It’s not a Power Trip. It’s just Power Observation.

I once said something about having how you can have complete conscious control over everything in your life through the Power of Magic. After a while, I modified that a bit and said there’s nothing in existence that is beyond your ability to influence through the Power of Magic.

These days I reside somewhere in between the original statement and the modified stance. I’ve seen every aspect of my life fall under complete conscious control and manifest exactly as I communicated to the spirits in a concert of conjuration. Every aspect! Relationship, health issues, finances, automobile failure, social interactions, professional intrigues, parenting, learning and teaching, everything I do, everything I am, and every circumstance I go through in any given day has been directly changed according to my stated direction through magical rites.

But at the same time, it happened under stress. When everything culminated at once in a crescendo of stress, I called on everything and everyone I knew from a position of … authority is too authoritarian of a word for it, it was more like I just accepted that I am the steward of all aspects of my Sphere of Influence, and started communicating my plan to the forces at my disposal. It took the heat of the moment to motivate me, to push me to the level where I was not only able, but also fully conscious enough to actually do the Directing. I had to rise above the circumstances and have them pushed into more comfortable positions. I couldn’t do that without the stress of that moment. Life wasn’t hard enough for me to require that kind of response up until then.

It’s kind of interesting, when I hit that moment, I felt alone. I wasn’t alone, I felt and heard and communed with the spirits through Word and Symbol, the familiar presence of my Supernatural Assistant was with me, and I could hear the Still Small Voice of the Father clearly enough. But I also felt completely alone. Not the scared and cut off alone, but that good feeling of being alone you get when you have your first apartment or house you’re paying for with your own money earned at your own job, and you’re not depending on anyone else directly, even though everything everyone who has ever taught you, cared for you, and supported you is still there with you.

Holy crap, I’m … growing up?

Yeah, right.

Regardless of my debatable maturation, I’m still hesitant to say everything is completely under our direct conscious control as magicians because I’m not at that point of awareness all the time, and even a couple days after that experience, I don’t see any reason to even try to control everything. I want to see how my direction manifests, and enjoy the process.

I also have work to do to make some of it manifest. There’s a time to experience conscious control of everything that manifests, and a time to go/be/do as the “observing experiencer.” A time for acting Above and a time for acting Below. There are things I’m not in direct conscious control of in my life, and I think that’s a good thing. I want to see how it unfolds as a part of the process, not just as the director. If life were a movie, I’d aim to be the director who stars in his own film, and wins the Oscar for Best Actor and Best Director for the result.

Of course, if life were a movie I’d find the damned monkey that keeps stealing the script and nail his feet to the ground.

And you know what? That’s how I think we all got here in the first place. God designed it all, and then wanted to experience it as it unfolded, so he manifested Mankind to be able to do that, an eternal spirit with access to the powers of Creation, yet existing within a mortal suit capable of forgetting all about that part of their essence. He created little amnesiac vessels out of himself, and then poured himself into them. He teaches us how to access our divine birth right and our immortal heritage, but he lets us also step into the process as it unfolds to experience it in all its richness of layered flavors, choreographed routines, and blessed ignorance of outcome. Because it’s him, and it’s all about him.

Just like it’s us, and it’s all about us, from our perspective.

And that’s it, really. The Source of our Power. The Father, the One, the Good, the Source. Eheieh. That moment of power I had, when it crackled through me and into this world was there because I was being what I am meant to be. I accepted my role as the Steward, I took on the responsibility of my world, and I took ownership of what is mine to have, to hold, to shape and to mold. Felt good, too, being what I am. All this magic stuff is remembering, reminding, reclaiming what we forgot. The conjurations establish the relationships and provide access to the ones who teach us the skills required to be ourselves in fullness. We learn Who we are, Why we’re here, and How to do what we’re here to do.

And we get to experience it all on top of that. Gravy!

I like to read book reviews by readers of books who read because they like to. I get insight from their disappointments and criticisms that I can weigh against my own preferences as a reader. I enjoy reading encouraging reviews by readers who were impacted positively by the book, whether it’s a how-to, an esoteric exposition, or a work of fiction or literary art. It’s neat. I’d say a good 90% of reviews by readers are useful in some way.

