I got an email asking me about the business basics book I wrote.

Yes, it covers some of the things Jason wrote about in his recent blog post, and yes, it goes into more detail. It also has nifty pictures illustrating the business process in simple, standard business formats. It walks through the process a friend of mine went through to open a brick and mortar store, and addresses some things I’ve learned about online retail. There’s not a lot of tech, it’s mostly basic theory, and it imparts the most important lesson I had to learn about the value of your products or services.

No, it doesn’t teach you how to conjure up demons, angels, genius loci, or the spirits of the dead to make you successful. The reason is because spirits and magic doesn’t make you successful. They contribute, they help a lot, but the only thing that makes you successful is work. You’ve heard it a million times from experienced magicians, famous and infamous: the spirits provide opportunities, you provide the sweat. You’re the one with a body, not them. they can help, but until you understand the basics of business, and the sweat equity necessary to succeed, you’ve got nothing.

Another question was how long is it? It’s about 7,000 words, on 26 5X8 pages. When Kindle launches Singles, this is the perfect thing for it. In fact, I’m going to be all over Singles when they come out.

Axiom: With great power comes great responsibility.

Ergo, the implied inverse: As responsibilities are added, so too is the power to accomplish these responsibilities.

Therefore: You are never tasked with a goal that you cannot achieve.

Yay! That’s great. Words to live by and remember when times are dark and you feel overwhelmed. Tasks can be daunting. Remembering that you have the power to accomplish the task at hand can relieve the pressure you might feel when you see how big the problem really is. Take a minute and remember your power if you get nervous.

And also, remember that with great power comes lackeys who will do the work that you can’t or don’t know how to do. You just gotta look for them. Kids, volunteers, employees, clerks of the court, public servants, family members, friends who help you move for pizza and beer, elected representatives, someone somewhere in the flesh can help. You just have to figure out who the lackeys are.

However, there is administrative overhead to take into account. You haven’t really integrated the powers you’ve been bestowed until you’ve updated your resume. An old joke goes, if a woman says something in a forest, does anyone really care? Take out the misogyny, and it’s basically an observation on the human condition: people will ignore everything they don’t think is important. You’ve got to be able to tell people what you’ve done that demonstrates your ability to succeed.

In magic, we don’t have a resume. But we do a lot of shit in this Great Work thing. Take some time to write it up using a Resume template. They’re free online, and the MS Word 2007 versions are compatible with Open Office and Google Docs, so there’s no reason you can’t get started filling in the blanks on a template. Keep it secret, keep it safe, but keep it.

When faced with a crisis, pull it out and review it. You’ll have forgotten about a trick you used in a previous situation that was similar. You’ll see separate occasions that required seemingly unrelated skills that now would combine perfectly to solve your immediate need.

We use resumes in our careers to tell people what we’ve done and why they should hire us. In magic, your “Curricula Vita” serves as a reminder to you personally that you can do what needs to be done, and that you’re the perfect person for the job.

And sometimes, that reminder is all we really need.

Dude, I just read some old articles I wrote. I was a major prick. Sorry about that. I try not to talk down to people with such dripping arrogance these days.

It’s hard, I tell you, and really, you should be thankful I go to such lengths.

See: this article for more info.

When they announced a “goldilocks planet” had been found, one of the first things I did was try to contact them.When trying to contact the Intelligences of the planet. I got nothing but static too.

[Edit: Corrected typo that’s been bugging me all week long.]

Now available through my eBooks page: The Rufus Opus Guide to Business Fundamentals.

It’s short, it’s really basic, but it covers the fundamentals of business process and core theory that books like The Four Hour Work Week and Rich Dad, Poor Dad assume you already know. It’s some truly simple concepts that you probably DO already know, but I really wish I had something like this when I was starting out in this whole business thing. It would have focused me on the important things I had to realize on my own up front and saved me a lot of grief.

Because the info is so basic, and the book is so short, I’m charging very little. $3.95 nets you your own copy. The target audience is anyone who’s read the books I mentioned above, but felt frustrated because they assumed you understand business processes most folks have little exposure to. It’s also good information for people who haven’t read those books, but are considering getting into business for themselves.

Please note, there is no occult information included in the book whatsoever. I was going to add a bunch of money-making magical techniques, but that will come later, if at all. Jason covers that better than I could anyway.

