What if your ritual results were always children? How would they manifest? A wealth spell kid would be what, greedy? Pragmatic? Beautiful so you can put her in modeling and make a fortune? A CEO with razor insights? A great actor? Probably would depend on the ingredients and formative belief structure.

A love spell child that’s just lust… what kind of kid would that be?

Interesting to think about that. What kind of kids do you want to bring into the world? What kind of future will they bring about in 30 years, all the spell children you’ve brought into the world over your magical career? Are you particularly proud of what they’ve become? What do they say about you as a person?

As magicians, we have at our fingertips all the angels and daimons and legions and tribes of spirits that make things happen in the material realm, and the impulse is to conjure the ones directly related to the things we want or need right now to make our lives better, like money. Conjure lunar spirits who govern growth and recession at the right time to grow your business, Mercury and Jupiter spirits for financial luck, Venusian Dukes to procreate wealth in our spheres, Expedite to hurry up the arrival of cash owed, Solar spirits to manifest gold, the Holy Guardian Angel to get a lifetime’s supply of comfort, and so forth.

But while these specific spirits might play a crucial role in the manifestation of these things here and now, they are still working together in concert with all the other spirits of the spheres extending all the way to the Nous, or Mind of God in the higher levels of existence. Getting these particular end-gate guardians/facilitators involved can end up unbalancing the overall process, impacting the stability of the results.

But working with the Archangels or Intelligences of the spheres on gaining initiation into the higher spheres results in shifts in the magician’s fundamental approach to life. Sachiel of Jupiter can provide an initiation that brings a “wealth/health/good fortune” harmony to your sphere that subtly changes how everything in your life manifests. The results aren’t as flashy or immediate, but they eliminate the ongoing crises that result in the perceived need for an Expedite or Bune to provide a fast-fix. Go to the Archangels and get the initiation that changes you, and you won’t need to do a specific conjuration of Bune or Expedite, you’ll already have the forces they represent balanced and working for you as you integrate the powers of the different spheres of manifestation.

Most thaumaturgical rites for immediate physical results are treating the symptoms of the problem, not the cause(s). That’s fine, and should be done, in fact. If you broke your arm, you’d get it set and put in a cast first, and then start checking on whether you’re getting enough calcium and exercise to make your bones strong. You’ve got to treat the immediate symptoms as they arise, but if the same symptoms keep coming up you need to address the disease. 

We live in a world where we experience the ongoing effects of causes that began days, weeks, months, and years ago, stretching back to the beginning of time. (Or at least that’s what it looks like from here.) The path of the Hermetic Magician outlined in the Corpus Hermeticum moves us from only experiencing and reacting to the end results, the effects, to being the causes of specific intended outcomes. Probability math and chaos science demonstrate how many millions of variables go into any given outcome, and no human can consciously direct all of them at once. But the conjuration of spirits to obtain initiations and favors on our behalf, results in the magician getting the skills and talents to direct the forces from higher levels in the chain of manifestation so that the causes all work together to form the intentional results. We become forces of Cause, conscious participants in the causal process rather than simply reactionary recipients of the effects.

That’s what the Hermetic Magic path outlined in the Corpus Hermeticum provides. Agrippa’s Three books of Occult Philosophy is a catalog of the data you need to become a Power operating consciously on the planes of premanifestation as well as manifestation. The end product of the Hermetic process is a magician capable of not only treating the symptoms, but also adept at identifying and treating the cause before the symptoms can manifest.

My next magickal project will be the Shem angels. When I first began Working with Spirits, I started with the Seven Archangels of the planets, intending to familiarize myself with them before moving on to more complex systems. Originally, I intended to move from the Planetary Intelligences to the Shem Angels, then on to the Ophanim, and then towards the Enochian system. At this point, I still intend to work the Ophanim system at some point in the future, but the Enochian system I’m wavering on. Time will tell.

At this point, I’ve only begun formulating some ideas about the Shemhamephoresh angels. I’m definitely in the Initiation phase (for those with Project Management experience), where I begin to gather and analyze data regarding the project. I need to understand what the Angels are, how they fit into the cosmologies, and then identify means of conjuring them efficiently and repeatably. At that point, I can begin to record their attributes as they manifest in my life. That’s a ways down the road though.

I got the “go-ahead” on the Shem angels from my HGA last week. I was reading in Agrippa that the Shemhamephoresh spirits were “better” than the angels of the planets and elements. I thought that was interesting, but there’s nothing about how to Work with these particular spirits. So, I did what we all do, I hit Google up for some leads.

