I never heard about this stuff before my daughter put it on in the car off her ipod. Good writing stuff. I prefer the stuff that sounds more like autobots with bad gas, but I found this music for free, and it’s good. A bit of reggae and electronica, but I still prefer the stuff with a heavier bass line. But you gotta admit, the album cover is awesome as shit.

So last Full Moon was a Super Moon, and while there’s nothing particularly extra magical about it according to Renaissance astrology, I and the kids made a couple liters of Super Moon Water. We got some water, consecrated it to the Moon with prayers to Mary, called on the Archangel Gabriel of the Moon to bless it, and instill the powers of the Moon into the water, and we left it out in the Moonlight overnight. After the moon set, and before the sun rose, we brought it in and kept it in a dark spot.

What I’m going to use it for, I have no idea. But 2 liters of Super Moon Juice is pretty awesome. Probably going to use it in manifestation rites, since the Moon rules the outermost shape of things and is the last sphere that an Idea goes through before it gets turned over to the Elementals to take on a physical form.

The Curious Curandera has some good ideas for it on her blog post today. Think I’ll take her up on some of those suggestions.

I think Jason recently recommended a Christian book called the Prayer of Jabez. It’s based on an obscure scripture reference in the Bible, and it’s a good example of the kind of result I was talking about in that post. Here’s the scripture:

Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from evil, that it not be to my sorrow! God granted him that which he requested. – 1 Chronicles 4:9-10

See that “enlarge my border” part? That’s what I’m talking about, but in terms of … well, it’s not about time management, necessarily. That’s a side effect, a secondary result of what we’re doing primarily. I know I said it was a result, but it misrepresents what is going on.

Taking this rite as a method of simply increasing a skill you already have, “time management,” is off a bit, and it’s my fault for rushing through that part of the post. That’s still working within the same borders, the same limits. If you look at time management, it’s still sacrificing something to be able to do more with the same limitations. This is about moving the boundaries of your limitations, and the result is what looks like better time management.

It’s about having the capacity to do more. The overwhelming stress comes from having as much or more to do as you possibly can. You’re maxed out. Enlarging the borders doesn’t change the amount of things you have to do, it just lessens the degree of impact. If you’re running at 110% of your capacity, you’re going to blow out the systems. If you upgrade the system, the same amount of work or responsibility goes down from 110% to maybe 85% or 60% of your total capacity.

It’s leveling up. In video games or role playing games, you might start out with a character who has 50 health points. An enemy doing 25 points of damage can hit you twice and you die. You upgrade the character a few times, and your total health points go up to 200. Now the percentage of damage that same enemy can do to you has shrunk from 50% of your total health to 12.5%. It’s doing the same damage, but you can take more.

As Simon Tomasi says, this happens incrementally as people adapt in normal situations. Game functionality is modeled on real life, after all. The Saturn/Venus rite is like finding a health capacity upgrade in a video game that you don’t have to spend any experience points on.

Only you are spending experience points, it’s just magic experience instead of mundane experience. You’re taking advantage of the short cuts we have access to as magicians.

Better were the days when mastery of seas came not from bargains struck with eldritch creatures… but from the sweat of a man’s brow and the strength of his back alone. You all know this to be true! -Hector Barbossa, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

Ever feel that way? I have. Especially after a spirit burned down my house to get me $4k. Totally not worth a year of recovery for a quick four grand.

But better were the days when I made $10 an hour as a bar/grill kitchen manager? Better were the days when I was an Admin Assistant at a non profit making $12 an hour? Fuck no! Barbossa’s off his rocker. Better are the days when I’m making four times that income as a result of my ongoing interactions with the spirits, can I get an AMEN!?

Damn straight I can.*

But that house fire thing wasn’t the first time I fucked up in magic. Not the first time bargains struck with eldritch beings came back to bite me in the ass. And I regret every single one of those rites, in a way. Not in a particularly remorseful way, but more in a damn, I wish that rite had worked out as planned kind of way. 

Ok, now that I think about it for a second or two, I don’t regret all my failed rites, of course. If all my rites worked… well, let’s just say I wouldn’t have made nearly as many friends in California over the last few years. And there’d be werewolves stalking the shores of Nevada. If they had survived the meteor apocalypse. So, I mean, the world’s probably in better shape because I don’t always succeed, even if it is pretty boring to a nineteen year old version of myself.

