I’m rebuilding my occult supplies now that we’ve got most of the house put back together. Incense burners, tarot cards, a new crystal ball… I had to rebuild The Box, too. Most of my talismans are gone, and I get to rebuild everything, pretty much, from the ground up. It’s kind of weird, but at the same time, it’s exciting.
It’s coming at a time that I’m writing up the Black Work Course too. As I write about the basics of Hermetic Magic, I get to go through them myself. Electing times to create talismans of the planets, consecrating new altar tools, breaking in a new mini-Rider-Waite deck, tuning a new pendulum, conjuring up old familiars and new…
It’s a very exciting time to be a magician in the RO house, I guarantee.
You know, my recent leaving behind of the Lem’s Goetia spirits may have left people thinking my approach to the Spirits doesn’t have room for demons. Nothing could be further from the truth at all. The Hermetic System has plenty of room for Demons. They fit right into the cosmology. Recognizing they exist and are responsive to the conjuration techniques we use is essential for long-term success and the accomplishment of the Great Work. Ignoring their existence, not making room for them in your system doesn’t eliminate their influence from your life at all. Plugging your ears and going “no demons no demons no demons” isn’t going to result in acquiring the Philosopher’s stone any more than an ostrich poking its head in the sand keeps it from getting eaten.
You’ve got to have room in your system for demons, that’s the bottom line.
My personal opinion is that the room in the system should look something like this:
See? Plenty of room for demons!
Does that mean no Hermetic Magician should ever let them out to go to work for them? Heck no! If you need something done that you haven’t acquired the initiations or empowerments to accomplish without the use of Demons, then by all means, conjure up the demons if you’re that impatient. Jason advocates having a laser-specific goal in mind before turning to them, and that might help too.
But what I’ve seen is that the demons don’t deliver what you want or need in the long term. I’ve found that turning to them for anything is likely to look really appealing in the short term, but eventually circumstances will arise that negate whatever benefit you received from them. You end up extending the problem, postponing some of the effects you want to avoid in the short-term, while adding more problems to clean up later. Eventually, and it might take a couple of years, you’ll end up wishing you’d spent the weeks or months Working with nicer spirits with better intentions developing the resources and powers you need to accomplish the goal without infernal influence. Better to leave them in the vault.
I wonder sometimes though, whether my experiences with them has given me some level of protection from stupid magicians sending them against me. A couple were hanging out a month or two ago, and they went away when I noticed them and told them to be gone. They took some things that I needed, but they left.
The thing is, my HGA could have gotten rid of them too. So could my relationship with God. Or Michael. Or holy water. Or even the LBRP.
Nope, I really can’t think of anything really useful that came out of my Work with them. Maybe there’s something I can’t see right now, but if there is… I don’t see it.
Ok, so the Black Work Course is going to be freaking AWESOME. It’s what I should have come out with first. The SA has been moved to the White Work Course, and Hermetic Merkavah’s over in the Green Work. 8th and 9th sphere stuff is coming in the Red Work Course. Whew. Dude. Lots and lots of work to do.
I’ve broken up the Black Work Course into three phases, naming them as pretentiously as I could. This is still a tentative outline, because there’s more I want to cram in there somewhere. I can’t seem to think of everything just yet, but this is the minimum of what I plan to cover:
Neophyte
Introduction
You have Cleansed me with Hyssop, Oh Lord: Banishing and Cleansing Rites
Courses are now available for registration. See the links on the right on the top of my blog for more information. I’ll be writing up detailed descriptions over the next few days.
I’m only running the Black, White, and Green courses right now. I’m sure that will be enough for me to handle at one time. Since I’m only one person, I’ll be providing materials on the following schedule:
Black Work: 1st lesson July 16th, additional lessons every other week.
White Work: 1st lesson July 23rd, additional lessons weekly.
Green Work: 1st lesson July 23rd, additional lessons every other week.
