And so it is, I stand accused of being too hard on myself, of having an ideal of what it is to be a magician and then getting down on myself for watching Dexter. Opti posted it in the comments yesterday, and he got me thinking about it. Maybe I am too hard on myself. I could certainly stand to be nicer to me. I like taking it easy on myself, frankly. 

While I appreciate Opti’s friendly advice, there’s more to it than I tend to let on. If it were being down on myself for watching some tube once in a while, or even on a regular basis, I’d agree that I’m being too hard on myself. Besides, it’s freaking rare that I like a TV show that isn’t an interpretation of a historical event, a presentation on the nature of Nature, or a postulate regarding the origins of the universe. It’s like I’ve heard there’s a candid photo of my Dad at work from before I was born that a lot of people are looking for. I can’t wait to see it. I think when they finally recreate the instant of the big bang, they’ll see a wise and kind face, with a touch of sorrow around the eyes, speaking a Word. In the mean time, I enjoy the plot and characters of Dexter a great deal.

I don’t like having the time to watch 3 season’s worth, around 36 1-hour shows, back to back. Plus interviews with Michal C. Hall. I don’t like that I would spend that big of a chunk of time watching the show to escape from my reality. I don’t like the escapism. It’s not what I would sit around and put up with out of my magician friends, either. Are we not masters of manifestation? Can we not simply dial back the edges of existence and speak directly to the powers that manifest reality itself? Eh? I mean, come on. I get stressed and escape into TV and Flash video games. While it’s a perfectly acceptable coping mechanism for depression and anxiety for the uninitiated, I know too much to fall into that trap.

The problem is that I’m being passive when I think I’d be more useful in an active phase. One of the things I advocate a lot is proactive design of your reality rather than passive reaction to it. It takes presence of mind, years of study, spiritual initiation, and a combination of imagination, determination, and pragmatism that can only be achieved through prolonged spiritual practice. That’s how I think we’re supposed to be. It’s an ideal, I agree, but it’s my standard. I measure myself against that scale. Am I in harmony with my Sphere of Influence? Have I done all that I can do to engineer my current experiences? Did I achieve my full potential as a Divine made flesh?

I’m not saying the life of a magician will be all roses and daffodils and piles of gold and gems (although the gold and gems should be given for all magicians, just because). I’m not saying we even have complete control over what manifests around us. But I do think when we look around and see things that suck in our sphere of influence, we should be ready and able to take magical action. Sitting around avoiding the problems isn’t even good for “mundane” folks. A well-adjusted, proactive, balanced materialist will be looking at their life, taking inventory, accepting the things they can’t change, and applying themselves to the things they can. I don’t expect myself to do any less than that.

I guess it goes deeper than my ideal magician. It comes down to how I approach the world, and the role of humanity in general. I think it’s our duty to make the best life possible, pursue fun and pleasure at every possible chance. I think we have the ability to feel pleasure because it leads us towards what is good, what we’re supposed to have in our lives. I think we incarnated out of love for this world, and that we owe it to ourselves to try to enjoy as much of our conscious time on the planet as possible.

Deep and profound philosophy, I know. I could say it simpler. I want to have fun.

So when I’m not having fun, I’m failing at life, you see? When I’m faced by trials, or slow torturous moments of existence, it’s harder to get proactive than it is to veg out and go into an electronic coma. If that were the highest level of pleasure I could attain, then yeah, that would make sense to me. But it’s not. Life is much more brilliant than that.

Not only that, by ignoring the stressors in my sphere, I’m allowing their cumulative effects to grow. Things change through my decisions and actions in this world. I am the fulcrum, the manifestation point of all that is above and all that is below within my sphere of experienced reality. It’s my choice how things will go each day. I don’t get to choose everyhing I have to work with, but I have a lot more available than TV and internet gaming.

So, while I may seem down on myself, it’s part of a process. It’s the application of heat to the alchemical prime to release the impurities and begin the refinement process. It’s a kick in the ass to motivate me. After spending a while berating myself, I move on to take appropriate action. Right now it’s evaluation and planning. Yesterday’s ritual was a step in the right direction, clearing up some old garbage and replacing it with something more appropriate. The next steps are apparent, but they need more contemplation. There are forces at work beyond my control, and those things I cannot influence must be adapted to.

And as a Magician, the methods I use are magical. They are both contemplative and ceremonial. They are symbolic and practical. They are, above all, powerful in the hands of the skilled and unskilled alike, and gaining that skill is my ultimate goal. Well, not really. But the ultimate goal can only be achieved by gathering the appropriate skills.