Who should have been punched in the face at least once.

But I tell you this, my brothers and sisters, I appreciate every rite I’ve done, failed or successful. Those that failed have taught me something, no matter how cliche. Those that have succeeded even more. The power at our disposal is something that would be truly sobering if we stopped and thought about it for a bit. Something we should not scoff at, nor let slip too far from our awareness. 

See, I’m guilty of that, I forget who I am, and my potential all too easily. There’s so much that I could be doing that I’m not. I forget, and I feel bad about it. 

Fortunately, I am a benevolent soul, and I forgive me.

* I think, sometimes, I would make an awesome preacher, except for the foul language. 

In today’s post, Jow talks about something I recently went through as well. I conjured for more income, more business, more more more. Surrender the Booty, says I.

And the universe did, bless her heart. Like Jow, I was busier than a one legged man in an ass-kicking contest. It didn’t take me long to get overwhelmed to the point of inaction. You know, when you have so much to do you can’t do anything. That’s where the Do One Thing post I wrote last week came from.

Crap, the Druid just posted something similar. He’s got too many patients to care for at the level of care he wants to give. Is it going around? I feel worse for him than I do for me. I got bummed because I just had too much stuff to do. He’s bummed cause he can’t provide the quality of life he feels his patients deserve. Maybe this can help him too. Hope so.

Anyway, we get overwhelmed when we try to cram too much stuff into the space we have available. You can’t grow more corn than you can fit in your field. If you play Farmville, you’ve probably reached the point where you’ve got more stuff on your farm than you have squares to put it in. You start sacrificing your productive land to fit in all the animals or planes or balloons or golden gnomes or topiary gardens or Japanese barns or whatever. (I don’t play it, my spouse does. I quit years ago. It got silly.)

We do the same things with our lives. We live at a certain level of responsibility, and we get used to having X hours of work, and X hours of everything else. We cram more and more into the schedule, and pretty soon we’re sacrificing in the give and take, blossom and decay of our efforts. It drives us nuts for a while until we adapt.

How do we adapt? We sacrifice. We get rid of something to make room for the stuff we want to keep. We get rid of the shit we don’t need anymore, eliminate the things that are taking up space or time that don’t give us a big enough return on our investment of time or effort. Non-productive time in front of a monitor is the first thing that goes for me. Video games, episodes of Torchwood and Doctor Who, even time spent reading other people’s blogs. At work, the administrative tasks that I can catch up later get sacrificed so I can work on putting out whatever project fire has my boss calling me into her office. Sacrifice is the instinctive reaction.

It can be good. You prune a tree, and you get a lot more fruit. The resources that went to maintaining all those extra branches and leaves get channeled into bigger, juicier, more abundant fruit. Good stuff.

Pruning, cutting back on things, sacrifice… It’s Saturn and Mars. Saturn because the things we’re sacrificing are coming to an end, but Mars because we’re cutting things out. When we sacrifice things like this, we’re working within a closed system. There’s only so much space available, only so much time, only so many productive hours in a day that we can work. There’s only so much our minds can handle at once. Limits. Boundaries. Closed circles. Saturn.

But there’s another option.

You ever meet those people who have twice as much to be responsible for than you do, but they’re sitting there all relaxed enjoying a cold beer on a weekend because they just finished mowing their perfectly manicured lawn and they aren’t all behind on everything trying to catch up? I always used to assume they were just rich enough not to have debt eating their pea brains the way I do. Or they hired other people to take care of their kids or something. But that’s not it.

See, people can handle more shit than we think we can. We think we’re in a closed circle with limited resources, but we aren’t. The human brain can handle a lot more shit than we give it credit for. We think we’re in a closed loop with limited resources within the defined boundaries we’re already aware of, but the truth is those boundaries are flexible.

In Farmville, you go up a level, and you can expand your farm. Presto, more squares to use for stuff. You don’t have to get rid of all that shit you thought you’d have to get rid of. In real life, farmers buy more land when they’ve maxed out the profitability of what they’ve already got.

