As you may know, I don’t do Golden Dawn. It brings out the worst in me.

However, it’s a good system for other people. Many of my friends are doing really well in that particular vibe.

Nick Farrell, author of When a Tree Falls, Tarot Revelations, Egyptian Scarab Oracle, Magical Pathworking: Techniques of Active Imagination, Making Talismans: Living Entities of Power, and Gathering the Magic: Creating 21st Century esoteric Groups (and I’m betting many more titles to come, titles with colons, yea, and verily titles also without colons), has announced the Magical Order of Aurora Aurea (MOAA). It’s website is www.auroraaurea.com, and if you want to see his announcement, it’s at THIS LINK.

Nick’s got a level head on his shoulders, and so far I haven’t seen any reason to suspect he’s going to turn into another Robert Zink. If you’re looking for a Golden Dawn group to join with minimal baggage, but as much “lineage” as any other GD Order, I’d suggest checking out MOAA. I expect it to be a major shaping force of the next generation’s experience with the GD. I’d like to see it become the phoenix that rises from the ashes of the inter- and intra-Order wars (both online flame wars and offline magical wars) of the late ’90s and early ‘aughts. I’d like to see it capture the goal of the original members of the GD and achieve the empowerment that allowed the English magicians to fight the Germans in the Aethyrs as well as the airs above Europe in WWII.

You have no idea ghow much of my life runs on routine. I had no idea until things started to get back to “normal.”

After the fire I lived in the hotel for a month or so. I moved into the temporary house Feb. 1, and then we got hit with a blizzard that basically disrupted the normal flow of events in our life for two weeks. This is the first week that schools have opened at their regular time, that my work wasn’t sending out emails about the work-from-home policy and emergency contact lists, and the first week I get to drive my Camaro regularly again.

See, when there’s no school, I get to take my spouse’s car. It’s a nice one, a copper-colored HHR. My teen says it looks like an orange clown-car. She’s totally wrong and has no taste whatsoever. I’ve wanted a copper-colored car since they started making them, and even though it’s not a Murano, it’s still pretty cool. I love driving it.

My Camaro is a hunter green, 1994 with T-Tops. It leaks about a quart of oil every two days (I consider it helping to weather proof the interstate). The driver’s side power window goes down nice and smooth, but the weather strip outside comes up with the window when you try to raise it back up. The heater core went up last summer, so I bypassed it. This winter, I’ve regretted that decision, even though it would have cost me over a grand to have it fixed. (For those who don’t have older cars that suck donkey balls, that means I don’t have a heater this winter.) It’s an uncomfortable ride.

But when I started driving it every day to work again, I got this inexplicable sense of relief. Driving my car is an exercise in embarrassment and discomfort, and yet there I was feeling damned GOOD to be freezing my balls off on the 90-minute commute to and from work. It’s the return to routine, of course, that feels good. My brain isn’t in a mild-to-severe state of fight or flight over being in a foreign environment. It’s how things always are, so my cortisol levels drop a bit, and I’m not as apt to wish unending painful flaming death on other commuters on the way home.*

And it’s not just me. As things got back to normal here at the office, people chilled out a lot. The talk of digging out of four feet of snow passed, and the tension in the air dissolved. My boss got over her crazy. That’s always good.

So there’s this guy at Harvard who was thinking about all this stuff about routines. He buys all this GPS data from a cell phone carrier in Europe that tracks where people go every day. He doesn’t have their names or anything, but he can see where thousands of people travel over a year. He expected most people had a routine, but that there would be a percentage who were consistently spontaneous. You know, the Kramer types. Folks who just up and do something crazy, like drive to Arizona because they got a rental car with unlimited miles until their car is out of the shop. People who take different routes to work once in a while.

He never found the spontaneous people in the data. Everyone stuck to a pattern. Even their variances from the norm were predictable. An algorithm can be written that will accurately predict your personal location more than 95% of the time. If you’re in Europe, at least. Maybe there are more spontaneous individuals in the States.

I doubt it.

I suspect the truly spontaneous people in the world, those whose patterns can’t be predicted by an equation aren’t going to show up in statistical data ever. They don’t fit into society. They don’t have a place in culture. They won’t keep jobs, pay bills, or have a permanent address. They can’t afford a cell phone, and even if they had one, chances are pretty good that they’d lose it. They’re the mentally ill, the homeless, the mad.They’re INSANE.

