RO, Flying & Invisible at the Same Time

So Jason says that grimoire magic is not the best magic in the world. He says it’s not clearly superior until he sees people turn invisible and fly.

For the record, I turned invisible and flew. Swear to gosh. I even have a picture. That’s me, invisible, flying over on the right.

Like most skeptics though, even this clear evidence won’t be enough to sway him, I’m sure.

But anyway, I’d like to take a moment to address something he said for real. In talking about someone who expressed the following experience:

They were convinced that following these texts [The Grimoires] as close to the letter as possible was the key to real success, but after a few years of spending lots of time and money on doing just that, they were not getting any better results than anything else he tried. Even worse, when he really looked around at the reports from the people that are trumpeting this approach as the key to magic, they really are not reporting results that are markedly different than what anyone else reports. No one is turning actual lead to gold or learning chemistry directly from the mouths of spirits.

Jason goes on to say that all systems, if practiced diligently will tender the same results. I’m paraphrasing.

I’ve got mixed thoughts on the subject. On the one hand, like Jason, I went through the pop magical trends as they came up, though I was a few years behind him because I’m younger than a coprolite. My path was neopaganism, Ceremonial Magic ala Kraig’s Golden Dawn stuff in Modern Magick, followed closely by Crowley’s Magick in Theory and Practice, and then Chaos Magick. And to their credit, all this stuff worked. I got results. I could change the world, sort of, using the techniques of each system.

But then I got into the grimoires of the renaissance, and started using them, and fuck me, dude, the power was just incredible. I did the same kinds of things I did as a neopagan, ceremonial magickian, and chaos magickian in terms of goals aimed for and achieved, but the speed that the changes came internally, the speed that the changes came materially were just totally off the charts in comparison. The time to manifest went from three months to a couple of weeks. The time for the internal changes I sought through initiations and contemplation/vision questing (pathworking) went from months to weeks too. I went from thinking “it’s all in my head” to talking with entities who knew more than I did, and could do a lot more than I can, and who were clearly not me. They were other.

But, as you know, no piles of gold showed up in my garage, no matter which spirits I Worked with, no matter how I treated them. I’m not bitter. Really.

Ok, maybe just a little.

So I managed my expectations a bit. I accepted that at my level of attainment and initiation, the way the spirits manifest stuff for me is the way they manifest everything else, through natural law. No such thing as supernatural or natural, let these two asses be set to grind corn and all that. Bending the laws of manifestation the way Reb Shimon did, piles of gold filling a valley to prove how little money mattered to a student of the KBL and such takes the kind of single minded and physically devoted focus that I just don’t have time to do at this point in this incarnation.

Oh, but man, I catch glimpses. Eighth Sphere stuff, the reason I’m always on about it, it’s the shit. It’s the True Shit that blows everything else away. And ever since I had that sweet little taste, I haven’t been able to do much exploring. What good is what I’ve got so far? Not much, except it manages my expectations. It teaches me what I need to know: It’s possible, but not yet, for me, because I’ve made other choices.

Quantification. How do I tell you that Grimoire Magic is superior to everything else I’ve experienced when I can’t Midas everything around me literally? How do I quantify the difference between the results I get form grimoire magic compared to chaos magic or GD magic or Thelemic Magic? All I can really do is point to the time differences I’ve found. Weeks instead of months. Great. Still not instant.

You know how when you’re all in a slump and can’t get motivated to get anything done, doing one small thing completely, finishing one small task provides the motivation to go out and accomplish more stuff? It’s true of magic too. I had a ton of stuff start piling up over the last couple of weeks, and every time I tried to get something started, something else would come up to distract me.

So I finally picked something small, did it start to finish in a few short minutes, and checked it off my mental list. Sure enough, the accomplishment gave me the momentum kick I needed to get just about everything done I had left to do.

And now I have a death ray! I love this stuff!

Nom nom nom

Wanna read something AWESOME?

G’head, read it.

Once again Fr. AIT has shown what it is that I like about him so much. He finds cool shit and puts it into words. Really good words.

So good, in fact, that I’m not going to add anything else. Except the caption on the picture, cause it had to be done.

And this: Yeah! Right on!

Ok, I’ve got some thoughts percolating that I want to get out. Necromancy, the breakdown of time and space, Mithraic Tauroctony, and meaningful communications with those who have come before and those who will come after. It’s a work in progress, so bear with me.

First a shout out to my priest, Mnsgr. Scott Rassbach who frequently posts the title of today’s post on his facebook status as a reminder of the Mysteries. The voice of one crying out in the wilderness to make straight the way.