Skills I’m not getting from Dexter.

Today I performed a conjuration of the Angels of the Lord’s Day. Not one or two of them, but all of the ones I could find a reference to in the Heptameron. I conjured them to undo some magic I had done with them earlier, specifically that magic that was supposed to get me wealthy without having to work.

I emphasized, if you recall, the fact that I didn’t want to work for the money, and while I’ve been getting what I need to get by, and I’m in the top 10% of the wealthiest people on planet earth, I’m just fucking hating trying to live like this. I want security, damn it. I want dental insurance, the car payment in the bank, and enough money for food too. I don’t want to be getting by as close to the bone as I have been.

So, to clear the air between us, I conjured the angels I had conjured before. I performed the rite on a Sunday before, and I figured I needed to at least have the day and hour right to undo whatever I had done. I’ve been meaning to undo the ritual for a while now, but what with one thing and another, I’ve missed the appropriate time repeatedly.

So today I started with a conjuration to my HGA, calling him by name and lighting a candle on his little “throne” talisman. As I did, I felt him come into the room. I anointed myself in Abramelin, and anointed his candle as well. I burned a little frankincense as I prayed with him, and felt the room grow clearer with his presence.

Next, I performed a bit of your basic cleansing rites. I began with, “You have cleansed me with hyssop, and washed me whiter than snow, oh Lord,” and I lit the candle that symbolizes the presence of God on my altar. Immediately, I felt a warm and golden light fill me and my altar space. The Lord was with me.

Now, admittedly, it’s been a while since I performed any formal magic. Most of what I’ve been doing lately has been with my familiar spirits, with a candle lit on occasion as I saw fit. I haven’t even been rising through the spheres much. Instead, I’ve been playing video games on my PC between bouts of manically applying for jobs, or watching television (I cought up on three seasons of Dexter). That’s how I’ve kept my mind occupied so I don’t have to think. I haven’t been a very good magician lately at all.

So when the Lord came to my altar space and filled the room with His presence, it was totally awesome. The hairs on my arms stood up, and I felt chills and warmth and peace and … holiness. I had forgotten the holiness of the Lord. I look at the last couple of weeks and I can only shake my head and wonder, what the fuck, man?

So I spent a few minutes in thanksgiving and adoration. Nothing too smarmy, but there is nothing more healing to the soul than spending time loving and being loved by God. The best form of doing this I’ve found is pure worship, purely loving your creator-source and feeling the complete love in return. There is nothing more cleansing, nothing that puts you back on track faster. There is nothing more perfect in this world of matter that you can experience than the holy presence of your Father.

After spending time with Dad, I asked for his blessing on the Work at hand, and asked him to send forth the angels I would be calling, to guide them in undoing the magic I had done in my ignorance, and to empower them to accomplish their true natures on my behalf.

My conversations with God tend to be run-on sentences.

Next I proceeded with the conjuration. Most of what I had planned to do was straight out of the Considerations of the Lord’s Day from the Heptameron. I used the Latin version of the Conjuration straight from that section, and even understood what I was reading while I read it. Mostly. It’s the same way I conjured the spirits before, and that “worked,” in a monkey’s paw kind of way. (That’s where you get everything you ask for and nothing you want.)

I haven’t read Latin out loud since High School. The last time I conjured the Sunday Angels, I sort of mumbled my way through it, relying on Agrippa’s “It’s the intent of the magician that determines the angel we receive,” and only really enunciating the names of God and Michael clearly. Today, however, I found myself automatically pronouncing the words the way they should be pronounced. I’m not saying my Latin was perfect, by any means, but it was a lot closer to what it’s supposed to be than I can accomplish most days. I attribute the improved pronunciation to having formally conjured my HGA today before the rite. He does make a difference.

After reading the Conjuration, I called first on the Angels of Summer, Gargatel, Tariel and Gaviel. And Tubiel, the head of the sign of Summer. I included them today because I had included them mid-Summer when I screwed up the last ritual. Also, it’s Labor Day weekend, and I’m taking down the pool out back, and I figured it was good to conjure them in general to thank them for the good times I had this year. Taking August off is a habit I could get into, if I could afford it.

In the Heptameron, it includes the name of the Earth in each season. In Summer, the name of the Earth is Festatavi. During the conjuration of the angels of Summer, I said, “Come now to the Earth which is called Festatavi” to include this name as well. I just sort of thought it was important.