Remember, the Black Work is for people totally new to magic in general, or those who want a solid foundation of stuff that I know works based on my experiences. It’s a lot of work and is the most expensive. This is the Hermetic Magic Basics class, the stuff you’d study in the first few degrees of an organized lodge. There’s a lot of core doctrine teaching, with explanations of your role in relation to the world around you and the spirits above (and below) you. There’s also a fair amount of practical Work, the creation of your altar, the creation/accumulation of magical tools, and introductions to the conjuration process I use most frequently. We’ll be doing conjure rites with the Elemental spirits, as well as learning to work in harmony with the Spirits of Place, the Genii Loci. This course includes an exploration of the Emanations of our Mother, the Spiritus Mundi. As we go through this process, we’ll begin the Great Work, begin turning up the spiritual heat and seeing the things that stop you from being who you were meant to be rise to the surface where they can be observed, contemplated, and addressed as needed. This course will include the establishment of a firm foundation in the Sphere of the Moon from which the White Work can begin.
The White Work is some major heavy lifting. We’ll be aiming to attain the Solar/Supernatural Assistant, and that will be the bulk of the Work. A lot of shit rises to the surface. Hopefully the Black Work we’ve done will prepare you. We’ll also explore the relationship between the magician and the assistant, and we’ll Work on exploring in closer detail the practical and spiritual applications of your relationship with the spirit. I’ll go over the things I’ve learned about Goety at this point, along with some heavy-handed warnings and not-so-subtle admonitions to avoid a particular grimoire that bites. We’ll end this course with a series of introductions to the 7 Planetary Governors.
The Green Work will explore the Seven Heavens in detail. This will be at least a 17-week course, if I remember the outline right. Haven’t checked lately. The goal in this stage is to establish relationships with each of the Seven Planetary Intelligences, Archangels, and Governors. We’ll obtain initiations into each sphere, and integrate those forces over time. We’ll also be Working with the Spirits, Angels, and Legions of the planetary spheres, exploring the ways they affect the material realm, and ways we can increase our abilities to work in harmony with them in our daily lives.
When we have enough people who are ready, we’ll begin the Red Work, where we start knocking seriously on the gates of the Eighth Sphere and take the next steps in the transformation into Powers.
Before signing up for the courses, take a look at where you’re at. The people who succeeded in the Supernatural Assistant Course were those who had been through some version of the Black Work course I described above. Witches with an initiatory tradition, Rosicrucians with an initiatory tradition, people who had done the “grunt work” that needs to be done to start getting you clear and prepared for the communion with the Supernatural Assistant. If you’ve been through that already and feel confident that you’ve dealt with the happy horse shit that comes out in the early Work, start at the White Course.
If you’ve been through the Supernatural Assistant Course and feel ready (VG, I’m looking at you), start at the Green Course.
Gordon’s post today talks about fish. Because fish are cool. Fish nerds are also cool, but they smell funny and I really don’t feel comfortable shaking their hands because I walk away and hours later catch a faint whiff of brine that makes me wonder if it was really fish they were handling. And then I have to scrub.
But Gordon’s post was about shoaling sigils. He also went off on magical diaries, making a lot of valid points about how they aren’t that necessary.
I want to talk about shoaling and schooling magicians.
Gordon says:
Shoaling. Think of it like birds flocking but with a few key differences. Firstly, the aerodynamic (in this case hydrodynamic) advantages aren’t as great. That’s because fish ‘shoal’ when they aren’t heading somewhere, and ‘school’ when they are. Schooling gives a hydrodynamic advantage. [snip] Anyway, fish ‘shoal’ for some obvious reasons:
To protect against predation.
To indicate where there is food.
To raise young.
Shoaling Magi
The blogosphere we play in is a lot like a shoal of magicians. It protects against predation by creating a community of generally respected magicians, and people are hesitant to critique a member of the shoal because they are likely to get called out by another member of the shoal and get publicly ripped to shreds. It indicates where the food is by letting us all know what each other is into, and we “feed” on each other’s systems and experiences, enriching our own Work. It also provides a way to “raise the young,” that is, provide a single place for new and budding magicians to see a variety of approaches and receive a bunch of complimentary training from people whose primary system or approach might be too specialized for everyone.