But I have become wary when I’m reading a review by a published author, or a would-be published author. Writers can be mean about things that don’t matter to most readers, like grammar and editing (I’m guilty of that). We read from the perspective of a fellow craftsman, not just as an audience. We think about how we would have said something, and if the author we’re reviewing has said it worse than we would, we feel cheated, “I could have written that better, and here this a-hole is getting published for it!” Or if they write it better than we could, it rankles.

The worst, in my opinion, is when I read something in the exact style, format, level of diction, and artistic license with the grammatical guidelines that I would have used if I had written it. DuQuette does that to me a lot, writes the same way I do, thinks about things the same way, and says things that I would say. He finds the same things fascinating that I do, and the insights he shares are exactly the ones I would share too. Gets right on my nerves.

Some writers give too much praise for what they’ve read because they understand how fucking hard it is to get something out, and give the author credit for even being able to get as much across on a dense subject as they manage to, even if it’s weak. Other times writers will go off on barely related tangents about what they would have written instead, things they think are missing that they would have included, and basically review a book that exists in their own mind only, that’s only distantly related to the actual book they are supposed to be reviewing. To these types, I say write your own book if that’s what you want to do, but in the review, fucking review the book you’re talking about, not the book you would have written. Don’t waste my time, eh?

I’ve been really enjoying Jow’s reviews lately. His reviews are from the perspective of a seeker, and he shares what he got out of the book, as well as a summary. Jason’s a writer who can review a book honestly as well*. There’s another blogger, Karmaghna, who has been reviewing Jesus the Magician, and I’m enjoying that a great deal. It’s like the Cliff’s Notes version of the book, and I’m learning a lot in small chunks, delivered neatly to my Google Reader in easily digested chunks. I like that project a lot. It’s a different style of review, almost more of a summary, but it’s interesting and entertaining as well. Like a Book Report, but by and for grown-ups. I think those are my favorite kinds of review. The Book Reports.

I don’t review books much these days because the last few times I tried, I couldn’t stop being a writer enough to be able to really focus on the important thing, the experience of reading the book and how it affected me. Also, I haven’t had time to read shit. When I read, it’s emails and blog posts mostly, news articles on occasion, or something work-related. The magical stuff I read is almost all Agrippa these days, with some Trithemius or Corpus Hermeticum as needed. Maybe I’ll start reporting on those things more often. Maybe not, I don’t know.

* Have you updated your RSS feed and links to point to Jason real blog site? Hurry up and do so, he’s posting videos!

Ok, so I forgot. Shit happens, and you just get distracted. Even when you’re seeing it regularly like I have been in my clients’ lives, you can still forget, and I’ll bet real money I’m not the only magician helping others who has momentarily forgotten.

I forgot the power of magic.

When my house got all burnt down from the demons, I withdrew from magic a bit. I still did ascension-type theurgical stuff, and I’d do some neat tricks with the stuff I’ve been learning in the Eighth Sphere here and there to get ahead at work, to cut through traffic, and to remain invisible to cops and robbers (I was delivering pizzas in the ‘hood for a while), but I kind of shied away from doing magic to help myself much.

Last week when my loved one wound up in the hospital, I did an uncrossing rite one night, you know, just in case I’d picked up something without realizing it. The hospital was only one part of a three-pronged attack, and the other two prongs were equally painful and stressful. As soon as I did the rite, each of the prongs was addressed. Made me want to write a blog post about how when magic creates issues in your life, you can tell when you’ve fixed the source of the problem when the issues caused by the crossed condition seem to resolve as magically and mysteriously as they appeared. Might still get to it, but if not, there it is in one sentence.

Not long after that, I was driving home and dealing with some remaining loose ends related to the issues brought on by the crossed condition, and I had one of those RO moments. Just got sick of all the bullshit and called on everything I know to fix my life up, addressing each of the issues individually and in specific detail, while leaving enough wiggle room for the spirits to do their work on my behalf. I called into being a new reality, and set all the forces under my direction towards building that reality in my life, ASAP.