I did the same for the Angels of the Lord’s Day. Now, there are a lot of them in the Heptameron. Twenty-nine, altogether. There are three for the Lord’s Day, Michael, Dardiel, and Huratapal. Then there’s the Angel of the Air ruling on the Lord’s Day, Varcan, and his Ministers, Tus, Andas, and Cynabal. These Angels are under the North Wind, which I mentioned while conjuring them. I don’t presume that the Heptameron includes information you don’t need.

After that, I conjured the Angels of the Fourth Heaven, ruling on the Lord’s Day, which ought to be called from the four parts of the world. From the East, I conjured Samael, Baciel, Atel, Gabriel, and Vionairaba. From the West, I conjured Anael, Pabel, Ustael, Burchat, Suceratos, and Capabili. From the North, I conjured Aiel, Aniel, vel Aquiel, Masgabriel, Sapiel, and Matuyel. From the South, I conjured Haludiel, Machasiel, Charusiel, Uriel, and Naromiel.

Forty Angels, plus my HGA. It was a large rite, and my little office in the basement that I use for my ritual space was rather… full.

After conjuring the entities, the first order of business was to thank them for coming. Next we addressed “old business,” that is, undoing the magic I had done before. I had thought this out before hand. I didn’t want them to go out and do something I say in this rite that somehow makes things worse because I phrased something wrong.

So I simply released them from any activities I had assigned them before. I explained that although they had done what I said, I need a job and to have all my debts paid monthly. I told them to stop keeping me “without a job working for the money I make” and instead to do the things they are naturally inclined to do, as listed in the Heptameron. Specifically, procure Gold, Gems, Carbuncle (sapphire, emerald, and ruby), and Riches, and to bring favor and so forth and so on on my behalf. I told them specifically to build wealth so that my family is in the top .05% of the planet’s wealthiest people, and to start by getting me a job to pave the way towards this final outcome. I mentioned the name of the job I wanted in particular, a place not far from home that provides all the benefits and salary and security I want from a job. If I have to work, this place would be ideal.

Afterward, I dismissed them and wrapped things up. I checked my clock, and I had finished with one minute of the Solar hour left to work in. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

I just finished reading Jason Miller’s Sorceror’s Secrets, and it is now on my list of books that Should Be Read By Everyone. Jason presents techniques that have never been published, as well as techniques that you may have been using for years… with hollow results. He provides exactly what the title promises, the secrets that empower the practices that you might have learned when you were a teenager browsing the “Metaphysical” section of Walden Books at the mall.

I mean, he teaches things that I only learned after conjuring the spirits. He reveals details of the breathing techniques and meditative practices I learned when I was first starting out that open the gateways to the power of the occult. He taught me things that I didn’t even know I didn’t know. It’s a great book.

More than technique though, and maybe more importantly, he teaches a philosophy of magic that takes years of actual practice to develop on your own. Most occultists I know get interested, study some, do some magic, have it fail, and move on, never realizing what they’re missing that would make their magic actually work. The rare magician who spends the time devoting themselves to figuring out why they failed and what to do instead will eventually reach the process he reveals, but man, I wish I had read this book and put the lessons into practice years ago.

As our friendship has developed, I’ve often compared myself to Jason in terms of magical attainment. I don’t know many magicians that actually do magic, honestly, and when I find them, I can’t help but compare myself to them. Some I’m obviously ahead of, and others I’m obviously behind. With Jason, I’ve always felt like I’m almost at the same level. I think his initiations into Tantric magic and his memberships in several organizations gives him an edge, but more than that I think what sets him above me as a magician/sorceror is his experience doing magic. After reading his latest book, I’m more convinced than ever that I’m right, he’s better, maybe not by much, but the trick to attainment is practice.

And he teaches the things about magical practice that you need to do to be effective in your Work. While he’s a practical magician and talks a lot about manifestation and magic focused on obtaining things in this world, he also teaches spiritual attainment techniques that will aid in the transformation of your soul. His understanding of the material world is excellent, and the chapter on wealth magic alone is worth the price of the book. I really enjoyed the book, enjoyed the lessons, and felt a resonance in what I do and what I’ve learned from the spirits.

Honestly, the man teaches things in this book that will result in blowing your effectiveness as a magician out of the water. I was concerned when I saw he’d be covering the same things I’ve already learned and thought I knew, but the keys he provides to even such simple techniques as breathing and looking out at the world are empowering. He provides so much more than the regurgitated bullshit you usually get. In addition, I strongly suspect he’s managed to reveal secrets he received as part of his initiations into several Western orders and  his Tantric training without actually breaking any vows. He definitely goes over things I only learned from the Spirits themselves. Very cool stuff, and it should be on every magician’s list of books to buy, read, and apply to their lives.