The two primary resources I found that had useful information in them were Aaron Leitch’s essay and Section V of Robert Ambelain’s Practical Kabbalah Part II. Both of these sources link the Shemhamephoresh angels to the zodiac.

Personally, I’m not convinced. Not entirely, at any rate. The evidence for the angels to be astrologically linked is very strong. There are 72 names, one for ever five degrees of the zodiac. Aaron’s essay goes into a lot of the reasoning behind the attributions, and it’s very in-depth, and extends back centuries.

However, the connections just don’t hold true enough to me at this point. I’m holding myself open to the idea they might be zodiacally related, but there’s more to placing spirits than the numbers they have in common with the zodiac.

The names of the Shem angels are derived from three Hebrew verses of 72 letters each in Exodus 14:19-21. From Agrippa, we learn that the names of spirits are derived from the verses in the Bible that describe their qualities. The verses describe the Angel the Lord sent to protect, teach, and make a way for the Israelites as they escaped the Egyptians. The Angel’s presence was indicated by the column of smoke by day, and the pillar of fire by night that remained with the Israelites for over forty years. The Cloud remained with the Israelites at least as far as the edges of the Promised Land, but it’s hard to tell exactly when the Cloud and Fire returned to Heaven. We do know that the Cloud of the Lord’s presence returned to the Temple of Solomon, leaving all of Jerusalem weeping in awe.

In tracking down the Angels’ history, I found they are aligned with the rays on the crowns of the twenty-four elders seated before the throne of God. Now, these elders are closer to the Throne of God than the seven candles representing the planets. They’re also closer to the Throne than the twelve angels that guard the gates of Jerusalem, placing hem above the zodiac as well.

Based on this information, I’m planning on researching the spirits’ manifestations outside the requirements of astrological timing. I am currently of the opinion they operate outside the “rules” of the planetary governors. I could be wrong, but finding out is one goal of this particular project.

Now, Ambelain’s section of Practical Kabbalah Part II includes seals for each of the spirits. These seals are copied and presented by Zalewski and Poke Runyon in other works, but Ambelain warns against their use, claiming a six-year operation using the seals resulted in cancer, obsessive thoughts of suicide, and other unpleasant results. Poke and Zalewski don’t mention it, and the general consensus of the magicians I’ve talked to about this is that Ambelain was full of crap. Either it was a false warning, or he was just wrong.

Regardless, the seals come from a manuscript much later than Agrippa’s record of the angels. Agrippa knew the angels’ names, and knew they were used in magick, but did not offer any indication that they are related to the zodiac. If the seals were created under the auspices of the zodiac-link, they’ll be useless to me. Besides, I don’t like using symbols I don’t understand or that I’m just not comfortable with, and these definitely fall into that category.

I’ll be working the spirits using the conjuration ceremonies of the 4th book of Occult Philosophy. The seals I’ll generate using some method from the time of Agrippa, or else something provided directly by my HGA. I haven’t figured that part out yet.

For a magician, I’m not very superstitious (knock on wood).

Nevertheless, long time experience has shown me that the weeks prior to Mercury going retrograde are full of online conflict, argument, and failure to communicate. The obstinate ignorant are more so, and no matter how I phrase things, it gets misinterpreted to mean something fundamentally offensive to someone, somewhere.

So far things have been good, but Mercury slows starting August 1, and goes retro August 20 this cycle. I expect to see things get hairy over the next week or two. Then things should calm down, and then go back to being mildly hairy as Mercury begins speeding up again.

Hopefully being aware of the cycle will allow me to break out of the normal reactions I go through.

Love is on my mind a lot. Not the emotion, although that’s a cool thing indeed, when you get to it. No, I’m not talking about relational feelings towards other people here, I’m talking about something higher. The LOVE that gets mentioned in places like the Corpus Hermeticum, where we learn that Man is Mortal and Immortal, and that we die for the sake of Love. Or Crowley’s presentation of the Christian AGAPE love, which he placed in the role of the divisor in his formula, LAW=WILL/LOVE, stated, “Love is the Law, Love under Will. By that formula, LOVE=WILL/LAW, and is the key to unlocking the mystery that is “Do what thou Will shall be the whole of the Law.”

I agree with the Thelemic assumption that Love and Will are intimately connected. “Will,” as expressed in Thelema, is what I call “Fate” or “Providence.” Fate, or Providence is manifest through our choices made in ignorance of the future outcome. That’s why it looks like free will.