Seems to me, this occult blogosphere provides the kind of stuff a lodge would provide, ideally, only without the dues structure and benefits of initiation and a cohesive regimen of structured progressive material, and that’s ok, shoaling doesn’t have to do that.
Schooling Magi
Schooling of magicians, on the other hand, is different. I recently got to participate in a small experiment with some other magicians, and the effects have been awesome. Working together on a team provided a very hydrodynamic advantage. It’s worth doing, and I’m looking forward to the next level, and future collaborations with people on projects. I like that it was research based, and not results based. I think that helped a lot. We weren’t working towards manifesting a pile of gold for each of us, or anything too restrictive, we were just doing the same things and recording our results, and then comparing them.
The courses I offered before provided a similar experience, but I think I had too many people at different levels of attainment to reap the same rewards. Generally, those who had done significant work before hand clumped together and succeeded, while those who didn’t have the same kind of experiences (from different backgrounds) had less impressive results. I’m going to be applying the results of the small experiment to the courses, and see if that helps streamline some of the benefits we all share.
On Magic Diaries
And then he goes on a rant about mandatory use of magic diaries. His main argument is against the idea that writing in a little secret book is some kind of universal magical requirement. If that’s why you’re doing it, because you have to, I agree that there’s no point in doing it. I think anything done only because it is mandatory will be a lot less useful than something done because its value is known and appreciated.
However, the use of a magical diary in a flexible way is totally useful. Gordon implies the benefit of applying Project Management techniques to your magical efforts, and a magic diary is one of the tools that will help you accomplish that. It provides a record of your intended goal, the path you took, and where you ended up. Going back and reviewing that from time to time is essential. Otherwise you forget the original goal and think you’re right on target when you’ve completely turned around and went way over budget. It’s called “Scope Creep.”
I advocate the use of something like a Magic Lab Book. Record your hypothesis, your planned experiment to prove it, the actual results, and any adjustments to your hypothesis that must be made. In doing an extended working, keep track of your results after each operation, and record the things that happen relative to your project. It helped a lot with the recent Schooling project we did.
It doesn’t have to be that rigid, either. This is magic, we can do what we will. A Flip record of your Work, like the video log in Avatar would be pretty fun and useful. You can’t rely on your observational skills, but a record of what you thought you experienced is going to be a lot more useful than no record at all. The process of magic is sort of like going to the gym in that you do make progress towards a goal, and seeing where you were at, where you are, and where you hope to be compared to where you were before is damned useful. And who cares why the Victorians did it? If we use it for our own purposes, it can be redeemed and made valuable regardless of the errors of rich white pissing English men.
Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and even if that is inductive logic*, it holds true. A diary might not be a completely accurate and perfect record of what happened, but it’s better than having none at all.
Shit, I just realized that I’m a documentation specialist. Technical Writer. I record project history, progress, and report on it for a freaking living. Of course I’m an advocate for keeping a written record. He’s in MEDIA and MARKETING, for Christ’s sake. Heh.
Yeah, we may very well disagree on the importance of maintaining a comprehensive document trail. 😀
But like he said, it’s an “if you want” kind of thing. It helps, I use it, it might help you.
* I totally disagree that inductive logic is inherently an error. I’m a fatalist with Calvinist tendencies, so I’m not surprised. I’m also a Taurus, and I use Practicality as a philosophical knife when dealing with philosophical Gordian knots. Even though you can’t really determine that the sun will rise tomorrow based on the fact that it has always done so before, you aren’t going to divest your holdings in solar panel production companies, are you? Even if it’s an imperfect tool, it can be used effectively, with caveats.
Kathy, a long time friend and the original inspiration that got me doing the Work in the first place*, lo those many years ago, brought up a good point in the comments on my last post.
Kathy pointed out that abandoning all forms of terrestrial, or sub-lunar spirits would leave a gaping hole in my practice, leaving me all unbalanced and ready to topple over. Toppling sucks.
But for the record, I’m not abandoning sub-lunar spirit work, nor is my core philosophy changing all that much, really. I’m just achieving some goals I had aimed for and lost sight of, and getting rid of one set of tools in favor of others. I’m de-energising the Lemegeton’s Goetia, but there are a myriad of other spirits that are available without the bite.