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you’ll know how highly I think of my own teachings and insights. Bear that in mind when I say I couldn’t have written a better, more comprehensive system that touches on all the aspects I’ve learned and lays it out practically and usefully for everyone with the calling to be a magician.

That said, I do have one huge criticism of the book, but it’s aimed entirely at the publisher. The typos and grammatical errors are gruesome. I had a chance to copy edit a couple of chapters, and those are perfect (of course), but the rest… well, let’s just say New Page did a huge disservice to the book and the author by not doing a better job editing the manuscript (if they edited it at all). There were misspellings in the section headings in the chapters, for Christ’s sake. As a writer, it was annoying, but as a magician it pissed me the fuck off.

Jason’s given the occult community a doctrine that perfectly encapsulates the role of the magician as I understand it, and he goes over everything I’ve learned to do and then some in a book I devoured in two days. It’s awesome. But the typos and bad grammar detract from the overall impact the book could have had, and it’s a shame.

My final word? Buy the book, and see past the errors in presentation to the perfection of the system he provides, and you’ll be well served.

Time is a Saturnine quality. Chronos was the name given to Saturn by the Greeks, the original Father Time. It’s the first of the planetary spheres, and in KBL it is Binah, the sphere of form and sorrow. Traditionally, Saturn is the Greater Malefic astrologically, and is used in Goetic magic as the binding agent. In my early magical work,l I had an epiphany about Saturn and its effects when accessed through the sphere of the Sun. It wasn’t nearly as “bad” as its reputation implies.

I wonder if I’m over-spiritualizing the concept, and that’s why I’m having a hard time understanding Saturn’s dark and evil reputation. I suspect that because it is the sphere of boundaries, and death is a boundary, people project “evil” onto Saturn because they associate death with evil. Saturn is definitely the sphere of Death, the end of the line, and the Grim Reaper is a valid image for the Intelligence of that sphere. But the harvest doesn’t come until the crop is ready, and I’m at peace with death.

I see it as the same essential boundary as my birth, marking the place where I begin and end as this incarnation. I look forward to its coming with quiet anticipation, not because I wish I were dead, but because I’m interested in what happens next. I’ve got this plan to incarnate as something more than human next time around, you see, and my Work as a magician is geared towards that eventual transformation.

Because the final transformation I’m looking for occurs at death, I’ve made my peace with the concept, and as a result, I don’t see it as a punishment or a frightening experience. I think that’s why I tend to focus more on Saturn objectively as the Sphere of Time and Space, the essence of the spiritual boundaries we work within while incarnated.

I don’t see the material realm we live in as being all that malefic. As a result I tend to overlook the negative impact of doing work while Saturn is afflicting my outcome. It’s annoying, because Saturn really does provide detrimental influence on my Work that I don’t expect because I’m all at peace with it. It’s not considered the Greater Malefic because it brings health, wealth, and prosperity, after all.

But the point of this post is some recent observations I’ve had about time and patience. The first couple of weeks of being unemployed was a transition phase. My mind relaxed, and I adapted to a very different schedule and very different set of demands on my time. I realized that working in the rat race had completely altered my sense of priorities in life, and not in a particular pleasant way. It took at least two weeks, maybe even ten days of not going to work every day to realize that I had formed a weird stress addiction, and that I didn’t know what to fill that part of my brain with now that I don’t have the stress of work to fuel the anxiety.

The whole “I’m going to lose my house and car and everything I need to provide my family with what they need to grow up healthy, wealthy, and wise” thing provided plenty of anxiety at first, and that fulfilled my brain’s addiction to stress quite nicely for a while. Eventually I reached a point of peace by Working the appropriate spirits and pursuing God with all my heart.

As the addiction to being a wage slave passed, I found that I’m much more patient. Having all this time available to me to do what I want when I want to makes the demands on my time much easier to manage. The kids interrupting me isn’t going to make me miss a deadline or run late to the office. My wife interrupting me yet again over stupid things doesn’t blow my train of thought out of the water. I mean, it does, but I’m not so stressed by other things that it’s next to impossible to pick up the momentum again where I left off. The fear of not finishing what I’m working on in the little bit of time I have available is just gone. I like that a lot.

So for those of you still stuck in wage slavery, know that the end of all you base your security on does not destroy you, you learn that there is just enough time to do everything you need to do when you’re not stuck in a place you hate for 8 hours plus the time to get there and get home. The things you think you have to work for have a way of taking care of themselves if they have to. While I don’t recommend losing your job, I definitely recommend finding peace as soon as possible if you do.