And it worked like magic. I mean, truly miracles and wonders, extreme coincidences and powerful manifestation of things I said I wanted to happen. And yeah, I had to put some work into making it happen, I had to take the opportunities that presented themselves, and I had to, you know, DO the Work, and it wasn’t any easier than usual, but it totally paid off huge. Every seed I planted grew into a huge harvest, and it was overnight. Literally for some things, and figuratively for the longer-term plans. Overnight.

And I’ve been doing Work for my clients all this time, and they’ve had strange coincidences that could only make sense in the context of the magic I’d done on their behalf. They got what they wanted in spades too. One lady even had a guy pop into her life whose last name was one of the choirs of Angels after we did some angel magic. Subtle? Nah.

But magic for myself? Practical, get rich and make my life easier because I deserve it magic? I just didn’t think about it much. When it did cross my mind, it got swept under the rug as I took care of other people’s problems and desires.

Well, fuck that shit, man! Seize the booty, says I, with a pirate wink and a swashbuckler’s smile. If you’re doing a bunch of magic for others, or you’ve been focusing on Ascension when you do have time for magic, take some time for your self, some ceremonial ritual time and conjure up your Supernatural Assistant, your Genii Loci friends, your Elemental Familiars, the Seven Archangels of the Planets, the Seven Winds, the Seven Flames before the Throne of God, and put in your requests, submit your invoice for services rendered, get those budget charge codes for the upcoming scheduled tasks in your project, get that girl/boy companionship you need, put in your room service order, and soak in the jacuzzi for a bit while they go about making things happen for you.

Those piles of gold aren’t going to conjure themselves, yo.

Perhaps the most useful guide to writing I have ever had was the government’s Plain Language guidelines. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton issued a memo stating that people should write things better in the government because no one could understand what was being said between agencies. Inside the agencies, specialized vocabularies had developed that no one outside understood.

I’ve recently started to review these guidelines, and man, I was in desperate need of review. Clients have been asking me WTF I meant in my responses to them, when I thought it was a clear as day. Come to find out, I haven’t been COMMUNICATING. The thing I think I do the best. Heh. Woopsie!

Anyway, if you write anything, the ideas in this manual are excellent. The things I do that you like about my writing are within the guidelines. The things that don’t make sense are the places where I’ve gone outside the guidelines. If your goal is to convey information to people, this book helps a lot.

And it’s free. Can’t beat FREE.

I spent the last week in the hospital caring for a loved one, and had a little realization that’s probably not new or original or particularly unique: in the midst of stressful times, it’s the normal shit that makes everything better.

I called a good friend and just listened to him talk about his job and stuff, and talked about what was going on with me, and then about magic and healing, and it was the kind of conversation he and I usually have. It was so normal, and it gave me a little bubble of sanity when everything else in my life seemed upside down.

It was a spontaneous thing, not preplanned to turn out that way. It was almost instinct to reach out and touch someone, it’s only in hindsight that I understand what I was doing. I don’t know if that kind of thing can be engineered. Personally, even knowing a moment of normalcy will help won’t convince me to take that moment when I’m stressed to the gills. It had to be a nearly-unconscious act for it to have diverted my attention from the issues at hand long enough to recharge.

I’m the kind of person that only looks for solutions to the problems when problems are occurring, I have a stress-relief machine I operate in a crisis, and I don’t stop to think about taking care of the machine. I just use it to eliminate the stress, to solve the problems. In this case, the machine is me, my thoughts, awareness, as well as my flesh suit I walk around in. Mind of Me and all that resembles it.

But that moment of normalcy with a friend was like giving the machine preventive maintenance, and gave me the boost I needed (without knowing I needed it) to stay the course and get through it in victory.

Uh, so yeah, the point of the post is “it’s good to have friends.” Friends to do normal shit with.

It seems like there’s this equation between manifestation and work. It starts with a desire for something, a negative that must have an equal positive on the other side of the equation. To fill it up, we have to come up with the equal amount on the other side.