Judging by my own sense of calm and peace that came from getting back to even an uncomfortable regular routine that includes frozen testes, I’m betting the whole “creature of habit” thing is genetic, embedded, hardwired into us as human beings. That means it’s on purpose. It’s a clue about how we’re supposed to act while we’re stuck in these mucus-filled water bags that turn into smelly dirt and calcium deposits when we’re done with them. Regular spiritual activity, a day every week set aside that is Holy, a time every day that is spent in holy communion with God, meditating on your Source, regular Work with the spirits of the heavenly Spheres, these practices are empowerments that will bring physical and mental peace as well as spiritual power.

When I was a kid, I was all about bucking the system, breaking free from the routine, busting out of the school-work-death cycle (I even called it the Death Cycle). Now that I’m older, wiser, and more aware of what it means to be Human, I’m understanding that the cycles and patterns are an important part of our existence. The regularity, the normalcy are absolutely essential. Without a foundation of a consistent schedule of events, we don’t have the mental bandwidth to explore the new and different.

There’s a lot of stuff in the occult realm that is either directly or indirectly influenced by the writings and research of Robert Anton Wilson and Timothy Leary. These pioneers in mental experimentation and spiritual drug use were products of the 60s, when the Crowned Child took his throne socially. They, and authors like Ginsberg and Kerouac brought a necessary correction to our culture, emphasized the richness of life that can be found by incorporating the unpredictable, the spontaneous.

But while a correction was needed to get people out of the rut, I think it’s important to recognize, accept, and incorporate the importance of the routine. Form a solid foundation, and then add to it. Extreme diversion from the norm is acceptable and useful when you have a core routine in place to return to. That core of normalcy gives you a foundation to stand on while you integrate the nuances of the new and different. Even explorers, the epitome of the “Neophile” idealized by Wilson, benefit from a routine that incorporates the exploration and discovery of the new.

* Except for you, little red car with the blond driver who stared at me like a fucking guppy in a fish bowl as I legally made a turn, whose boyfriend flipped me off because you’re too fucking stupid to know how to follow the basic rules of driving in a parking lot without getting drool all over your steering wheel. You can totally die, hopefully before you breed, but even if you’ve already got kids, it would be better if they weren’t raised by you and got your stupid driving skills passed on to them. Do us a favor and take a dirt nap before you get someone killed.

Things should be picking back up around here soon. A few quick notes:

• I have internet again, after a couple weeks without. The blizzard that hit the East Coast caused the installation to be canceled. TWICE. Two weeks in the new house with no cable or internet. Thank god for Xbox and DVDs.
• I’m moved in and as settled as possible in my new temporary house. Being out of the hotel is great, but there’s still no place like home.They’re saying it will be 3 months until I get back to my house, but it could be as long as 6. 
• While I was without internet, my domain expired. Rufusopus.com is back up and running.
• Orders placed in the last month will be processed some time this week. Eventually.
• Courses: God DAMN, it’s good to be back online. I still have some shit to get off my old HD, I’m installing it as a SLAVE on my new computer this weekend (or sooner), but I’m still going to be slow publishing stuff to the courses. 
• A book may be published officially and everything some time in the next year or so. Woohoo!
• Expect fewer posts here going forward. The fire gave me some much-needed time to assess my life. I was spending way too much time online, and way too little taking care of my real life. I’m a geek, it happens. Nevertheless, I’m a magician with the primary responsibility of being a good steward of the things and people entrusted to my care. I’ve been tempered by the flame, and come through a lot stronger, leaner, thinner, and in some ways, meaner. A lot of the crap that isn’t necessary just vanished in stinking clouds of smoke. Literally and figuratively.

 ¹Now on the same occasion there were some present who reported to Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. ²And Jesus said to them, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate?
 ³“I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
 ⁴“Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem?
 ⁵“I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” 
 ⁶And He began telling this parable: “A man had a fig tree which had been planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and did not find any. ⁷“And he said to the vineyard-keeper, ‘Behold, for three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree without finding any. Cut it down! Why does it even use up the ground?’ ⁸“And he answered and said to him, ‘Let it alone, sir, for this year too, until I dig around it and put in fertilizer; ⁹and if it bears fruit next year, fine; but if not, cut it down.’”

