From “Obama: All US Troops Will Leave Iraq by Year’s End. The War is Over“

Ok, so just in time for thousands of currently-peaceful OWS protesters to be hitting the streets of America in non-violent expression of their disgust with corporate America’s involvement in government, the “war” in Iraq ends and 50,000 US troops will be coming home.

50,000 combat veterans with specialized training and direct combat experience in urban guerrilla warfare.

How convenient is that?

Expect the “National Guard” to be deployed. Hopefully it’s just paranoia, and that will never happen, and it won’t get any worse for us than it did for the hippies. Hope for that.

But prepare for the worst.

The way I see it, the 1% has a couple of factions. The Warren Buffet/Starbucks faction that supports higher taxes (because they STILL make more in profit in a year than the 99% make their whole lives) and job creation because it’s a nice way to spend their money and it shows the 1% are Americans too. The Others are the old school Hawks, who believe they earned their money, worked hard for it, and by God, they aren’t going to give up a penny just because the lazy unwashed rabble are protesting that life is hard.

The problem is, the Hawks have the law on their side. They wrote most of it, buying or renting senators and congressmen (on both sides of the aisle) to vote it into law. The Government is legally required to defend them from rioting mobs.

So in your magical preparations, take these things into account.

And be careful with your magic. There are things called “unintended consequences” that you have to manage and mitigate.

In fact, if you’re new to this whole political magic thing, please don’t go running in binding everything the social media funny posters say are evil. One guy I know mentioned “binding congress.” I don’t know what he meant by that, but imo, congress is already bound, bound to corporations, self interest, greed, and ideology. I’d rather see them freed from that, freed to govern, empowered in righteousness (the real kind), graced with wisdom, inspired to brilliance. Wouldn’t it be awesome if for once in history, the day was saved by about 535 Americans governing for the common good?

Be careful. Don’t make things worse. Just because someone made an image and posted it to FaceBook doesn’t mean it’s right, true, or even applicable in your personal politics. Do some research, find out what the reality is, so you can target your focused changes at things that will make it better for everyone.

Not only am I missing awesome live theater in Prague, the green love of Amsterdam, all of Ireland, and the birthplace of The Doctor, I’m also apparently missing out on a pretty cool Dia de los Muertes celebration next Saturday in Glastonbury.

If you’re a European looking for something to do, check it out. Scarlet Imprint and Hadean Press will be represented at booths, and Jake Stratton-Kent will be speaking, among others.

I gotta see if there’s something going on in Baltimore I can participate in.

You ever have one of those things that you really meant to do all week, but then forgot because other shit came up, and then it was late and you hadn’t done what you really meant to do on time?

Well, for my readers in the Prague vicinity, I meant to tell you about a play you should really go check out. One of our Gentlemen for Jupiter is involved in the production, and from what I’ve seen of his work it’s going to be brilliant. He’s done stage adaptations of Lovecraft’s work in the past, so … you can imagine.

Here’s the plug that I meant to publish all fucking week long. The last show is Saturday night, I think. So hopefully you get this before you make plans for tonight, you Eastern European readers, and make every effort to attend.

Blood, Love and Rhetoric present “The Caretaker” – Pinter’s dark and poignant drama about life on the lunatic fringes of a collapsing society – an evening of menace, suspense, violence, terror and torture.

Re-imagined by Blood, Love and Rhetoric, “The Caretaker” is transported to a 2012 post-holocaust London. Thursday sold out but tickets still available for Friday (21st) at 7pm and 9pm or Saturday (22nd) at 5pm and 8pm. email blrtheatre@gmail.com for more information. Looking forward to seeing you at the show.

Michael Cecchettelli, author of Crossed Keys, has recently released Mardukite Magick, an ebook covering a technique for Working the 50 Names of Marduk in harmony with the Jupiter current. It’s available at his blog, another thing you should check out.

This book is quick and to the point, and I enjoyed it immensely. It’s everything a book about magic should be, in my opinion. It provides the basics of what you need to know, and then it jumps right into the magical rites. It forms the framework, and then it fleshes it out to the point where you can start filling in the details on your own.