Mystic Origins of the Eucharist (High Possibility of RO BS)

I suspect it’s the Tauroctony rite of Mithras. The Tauroctony shows the Mithraic bull sacrificed by Perseus, its blood is being drunk by the dog, and wheat grows from where the blood spills. I think that this rite, like most of the other details of the Mithraic mysteries, is lifted directly and slightly modified for Christian consumption. I think the Tauroctony rite involved eating the bread (made from the wheat springing from the blood) and drinking the blood of a sacrificed bull.

But why did they do it? Symbolic participation with the mythos that leads to empowerment and affirms their place in the cosmology. The Tauroctony contains representations of a large portion of the constellations in the sky, Perseus, Taurus, Scorpio, Sirius, the Twins, and Corvus. By eating the bread and drinking the blood, they are manifesting a direct connection between the Above and the Below. they are participating in the union of the Celestial and Terrestrial realms. There aren’t any planets involved, no Governors, Intelligences, etc. This isn’t a planetary magic, 7-heavens thing, this is union with the EIGHTH SPHERE, the Constellations and the Mansions of the Moon.

But there could be more… Communion.

Mysteries of the Eucharist

I grew up calling the Eucharist “communion.” It was something we did weekly, something I didn’t really understand. I prayed for forgiveness of any sins, asked to be closer to Jesus, thanked him for his sacrifice, and moved right along. That’s fine for the “outer order” of Christianity, the religious stuff that meets most people’s spiritual needs. But there’s more to Christianity than you learn about in the Bible or from the pulpit. I never really thought about what it represented, or even what the word “communion” meant, what and who it was we were communing with.

One of the Mysteries of the Eucharist is who we’re communing with. Yes, we’re remembering Christ and what happened, but we are “joining together with all the saints who have fallen asleep in Christ” when we participate. We are communing with not only God-Jesus-Holy Spirit, we’re also communing with the dead. It’s necromancy, pure and simple. You’d think it would be obvious since it’s, you know, cannibalism, but I missed it for years.

Another Mystery, the one Scott points out, is that the Eucharist Never Ends. We’re always in it, always in communion with the saints. We’re always joined with them, all the ones who ever came before and all the ones who are yet to come. The Necromancy Never Ends! Separation-by-death is an illusion. Like the ritual act of “taking communion,” we might forget in between the ritual reenactments that it’s present and ongoing, but that doesn’t mean it stops being true.

Implications

If the Tauroctony thing is right, this isn’t a Christians-only truth. The time Christianity coalesced was not an explosively creative time. It was an explosively syncretic time, explosively adaptive. It’s more likely in my opinion that the necromantic aspects of the Eucharist existed prior to the establishment of the Lord’s Supper than that they were created along with the memorial rite. So if it’s a necromantic communion ritual, it’s there for Christians AND for non-Christians, which pretty much sums up everyone. So you can commune with your dead all the time. no matter what you believe.

Time is no barrier to communion. Neither is space. We are all linked through the neverending Eucharist. Death has no power, there is no power in its sting. We can commune with anyone any time. We can leave messages for the future, receive messages from the past. I’ve felt like I was walking and talking with Agrippa before. I’ve felt like I could feel the guidance of the magicians whose work was compiled into the Lemegeton. It makes sense.

And … well, that’s all I got so far. Bread and wine, memory, communion: never ending necromancy.

The dead, they’re everywhere, and they’re listening and talking to you right now. All the time.

Have good dreams!

You know, it’s been coming up a lot this last week, so I’ll go ahead and write about it, and maybe then it can go away.

I’m annoyed, again. I know better than to be annoyed by this in particular, but nevertheless, it’s annoying. This Work we do, it’s all WORK. It’s fun Work, but still… work.

Everything we do magically, just like everything we do using our other resources, requires ongoing periodic maintenance. There is no “Once and For All, Make Everything Perfect” ritual. There’s only a set of (really awesome) tools that we have to keep using to keep things going.

Wealth and prosperity talismans need to be periodically reconsecrated. Protective entities need to be conjured and directed (redirected on occasion) regularly. Astral temple space has to be protected, cleansed, used, maintained. Love rituals have to be refreshed. As your life’s situations change, the practices you have in place have to be modified. Your daily work needs to be done… daily.

This weekend I was feeling particularly annoyed because some rituals I had done had come to their successful conclusion, and I hadn’t bothered doing any refreshing work to keep certain things in motion that need to remain in motion for my life to be comfortable and relatively stress-free. It was my own fault, and because I had fallen off the proactive wagon, I’m reduced to reactive magics.