At my core, I am above all else a practical magician. I know lately I may have seemed sort of flighty, but there’s a lot going on up above and down below. As it stabilizes, things will return to a more normal flow, and all these neat little tricks I’m seeing so easily now will likely fade, and I’ll have to work my ass off to reclaim this post-initiatic high I’m on. If it’s anything like what I’ve been through before.
But the point of all my magic and striving towards reclaiming my full potential, the point of becoming a Power if possible is not to ascend and be beyond all this pesky material reality, oh no, the point, the freaking essence of what I do is all about being fully me, to the most, for the highest purposes of all: to do what I want, when I want, and have the world be a better place as a result. To do as I see fit and have that be the Right Thing to do, and not just for me, but for everyone.
The goal of making the Philosopher’s Stone is to reach the phase of Projection, where you grind it up and use it and make lead into gold, sick into health, mortal into … well, still mortal, but with longevity, long life. And that’s still my goal.
I want to make the world a better place. Cheesey, eh? I don’t care, I just want to tend my garden, and to have all who pass through feel at peace and at rest.
And have some good conversations along the way.
* Kathy was a single mom who had gotten the shit end of the stick for many years. She had limited resources, but a strong calling to the Occult. She singlehandedly figured out the Ars Paulina, pretty much, with a little help from Chris Warnock and Aaron Letich and a couple others, and started making traditional magical equipment in her home. She lived 40 miles from civilization, if I remember right, and she still managed to overcome all kinds of hardships and achieve an amazing amount of success with her Natal Angel. Seeing how much one person could accomplish in this art of ours inspired me to get out of the arm chair and start doing real magic per the grimoires. Her inspiration of me also resulted in this blog you’re reading. I figured if it was possible for her, it was possible for me, and then I wanted more people to be encouraged by seeing my success, so I went public. You’re reading this because of her. It’s all her fault. Pretty much. 😀
I still don’t know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets
Every time I thought I’d got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me…
-David Bowie, Changes
So I’ve been playing more with the Eighth Sphere magic I’ve been learning from the spirits lately. It’s pretty amazing stuff. It really is about intent, and I’m finding parallels to the Energy model that are so … very … well, yeah, a bit annoying, bur mostly damned useful, honestly. I tense a muscle in the back of my hand, and this power just flows out, palpable to others. I was working on a household project that had me out in the sun on a really hot day, and I thought of Raphael in the West, Prince of the Air Elemental direction, twisted my head a bit, sort of, and a cool breeze came drifting in, followed by a really nice, cooling shower that only lasted long enough to be pleasant. I’m experiencing the Chain of Manifestation directly, and finding that everything I’m going through was right there in Agrippa the whole time.
See, manifestation is a lot like the scales of a fish, or overlapping chain mail. You move one piece, and all the ones nearby are moved. Muscle control combined with symbol and intent releases a flow of power that has an instant effect on the environment around you. Everything, every link or scale has an intelligence, an awareness that can be spoken to, if you only know its language.
And it’s really weird for me because I’m used to being able to put things into words. But in the Eighth Sphere, you learn to sing hymns of silence in preparation for the Ninth. It’s a matter of directing your intent in worshipful observation, in celebration of the process of manifestation. You tune your observation-with-intent to harmonize with the manifestation current, and you find yourself as the conductor as well as a player in the orchestra. And see, there’s no limit to what can be accomplished. You name a thing, and it responds, and then it returns to where it used to be.
You know all the things the spirits of the Lemegeton’s Goetia are capable of accomplishing? You can accomplish them too, without the negative consequences. You want riches? You’ve got a Midas Touch in your right hand’s ring finger. Everything you touch with intent will turn to gold. You only need to speak with the right spirit at the right time to release this ability.
You want to curse someone? Flip them off with intent. Sex on your mind? Tense that Mound of Venus with intent, and see what happens.