This is not as much a book about Marduk as it is a book that puts you in contact with Marduk so you can find out about him first hand. That’s awesome. It reminds me a lot of my own Modern Angelic Grimoire, in that it provides a quick and easy reference guide to everything you need to get started, tells a little about personal experiences, but is mostly focused on getting you in touch with the entities so you can get on with doing the Work yourself.

And I really love the tone Michael has in his writings. He’s got this formal informality about his writing that is both authoritative and yet approachable at the same time. In this book, he focuses on the traditional Sumerian sources for his information, and the ritual format and style flows readily and easily. This approach doesn’t take a lot of specialized tools, and the rites themselves are fun. Just reading through them, I felt the Jupiter Current Michael is tapping begin to flow.

My favorite part is the table at the end with the traditional 50 names of Marduk and the description of each. It’s chock full of goodness and insight into the many facets of this Jovian deity. I found things in there that I will be incorporating into my own Work that I hadn’t thought of, like how there’s a facet of the Jupiter current that sustains all things all the time, an ongoing maintenance that I hadn’t thought about before.

All in all, this book provides the information you need to establish a Working relationship with the Jupiter Current through the God Marduk, and the details you need to develop that relationship over time. I can easily see a magician immersing themselves in this system for years, and still only just scratching the surface of its potential.

Eventually.

Remember when Clinton went on Arsenio Hall and played the sax?

Remember when your biggest fashion conundrum was resolved entirely by figuring out which flannel shirt smelled the least bad?

Remember when we saved the world from Y2K?

Remember when we built the internet?

Remember when we didn’t really have any hope for the future, but it was alright, because there was slack?

Where did the slack go? I’ll tell you where it went.

The 1% took all the slack.

Sure, some of us are a bit bitter and resigned still, some of us are having the same reaction I had at first to this OWS thing.

“Oh, you’re getting fucked? Welcome to my world, trapped between the boomers and Gen Y, and nobody’s ever given a shit about us, but we do everything useful anyway.”

Here, it’s put much better in this Gizmodo article: Generation X is Sick of your Bullshit.

But some of us are not putting up with it. Some of us are remembering you can’t steal slack.

And we’re taking it back.

Because this is how it happens.

Ok, so I gave everyone a heaping pile of SHIT about meeting at Starbucks to plan OWS, did I not?

Well, I was APPARENTLY a bit hasty. Check this shit out:

Here’s the idea they came up with: Americans themselves would start
lending to small businesses, with Starbucks serving as the middleman.
Starbucks would find financial institutions willing to loan to small
businesses. Starbucks customers would be able to donate money to the
effort when they bought their coffee. Those who gave $5 or more would
get a red-white-and-blue wristband, which Schultz labeled “Indivisible.”
“We are hoping it will bring back pride in the American dream,” he
says. The tag line will read: “Americans Helping Americans.”

THIS.

This is what I was talking about. Subsidize small business, I said. Get small businesses moving, and the jobs will follow. And it’s STARBUCKS, the very corp I was knocking who’s making it happen. Fuckin’ figures.

But fuck it, I support this.

Start your own online business for under $100. 

Jump into the gig economy. (Got that link off Gordon’s latest Apocalypse post, which is chock full of nougatey goodness.)

Plan on growing your business over the next year to where you are the job creator. Don’t wait for corporations to do it for you, even though apparently they aren’t all evil greedy bastards with no solutions, only ways to get more money. Don’t wait for Government to do it for you, though I’m starting to feel this weird feeling of hope that there might actually be something good that comes from all this OWS stuff. I still suspect nothing good will come of it, but … it would be nice if I’m wrong.

And then magic your Business to Success.

And while I don’t think it’s entirely necessary to use credit to expand and grow in the digital age, we now have access to it if necessary. Maybe a couple grand here or there will get you the materials you need to take things to the next level in your product line, increasing demand and allowing you to hire people. Who knows? It’s an option though, when a couple weeks ago it was not.

Do it yourself. I’ve already got one part time employee helping me out with my online business. She’s gathering materials for talismans, handling incoming orders, taking care of shipping, and doing a lot of the administration, freeing me up to concentrate on providing the occult services and writing. Business is booming. I’m telling you, it’s not only possible, it’s effective.

