Hey, if you’re going to miss Google Wave the way I will, check out WizeHive. They’re giving away 500 free accounts to former Wave users. I may be using this for course work, it looks pretty convenient.

Check this out:

http://www.wizehive.com/blog/?p=344

Just got back from an awesome game. The O’s beat the Angels 9-7. I was scared the last few innings, but we ended up on top. There was one Angel’s fan in our section yelling for her team, and my son “Booed” her with conviction every time she cheered! She and her date got a kick out of it, fortunately enough. He was a big fella, and I still haven’t mastered shooting fireballs out of my fingertips. Lightning’s coming along nicely though. If I shuffle my feet enough, look out man! ZOT!

I just read a beautiful recollection of a spirit walk at The Druid of Fisher Street. One of the things I find really interesting in magic is how no matter what path we take or model we use, the types of experiences we have when we go spirit walking is similar to all of us.

I’m working on writing up the Green and Black Work courses, and I’m at the part where I’m talking about the spirit walking exercises. In my courses, I’m calling them contemplation rites. It’s an exercise that combines conjuration of specific spirits with the kinds of visions received by Hermes Trismegistus in the Corpus Hermeticum and St. John of Patmos in Revelations in the Bible. Paul went through the kinds of vision work I use too.

In these examples, the people were all taken up by the spirit, whether in the flesh or in the spirit, they don’t recall. It wasn’t on purpose. The spirits took them up and showed them what they needed to see.

In the Red Work courses, I’m teaching what I do in my own pursuit of the Great Work. I go to the astral temple, and then conjure the spirit, and then ask it to take me where I need to go, to show me what I need to see, and then the visions begin.

My experiences in the seven heavens and beyond are a lot like Gwynt’s. There’s a dreamlike quality to them, and I see things I don’t always understand. I ask questions, seek clarity from my spirit friends, and I don’t always understand the answers, and get “all will be made clear” type responses to further probing. While that has so far always been true, I feel the same kind of emptiness and frustration that Gwynt seems to feel when things don’t make immediate sense. I get scared of what I don’t know, and what it might mean when I see terrible things.

Fortunately, since I stopped my work with demons, my visions have no longer been set in post-apocalyptic cityscapes. That’s helped a whole lot with me getting restful sleep, too.

In ceremonial magic circles, there’s not as much attention paid to this kind of work. There’s more focus on learning the map and then using it to analyze experiences. There’s not a lot of instruction or discussion about the rituals used to get into the visions, or what to do with the information gained. There’s even less public discussion of the visions themselves, the content of the things we see, and I don’t know if that’s an indication of the personal nature of visions received, or an indication that people aren’t generally going on spirit walks in the CM community.

Some of the best source materials for magicians are the diaries of the magicians that record the results of the workings. Soror Acitha’s vision from the Amalantrah working, for example, provides more insight into the magic of Aleister Crowley than all of Book IV. The material from the “Merlin Temple” during WWII is fascinating stuff, providing all kinds of techniques that inform magical practice. How many times have you read of magicians conjuring the Archangel Michael to aid a naval battle off the cost of Great Britain?

Maybe CMs don’t talk about it much because it can be a distraction. I’ve seen people go off the deep end chasing after phantoms from their dreams. I’ve seen people obviously posting their dream work and ritual visions for self-aggrandizement, little “I’m enlightened, see!?!?” posts that are designed to feed the person’s self image more than anything else.

But I’d be willing to say that the bulk of the Great Work occurs in these visions. The time we spend talking about conjuring methods and cosmological models and philosophical implications is grossly disproportionate to the time we spend talking about the actual effects of the magic, the instant experiences during the magical procedures. It’s during these visions that the spirits extend their hands and power flows from them into our spheres. It’s during these visions that we learn techniques to better influence the reality around us. It’s in these visions that we receive guidance on where the next phases of our Work will take us, which spirits we need to conjure, and what applications of these lessons will bring us the things we need to make it to the next level.