Get back in the Ring, RO!

Each morning I try to find a little pleasure to kick off the day. I find a lot of things to bring me happiness as I get ready, head to work, and get settled in for the day, but there’s usually at least one thing that rises to the top.

This morning’s Morning Pleasure was the Magian Rumination post by guest blogger PB. Friggin’ awesome, as Balthazar points out.

In a previous post, I mentioned a Brujo curse I lifted for a client, and it generated a lot of interest, so I figured it could use a full post.

The client had been cursed by her ex-husband’s new wife, a situation anyone who has been remarried can readily understand, if not condone.* The person doing the cursing actually hired two different brujos to curse my client, and when I went to lift them, I could see the differences. One had been designed to passively draw bad luck to the client. The other was aimed at causing trouble in the family, social life, and in her ability to parent.

Both of these curses were made and then hidden. The initial divination I did revealed only a moderate crossed condition, a “Murphy’s Law” curse that just made everything more difficult. No problem, I thought, a simple uncrossing rite, maybe some good luck to make up for the pain of the last few months, nothing major required. I reported this to the client, and she indicated there was something deeper, so I put away the tarot cards and conjured up my spirit allies and went investigating.

What I saw at first confirmed the tarot reading. A slight tarnish covered the client’s sphere, and the general sphere of her family. Then I looked deeper into the tarnish and its sources, and used some lunar tech to see through any illusions that might be covering the client. I saw a tribe of spirits had been assigned to monitor the client and her family. This tribe would monitor the plans and activities of the family members, and then sabotage whatever the client tried to do. The goal was simply to make the client’s life miserable, and there were many agents sent against her, actively looking for ways to make her life hell.

Then I noticed that there was more to it. The client’s sphere had been cursed, and bad luck flowed into her life. If bad luck were water, someone had increased the client’s gravity and it all sort of flowed directly to her.

The curses were working together. The tribe of spirits used the incoming bad luck to sabotage the client’s ambitions.

Curing it involved an extensive cleansing rite and a full exorcism, followed by the assignment of a friendly tribe of spirits to cover her home and family with protection.

I learned a lot from this exercise. Strategy had been employed, and although it was the work of two different brujos, once cast the curses began to work together. They were of harmonious intent, and fed one another. What stood out to me the most was the use of Lunar sphere forces to disguise the extent of the curses from other magical practitioners. A glamor had been put in place to misdirect anyone trying to lift the curse. Treating what appeared to be the problem may have resulted in a temporary benefit, but until the root causes were addressed, the symptoms would keep returning. That’s exactly what it was, it was a method of directing the attention of potential beneficial magicians to treat the symptom and not the disease.

I followed up on this case with my supernatural assistant, and he showed me a way to make sure I could see beyond the superficial indicators, and some other ways to recognize that a glamor had been put in place. He also showed me how to put the glamor in place, explaining that even when doing beneficial work for clients, it helps to cover up the evidence of magical influence on their behalf from other practitioners. I have a client who uses talismans I’ve made for him to bring business opportunities and luck, as well as protection from magical attack and to aid in bringing victory in any conflict or competitions. My SA pointed out that any of his competition or enemies would be able to see the effects of my magic on his behalf lighting up the aethyrs, and would know how to counter it. Throwing an invisibility layer over the magic I’ve done covers up the work-marks, and also helps protect me from any kind of pernicious blow-back.

* I could make a career off cleansing the curses of Second Wives, I bet. Second wife syndrome is something even modern psychiatrists have addressed. Any time you get a divorce and then get remarried, it creates all kinds of spiritual and mundane stress. It’s one of the reasons you’re not supposed to get married and divorced like you’re changing your underwear. It makes life harder. Take the vows seriously. Don’t make them if you can’t keep them.

You know, there’s very little that makes my skin crawl more than the phenomenon of “pet psychics.” People who commune with the pet and tell their owners what they’re thinking. It’s so new age, so fluffy, so … ignoble.

But when you think about it, how many of us magicians use our magic on our pets? I treated a cat of ours who we got from a family with an ADHD boy who had terrorized the poor thing. For years she wouldn’t let us touch her, pet her, play with her. She would eat and meow to go outside, and that was the sum total of our interaction with her. She wouldn’t even chase the red-laser pointer thing. We kept the kids off her, gave her her space, let her heal, and showed her love when she would let us. Then I did some magic to communicate with her, and sort of let go of her early life’s pain, and she’s now a normal cat. She demands attention and affection, she chases the red light, and she even lets my daughter rub her belly and hold her paws like they’re old friends.

