going back to Gardner, as far as I know.

Ian’s up to the same old mischief, only he’s gotten rid of the GD stuff and went back further to the approaches of the grimoires. I’ll admit it, I’m a bit territorial when it comes to the grimoires, and the appropriation of techniques I happen to use by others. I see in his list of published books a lot of the techniques and approaches to magic explored by Jason Miller, Jake Stratton-Kent, and Aaron Leitch. I see a neopaganized version of the kinds of things I’ve been blogging about for the last six years, and I feel a bit used, and uncompensated. (That may be code for jealous, but I’m not entirely sure.)

I don’t know if my issues with the approach are based on anything valid or not though. We all adapt stuff to suit our needs and desires. I’m fascinated with Jake Stratton-Kent’s efforts to revitalize the Goetic traditions of the past and turn the Magical Revival into a living tradition in our culture. I see my own work with Hermetics to be an effort in that direction, with less emphasis on the roots of Goetia, but still focused on practicing a practical living tradition that helps people today using the magical techniques that have been around for at least the last 10,000 years.

We’re all creating new systems based on the old ones, to varying degrees, but never exactly as performed at any stage in history. We make adjustments, include pieces of different approaches according to our own personal intuition and input from our glorified spirit guides about what needs to go where. Frater Ashen is the most traditional magician I know and work with, and even he makes adaptations as he sees fit. His adaptations all come from traditional sources, and make sense, and look really good, but they are still adaptations.

Hell, I don’t think any two magicians have ever performed the exact same rite, honestly. There’s always variance.

But there’s something about neopagan adaptations that rubs me the wrong way, in the same way that the worst kinds of Chaos Magic rubs me the wrong way. It just has an air of fraudulence, an aroma of flatulence. The Court of Brigid? Really? What Bardic epic points to Brigid ever having a court of spirit assistants that were ever conjured and worked with the way a grimoire magician works with the rank and file of angels and demons? Wasn’t she a Warrior Queen or something? Boudica, the Celtic Warrior Princess? Trapped in a tower by an evil Fairy who used her hair for magical purposes, but it could never be cut with iron shears, and then one day she let an errant prince into her tower with her hair, and he raped her while she slept, and the twin babies were lost in a forest when the ravens ate their trail of breadcrumbs or something?

I’m not real sure what she did, but I’m pretty sure she never had a Court of Servant Spirits, or responded to any conjurations.

But at the same time, it’s a logical conclusion he’s made, Powerful Dead spirits who get worshiped after their death usually would, in theory, accumulate a gaggle of assistant spirits over time, as adherents and dedicants died and went on to whatever functions they might have in the afterlife. That’s how several of the pantheons in ATRs came into being, if I understand the process correctly.

And as far as mixing systems in our adaptations goes, I’ve included Orphic Hymns to the gods of the Planets in my planetary rites with Archangels, Intelligences and Spirits. It’s effective. It’s powerful. It’s an adaptation based on sound theory that has useful results.

So I just don’t really know what to think about the whole thing he’s got going on in the depths of that Mound he’s always going into. If he managed a visible manifestation that changed his world entirely, and demonstrated the 16 or so sub-spirits of the system were at least as potent as the saints of the Catholic tradition in meeting the needs of the incarnate, it would go a long way towards convincing me that he’s onto something real, something big, and something effective.

But ultimately, he doesn’t have to prove anything to me. He has to prove its effectiveness and applicability to no one but himself. Regardless, I’m watching what happens because I want to delve into some of the stuff Jake talks about in Geosophia, and I want to do it using the Modern Angelic Grimoire techniques, talk to the Heroes and Sibyls in a Crystal like God intended.

Apparently, my eBook page was acting up and the PayPal buttons
weren’t working. After hacking into the code, I discovered some missing
form fields. No idea how that happened. They were working fine up until a
month or so ago.

But it’s fixed. You can now order my stuff using both PayPal and Google Checkout, whichever you prefer.

If anyone runs into any problems purchasing eBooks, Red Work Courses, or any Applied Hermetics services, please let me know.

In my lifetime, the Moon will be colonized.

This is awesome. Ever since I was a child reading Science Fiction genre books, I’ve been watching the hard truths of reality overcome the aspirations of countless humans who took it for granted that some day we would be living on the Moon. I’m almost 40 now, and after the 90s and the first decade of the 21st century, I’d about given up on it. The last 20 years have seen some of the biggest boom times of our history, and even with all that money, we weren’t living on the Moon.

But at last, they’re starting to make the strides necessary to get us off the planet. It’s important to us as a species. The planet’s a temporary home, at best. And I don’t mean spiritually, though that’s true enough.

I don’t know how far we’ll get. We’ve got a lot of issues as a species that need to be worked out. What good is spreading the hatred and violence we lavish on one another to the stars going to do the universe at large? And who says we’re even smart enough to manage it?

The path of Hermetics that I follow leads to joining in the choirs of angels that live beyond the terrestrial sphere. It’s all about taking my place in the brotherhood of trans-material entities who travel freely between the planets. I focus my efforts in the spiritual realms, but I’m proud of my human brothers and sisters who are taking it to the material plane as well.

I don’t have any kind of formal post in mind today, but these are some random thoughts passing through my mind about Teachers in general. Approaches to teaching, phases we go through, things we think about. Moods that come and go.

They’re all things I’ve thought or felt at various times as a teacher, some more often than others. They’re also things I see in my fellow teachers of occultism, and if you’re a blogger, you’re included in that category in my cosmogram.