But the things we’re talking about here are mostly time constraints, and there’s no way to expand the day, right? Well yeah. But we’re magicians! We have access to the sphere of Saturn, where boundaries are set. We have access to Chronos himself! TIME constraints? Fuck time constraints. I didn’t go through these initiations to get ass-fucked by time constraints.

Now, when we’re talking about cutting back and sacrificing, it’s Saturn and Mars, right? Well, when we talk about expanding our limits so we can create more, do more, grow more, have more, we’re talking about Saturn and Venus. Primarily. There’s plenty of room for the Moon too, and you’d time it to occur during a waxing Moon. Which is, you know, NOW. But a Saturn/Venus rite is what is called for.

Me, I just conjured up Cassiel and Anael. I used those seals from the Magical Calendar, and the Modern Angelic Grimoire, and my conjure box, and I called up Cassiel first, and then Anael, and when they were present and accounted for, I explained the situation. “I got too much to do, and not enough time or attention or brain power to get it done. I need the boundaries of my sphere expanded, upgraded, I need my resources to deal with everything grown. I need to be able to take care of things in the time I have available, and the bandwidth left over to enjoy my life. Grant me the expanded sphere of influence, the wisdom to manage my time wisely without sacrificing the things I need to keep. Generate more space, and let it be fruitful.”

The result was better time management skills, though I didn’t notice it at first. Things were getting done that were slipping through the cracks before. I was able to sleep soundly, at a decent hour, without my brain running a million miles an hour going over all the things I didn’t quite have time for. I’ve been able to blog more consistently. Above all else, I’ve been able to think more clearly.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying sacrificing things is a bad thing. We’re all little hoarders of bullshit, and we accumulate habits and patterns that need to be shaken up. We need to prune from time to time, and we need to “sacrifice” things that aren’t helping. We need to be Martial with ourselves once in a while. It’s a damned good thing to do.

But when the quality of your work is getting sacrificed, when you’re falling behind on the things you really have to get done no matter what and the make-up time just never gets there, and people are counting on you, it’s time to consider that you need to expand your sphere, upgrade your farm, get a little more room. There’s an adjustment phase, and like all magic that affects your sphere directly, it’s not always comfortable. But the benefits are worth it.

Arrrr! There do be something akin between ye pirates and ye magicians. I’ve been trying to put it together, and all I’ve come up with so far is this:

Pirates are looking for a way to tap into the wealth and prosperity of global commerce despite a lack of social standing or the specialized skill sets required to participate within the constraints of legal authority. They don’t stay in their assigned social class. They are outlaws, and they put their lives on the line to accomplish their goals. Their motto can be summed up in the phrase “Surrender the Booty!” Surrender because they are taking it whether you want them to or not, demanding that you give it up or perish.

They also drink a lot, and have sex with anyone they can.

Magicians are looking for a way to tap directly into the engines of manifestation and the hierarchies of ascension in order to accomplish their spiritual and physical goals.  Magicians don’t stay within the social constraints to get their desires. If we’re working on Theurgy, we don’t stay within the lay community of whatever religion dominates the land. We look for the hidden, occult means to accomplish our aims. We look to ascend on our own, without any intermediary telling us what God said, and what he really meant. We go outside the social norms to get what we want on our own. If we’re working on getting ahead financially, we don’t rely only on our training, education, and experience. We take a shortcut. We’re after the booty. +

And we share the penchant for mind altering chemicals and sex.

The similarities are fairly apparent. Outlaws seeking the treasure in spite of our social standing. The Lemegeton’s Goetia, if you look closely at it, provides an interesting social commentary. The main things the spirits provide are the education you’d receive in a Liberal Arts school in the Renaissance. The term “Liberal” in liberal arts refers to the fact that it was an education reserved for the free citizens, not to be had by the slaves or the serfs or the non-noble classes. Only nobility and clergy received a formal education in theology, the maths and sciences, and the emerging middle class had no recourse to the training. They couldn’t be officers, couldn’t command troops. So they went to the spirits to learn the nature of things, to get aid in commerce, to have access to troops for defending their cities.

The occult methods provided a means to overcome the liabilities of our birth, and the whims of our fate. Like pirates, we go outside the prescribed constraints of our birth or training to reach heights that are denied us by our culture, our tribal custom.