Note: Someone pointed out to me a month or so ago that the PayPal Buy Now buttons on my eBooks page took them to the Google Checkout page instead. If you paste the code for the two options too close together, some browsers, like Chrome and FireFox just take you to the first form on the page. Irritating. I fixed it by adding a lot of space between the buttons, but it’s … ugly. One of these days I’ll make a beautiful web site and people from all around the world will praise my genius. Or maybe not. Web design is excruciating, and templates are free.

So this guy is complaining that Moloch’s list isn’t fair because Moloch doesn’t discuss ATRs there, even though it’s technically “evocational magic.” Moloch spent years developing his list, it’s got 444 members, and he runs it with an iron fist. He talks about the kind of conjure magic he likes, and he always has. He doesn’t discuss ATRs on the list because he knows they require specific expensive initiations to work right, he knows his average subscriber can’t afford those initiations, and he knows that anyone who knows enough about the ATRs to be able to discuss useful conjuration methodologies would be forbidden to do so by their oaths. So basically, any public list that talks about ATRs is going to be spreading misinformation at best, dangerous information at worst. So he doesn’t allow ATR discussion on the list.

Instead he talks about the kinds of conjure magic you can do without paying exorbitant fees for initiation. Stuff from traditional grimoires that works really well. His list is a treasure trove of useful information on different ways to conjure spirits. He’s cool like that.

The guy that’s complaining about the list being “discriminatory” because Moloch won’t allow discussion of ATRs there is exhibiting symptoms of a spiritual malaise that I feel should be addressed. It’s a sense of entitlement that we have to shed when we get serious about magic, because it ruins all our Work.

People seem to think that just because something exists, they have a right to use it however they want. Whether it’s someone else’s discussion group, someone’s written books, or an entire tradition with built-in safeguards that exist for a reason, people think they can just take whatever’s around and use it in whatever manner “feels right” to them without consequence.

I’m guilty of that too, by the way. I’m no saint. My approach to the Lemegeton’s Goetia is a perfect example of someone who didn’t want to follow the rules because I thought I knew better than the grimoire authors about the class of spirits I was dealing with. Arrogance. I also felt that because I had been initiated to a certain degree, I was entitled to rewrite the grimoires the way I thought they should work. It worked with the Modern Angelic Grimoire, after all.* Why not with the demons too?

I’ve mentioned it before, but my house burned down because I cut corners and thought I was ahead of the game. I stopped treating my spirit familiar like the demon he was, and started treating him like an old friend with characteristics and traits he didn’t have. My bad. My sense of entitlement screwed the pooch. You don’t get to do whatever you want with whatever you find and have it work perfectly.

But the main problem with a sense of entitlement goes a lot deeper than the fact that it’s physically, spiritually, and emotionally dangerous in the occult to just take things that aren’t yours and pretend you can do whatever because you have a different belief system and therefore get to make your own rules. The main problem is a spiritual disease that will do far worse than hurt you, or even kill you.

If you think you know everything, you’re going to end up prolonging the Work until you can get over it. I tend to forget sometimes, but I’m here for a reason. I study Magic on purpose. My goals transcend this lifetime, and go a hell of a lot deeper than anything I happen to be doing in the moment. See, I do magic to accomplish the Great Work. Whenever I start thinking I know more than the spirits, the grimoires, or the master magicians and adepts I’m honored to be friends with, I stop progressing in the Work. I stagnate, and get stuck at whatever level of attainment I happen to be at when my pride sneaks in, and I start feeling like the world is my toy to play with as I see fit. I stop going Up to the Source to return to Earth in Power and wisdom to use the power effectively, I just sit in my pool of power I’ve got so far and shoot it out at random targets. I cut myself off from the true potentials.

What I’m trying to say is that a full cup cannot be filled. If you already have “all the power of the universe,” you’re stuck wherever you’re at. I know for a fact you’re not where you want to be already, I know there are things that you want to improve in your life. I know this is true because it is true of everyone on the planet. The planet itself, existence, seems to be fundamentally engineered to provide less than we want. Either that, or we’re fundamentally designed to always want more, different, better. I think we miss our Source, and we try to fill that ache with stuff, or other forms of improvement, but even then, I still always want more, a closer relationship with God, a better understanding of what I’m supposed to do in the situation I’m in, and how it all fits together in the overall plan.