Things are really changing. Who knew?

Hey Magician, how’s it going?

You know how pissed everyone is that the wealthy elite control all teh monies?

How pissed would they be if they knew a handful of occultists around the world were the primary movers and shakers of this shared reality we experience?

How many magicians* actively participating in the creation of their experienced world do you think are at work today?

Based on book sales statistics for the last decade, about 1.1% of the population is interested in spirituality, self help, occult, and new age beliefs. Out of all the people interested in these topics that you know, how many of them are actually actively creating their world?

Purely as an estimate based on my personal observations in three states over the last twenty years, I’d say there are probably two competent practicing reality engineers for every fifty people who buy books about this stuff, of various paths and traditions. And that’s a generous estimate, in my opinion, as most of those folks are still figuring out how to do it, and a lot of them will get distracted for years at a time. So that’s 4% of the 1.1%.

That’s 0.044% of the population that’s actively participating in creating the world using occult means, spiritual assistance, eastern occult philosophies, or new age techniques of some kind.

And guess what most of them were focused on?

• Sex: Fuckin’ and relationships is the number one magical service requested, and most people’s first attempts at spellcraft were related to someone they wanted to fuck.
• Money: Wealth and prosperity is the number two magical service requested. Moving up through the ranks of society, getting an edge, making businesses profitable… In other words, doing everything in our power to become the 1% the OWS is railing against.

That’s right. As the great philosopher once said, “Life ain’t nothing but bitches and money.“**

It’s Elemental

The good news is that most of us, if we’re serious about using magic to make money, eventually realize the role money has to take if we’re going to be successful in conjuring it on demand. It becomes the servant, and not the goal. That’s the key.

And we stop trying to get to be the 1%. At least, that’s what’s happened to me. I don’t want to be at the top, I simply want to be free to pursue what I want to pursue when I want to pursue it. For years I figured that meant amassing great stockpiles of money, the interest on which I could support a decent lifestyle. In other words, becoming the 1%.

I didn’t want billions, just $4.2 million. Not a lot, really, when you think about it.

But see, that was the means to the goal, not the goal. The actual goal is to get out of the game, to play my own game by my own rules, to rule myself.

OWS is about giving more people the opportunity to achieve that goal. The grip on the wealth held by the wealthy is tight, and they are strangling the 99%, making sure they can’t get in on the deal, pushing them even further away from the end goal.

More on that later, it’s miller time.

But before I head out, I should acknowledge that I may have been wrong about Soros funding the OWS. It wouldn’t be the first time.

But we’ll see where things go when Adbusters starts rolling out their demands. It’s entirely possible their planned demands get washed under the masses they’ve organized though, at this point.

* Or sorcerers, root doctors, folk healers, shamans, masters, gurus, priests, goes, theurgists, or whatever you want to call them.

** to which Philosoraptor replies, “But didn’t Biggie say mo money mo problems?”

For those who have not yet looked at what’s going on politically in America from a spiritual perspective, from a firm foundation of history, here’s a simple graphic explaining it all as clearly as I can:

They’re both movements primarily started by the wealthy elite. Adbusters started the OWS, and they’ve got a long term agenda planned for it. It starts seemingly seemingly at random, but then it starts putting out a cohesive message. They’ve already talked about it here:

“Down the road, there will be crystal clear
demands coming out of this movement,” he said. “But this first phase of
the movement is messy and leaderless and demandless.”

Do not make the mistake of thinking that this OWS was spontaneous, or unplanned. Maybe Soros did or didn’t have anything to do with funding OWS, but do not think for a moment he will not profit off the unrest. See Rule 162.

Herr Von Faustus wrote a neat post about Cynicism the other day, and it really got me thinking. I had thought for some reason the Cynics were a second century doomsday cult. I can’t seem to find the source that made me think that,* but his post and the wikipedia explanation make it sound right up my alley lately.

Since I started doing the Gates Rites regularly, I’ve been harmonizing within and without, and it’s changed the way I see things. If you read the introductory material of the Rites, it’s apparent that they are aspiring towards something much more than wealth and prosperity. It’s not about becoming King and being a tyrant, jockin’ the bitches and slappin’ the hos.