If you’re interested in Working on patience, take a look at your schedule. There’s a good chance that the reason you’re impatient is because you’ve got too much going on, or at least so much going on in any given day that you don’t feel in control. Take an inventory of what you spend your time on, perform an exercise of creating a time budget. Observe for two weeks what you do each day, and how long it takes, and then when you have a good sample of your schedule, look at where you can make cuts in allocated time. Take a week or two to adapt to not having anything pressing to fill the time you free up. Don’t schedule anything, in other words. Take a look at how your patience is doing after you’ve adapted to your new and improved schedule, and make additional cuts as needed.

The trick is to keep free time free. Life has many ways of filling up your spare moments with bullshit stressors, and that is exactly why we lose patience. The things that fill up empty time would have filled up your busy time anyway. You would have had to take care of it, or put it off until you had time and brain power to apply to it, and in that time it probably got harder to deal with. We get pissed when the unexpected comes into our already-busy schedule, or when we have to deal with something when we’ve already scheduled our time to deal with something else.

Sometimes we schedule our time with our expectations. Like I expect to be “at work” from 9-5, and to do family fun and other personal business between 6-10 week nights and on the weekends. When my kids come into the office during the day (school starts next week), I considered it an intrusion on my “work time,” and reacted impatiently with them at first. Now I find that I’m a lot more patient in listening to them and dealing with whatever they need. Their needs are simple still, they’re young enough to have the biggest issue in their life be lunch, an argument over a toy or game, or solving the ancient mystery of why people can’t talk to cats. Providing an ear to listen, a calm and rational mind to direct them towards their own solutions to their problems, or a conversation about the mental capacity of house pets and their eternal souls doesn’t take long, and is actually fun!

These moments aren’t essential. My kids will grow up well-adapted to society if I’m too busy to mediate their social issues for them. I’ve seen them work out their problems when I’m engrossed in writing something without any help from me. But I missed out on an opportunity to participate in their lives and form a memory of a patient dad who makes time for them and isn’t too busy doing something else to spend his precious time on their lives. I don’t know what the future will bring, but spending an afternoon swimming with the kids instead of obsessively monitoring job boards for a new opportunity is definitely time well spent.

I’ve noticed a trend lately that isn’t new at all. It’s the persecution complex. I noticed it first with my mother when she visited for a week. She’s a fundy Christian, very Religious Right, very frightening to most right-thinking pagans. She’s the rubber meeting the road in every “a fundy tried to cast out my demons at the mall because I was wearing a pentagram” horror story you’ve ever heard. She wears a T-shirt that says, “May I pray for you?” on the front and “Jesus is Lord” on the back when she goes out. And people come up to her and ask her for prayer. And she prays for them. Weird.

Can you imagine a Hermetic T-shirt like that? “Can I conjure your Genius for you?” on the front, and just “LOGOS” on the back…

Anyway, she went on and on a couple nights about the persecution against her church. A biker stopped at the church and told her pastor he wanted to buy their building for his biker friends’ club. When they said it wasn’t for sale, the biker got pissed and made an ominous statement about coming back, and that they would sell it to the bikers. She told me about the witches up in the mountains (of Colorado) that are casting spells against Christianity. She told me about how Obama’s health care robs her of her coverage. (She also believes that private healthcare is screwing her too; she just worked for the government for twenty years, and knows how badly they can fuck shit up.)

I grew up with that. My parents didn’t save up any college funds because they were sure Jesus would be back by then. They read Mother Earth News to find survival tips, and had a huge garden in their back yard to provide food in case of the Tribulation.

So, I’m used to the whole persecution complex coming from the Christian Church. They never got over the whole feeding them to lions and crucifying them thing.

It’s all over the pagan community too. Burning times much? Granted, pagans do get discriminated against (ostracized and killed in some places) by most communities, especially anyone accused of witchcraft that’s blighting the crops, cattle, or kids. Here in the States, Pagans lose their jobs when zealous Christians find reasons to fire them after they wear their pentagrams to work.

Jews have earned a right their paranoia. ‘Nuff said. My immigrant friends suffer persecution at the hands of whites, blacks, and even people from their own countries who are already US Citizens. They’ve also earned a right to their paranoia. So I’m not saying all instances of fear of persecution are wrong.

But it’s way too prevalent. Democrats are afraid of and angry at the persecution they receive from Republicans, real or imagined, and the same is true of the Republicans. Both parties use hyperbole and pathos to frighten their constituents, to get them all wound up in a frenzy of illogical emotion. Both sides are blind to their illogic, blinded by ideological programming that they are constantly at risk, constantly under attack.