No matter what you think you know, or have seen, or experienced, there’s always more to come. If you cut yourself off from the “more to come” because you think you’ve already got it, you can’t get it. That’s why when it comes to traditions of initiation that are shrouded in secrecy and oaths need to be worked with from within. You go through the progressive stages of initiation, and you play the hand you’re dealt according to the rules of the game. If you don’t, you’re not playing the game at all.

Now, this doesn’t mean you become a grimoire-thumping true believer who only follows the rules, and turns off their brain. Some of the grimoires were bullshit, others were simply imaginative flights of fancy, and all of them were designed to be used by people who understood some basic things, either because it was culturally general knowledge, or because they had received special instruction and empowerment in a Mystery or seven. You’ve got to question, challenge, and test the things you’re working on. You innovate and incorporate, you syncretize with insight and wisdom.

But you can’t do it with a sense of childish entitlement. You’ve got to do it with an open mind that keeps sight of the long term goals. You take your knowledge up through the spheres with you, and get input from each Intelligence on the way, and then you talk to the Source of the knowledge itself. You keep doing that, keep your eye on the Work, and you won’t get caught up in stupidity.

*Note: It worked with the Modern Angelic Grimoire because I didn’t change anything in the technique at all, I just rewrote it in modern English, and kept the traditional requirements intact.

I wrote a long sarcastic post about how people should be good, pointing out in great irony and wit that people have been telling each other for 10,000 years that they should be nice to each other, and then I summed it all up with a poignant reminder that only individuals mindfully aware of their own individual behavior will be able to manage this, and a warning that some people never will be nice regardless, and that they should probably be killed before they spawn more like themselves.

And then Google ate my post.

It’s probably for the best, I have a feeling recent work with no-thing-ness is going to come through as apathy at best, nihilism at the worst, and it’s not how I am.

So… Magic and stuff.

I figured out why it’s so hard to use magic to do anything useful. I’ve spent most of my time lately going in depth into the whole process of manifestation for a number of different projects I’m working on, and it hit critical mass. I get why it’s so difficult to get specific results, and why general influential type magic works better than laser-focused stuff.

It’s because manifestation is fucking hard. And complicated.

First, it takes shitloads of raw power to add layers to Ideas before they get dense enough to manifest. Most of the power coagulates into form, and it takes a ton of power to make a very small amount of mass. You know Einstein’s equation, E=MC^2? It’s how we get so much energy out of a little bit of mass. Well, it’s true the other way, to make mass, you need a ton of energy. One gram of gold takes the equivalent of the energy released if you explode 21,481 tons of TNT.

Twenty-one THOUSAND Tons of TNT. To make an ounce of gold.

Got that sitting around? Have you been initiated to the degree that you could handle that much power on any of the planes of pre-existence without burning out? Assuming you’ve got the reinforced, remodeled, re-engineered sphere of power to handle that kind of raw energy, have you looked at everything that goes on to get that power to manifest?

It goes from the Idea-world to the Form-world, and takes on layers under the careful administration of vast powers and principalities. By the time a thing manifests, it’s been influenced by the Intelligences and Spirits of 12 constellations, 7 planets, and 4 elements. They’ve got power and wisdom and skill in making things happen you just can’t have. You’re not old enough. They know the recipes for grass, the proportions of each planet that have to work together influencing the proportions of the elements for the specific manifestation to occur. They know who to nudge with what inspiration when it’s just right to get the thing they’re supposed to make happen to happen when it’s supposed to.

We don’t.

So what’s the solution? How do you get your magic to be effective? What’s the secret? I think I can sum it up rather simply, by stealing an observation one of my favorite students made the other day in an email. We were talking about hoodoo rites, specifically the one Balthazar posted on Gnostic Conjure, and he said “Magick that has a style like Hoodoo is awesome. They create little Microcosmic stories of the thing you’re trying to manifest.”

That’s it! That’s how magic, successful, practical, results-oriented magic really works! You tell a story about how the idea manifests in the mind of God and then materializes as it goes down through the spheres before hitting this one. You have representations of the spheres involved, you conjure the intelligences to manage the proportions, you involve multiple fronts strategically, hitting multiple layers to shepherd the desired result into manifestation. Jason’s testimonials from his blog lately show how this works, you conjure an opportunity, and then you conjure the result, you anoint your hands and shake on the deal, you dress your paperwork, you bend over the dude you need to agree with you. You shoal your sigils or whatever.

You take a symbol and do something symbolic with it, but you tell a story.