One of my favorite songs, Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen) has this line in it, “Remember, half of every choice you make is pure chance. Just like everybody else’s.” I agree with it, though I see chance in that line is a reference to Fortune, Providence, or Fate. Kismet. Destiny.

The point is, Will is expressed when you do what you know is right in a situation. You’re in harmony with your reason for existing when you are performing your True Will. And Will and Love are different faces of the same thing.

Another popular truth is phrased “God is Love.” We magicians usually understand what this means. It is LOVE when you feel God’s presence. The beginning of wisdom is the Fear of God, but that Pachad-Fear is really talking about the awe, the deep-penetrating wonderment you feel in the presence of God when you see his LOVE pourning out and through all that is. The love of God causes intense reactions, and they resemble fear. You can’t move. You can barely breathe. Your body trembles. You look a lot like a deer caught in headlights, but with a huge shit-eating grin on your face and an almost visible light of divine madness pouring out through your eyes to illuminate all you perceive. And it flows through you and to you and out of you in accordance to your own choices and actions, and they are really your own because you don’t know what the outcome will be, even though God already knows.

So we have Will being God’s Plan, and Love being the Power of God. Will and Love combined are the power of manifestation of God’s plan. It’s a beautiful thing, as all things of Love are beautiful.

Love is always manifest in procreation, as well.* Procreation is something I don’t talk a lot about, being the good Puritan Christian that I am**. There are too many pitfalls and distractions around the topic of procreation because it feels so GOOD to procreate. It’s a very magical act, but I cringe when I see people say that sex magic is screwing while thinking about a sigil. That’s like saying Hermetic Magic is making a talisman. There’s so much more to it, the movement of kundalini, the clearing of the channel, the motion, the sensation, the mental focus… Sex Magic proper is much more… initiatory than just getting off in the flesh while you think about a symbol.

I use the term “Procreation” for sex as an awareness trigger in my life. Every time you have sex, it’s a procreative act. Every time you have sex, a child is created. That’s why thinking of a sigil while screwing works at all. You’re inseminating the idea into manifestation, or seducing it into your womb.

Sex is a manifestation of Love and Will, Creative Power and Providence***. You know how good it feels to have sex? That’s how good it feels to be living in a way that intentionally expresses LOVE and WILL as you fulfill the LAW of “DO WHAT THOU WILL.”

That’s how good it feels to be a magician. You become the channel through which Providence and Love create the universe. You are the Promethean tube that carries the sacred fire. Into darkness you bring illumination, you bring heat where there is cold, you bring purification and refinement, you make the world a better place to live in, personally for yourself, but also for the other poor bastards stuck here with you.

Back to the maths. Love is the Law under Will, or LOVE=WILL/LAW. Do what you Will is the whole of the Law, or DO WHAT YOU WILL=LAW. Plug that back into the equation, and you get LOVE=WILL/(DOING)(WILL). Love is doing what you Will under Will itself. Do the math.

LOVE=(WILL)(1)/(DOING)(WILL)

LOVE=1/DOING

Love is One, Doing.

One Doing. Not two doings, or three or four. Just One, One time, Once, forever. That “doing” is being done right now, this very second. It’s been one “doing” forever, and it’s going to take forever before it’s “done.”

And there’s only One doing it. That One takes on many forms on many planes, but it’s still One who is Doing. You and me, we’re a couple of the forms it takes, and we’re living consciously in a few of the planes this Doing has manifested so it has some “where” to do in.

And It’s Doing it right now. You are doing it, and “you” are its doing. Love is a verb, and it’s everything that happens. All the time.

* I’m not saying you’ve personally, emotionally loved everyone you fucked, that would be silly. Again, it’s Love that we’re talking about, not the nephesh shade of love we feel in the Meat Suit.

** It’s true; Puritans rocked the Holy Spirit in ways no one understands today.

*** Every sexual act you have is half choice and half chance; in other words, you’re lucky you even got laid.

Lavanah totally inspired the previous post with her Framework post. I saw the title of her post and thought it would be neat to see the blogosphere run a series of framework posts to provide insight into who they are and why they do magic the way they do it. Then I realized everyone is already doing that in their daily (or less frequent) blogs anyway.

Then my brain leapfrogged a bit, and the Frame It post got written.

And THEN I read her post. Cause that’s how I am, sorry.

I’ve been following Jason’s Evangelism posts (here, here, and here) with mild interest, but I haven’t been reading the comments. I caught a whiff of drama when he had to make a second post, and a stench of it on the third. Being a Christian Magician, I’ve had to deal with plenty of the anti-Christian sentiment, and honestly, I’m just not that interested anymore. Many people have deep and painful emotions about Christianity because people either misrepresented or abused the belief system in their youth to get some kind of jollies. Others are just stupid and jump Christianity because they think it’s cool and they’re working out their issues with their mommies and daddies.