-Luke 13:1-9

The people who died in Haiti were no greater (or lesser) “Sinners” than anyone else. God said you’re not supposed to look at catastrophe and say it happened because of this sin, or that pact made with STAN, SATIN, or any other member of the SATAN family. When shit happens, you’re supposed to repent and turn to God, not blame it on anything, or condemn a nation and imply they had it coming. And to drive the point home, LOGOS says it with a warning.

He’d been saying shit like that for 3 years, and people weren’t listening. The Father was ready to cut them down like a fig tree that didn’t give fruit, but his vineyard-keeper (the WORKMAN) said, wait a minute, let’s put some bullshit around it and see if it doesn’t grow. If it doesn’t bear fruit by next year, choppity choppity.

Choppity choppity, man, choppity fucking choppity.

People who are all worried about why God “punished” Haiti or New Orleans had better watch their asses. They’re giving themselves a year to bear fruit.

In yesterday’s post I mentioned doing magic about the political landscape. One comentor mentioned the following, and it got me thinking. What started out as a response in a comment sort of turned into something that warrants a whole post, I think. There are things I wanted to clear up about magic in general, and how I think it should be used in changing the world. Alan posted this to the comments:

How about we do some magic to remove a conservative judge and replace him/her with a liberal one?

No, not magic to specifically address things like that. I mean, by all means, go ahead, but it’s a can of worms I don’t want to open. Do you really think the spirits are that nuanced in their interpretation of this physical realm, able to mean what you mean when you say “liberal” and “conservative”? I asked for my family to be unharmed, and protected, and they still used a fire to bring me specific amounts of cash.

And what kind of liberal are you going to put in? You think the other extreme is any better? Politics is a circle, and if you go far enough left or right, you end up in the same place: extreme radicalism. Anarchy sits on the other side of governance, and even though it’s popular, especially in occult circles, anarchy is a terrible thing practically speaking.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the liberal judge would still be human. All humans are assholes some of the time, angels some of the time, but mostly somewhere in between. With more tendencies to seem like an asshole than an angel, really. Add the power of any political position, especially one held for life, and what do you think is going to come out of it? I don’t trust them at all.

Personally, I aim for the center, try to find someone who keeps the sine wave troughs low and frequency down in their vacillations between angel and asshole. Like McCain before he towed the party line after winning the primary and becoming the Republican Presidential Candidate.

I’m thinking more along the lines of a spirit of the Sphere of the Sun, or Tiphareth in qabbalistic terms, someone to influence the government at an epochal level, changing the mentality of the elected leaders as a whole, snapping them all out of their bullshit and getting them to govern, to do their fucking jobs on behalf of their constituents without fucking over their constituents’ children and grandchildren.

I’m talking about a fundamental change in the political oscillation and harmonics of rule in the United States. The end result will be the moderation of the Supreme Court, a shift toward the center by the extremists in both parties, and an unbiased media to report the facts without opinion as a whole.

We’ll have to get rid of reality television too, I’m afraid. It’s part of the problem. Gross and wanton consumerism feeding the parts of the brain that thrive on drama. There’s nothing “real” or redeeming in reality television. It’s just bad actors pretending to be interesting. It’s modern day soap operas. It ROTS YOUR BRAIN.

Dog the Bounty Hunter!? Howe and Howe? Pawn Stars? I mean, really, the shit they put on the history, discovery, and science channels are even poisoned with this low-brow bullshit. There is no refuge for the Ruach-focused human incarnation to turn to that isn’t laced with titillating tidbits for the nephesh to feast upon.

Feh.

Anyway, society doesn’t need more “LIBERALS” any more than it needed “NEO-CONSERVATIVES.”

It needs More Light.

LVX FIAT.

I just watched Obama’s speech and listened to the Republican Governor of VA give the counter speech. Then MSNBC commentators en masse agreed there was nothing to report on after the Republican’s response. I know they’re liberally biased, but MSNBC has cooler graphics than any other news program but Fox, and Fox makes me physically nauseas.