The truth is, we aren’t under attack nearly as much as people like to believe. Fear of the “others” is a tool used to keep groups separated from one another. It’s almost like there’s this genetic need to feel lie the rest of the world is out to get us.

But are you out to get any particular group of people? Are you actively or passively executing a plan to destroy everything your opposing political rivals stand for? Guess what… Most of the other people in the world aren’t that interested in destroying you personally either. Some are, sure, but find out the facts. Keep your fear levels at the right levels, based on the truth.

Tonight I watched a special on the end of the world on the Science channel. It showed the top ten ways the Earth could be destroyed at any given time. “Yellow Stone Park is a CALDERA!!! Asteroids!!! Nukes, everywhere, NUKES!!!” Bullshit.

You know what they had in common, whether they were theologians or scientists? They all seemed like just under the surface they were totally pissed that the Earth hadn’t ended yet. I recognized it from the pastors that taught Revelations with zeal when I was a kid. They get this passion in their voices when they talk about the extremes we’ll face if this blows up or that hits us, or if “they” launch a nuclear weapon at us.  It looks like concern, or fear at first, but then you hear them describing these horrific scenarios with this glazed look on their face, and you notice the drool, and you realize hey, they really want to see this shit, and yeah, they’re pissed that it hasn’t happened yet! They’ve been predicting the end of the world for years, and it still hasn’t come.

Anyway, it would be stupid to say that there’s nothing dangerous on earth or that no one is ever out to get us. There’s nasty shit in the world, and crazy people. But as magicians, we’ve got to remember that the forces of creation itself are on our side. They protect, empower, and provide for us. We converse with the spirits of all that manifests, we commune with Nature in ways that would make Darwin weep. We know where we stand in the cosmos, and there is nothing to fear. Know the dangers, but fear them not.

I’ve been working on my own sphere in this regard. I’ve noticed the persecution complex pops up when ever I jump to conclusions without having all the facts. I’m not that political, and there isn’t really any organized religious group that I can call my own, so it usually manifests in my relationships and finances. The trick to getting out of the fear loop seems to be asking simple questions.

• What am I afraid of?
• Is the source of the fear a fact?
• If so, what is the actual fact, not the hyperbolic spin on the fact that is affecting my emotions?
• If it happens, what would I do?

Applying these questions to my fears has helped me to understand a great deal about myself and the things that trigger my own persecution complex. The two biggest things that cause me fear are my family and my freedom. If something appears to threaten either, in any way, I get emotional fast. The adrenaline helps my muscles and reflexes, it prepares me to defend against anything physically attacking what I hold dear. It also shuts down my rational mind and leaves me acting on genetically programmed instinct that doesn’t necessarily apply to the situation at hand.

It’s important to point out that I’m not overcoming my fear, or rising above my emotions. I’m not turning off anything, I’m simply putting it into its proper place. Emotions and fear are important aspects of our existence, and the goal is to bring them into harmony. They should fuel the rational mind, not consume it.

I’ve been in an odd situation lately. I spent a long time focusing on getting money, getting a good paying job, and earning enough to support a luxurious life style. I used magic (thanks Bune, Expedite, Muriel, Michael, Och, and all the Solar Angels of the Heptameron) to great success. I found out that last year I made over 6 figures for the first time in my life, and I enjoyed most of it very much.

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been unemployed. I saw it coming, and reacted too late magically to ensure a seamless transition from job to job. In fact, I may even have caused the snafu. See, I performed a wealth ritual that focused a LOT on obtaining interest bearing assets and the idea of wealth that Fr. S.L. and I hashed out. I spent a lot of time going over the details related to the fact that I didn’t want to have to work for the money. I wanted to be free from wage slavery, and performed the rite accordingly. I’m free from wage slavery now, yay, and I’ve had all my bills paid, so far, pretty much… the essential ones anyway.

But I haven’t had any income for almost a month. It’s weird. I’m not comfortable at all. I have periods of extreme fear come across me, and I have to consciously reach out to the Stars and their Intelligences to obtain peace of mind in the maelstrom. It’s amazing how much of my security as a human being I place in the idea of “having a job.”

But I’m getting better. I found a small opportunity today to make some cash, not by working, just by being in the right place at the right time. I had a tight two-hour window to pick up some food from a local co-op, and it happened to be at a church where they happened to have a flea market that happened to be monitored by an elderly widow who was getting rid of her husband’s wood working tools. I have everything I need to set up a woodworking shop in my garage now, and it cost me a whopping $15.

Last night I was talking to my spouse about building stuff and selling it out of the garage. Purely a coincidence, I’m sure.