Arr! We do be pirates, of a sort!

And yet there are differences too. Pirates accepted the risks they faced. Magicians tend to want the booty without risking their lives. We may joke about risking our sanity, but we usually think those who find madness in their occult pursuits brought it with them into the cave in the first place. Pirates will work their tails off to get their treasure. Pirate life is hard frickin’ work. They earn their treasure by the sweat of their brow, the strength of their backs. Magicians can be a little less willing to do the mundane work that makes a way for the occult powers to manifest their desires in their lives.

We also approach the obtainment of our goals and desires with a bit less gusto. We can’t very well conjure up the Intelligence of the Sun and demand it Surrender the Booty or Else! At best we’d be ignored, at worst fried in a solar flare. Pirates had swords and cannon, and their targets were vulnerable to swords. Our target is the Universe, and it’s bigger and stronger than us. No amount of threats will work in most magical practice, and the few techniques that involve threatening our co-workers usually tender results that leave something to be desired.

Nevertheless, there’s a passion in the demand of the Pirate that I think we need to incorporate into our Work. Will you accept less than the complete fulfillment of your ambition!? Will you take no for an answer? There are times when the answer from the spirits is “no,” but we don’t have to stop there. When we get a “No,” press harder, ask like a child, “Why not!?” Maybe there’s something we have to change about ourselves to accomplish our goal. Maybe there’s something we have to learn that makes the thing we want moot. Maybe we already have it. But taking the “No” at face value is weak. What are we leaving on the table if we leave too soon?

I demand change, I demand the prize. Surrender the Booty, universe! Move, or move me! If I can’t have what I want, then change me, teach me, school me so I know why I don’t need it, or why I can’t have it. Show me the way to what I want if I can’t have it the way things are right now.

Or kill me dead, because if you won’t give me what I want, or raise me to the level where I can see that I don’t REALLY want it, then this is no world I want to live in.

With my wife dealing with chronic illness beyond the scope of my magical ability to heal, there are often times when I have to cook. I used to cook in a restaurant… Ok, it was a bar and grill, but it had delusions of grandeur. We had gourmet soups, the best prime rib on the planet, and we constantly went out of our way to make the dining experience shock the customers. So I’m a decent cook, and my kids rarely complain.

This isn’t my chili, but it looked similar.

So last night was a night I had to cook. I decided on chili, because it’s super easy. My recipe is pretty straight forward, a pound of ground beef, a whole sweet onion, one huge ass can (26 oz) of dark red kidney beans, two regular (I think 15 oz) cans of diced tomatos, one (15ish oz) can of sweet corn, drained, and a little can of tomato paste. And a tablespoon of minced garlic, or two cloves, salt and pepper to taste, a quarter teaspoon of cumin (I forgot it last night, but it adds a mild “dirt” flavor that seems to go well with chili), and the chili powder.

The chili powder was an issue. See, usually I get the most expensive seasoning possible, keep it for short periods of time so it tastes fresh, and ditch it when it starts to lose its aroma. Last time I bought chili powder, I was totally at Wal Mart. And money was tight, so I bought the generic. And you could totally tell when I made the chili. So last night, I cheated: I used magic.

I browned the ground beef with the chopped up onion and garlic, salt, and pepper. I love that smell. Then I got all the canned stuff together and the spices, saw the generic stuff, and remembered the generic flavor of the last chili I’d made. Remembering that the Supernatural Assistant (SA) is also supposed to be able to bring together an awesome dinner on command, I conjured him up and said, “Make this the best tasting chili in the world, improve the flavor of the ingredients that the end product is better than it should be by rights.”

When the ground beef was done and the onions had started to turn translucent, just, I added all the canned goods. I added the chili powder, and again asked my SA to bless the seasoning and the end product with good flavor. I stirred it all up, and turned down the heat of the burner to simmer.

Then I made my mistake.

Thinking it needed to be brought up to a boil before turning it back down, I cranked the burner back up to about 6. I figured, less than high heat, shouldn’t burn, but still hot enough to get it boiling. I’ll be in the next room, I’ll remember to come back and turn it down to simmer. No worries!