It’s about taking responsibility for your life. It’s about taking ownership of your existence and your experience. That takes courage, power, authority, and compassion. You become the patriarch or matriarch of everything and everyone in your world when you harmonize your consciousness with Destiny. You see how they all work together to create the one thing that is your life, and you see weaknesses and strengths, potentials to shape, projects to accomplish. You get inspired, and your life becomes your Art as you express yourself through yourself, becoming the fulcrum between the Seen and the Unseen realms.

It’s a process of decompartmentalization of your life, in many ways. You see that they all feed on one another, your happiness, success, family, work, society at large, global population, the environment, space, time, and all the illusions of differentiation. It’s all a bunch of arbitrary lines marking off similar subjects, but it leads to the illusion of separation. It’s all attached, it’s all one big shiny thing, your life, and it’s fucking brilliant.

The reason the Gates Rites take you down through all the spheres along the chain of manifestation is to build up a resonance in your sphere of manifestation. In other words, it makes you powerful in all the different ways things manifest. Hermetics supplies a map of the forces, organized by qualities and similarities, but it’s all one big process, and we use the phase gates of the process to work with it. At a high level. More granularly speaking, there’s a lot of conjuration of helpful entities that goes on in practice.

We’re in that current of manifestation all the time, but we’re not of it. I’m fond of the Crowned Creation interpretation of where our ability to do magic comes from. I believe we’re made in God’s image, and we’re loved by everything because of that, and that’s why spirits work with us and we get to do magic. I think “made in God’s image” is code for Thou art God, but I’ve always put St. Heinlein a few notches above St. Paul when it comes to scripture.

Jake Stratton-Kent believes you get your magic powers from the pacts made with the spirits, specifically the parchment or Liber Spiritum which contains the covenant between the Spirits and the Magician. The agreed exchange is the magical effects for the offerings of fire and smoke, and other things we do with the spirits. You don’t pay the spirits, you don’t get the magic, like in any business venture.

Functionally, we both end up with a Liber Spiritus, and we both burn candles and incense, so what difference does it make? I think it’s one of those areas of doctrine where there’s enough room in the universe for multiple interpretations with explanatory force. However you interpret it, you end up with the power to create your personal world.

You’re not like other people when you do that shit.

Ok, so to recap:

• Man’s the fulcrum between the Unseen and the Seen worlds
• And it’s one big current manifesting above and below simultaneously
• And regardless of where the power to do magic comes from, the reclamation of your race and value, or the pact between you and the spirits, magicians have special authority over their lives
• This authority is how the Universe is made
• You’re special; you create your world

For most people, the world is their whole world. For us, it’s our playground, our laboratory. It’s where we practice being gods. Practical magic. Practice. See that? Isn’t that neat?** So when it comes to society and worldly things, we’re in the world but not of it. We have a perspective on the forces that are manifesting as the Occupation, the Arab Spring, the Tea Party, the entire global recession in general that most people don’t have.

Manifestation is hierarchical. Hierarchies of spirits are maps and tribes, it’s true, but they are also a lesson in relationship. “Man” is a spiritual class of entities with a role to play in manifestation, the role of god of their world. The secret Joseph Smith missed was that you don’t have to wait to die to get your own planet, it’s already yours. It doesn’t feel like it because there are forces out there you can’t control, market forces, economic fluctuations, natural disasters, but that’s just because you’re looking at it as if they were separate things. They really are part of that one big current of manifestation.

And you’re part of it too, but separate. Detached a bit because you’re special. You can do magic. You can create your world. You work with what you’ve got. The world is your laboratory, the stuff that happens is your materia, and your magic is your equipment.

You work with what’s really going on in the world. You become aware of the force and how one facet of it is manifesting in your world, and you have established a relationship to it. You’re in a relative position to everything that’s happening. If you’ve recently lost your fortune to the economic downturn, you’re position relative to the big dick of economic hardship is bent over. Positional relationships.

You learn to read the current as a magician. You learn to adapt to it, as well as adapting it to you. You harmonize it with your desires. You harmonize with it too.