So I’m wondering if this is what the life of a full time magician is like, someone who lives on magic instead of on their job. I wonder if I’ll just stumble upon lucky hidden treasure here and there, and cash in on it and have enough of a small profit to live on for a couple of months at a time. I can imagine the results getting bigger with subsequent rituals.

I could certainly handle that.

The weirdness is I keep finding amazing ways that I’m able to save money. Gas and lunches out were costing me about $400 a month. I haven’t had to go to the dry cleaner in weeks. I’m saving another $400 a month by buying food from co-ops and local farmer’s markets. I’m looking back at the last few months and realizing I could have been saving $800 a month, reducing my monthly budget to something manageable. I’m eating better quality food, and wearing more comfortable clothes. I haven’t put on a tie in a week, and the last one was just for an interview for a position they said I was overqualified for.

Funny old world we live in, I tell you. Funny old world.

The point is, of course, that I’m understanding wealth in a new way. I could actually survive without getting another job, if I dared to. It wouldn’t be easy, necessarily, but it would be simple. It is so tempting. I’m going to be amazed if it turns out that the lifestyle I’ve sought magically for the last 5 years would have been available at any time if I’d only had the courage to quit working so obsessively for it.

Anyone interested in joining a loose fraternity of Hermetic Magicians? The following are the requirements, except #5, which is optional but highly recommended:

1. You do not talk about the Invisible College.

2. You DO NOT  talk about the Invisible College.

3. You must be willing to take the following statement to heart (like an oath, but one that doesn’t need to be taken because it is simply true):

I am a Hermetic Magician. I am the Image of God on Earth, and it is my responsibility to perform God’s Will within my sphere of influence by Working with His Ministers in the forms of Angels, Daimons,Genii Loci, and Elemental Spirits as I see fit.

4. You must take complete personal responsibility for all aspects of your life, recognizing that even factors beyond your control are never beyond your influence.

5. You must accept that I am your spiritual leader and do everything I say all the time, especially about sending me money.

6. You must be dedicated to the regular practice of magic, and not just the study or pursuit of occult knowledge. The Invisible College is about using the Power of Creation to shape the Universe according to our understanding of the Will of God.

7. You must be willing to work within the Hermetic Doctrine as revealed in the Corpus Hermeticum and the Emerald Tablet.

Ok, 1 and 2 are really from Fight Club, and are in jest. I plan on keeping a pretty low profile, but I may be at least affiliating with Congregational Illuminism.

If you’re interested, send an email to me at rufusopusatrufusopusdotcom. Please include a simple resume of your occult experiences, your occult Curriculum Vitae. It doesn’t have to be extensive, but I’d like to know what your background is. Don’t be shy, there’s nothing you can have done in the past that will exclude you, not even chaos magic.

I’m going to experiment with using Blogger as a kind of a message board/discussion group type thing, because I’m sick of email groups, and the comment feature seems to work well enough. Depending on your experience in the Work, you will be granted the ability to author posts.

This is a organization of practicing magicians. You don’t have to be a practicing neoplatonic hermetic magician at the moment, but you need to be willing to become one, or at least learn the vocabulary to translate your own experiences into the common vocabulary of the Hermeticists.

It’s a place to learn from people who have done this for a while, like myself and a few regular readers I’m thinking of who have displayed their experience with spirit magic to me in a way that I can’t explain. It’s not only for those who have achieved KCHGA (or the equivalent), but it is only for those who expect to do so within the next year, not just within their lifetime at some point.

Over the years, I’ve done a lot of wealth magic. I’ve always focused on money, dollars, cash, and I’ve found a couple of techniques that seem to work rather well at getting windfalls. It’s reliable, but it comes in weird ways, and it’s nothing I feel secure about. I mean, I can trust that I will get money if I do a money rite, but it’s never in the grand “$7.42 Million US Dollars” that I aim for. It’s usually windfalls or jobs that pay well. That’s all well and good, but it’s not what I mean when I do a ritual for wealth.

To get to the bottom of why I fail miserably at attaining wealth, I asked the spirits. Not long afterward, I was in a conversation with Fr. S.L. about wealth*, and he explained to me what wealth really is: to live a life where your actions are determined by your will and not by your bills. Wealthy people can go play folk music on the corner if they feel like it, and they don’t have to worry that they’ll be evicted, to paraphrase his example. Or they can go for a walk at 3:00 in the afternoon on a Tuesday without losing their job. There’s always going to be some management of your resources required, and that is technically work, but getting it down to a minimum is the goal. If you only have to manage your money once a month, chances are pretty good that at some point in the month you’re going to WANT to manage that wealth.