To get to the desired outcome, you have to start with what you fundamentally have going for you right now, no matter where you are or what your circumstances are. You always have You, in whatever condition you’re in. Obviously, what you are right now lacks the thing you want, the person, experience, or thing. We have to add something to what you have right now to come up with the stuff you want. You obviously can’t just have it, or you already would, right? So there’s going to be something that has to occur to get you the stuff you want. The thing we add to ourselves to get the stuff we want is always some form of Work. So the basic equation for getting what you want in life is:

You + Work = Stuff you want.

There’s more to it though. You also have to have the opportunity to get what you want. Opportunity is that series of coincidences that lead to the ability to do the work to get what you want. The greater the opportunity, or chances to get what you want, the less work you need. Ever notice that gambling is referred to as a “game of chance”? And gamblers who win are said to be lucky? Opportunity is, in many ways, another word for chance, or luck. Fortune, as it’s called. Also known as Fate.

Say you want a roast beast. For some, it’s no problem because there are places selling all kinds of roast beast right down the street, or they have roast beast just sitting in their fridge. But for others, their circumstances aren’t that good, they may live somewhere that has cultural taboos against eating roast beast. They may have had the misfortune of being indoctrinated as a child that roast beast is a sin, yet they find themselves jonesing for some steak. Or maybe they’re just too poor to afford roast beast. It’s their circumstances, their fate, if you will, that determines how much work it’s going to take to get that roast beast.

So the equation is sort of:

You + Work + Fate = Stuff you want.

And then there’s time. Time is a part of the equation too. The bigger the thing is you want, generally, the longer it takes to get it. You have to work hard longer when you get the opportunity if what you want is really expensive, for instance. So it’s:

You + Work + Fate + Time = Stuff you want.

That’s the basic equation for manifesting things in this world. You want something, you work for it for as long as it takes with the opportunities you have at hand until you can have what you want. Any time you increase the value of anything left of the equal sign, you decrease the other factors. If you want something and it will take 60 days to earn enough with your current circumstances, you can decrease the time by increasing the work, or by increasing the opportunity. You can engineer a meeting with someone who can get you what you want with less work and time.

In the Corpus Hermeticum, it talks about the Seven Planetary Governors, and their more-material reflections in the microcosm. Another name for these entities were the Fates. They were the spirits who control the manifestation of things in the material world through their powers and affinities. They spin the threads that get woven into the tapestry of the space-time fabric of the universe. If String Theory were right, they would be the  string manufacturers, in a way.

We Work with the Governors of Fate. Magicians create opportunities for ourselves to get ahead through our relationships with the spirits of the world around us and the worlds above (or below) us. We increase the Fate factor to decrease the Time and Work required to manifest the Stuff we want in our lives. Whether we’re conjuring spirits to understand the occult virtues of stones, or to sink the ships of our competitors to increase our profit on rice investments, we are working with Fate to obtain our desired outcome, decreasing the work and time requirements to get the stuff we want.

Yet doing magic is also work. To get really good at Working with the Fates, you have to go through a lot of training, initiations, and transformations. The nice thing is that the more you do, the more these changes occur naturally, as your sphere harmonizes through the properties of resonance to the vibrations of the spirits themselves. This too causes manifestations in our lives, and we change.

We become different people with different perspectives. We become wiser, and thus quieter people. We become more comfortable in the knowledge of ourselves, and thus cease to lie to ourselves and others about who we are, and what we did. We see that what we do is exactly what we are, and as we see that, what we do changes.

And most of these changes suck major dick to go through. In a bad way. Most of the processes of the Great Work begin with some form of dissolution, calcination, or something that if it were done to you personally would probably kill you. Can you imagine burning yourself slowly until your skin turned black, then white as it became ash, eventually becoming nothing but a red powder? I mean, literally. Not a FUN experience, yo.

And that’s what happens metaphorically, most times. I don’t think people like to think about it, but I’ll bet that cocoon coming off the butterfly hurts like a motherfucker. Maybe that’s just me because I’m a stubborn old bull, though, maybe it comes easier to other people.

But I doubt it.

Because the basic equation remains. You + Work + Fate + Time = Stuff You Want.