Going forward, I’ll try to post more about what I experience in my Work for posterity’s sake. Some of it won’t make sense, some of it might be meaningful to me personally and be completely out of context for you. It’s not about pointing out how advanced or special I am, it’s only because reading other people’s experiences helped confirm my own.

I’m doing some market research on my eBook sales, please feel free to comment with whatever info you can provide.

That persistent reader who’s been bugging me for weeks to put paypal buttons on my eBooks site says the way its set up now, the “modern angelic grimoire” would show up on his credit card statement. And that’s a problem for him, he doesn’t want Visa and Mastercard knowing what he buys with his money. He doesn’t want someone seeing his credit card statements and finding out he’s into Angelic Grimoires, I guess.

I’m assuming his spouse or parents wouldn’t approve, or he’s afraid some corporate human resources,  government background investigators, or whatever might not approve of his purchases.

He said “what’s normally done for this type of transactions is that the name of the “shop” is mentioned rather than the details of the product sold.” Now, I don’t know of any bloggers who sell eBooks who even bother going through all this effort to put in a payment option that charges more than another payment option already there. And the names of the “shops” I see selling things online aren’t exactly subtle. Lucky Mojo, SomaLuna, Queen of Pentacles, Strategic Sorcery, etc.

So after shooting off a “keep your fucking money, coward!” email, I went on with my life until now. I’m wondering whether I’m fucking up here. Is it a major concern that people might see something occult on your buying history? Is it “normal” procedure to mask the purchases?

And how do my sales show up on your statement? According to this site, a charge on your statement only says “PayPal.” It doesn’t say what you bought. It’s true on my bank statement. Are things different for everyone else?

Comments appreciated. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble for buying my stuff.

After one particularly persistent reader rode my ass for weeks, I’ve finally added the PayPal buttons to my eBooks page for all the books I’m currently selling. I still prefer Google, they keep less of my money, but PayPal’s all popular and stuff.

I also put up a graphic for the RO Guide to Demon Recovery. I was tired when I posted it to the site last night. Er, this morning. Didn’t feel like doing much.

http://www.rufusopus.com/products_and_services.htm

[Edit: And now they actually go to PayPal when you click ’em.]

Well, one really good thing has come out of my bad magic experience with the Lemegeton’s Goetia demons. After charging headlong into Solomonic magic and getting all into demons, and then getting burned, and then having to clean up the mess, I’ve developed a nice set of practices that work really well to eliminate the effects of Working with demons from the magician’s sphere.

In a purely hypothetical context, not saying I have any available, or would consider it myself, but just suppose someone had stumbled on the secret of developing homunculi consistently and and had adapted a procedure to keep them in a stable, dormant state prior to their “birth,” at a relatively low cost.

Would it be ethical to sell them on eBay for $4.95 plus shipping and handling? The dormant state would keep them safe during transportation. I figure everyone would want one, but then everyone would have one, and they wouldn’t sell anymore. It would likely be a fad, like sillybands, and when the homunculi “died” and reverted to their prima materia, no one would want any more. Kind of a built in lifecycle. Like Sea Monkeys.

Chances are the lucky mage would get about 6 weeks of popularity out of it, and another 6 weeks for news of their stench to get around. Could probably sell a few million in that time, right?

How’s your heart. Are you aligned properly? The Heart Chakra should be lined up square against the keyboard. The center of the chakra must be perfectly aligned with the center between the G and H keys. If it not properly aligned, the chi will not flow. The words will not work. The language will be boggy and the point will not pierce the reader’s thick skull.

There is art, oh blogger. The kata again! Index fingers on the F and the J. Do not look at your fingers! Feel the raised bumps on the keys. These are your touch points, this is your horse. A blogger’s kung fu is only as strong as their horse. Break their horse and they have nothing to ride.

Again!

Go through this Flikr album some time. There’s something about the pictures Sucae takes, something both momentary and eternal.

Strategic Sorcery: HEKATE CLASS AND RITUAL