Crowley once commented that the tools of the Magician are the tools of a scribe, because he saw that the Magician is a story teller. Look at the Magus card in his Toth deck if you don’t believe me.

I think the overall reason most magic is weak or fizzles out is because people like to pretend it’s really easy to make things happen, and it’s just not. It’s hard. And complicated.

I’ve been watching Pirates of the Caribean: At World’s End a lot lately. Actually, my kids have been, and it’s been on in the background. At the end, when they’re all set to destroy the East India Trading Company’s ship, they yell, “Full Canvas!” That means they unfurl all their sails and go as fast as they can. They release their full power, not just the main sail, or the littler sails with fancy names that I don’t know about, the full canvas, everything they’ve got. That’s how the stories have to be told, fully, not just a piece of the story, not the plot with no characters, or the characters with no plot. The whole thing.

Heh, I love Gnostic Conjure. Today he’s got a post on Frenemies. And it uses GUNPOWDER!

I love using gunpowder in my magical rites. I miss Goetia because I had a lot of opportunities to use it with those spirits in particular. Bune loved it in his spirit pot, and there’s something about the smell of just-burned gunpowder that reminds you of hell.

Do I need to point out that it’s dangerous, extreme caution must be used, a (very very) little goes a really long way, and don’t be stupid? Probably. So pretend I did.

I like the way he suggests you use it, with the candle igniting the little charge. I’m absolutely positive someone somewhere is going to use too much, ignoring his emphasis on a tiny little pinch, and it’s going to blow the candle, shards of shattered jar, and molasses all over the room.

And I feel really bad for that person, for sure.

So where do you get gunpowder, you ask? WalMart, of course! In the sporting goods section, because how can it be a sport without gunpowder? At least, that’s where I got mine last time I bought it. And it’s not really gunpowder, it’s flash powder for black powder guns. But it works. In college, an acquaintance invited me out to a quarry to blow up some pipe bombs he’d made from the stuff, and a good time was had by all.

My local occult and Wiccan supply shop would never sell gunpowder. They do, however, sell both sulfur and salt peter in small amounts, which combined in proper proportions with powdered charcoal (plain old Kingsford, not match light, not self-igniting-incense coals) makes gunpowder. I’m not giving out the exact proportions, but it wouldn’t take long to find it on the internet.

As an ingredient, it’s best used when you want some explosive results. If you’re going to put it into a spirit pot, use a very, very small amount, and make sure it’s mixed in well with the soil so it doesn’t explode when your house catches on fire.

Kammael’s influence should be included with this ingredient because he’s the Archangel of Mars, and it’s important to have some intelligence involved when you’re doing magic with gunpowder. I mean, obviously the intelligence isn’t coming from the magician, eh? You’re playing with explosives for Christ’s sake! Not frickin’ smart!

But fun.

Trace the seal of Kammael over the powder when you’ve made it. Only make what you need for the rite. Do not store the left overs. Do not dispose of the leftovers by tossing it on the charcoal briquette just to hear it sizzle and pop. Do not pack it in PVC pipes and toss them on the Samhain bonfire when no one’s looking, and then start screaming, “It’s SATAN, I knew it!!!” when it blows up.

If there are any leftovers, mix it up (gently) with dirt or its equal weight in more carbon, and then sprinkle it finely in your garden, plants, or in the grass. Plants like potassium nitrates and sulfur and carbon.

So I was thinking about how enlightened I am today. Not totally, I have some issues, a ways to go for a while yet, but I’ve made some decent strides, accomplished a lot, and picked up a few tricks.

So I figured I’d try levitating. You know. Because I’d like to fly.

So I stood up from my chair at the desk here at work, flexed a muscle in my lower-right abdomen I didn’t know I had, and kept right on going up. I was freakin’ thrilled, loving it, I was totally flying, in the office, not even Jesus had done that, and I looked down and saw my body falling back into the chair, and as my butt hit the seat, my consciousness slammed back into the flesh. Seems I popped out through the crown chakra thing and left the meat suit behind.

Sigh. I’m kind of getting sick of the “needs spiritual sight to see how cool I am” aspect of this enlightenment thing. I get it, I understand it’s like this for a reason, but why can’t I be exempt from the rules?

Probably because I’d master invisibility and rob a bank, and then fly away with the loot.

Just guessing.

Not quite as enlightened as I’d like to think.