• Everybody’s a Fucking Idiot but me, so send Me your Money!
• Oh my GOD, this is AWESOME SHIT right here, you gotta fuckin’ TRY it, like NOW! Hurry, you’re just wasting time!
• Fuck this shit. I quit.
• To date, these are the things I’ve learned, but there’s a lot more
  to go. I’ll put it in words that work best for me, but you’ll have
  to figure out the meaning in your own way, or discover a meaning behind
  the symbols that is better suited for where you’re at in your life’s
  context.
• Oh my god, no one ever listens to me! I’ve been saying that shit for years, for fuck’s sake. Jesus, people, catch the fuck up.
• FUCK! I was wrong… still no refunds.
• If you had only done the research, and the practical Work related to it, you wouldn’t be arguing with me. Try it some time, and then you’ll see that I’m right, or you’ll at least be better qualified to argue with me.
• Holy shit, I’m more enlightened than YOU!? Fuck.
• Some shit works, some shit doesn’t. The journey’s not that great, and the destination is less pleasant than anticipated. And I’m pretty sure they made it that way on purpose just to keep you moving on.
  
• No shit, Sherlock.
• Oh my god, really? Really!? I need a drink.
• Hey, this is stuff that helped me achieve a measure of happiness that I am currently enjoying. Hope it works for you as well as it works for me.
• You’re doing it wrong.
• I will RULE TEH WORLDS!!! And you can rule yours too!
• You did what? And it did what? Sweet! I gotta try that some time.
• You’re doing it right!
• Now what?
• Hmmm. That’s interesting. Let me think about it.
• I used to be an adventurer like you.

I think that about covers the moods and approaches I’ve been through since starting out in this teaching gig, not necessarily in any kind of chronological order. Ego, ambition, disappointment, excitement, the thrill of the hunt.

It’s interesting how many of them are more about other people than about where I’m at and where I’m going. Relationships with other people are important, apparently. And I have an inclination to think I’m right that is usually justifiable, but maybe not as accurate as I’d like to think.

And there’s an irritability that drives a lot of my Work, a certain Holy Dissatisfaction that keeps me moving onward and upward. That’s neat. Should have gotten its own post, probably.

I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong with feeling any of these ways at different times, except that first one, and most of us get past that before we really start becoming useful teachers. I cycle through most of the rest regularly.

I don’t really know why I’m posting this. Usually when I write the random-thought posts, they sit in the draft bin for years before I get around to deleting them. But I think I’m posting this so you’ll think about how teachers are, how they act, and remember that they’re people of varied interests and moods, just like you. Learn from people, but take what they’re saying with a grain of salt. Sometimes they’re brilliant, other times they’re assholes, and in the end it’s all beautiful.

Until you take an arrow to the knee.

When you go through the painstaking process of creating all the tools, talismans, implements, and Magic Circles of the traditional grimoires with the heart of the true magician, on fire and enflamed with the passion of your true Love, you go through one of the most rigorous and life changing initiations possible.

The creation of a real talisman, from raw metal to finished, engraved, consecrated talisman is a process of transformation that is Alchemical in every sense of the word. After you’ve made and consecrated a talisman, you’ve interacted with the Four Elemental Kingdoms in all three of their phases, you’ve spent an extended time in the presence of the spirit who works through the talisman, and that interaction as you and it worked together to create the finished thing and brought it into being in the material plane has forever changed the harmonics of your sphere. You’ve been tuned through the properties of spiritual resonance.

When someone like Mr. Ashen or Mr. Cecchetelli goes through the process of creating the tools for his Solomonic rites, he’s going through that initiatory process of talisman creation at every stage of the preparation. His heart’s aflame with the passion of his intent, and that intent blazes through the Spheres, a clarion call to the Spirits.

How many of these initiations do they go through to perform something like a conjuration from the Lemegeton’s Goetia? How many times do they end up inscribing the Ten Names and Seals of the Intelligences of the Spheres? At least twice, for the lion’s skin belt, and for the Magic Circle they stand within. You make a MAgic Circle full size, and it’s incredible how you feel standing in the center as the paint dries. You feel the spirits aiding you as you write out their names, and if you’re trying to do it without the right heart, the right attitude of reverence, they invariably smack you down and make you start again.

It’s a Holy process.

A process of transformation.

If you’re having a hard time seeing and hearing the spirits, take a few months and devote it to creating all the implements of the grimoire of your choice. The Almadel, the Arbatel, the Ars Paulina, the True Grimoire, the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals, Crossed Keys, the Order of the Black Powdered Octopus, The Greater Key of Solomon, Abramelin, Samekh, the exercises in Strategic Sorcery or Protection and Reversal Magic.

Do them well, do them honest, do them pure and true, or as true as you can, and it will start that process of change that leads to the visible and audible manifestation of spirits.

Unless you’re spiritually blind and deaf. It’s a condition that some people have, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of, although it’s certainly frustrating. If you’ve gone to all the work of putting together a straight, by-the book rite, and you’ve performed it at the appropriate astrological timing, and you’ve meant every word you’ve uttered, from the heart, and you’re still not getting anything, and you’ve done it a lot more than once with zero results, don’t despair. There are several grimoires that suggest working with a seer because the simple fact is this: Everyone doesn’t see or hear spirits. That doesn’t mean the magic doesn’t work, it just means some folks are deaf and blind to the spirit world for whatever reason.

And who knows… it might be for a very good reason.

As I prepare for tonight’s Jupiter rite (3 minutes and counting), I can’t get that Mumra thing out of my head.

Without the “Evil” part, and without nearly as much maniacal laughter afterwards, that’s how I feel when I conjure up my HGA before doing the rites.