This isn’t the kind of thing I can put into words, at least not yet. I’ve got to experiment more, and pay attention to what’s going on when I figure something new out. I’m at a point where I can think about a desired effect, clear my mind, and just feel how to make it happen. There’s a mind-body connection (also discussed in Agrippa) that is directly plugged straight into the Source outlet. And when we do it ourselves, there’s no demons with a “fuck you filter” in place by nature to suck it all away.
This isn’t, for the record, me adopting the Energy Model and abandoning the Spirit Model. I can see now how it all fits together, like the scales of a fish, overlapping and rubbing hard against one another in unison. Here, Agrippa says it better:
Hence saith Aristotle in the sixth book of his Mysticall Philosophy, that when any one by binding or bewitching doth call upon the Sun or other stars, praying them to be helpfull to the work desired, the Sun and other Stars do not heare his words, but are moved after a certain manner by a certain conjunction, and mutuall series, whereby the parts of the world are mutually subordinate the one to the other, and have a mutuall consent, by reason of their great union: As in mans body one member is moved by perceiving the motion of another, and in a harp one string is moved at the motion of another. So when any one moves any part of the world; other parts are moved by the perceiving the motion of that. The knowledge therefore of the dependency of things following one the other, is the foundation of all wonderfull operation, which is necessarily required to the exercising the power of attracting superior vertues. – Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book 2, chapter 60
That whole chapter is pretty deep. Note the final sentence:
In the first place therefore we must implore assistance from the first author, and praying not only with mouth but a Religious gesture and supplicant soul, also abundantly, uncessantly, and sincerely…
See? Pretty cool, eh? Religious Gesture? It’s right there.
Now the reason I’m even talking about this cool stuff that I can’t put into words yet is because I want to give you some insight into my recent decision to take the Goetic Grimoire off the list of things I sell. I overestimated the value of those spirits, and underestimated their negative effects. At this point, I wouldn’t teach my son to conjure demons, you know? I can’t in good conscience keep telling people that the demons aren’t that bad when really, they aren’t that great. Especially when there’s a much better way that doesn’t nearly kill you just to get what you want to manifest.
Kill you? That’s a bit extreme, right?
I haven’t mentioned it publicly before, but without getting into too much detail, I almost died a couple weeks ago. Spent Memorial Day and a couple more in the hospital. My heart muscles and the surrounding tissue were literally dying, and the necrotic biomatter of my decaying heart was killing me. My heart’s inflamed to this day, and not in prayer. In virus.
So look, I’ve got really good reasons to think twice before calling up the spirits of the Lemegeton’s Goetia. Conjuring them really isn’t worth it. That’s coming from a guy who has conjured damned close to half the spirits of the Lemegeton over the last few years, and developed close and personal friendships with some of them. I’ve reaped rewards from them, and I’m still telling you: they aren’t worth the price.
Especially when everything you need to get everything you want them for is sitting literally in the palm of your hand. I wouldn’t have seen it, not clearly, not without receiving the initiation I’ve been through, without learning that they just aren’t necessary to accomplish the Hermetic goal. That, combined with some rather forceful revelations about the nature of the Lem’s Goetia spirits has led to a lot of soul searching and evaluation of my role in the lives of others. I don’t want to play any part in getting anyone else into as much trouble as I’ve gotten myself into over the last couple of years.
So the Goetic Grimoire is no longer for sale. To those who purchased it, I advise extreme caution. My methods might have gotten me hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I haven’t got a penny to show for it. What I do have to show for it is a lot of stress, and physical scars.
And my heart was physically rotting in my chest.
At some point, even a Taurus has to see that maybe, just maybe evil spirits are bad to conjure, you know?
But still… NO REFUNDS. And the curse on uploading it to torrents still stands, pirate bitches.
The cosmology I use is based on the system used by the Hermetic magicians of the first through third centuries AD as recorded in the Corpus Hermeticum, specifically the Divine Pymander. In this system, the Earth is the manifest physical realm and is at the center of a series of concentric spheres. Within the physical sphere are the four spheres of the elements. Closest to the Earth is the sphere of Earth, followed by Water, Air, and then Fire. These four elemental spheres combine to form the Sphere of Sensation, the physical realm.