And I use the skills I’ve developed magically with other pets. I was out collecting food for a food bank with the scouts, and one house had this mean-looking little border collie all chained up, malnourished, and practically feral outside their house. My son ran up to the house, and the dog went for him. My son froze. I communicated friendliness and good will to the dog, and you could see his demeanor change. He stopped running with his teeth bared, and just sort of walked up to my son and sniffed his hand, licked it, and whined a little.

The way I see it, we’re responsible for pets. We’ve bred them, whether as hunting companions, guardians, or to keep the rodents out of the grain houses in Egypt. In the Bible, the first thing Adam had to do was name all the animals. We are stewards of this world, shepherds of the resources and companions we live with.

But Pet Psychics? All the ones I’ve seen make my skin crawl. That glimmering shine of madness in their eyes, the face-breaking smiles, the … leftover 60’s bullshit and the new age twaddle that comes out of their mouths. Feh.

So my boss has this dog, this beautiful, loving, wise animal who has been her faithful companion through life’s shit. She’s getting old, this dog, and is falling apart. My boss wants to find someone who can ask the dog whether she wants to live, or if she’s ready to let it go and be euthanized. Ungh. Tough call. I wouldn’t do it, honestly. Even if it wasn’t my boss, I’ve seen what the passing of a dog companion can do to a woman in her late 40s. Complete and total emotional breakdown. Grief. Grieeeeeef. Bleah. I really don’t want to get any of that on me.

But I understand the service it provides. Pets are a part of our culture, and the bonds between humans and owners are strong. As magicians, we can make familiars of our pets because there is a connection. Familiars are useful because animals can do things people can’t, go places and see things we don’t. Cats in particular are great because they can sense spirits, and can pass through the spheres with us. (First time I saw my cat in the heavens, I was all upset that my brain was producing images that weren’t valid, and the angel I was talking to explained she had come along on her own and had as much right to be there as I did, because I was impacting her life with my Work as well.) Dogs aren’t that great, ferrets are like little bi-polar freaks, and reptiles are primal beings. The little manifest ones are next to worthless. The higher intelligences are wise and can provide good input, but the individual snakes and lizards and turtles I’ve interacted with are too focused on the moment to be useful. They don’t have a very well developed understanding of “the future,” so they can’t be sent places very well. They’re easily distracted, and make poor familiars if you have anything for them to do that will take place beyond five minutes from now.

So anyway…

The Communion Between Mage and Beast
Using the Modern Angelic Grimoire to Talk to your Pet

Create a Lamen for your pet. Write its name above the hexagram where you would normally write the Angel’s name in Hebrew/Celestial Script. Write the name in English, unless your pet is Jewish, in which case Hebrew/Celestial script letters are appropriate. You may affix a photo of your pet in the center of the hexagram instead of writing its name the second time, or affix some of its fur if you like.

Conjure the pet’s spirit using the standard conjuration with appropriate modifications (i.e. “In the name of the blessed and holy Trinity, I conjure you, spirit of [Pet’s Name], that if it is the divine will of Tetragrammaton, the Holy God, the Father, that you take the shape that best reflects your celestial nature, and appear visibly here in this crystal, to the glory and honor of his divine Majesty, who lives and reigns, world without end. Amen.)

Communicate with the spirit of your pet.

Notes:

The intellectual capacity of pets is scientifically estimated to be approximately equivalent to that of a 4-year-old human child. Their spirits, in my experience, are not limited by these scientific estimations.

Animal spirits are organized hierarchically, in my experience, similar to the angelic hierarchy. There is a House Cat Intelligence, there are officer-class House Cat spirits, and there are the actual manifest spirits of individual animals. There are Intelligences of Genus, and there are Intelligences of Species that can be contacted. I’ve found the Intelligences of the Species to be roughly equivalent to my experiences with the Totem Animal spirits in my new age shaman-esque period.

Animal spirits don’t always communicate in words. Sometimes when you ask them questions, they respond by taking you on a romp through a symbolic world which you then have to translate into meaningful communications. Don’t be surprised if you ask your pet why it’s limping and you end up with a vision of hunting through a dark forest for a shining rodent, only to have your paw caught in a trap. This could simply be the cat not paying attention while it chased a mouse, and stepping on a thorn, twisting tis ankle, or something like that. They do the best they can in communication, but humans and other animals have different ways of expressing themselves.