I’ve got to wonder wtf they were listening to while the Republican spoke. I heard things that scared the shit out of me. I work with a federal agency, a really big one that gets its own line item on your paycheck’s withholding section. I can read between the lines. This is what Republicans said, behind the vaporous rhetoric:

• We’re going to push for more charter schools and vouchers that parents can use to send their kids to private Christian schools on the taxpayer’s dime instead of putting that money into public education to make our kids competitive in the global market. That makes us popular with the base.
• Buried in that process will be some ugly little things that are simply wrong to even contemplate, some things that should be listed on a spreadsheet of concerns under the “Appalling Indicators” column heading. We’re going to get rid of that whole civil rights movement thing, and put the poor and minorities back where they belong. We’ll start by getting rid of busing.
• We’re also going to keep fucking the poor up the ass with a night stick while giving the wealthiest more avenues to hide their profit, keep them from paying for the poor to have a chance to get to their level of achievement, and do everything in our power to keep the corporations richer than Croesus. Oh, by the way, these corporations and banks now have no limits on what they can spend to get us into office, so you’d better go invest in Federal Incense to burn to your Oligarch’s figurehead, because Caesar’s coming back.

Nothing to report on? Nothing? The fuck there was nothing to report on. Whose side are they on? Are liberal media heads that stupid?

Jesus Christ. They’re planning a fucking race war. Helter Skelter, man.*

Watch them bastards, it’s an election year and their corporate masters can pump billions into the campaigns now. Populist votes are up in the wind, and idiots who think it’s cool to follow the political winds will jump on the Republican bandwagon faster than cockroaches breed. Maybe Obama’s plan to mitigate the impact by having to publicly list your lobbyists will help, but I don’t think it’s a strong enough control valve on that particular faucet.

Anyway, not a magical post, though I’ll likely do something magical about this as soon as possible. One point this fire drove home more than anything else is that magic is not only very real, it works powerfully and effectively, in ways that will change your physical reality to the core. Fuck, man, look around you and be careful, protect what you love. That includes the political landscape that we’re leaving our kids. I don’t want my son caught up in a fascist regime that history records as the next Dark Age.

*Extreme? A little reactionary and a touch paranoid or maybe a bit… overzealous? Yeah, maybe that’s part of it, but it’s on purpose. Unchecked, these nuts will ruin everything.

Man, I haven’t had a lot of time lately for doing all the stuff I do online when things are going well. Looking at houses, dental issues, my spouse’s birthday, my daughter’s birthday, extra stress at work, getting into the groove of hotel living, plus all the regular stuff that happens in my daily life has left me exhausted and drained and pretty much incapacitated when it comes to doing magic, let alone writing about it. Sorry, course members, I didn’t abandon you, I just got caught in the undertow as the tsunami of bullshit in my life started to wash back out to the sea of the unmanifest where it belongs.

I’m moving into my temporary house February 1, a month and a week after the fire. Today’s the anniversary of the fire, by the way. In many ways, it’s like a one-month birthday. I’m not the man I used to be. I’m sort of interested in seeing how I turn out when I get out of the chrysalis.

I expect to get active again online in a couple of weeks. This week is pretty much shot. I’ll be packing and moving this weekend, and then next week is going to be a busy week at work. So don’t expect much in the way of posting here until I can get my shit together.

I went through a bad time over the summer while I was unemployed. Shit rose to the surface, and needed to be burned away. It was a good thing to have happen, it’s cleansed a lot of crap away. The house wasn’t the only thing that burned.

It’s all part of the Work, and I’m grateful. Nothing less than this would have changed my heart about things like taking care of what I spend so much money and time on. Family are a given, but I didn’t appreciate the house and stuff in my life, not really.

There is a value to material posessions that brings security. It’s not spiritual peace, and it’s not of eternal value, but we’re flesh as well as soul, this side of the grave. The body needs food, shelter and clothing. It feels better when it has it. A happy, healthy, secure Guf is every bit as important as a happy, healthy Ruach in tune with the Divine Source.

It’s a tapestry of stories, this “catastrophic event” thing. It’s a crystal with lots of facets, and each gives a different view of the interior of the crystal, a different perspective. With all the different views, you get a more-complete understanding. Not only that, each facet changes what you’re looking at through the facets. Each facet is like a lens, changing how the experiences viewed through it appear, giving you a completely different depth of meaning that you could never have had without the lens.

Having good insurance helps a lot.

Does anyone have the old “NI CelestialB” font installed on their machine? The Geocities site I got it from years ago is gone, and the font’s on my old HD, one of the files I didn’t know I needed to copy over. If someone has it, please let me know.

Edit: Found by Harry, an astute course member. w00+ness!