Dropping it down a level, less abstract, say you’re working on getting money, and there’s an Occupation of Wall Street going on, it’s a good time to start selling T-Shirts with slogans on them. Or if you’ve got political aspirations, and there’s a protest going on, you join in and see how many people you can convince to support your platform. If you’re a day trader and the economy’s taking a nose dive, you focus on strategies for making a profit in down markets.

Magicians, that’s us, only not so specialized. We’re doing that all the time with everything that’s going on at once, on some level. Strategizing. working with what we’ve got. Using everything to our advantage. Bullshit makes the flowers grow, and that’s beautiful. War, peace, they’re both good for business.

And I’m using money metaphors here because it’s a language I understand, because I’ve focused on it a lot. But don’t think that just because I talk a lot about money, that’s all I care about. I talk a lot about it because it matters a lot, and also, to a much much lesser degree, because I used to be really greedy. Wealth was goign to answer everything, wealth and prosperity were the ticket to everything I wanted.

And I still see money as a means to an end, but my desire has shifted from the means to the end. As a result, the focus of my magic has changed, and things have gotten a lot better in my world. And money is the easiest thing to make in the world, as a magician. Money, once you see how easy it is to make, loses value. Rob it of its mystique, and it has no power over you.

Greed is not an issue when you’re being a good King. Philosopher Kings know the truth and harmonize with it. The cynics taught to give up everything and live in harmony with nature. I agree completely, Hermetically speaking. Give up attachment to all the compartmentalized pieces of the current, and live in harmony with it instead, harmonizing it with you, harmonizing you with it, playing, creating, in tune with everything else, using what you have to work with and crafting your world.

Do that right, and the money just flows in. Like a flood. Whenever you need it, address the means and the end, and do the magic to harmonize it to your desired outcome, be willing to adapt as necessary, and you’ll find it just moves right where it needs to go. And the money was never the point, the resolution or acquired result was the goal, and that’s where your intent and attention was focused. That’s the trick of all this. Awareness of your relationship to everything else, and creation of your world.

Money serves you. Jason teaches that fundamental concept in his financial sorcery classes. Make money serve you, or else you’re serving money. Someone’s got to be the bitch in the relationship.

But that lesson applies to everything, and there’s more to it. You’re either serving your job or its serving you. Your family, your spouse, your boyfriend/girlfriend, your pets. Are they serving a purpose in your life? You’ve got them in your life for a reason, what is it? Are the situations serving you by providing you with the rewards you should be getting?

I like being a dad. It’s cool. I like having kids. They’re awesome. I love the parenting process, shaping little minds and hearts and aiming them at the future, having progeny, knowing my genes have been passed on. It’s awesome. It’s like emanation in the flesh. Little pieces of myself that will go on after I’m gone, bringing me wisdom, love, and happiness as a father. Fatherhood serves a purpose, it makes me happy.

But for it to make me happy, I have to do it right. There’s nothing wrong with being a hedonist if you accept the responsibility that comes with getting the pleasure you seek. I have to be a GOOD dad to have good kids who do good things that make me happy. If I fuck them up, my life will be hell. I won’t get any pleasure out of being a father if I screw up. So I have to do it right.

Which means I end up in service to them.

Service, it turns out, is part of rulership, intrinsically linked, aspects of the same principle. You aren’t a good king if you’re not ruling in compassion, serving your kingdom by creating it beautifully. Everyone else in the world, no matter what they look like, or what they believe, or how they vote, they’re all in our world. They’re our brothers and sisters, as well as being part of our Kingdoms, part of the manifestation of that One Thing. To be happy Kings, we have to serve even them.

* Try googling that and see where it gets you. Teh Intertubes are clogged with bullshit and I can never find what I need anymore! Fucking 2012 has ruined any kind of decent results you can get on ancient eschatologies. And Camping hasn’t helped at all.

** You’ve got to listen to this story about Lonnie Sue Johnson, it’s kind of a downer until you get to about 7:28 or so, and then some of the most profound wisdom comes out, pointing to the Mystery of the interconnectedness of the One Thing in relation to the role of Man in creation.