I’m not equipped to heal the damage done by my fellow Christians to you, if you’re one of the wounded. I’m not interested in your adolescent games if you’re one of the Christian bashers who don’t even know what you’re bashing.* Chances are pretty good you’re only bashing your own beliefs about Christianity based on whatever you’ve read and experienced anyway. Loser.

But when I read Lavanah’s post, I literally wept. Had to wipe the tears away with a napkin before any co-workers wandered into my cube and saw me blubbering. What happened to her and anyone with similar stories really, really sucks. I’m personally sorry, deeply and painfully sorry that any of “my people” ever hurt you that way if you’re one of the many who suffered. I can’t make those people go away, or take away any pain you felt because of their treatment, but know that at least one Christian is sorry for what was done. It wasn’t right. You deserve better.

For the record, the Good News, the Gospel we’re supposed to be taking to all the world (based on what JC said to me) is simply this: God can be a friend. Whatever it is you think separates you from him is gone, now and forever, and he loves you and wants to be with you. No matter what you’ve done, or think you’ve done, and certainly no matter what anyone told you.

If the Christians spreading the gospel really believed that, if they understood what it means that “GOD WANTS TO BE FRIENDS WITH EVERYONE” … Well, they wouldn’t be hurting people, or thinking badly of them if they don’t “accept it,” they’d value every person and their personal relationship with God as much as God does, however God manifests to them.

But most people out there evangelizing haven’t even met God, face to face. They don’t know what they’re talking about, only what they’ve been told, or read in a book they’ve made an idol to worship because it’s too hard or (more honestly) frightening to meet the alleged Author. They don’t know. They evangelize out of fear, because it’s a requirement, or an obligation, not out of Joy of being with God daily, being the Observer and the Observed at the same time with their Source. And then they feel all self righteous or something, not even noticing that they’re the reason Jesus wept.

It sucks.

* And honestly, if you’re NOT a Christian, you cannot understand it. Even most “Christians” don’t understand it. Those who explore the mysteries of Christianity in faith, hope, and earnest desire to know and be known by God might understand part of it, sometimes. But no one agrees with everyone else about what Christianity is “really” all about, when you get into the doctrines, scriptures, schisms, and all that stuff, no one. We Christians, just like everyone else, are all adept at creating our own core beliefs that are unique enough to be different in at least one way from any other Christian when compared point by point. Even if, like me, you think you fully understand it, you don’t. We can’t even see “it.”

Can you write a beginner’s guide to your belief system? It’s harder than it looks, especially when your belief system isn’t canned fantasy pulp fiction smeared liberally over Regardie’s oath breaking revelations of mysteries he wasn’t initiated enough to understand. It’s even worse if you’ve gone back more than 100 years to figure out the roots of your system and tried to integrate as much of the original content as you can.

But it’s amazingly interesting to do. I’m finding incredible shit that I forgot all about as I write up the Black Work course material. It’s awesome.

Try it some time, write up the core doctrines that summarize your beliefs, provide a general explanation for everything that is, and then specific methods of interacting with it to get the results you want, or the methods of progressing through the various stages of the path your belief system advocates. I’ve always believed you don’t really understand anything until you can explain it to someone else. It’s a good test of your true relative position within the belief system you claim to adhere to.

If you can’t write up the basic creation myth and core cosmology of your system, if you don’t know what the stages of progression are, or where you’re at in it, or what order they’re supposed to go in and why, think about that.

Then sign up for my courses. 😉

Heading into the 21st century and Web 2.0 (it’s not just a buzzword, it’s not just a buzzword), I decided to try out a template that was created in the last couple of years rather than just sometime in the last decade.I think it’s beautiful, but the dark red text on the gray background is irritatingly hard to read. Light red is just lame though, really really lame.

I’ve cleaned things up over on the right too. Condensed some stuff, took out the garbage, dusted, hung some new pictures, oh, and I updated my blog list with the people I read regularly these days. SOME OF THEM DON’T POST OFTEN ENOUGH, but when they do, it’s worth it.

(Last older post for today, a tribute to my friends. Yeah, OK, maybe I did talk more about me, but it’s about THEM. This one was from back in November of ’09.)