Heh, when you think about it, as You goes through the Work, Time, and Fate to arrive at Stuff, it’s also changing and increasing in value. So at the end of getting Stuff you Want, “You” is actually “You + The Experience of What You Went Through” so next time you Want Stuff, the value of You has increased, so the required values of everything else to get to Stuff you Want are decreased. Bonus!

A message from Jason Miller (Inominandum), author of the Strategic Sorcery blog:

Dear Readers of Strategic Sorcery,


As most of you know, Strategic Sorcery mysteriously disappeared on the evening of Wednesday, January 19th. The blog was not locked or cancelled by blogger intentionally, nor does it appear to be a deliberate hack. It is a glitch that is effecting about 50 other blogs.


Strategic Sorcery will now be hosted at my own website. The new address is:
http://www.inominandum.com/blog/

Please take a moment and update your links and follow me at the new site.


A big thanks go out to the owner of this blog for helping me get the message out.  Thank you readers who have written in concerned about the situation. I am awed and gladdened by your support.


Thank you,
Jason Miller (Inominandum)

Revelations 13: 1-10

    1 And the dragon stood on the sand of the seashore.
    Then I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads, and on his horns were ten diadems, and on his heads were blasphemous names. 2 And the beast which I saw was like a leopard, and his feet were like those of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion. And the dragon gave him his power and his throne and great authority. 3 I saw one of his heads as if it had been slain, and his fatal wound was healed.

Ok? You see that, right? Verse 3. It’s not just me.

Ok now I’ll just say it: Gabrielle Giffords is walking around her hospital room two weeks after being shot, in the fucking brain. Ok?

      4 they worshiped the dragon because he gave his authority to the beast; and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who is able to wage war with him?” 5 There was given to him a mouth speaking arrogant words and blasphemies, and authority to act for forty-two months was given to him. 6 And he opened his mouth in blasphemies against God, to blaspheme His name and His tabernacle, that is, those who dwell in heaven. 7 It was also given to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them, and authority over every tribe and people and tongue and nation was given to him. 8 All who dwell on the earth will worship him, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain. 9 If anyone has an ear, let him hear. 10 If anyone is destined for captivity, to captivity he goes; if anyone kills with the sword, with the sword he must be killed. Here is the perseverance and the faith of the saints. And the whole earth was amazed and followed after the beast;

So, the next big news will be that she can speak coherently and she’s not severely brain damaged. She’ll go on tours and the world will fall in love with her. Then she’ll be President, and will be given power for 42 months.

Cause she’s a head of the ANTICHRIST.

You just wait and see.

In a recent Rune Soup post, Gordon says (edited for point-making purposes, see his original post for the full context, because what I’m doing isn’t technically fair, picking and choosing bits like this, and the rest of his post is important and good about mini-self exorcisms and stuff):

These days it is quite rare for me to actually use a magic circle … Jason points out it’s a minority, Western-European practice that … took off in the late Renaissance among the ceremonial bourgeoisie. It’s practical application is comparatively rare on a global level.  [In Peter J Carroll’s] experience [magic circles] afford little protection.

The only point I would actually argue with is that the practical application of a Magic Circle is comparatively rare on a global level. I’d wager that every magical practice makes use of circles in their art. Every magical working space I’ve seen, no matter what the tradition, includes circles somewhere on the altar, in the sacred space, or wherever the actual conjuration of spirits takes place.

I suspect he means that globally, you won’t find a neo-pagan form of the Golden Dawn’s LBRP being performed before every magical act, and he’s totally right in that regard. However, every circle, whether it is intended for magic, marketing, or doodling has an occult meaning and purpose. Agrippa explains it thus:

“a Circle doth answer to Unity, and the number ten; for Unity is the Center, and circumference of all things; and the number ten being heaped together returns into a Unity from whence it had its beginning, being the end, and complements of all numbers. A circle is called an infinite line in which there is no Terminus a quo, nor Terminus ad quem, whose beginning and end is in every point, whence also a circular motion is called infinite, not according to time, but according to place; hence a circular being the largest and perfectest of all is judged to be the most fit for bindings and conjurations; Whence they who adjure evil spirits, are wont to environ themselves about with a circle.” (Quoted from Esoteric Archives for instructional purposes.)