Surrounding the Sphere of Sensation are the Celestial Spheres. They consist of the Seven Planetary Spheres, also referred to as Heavens, the Sphere of the Fixed Stars, and the Sphere of the Prime Mover. Agrippa and the Hermetic authors of the Corpus Hermeticum began numbering the spheres at the Sphere of the Moon:
1st Sphere – The Moon
2nd Sphere – Mercury
3rd Sphere – Venus
4th Sphere – The Sun
5th Sphere – Mars
6th Sphere – Jupiter
7th Sphere – Saturn
8th Sphere – Zodiac, Fixed Stars (includes the Mansions of the Moon)
9th Sphere – Sphere of the Prime Mover
Note that this system counts “up” from the Earth rather than “Down” from the Prime Mover. Students of Modern Magick are familiar with the Golden Dawn’s kabbalistic Tree of Life, and tend to count “Down” from Keter, which corresponds to the 9th Sphere of Hermetic cosmology.
I think the difference is that in Hermetics, you start from where you’re at consciously, the physical realm that gets most of our attention, along with all the drama and thrills we go through on a regular basis. As you progress through the spheres, performing the Great Work, you “de-energize” the things in your sensate sphere that keep you from reclaiming your full potential, your rightful heritage as a member of a divine family sourced in the Prime Mover.
The oft-maligned armchair magician, our Sunday-Morning quarterbacks who read the grimoires, or at least the For Dummies versions of whatever system they’re trying to be Subject Matter Experts in at the moment, or even those who spend twenty or thirty years reading about magic without ever stepping into the Ring are the subject of today’s thoughts.
I’ve bashed these losers in passing for years, in part because I was one for many years, and in part because they seem on the surface to know what they’re talking about, and I ended up wasting a lot of time arguing with them about details they didn’t really have a framework to comprehend. I loathed them for many years.
But recent events have caused me to reconsider my stance. You know how to conjure the Ruach of a dead magician to teach you the finer points of something they’ve written? It’s fairly simple, really. You simply take their written materials and use that as a talisman, and you call on them in the names of the Intelligences of the Moon. You go on an astral journey to a meeting ground in the lower heavens, a sitting room beneath your astral temple, or a preserve in an astral national park.
They teach you in dreams, or in inspirations or conclusions reached while reading their books. They help you understand the meaning they were pointing to while writing.
You know how when you as much as look at a seal of a spirit with intent, it starts seeing you back? I’ve noticed it while practicing sketching seals of demons and angels. They’re closely tied to the patterns of squares, lines, circles, crosses, triangles, and all the other geometric shapes that make up their images. You can’t really read about a spirit in detail without it noticing a flicker of a disturbance in the force.
Now think about these armchair magicians… not the really annoying egotistical asshats that only read magic books to be able to proof text their way into looking smart by tearing apart others. Their surface knowledge of a system leaves them woefully inept at attacking people with experience. Ignore these knuckle dragging dweebs.
But the serious student of occult knowledge who reads and studies and discusses the principles of magic, have you ever thought about what’s going on inside their spheres over the years? The Great Work is the art of amassing the ore that contains the Stone, and then treating it through pressure, heat, time, and various chemical purification processes until it is refined and rarified. These armchair magicians are absorbing tons of occult material that sits percolating in their spheres, being affected by the stresses and pressures of life. It makes an egg, and it incubates, waiting the signs and signals that it is time to be hatched and revealed.
A friend of mine thinks he’s not much of a magician because he’s studied more than he’s practiced. Yet his insight and understanding exceed my own in many ways. Practical work is necessary to attain initiations into the spheres, you’ve got to conjure the spirits to Work with them consciously and attain the full benefit of their influence, but there is still Work being done in the spheres of the Armchair Initiates that is valuable and worthwhile in ways they won’t appreciate until later.
The animosity towards armchair initiates in general leaves them feeling embarrassed, ashamed, I think, and less confident in their results than they should be. I think it’s about time for scholars of the occult to be given a little slack, and a lot more encouragement than they’ve gotten in the past.