Integrity is, in my opinion, the foundation of all relationships, whether they are with your family, social groups, spirits, or God the First Father. As I discovered painfully from the establishment of my relationship with God, there can be no foundation for any relationship that isn’t founded firmly in the truth. You have to know who or what a thing is first and foremost before you can decide if you like it, love it, or want it to be a part of your life.

In my life, I’ve had few friends. Part of that is because I moved around a lot as a child, and I quickly learned that when you move, your friends quickly forget you. You became “that guy that moved away in 1st grade,” or fifth grade, or tenth grade. The people most important to me in my elementary school couldn’t pick me out of a line-up two years later. I realized then that “friendship” wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. It’s nice, but you can always make new friends. Your old friends will forget about you, and if you pop up again, you’ll both be strangers because so much shit has gone down. There may always be a core of shared experiences to fall back on, but life has a tendency to change people, and there’s truth in the old proverb: you can never go home again.

But the things that make people really be your friends are all based on truth. If you have a relationship with someone where you have to limit what they know about you, you’re limiting the depth of your friendship. I can’t tell my boss about my occult studies, even if she understood it wasn’t Satanism. But I can talk about what happened on Dexter. We can have a level of friendship, but it can never be complete because there are some things that neither of us would share with colleagues in the Government Service industry.

And that’s ok with me. I don’t really want to be friends with a lot of people. I don’t mind being friendly with a lot of people, but my circle of close friends is small and will remain so. All these relationships are based on truth, integrity.

There are times that integrity demands discomfort. Everything that is true is not necessarily fun. It doesn’t always mesh well with what we want to believe. Sometimes we think in certain programmed patterns that leave us blind to some piece of the programming that might cause problems, and when people point it out, we want to kill them, even when they’re friends.

Since most of my friends are magicians, there’s an added element of danger to pointing out uncomfortable truths. Some of my friends are megalomaniacs, though in a mostly harmless way. I find that personality trait appealing, for some reason. Can’t imagine why.

But the problem with megalomaniacs is that we, er, they can be a little touchy. So there are times when I’m tempted to keep things to myself to be nice. I’ve learned that it doesn’t help things at all. Eventually I get so annoyed it comes out anyway, and seldom as peacefully as it could have been had I said something earlier.

My problem is tact. I don’t have a lot of it. I can, sometimes, but when it comes to magical things, I tend to be a bit of a dick. I’d blame usenet, or Golden Dawn Yahoo Groups, but the truth is, I was always like this when it comes to spiritual things. I’ve been a Crowned Child (code for Brat Prince) in spiritual matters since I first learned that Jesus Christ died on a cross for my sins. I mean, if the earthly manifestation of the freakin’ LOGOS that created all things by speaking the thoughts of his Father loved me personally enough to die like that so we could spend time together… .

And I’ve always heard the Voice of God. Not in a crazy way, but I’ve always had a good and close relationship with the Holy Spirit. I’ve been in tune with God’s Spirit on Earth since I was a young child, and I knew a lot more than I understood, or understood a lot more than I knew. I learned to listen to the Still Small Voice in a Bible camp in Oklahoma, and I heard it n the winds, and heard it in the stones, and heard it in the whisper of fallen pine needles beneath my boots. Sure, I forgot, and spent hard times ignoring it or drowning it out with booze and other stupid choices, but I got better. I got a lot better.

So I feel pretty goddamned privileged, frankly.

When I speak on a subject, I do so when I have had experience in it, and tested it, and discovered something about it that is valuable. I speculate on things from time to time, but I don’t offer a conclusive opinion, or present a conclusion until I’ve got some experience to back it up. As a result, I expect people to take what I have to say about some topics with a little more weight than some average guy in the street.

So I can be a bit touchy about things too. It’s pride, not arrogance though, when I do it. I’ve earned the right to my pride. I deserve it. I’ve done a lot to be proud of. It’s not hubris, and it’s not vain glory either. I know the things I’ve done so far are good, but they aren’t where I really want to be. I’m in constant danger of stagnating in the Peacock phase, and that’s not what I want to do. It’s fun here, but there’s more at hand.

These are the same traits that I value in my closest friends. Confidence in their abilities, pride of workmanship, or craftsmanship, and dedication to getting better, seeing more, being more and more themselves in every way. My friends have traveled the world in pursuit of spiritual insight, or painstakingly delved into the Secrets of the Grimoires, or demonstrated their beliefs in active cultural ministry. My friends are leaders, and when they speak on a subject, I listen carefully.

Integrity is the foundation of these relationships. They demonstrate the integrity of their beliefs in the actions of their lives.

I’ve got some pretty awesome friends.