See, when you conjure spirits, they can’t get into the circle unless they’re invited. They hit the circle, and begin going around and around it, looking for a point of entry. When it is empowered through evocation and invocation, evil spirits can’t get through it at all. There is no point of failure they can breach.

As you can see, it makes sense that late Renaissance ceremonialists would begin incorporating the use of the Magic Circle in their rites. They were conjuring a lot of spirits to get ahead in life, and the kind of getting ahead they had in mind was based on exactly the kind of desires for material things that attract the Evil Daimons referenced in the Corpus Hermeticum. The Circle became more necessary to them as they turned from the kind of hands on crafty magic to conjure magic.

But when you look at the grimoires of the times of the Renaissance, the Magic circle pops up primarily in conjure magic. Practical, hands-on magic doesn’t require a magic circle because if you are conjuring spirits in the rite, it’s through the virtues of the herbs, minerals, or symbols you use to make the talisman, mojo bag, or whatever physical fetish you use. You mix the ingredients, let the spirits that are naturally in tune with the ingredients manifest, and then you speak to them directly. There’s less chance of getting an “Evil Daimon” when you’re working with the direct manifestations of the spirits themselves.

But when you’re doing the kind of formal conjurations of the Great Work that I do, a magic circle is a major part of your Work. You’re going through the heavens seeking initiations. You need an added level of protection from deluding spirits. It’s difficult at first to discern between a spirit telling you what is true and real and a spirit telling you what you want to hear. You don’t want to conjure up a spirit of Venus for initiation into the sphere that rules the engendering of existence and wind up getting a spirit of debauchery and decay. Hedonistic self-destruction can be fun for a while, but it sort of sucks when the liver and kidneys fail, or when it burns when you piss.

When you’re doing the practical Work I do on behalf of clients, it’s also important to use the Magic Circle. Accidentally cursing your clients is bad form. When I do practical Work, I go Above to the Macrocosm, and Work with the Intelligences of the spheres and their minions here below in the material realm. I Work with my brothers and sisters and cousins in the Holy Family of Emanations of the One. Picking up a cousin who isn’t suited for the task at hand can be disastrous. The circle keeps out the spirits I don’t want, and allows only the spirits I do want.

My magic circle is about six inches wide. It’s burned into the top of a cigar box that I use to house the electronics that light up the sphere when I lay a metal talisman across the electrodes sticking out of the Box. My magic circle is the Table of Practice I use to conjure the spirits in all my magical Work on behalf of the clients, my material needs, and my spiritual goals. I made it once, and it continues to function, properly empowered. I trace out a circle of defense around myself as well. It takes about half a minute to do so. I use a spherical crystal to communicate with the spirits. Using a magic circle doesn’t take very long at all.

Throughout the day, as magical needs arise, I don’t do a formal circle. I use techniques that are combinations of mental, physical, and verbal directives to the forces of existence. I use the forces of the spheres I’ve been initiated into. But for the formal stuff, I stick with the circles.

I guess what I really want to say here is that a Circle is important. It might not be used all the time by all the people, but that doesn’t make it optional, or unnecessary. It’s not a thing that can just be dropped without consequence. Other forms of protection are useful and more effective than trying to form a full magic circle on the fly as you go about your daily activities, but for the Ceremonial Bourgeoisie like myself, your magical Work should probably include a circle.

Due to the instant popularity of things that have been around for years afforded by Facebook, the “Wrong Zodiac” meme is getting a lot of press. For those just hearing about it, it’s not new. I read about it a couple of years ago, thought it was total bullshit, and promptly forgot about it. Then my spouse brought it up the other day, telling me on first exposure she knew it was horse shit because she wouldn’t “really” be a Capricorn under the new model. We laughed because she’s the quintessential Capricorn, and I moved along with my life.

Then Chris Warnock wrote this blog post about it, and then a student asked me about it, and damn if it isn’t all over the place.

Read Chris Warnock’s blog post and the web page he wrote to address this issue when it came to his attention a while ago. I’m in total agreement with his conclusions.