And I went off and played video games with my son and daughter. Pretty soon, the aroma of burned beans began to fill the house. With a loud “SHIT!” I ran to the kitchen as my kids made the, “oooo, you said the ess word” noises they always make when I cuss. It was too late though, the beans had burned on the bottom.

If you’ve ever burned beans in chili, you know the whole pot is ruined, right? The smoke flavor permeates the whole thing. I was pissed. I turned the whole thing off and made plans to run to KFC. Before heading out though, I had to at least taste it.

Best damned chili I ever made. Somehow, the smoke flavor wasn’t total ass. Don’t ask me how. It was great! I just had to be careful not to scrape the bottom when serving it. The kids loved it, and they’re total chili snobs. My teen loved it.

It was a complete miracle.

First, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement so I must do nothing. And secondly, you must be a pirate for the pirate’s code to apply and you’re not. And thirdly, the code is more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules. – Barbossa in Pirates of the Caribbean: the Curse of the Black Pearl

I’m not a traditional grimoire magician at all. I am a modern magician.

Traditional grimoire magicians who read the blog and my books are already aware of this fact, but I just wanted to make sure that’s clear. To me, the grimoires are a source for really powerful magic, but they are not complete in and of themselves. They don’t talk about initiations, they don’t teach the hierarchical cosmology that makes it make sense. They don’t explain much about the god names and words of power. They don’t teach how to accomplish the Great Work.

They’re cliff’s notes. Reference guides. They’re like the notes you make when you’re going to give a presentation. Sometimes everything in the notes is covered, sometimes more is covered, sometimes less. I’ve written up rituals of my own in great detail, but when I do the rite, shit changes on the fly. If I had to stick to a script, I’d get nowhere fast.

I’m not a grimoire fundamentalist, but I do believe the grimoire magic is the most powerful I’ve used. Yet an argument can be made that I’ve never really used grimoire magic. So what does it mean when I say the system is more powerful (in my experience) than other systems? Only that the names of the spirits and their seals are really useful? No, because there’s more to it. The structure they present is important to understand as well. The system is more than the pieces.

But at the same time, we aren’t the magicians who wrote the books. The “unknown unknowns” leave us unable to really do the magic the way they were doing it back then, if it was ever done that way at all. We’re products of a different culture, living in a different time. Agrippa would have had an ipad, you know it. And spreadsheets.

Magic is living and breathing, it’s not set in stone. Grimoire writers were compilers and syncretists. We are too. Adaptation is necessary to be able to do any of this. It’s a given.

So my approach is to look at the grimoires as snapshots, references. I use the names and seals of the systems, and my rituals are something a Renaissance magician would recognize. I use the right god names and the right words of power from the scripts. I use the right incenses and metals, when possible. I do my best to keep it as close to the original as possible, but I do it the way it makes sense to me to do it using the technology I have at my disposal. I keep my adaptations traditional, if that makes sense.

And I experiment. I innovate. I work with the spirits to figure out the best way to work with the spirits. It’s a philosophy as much as a set of techniques.

The grimoires, imo, are more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules.

A potential client wrote me this morning asking for help getting rich. He’s spent a lot on other practitioners trying to get rich, and it’s failed. He wants to work with me, but he’s been burned before and keeps getting deeper in debt. He’s not looking to get megabillionaire rich, which is good, but he wants to get some money coming in fast. He asked for a guarantee of success.

So here’s my response:

No, man, there are no guarantees in magic. Magic is a force you can apply to your life. It’s one force. There are many other forces applying to your life too. Adding a force for getting you wealth is good, but it still has to compete with everything else affecting you.

Are you cursed with poverty? That could be a major factor. You need to get rid of any curses if they are there.

Are you destined to be poor? It’s different from a curse, it’s something that cannot be changed if it is your fate. You need to have a professional astrologer check your natal chart. Christopher Warnock at www.renaissanceastrology.com is good at that. If you are just destined to be poor, you have to learn to live with it. You can be poor and still be happy.

Were you taught poor financial skills? No magic can make you wealthy if you spend more money than you make. Magic cannot make you financially disciplined.

Are you aware of opportunities? Magic brings opportunity to make money, it doesn’t bring money. You still have to do the work.

If you’ve done a lot of wealth magic and you’re still poor, more wealth magic is not going to help. You need to figure out the reasons it’s failing.