The conversation got me thinking about wealth. Too often, I think of wealth in terms of money and materials. What I’ve realized though is that true wealth has less to do with money than it does with your ability to pursue your desires. We tend to think money is the key to reaching the point where you can pursue your desires because the biggest thing that stops us from doing so is our job. We have to go to work 8 hours a day, or we lose our house, car, and ability to feed ourselves and our family. 


But if you have your home (rent or mortgage), transportation (car, insurance, and fuel), and food paid for each month, you’re free to do whatever you want with the rest of your time. Achieving that level of security is the goal of most wealth and prosperity spells, but I think we fuck it up by aiming for the dollar value that would bring that situation. It’s not the money I want, it’s what the money can buy. 


This shift from focusing on the dollar amount to the actual thing I want has led me to reevaluate wealth in general, and sources of wealth in particular. The lottery would be a good windfall, right? It would set me up for life. I’d have the cash necessary to invest in wealth-generating ventures, investments, and assets. But again, I’m looking at the means and not at the true goal.

The trick, I think, to true wealth magic is aiming it not at dollar amounts, but at the things that wealthy people get that pays their bills. Most of that, as S.L. pointed out in our conversation, is simple Luck. The biggest lucky break you can get, he said, is being born into wealth. If that didn’t happen for you (it didn’t happen for me), then the next biggest break you can get is having friends or family that are wealthy. George W. Bush borrowed $200,000 to invest in the Houston Astros baseball team, and a few years later sold his stake in the team for $6 million. If I remember right, he never repaid the investor in cash. Having a guy like George W. as a friend certainly has its benefits though.

My mom’s visiting this week (which is why there haven’t been many posts lately), and she was tellling me how my grandparents earned their fortune. My grandfather got born again Christian religion and latched onto this eccentric lady from Florida as a mentor. She hated her husband, but being a dutiful Christian, she stuck with him until he died. She wanted nothing to do with his estate, and let my grandfather be the legal heir. The man had 5-gallon buckets of rare coins sitting in his garage, and investments in GE, GM, AT&T, and Ford when they were all worth a lot more than they are today. My grandparents sold everything and put it all in interest bearing accounts, where it has pretty much remained ever since, minus the house they bought for their retirement, and a slush fund to pay for the expensive things that pop up on occassion when you own a house.

Fr. S.L. pointed out Bill Gates as an example too, another wealthy man who got where he is because he knew the right people and had the right idea at the right time. As you can see, wealth is very much a factor of luck.

I’ve been reading the histories of famous Renaissance magicians. They mostly had wealthy benefactors that paid their way. Agrippa was a doctor and a Captain in the Army, he lectured on things wherever he went, and usually ended up getting into trouble when he gained too much notoriety; Emperor Maximilian assigned his support to various nobles across the Empire. Dee had the support of the Queen, Kelley had the support of Rudolph. Ficino and Bruno were in good with the Medicis, if I remember right. Even Plato was supported by his students, i.e. the wealthy parents who sent their children to him to learn philosophy.


What I’m getting at is that true wealth comes from your friends, your family, and your benefactors. To truly get to the point of wealth, you need to focus your efforts on cultivating luck. You need to be ready to see and sieze opportunities as they arise. You need to have the right idea at the right time, and have the ability to follow through on making it happen. 


So, I’m into pursuing those things now. I have a Jupiter Talisman I made the last time He was well-dignified, and I’m using that to create a sphere of luck around me. I’m also working with spirits to gain the “favor of princes,” and to develop more opportunities to attain true wealth. I’m not obsessing as much over the dollar, and I’m learning to put my attention where it can do more good. I’ll keep you posted.



* Not to be all smarmy or anything, but Fr. S.L. is one of the Wise who have served as a mentor to me. His advice is solid and his understanding is deep. Thanks, S.L.

Tools, tools, tools. Simple props or powerful talismans? Initiatory gateways to higher power, or a crutch for the weak? Empowerment or a trap?

To me it’s obvious. Magical tools have power. If they didn’t, then no one could buy a talisman from a magician and have the kinds of effects they get from a Astrological Renaissance Talisman made to grimoiric specifications or a mojo bag from the local root doctor. We learn in Agrippa of the planetary and elemental traits of things in nature and things refined by mankind. Stuff is symbolic of other stuff, and when combined with similar symbolic stuff in the right proportions, the stuff becomes something more than just the sum of the parts. I’ve seen it, and at the very least you’ve heard about it.

At the same time, the magician making the tools is going through a transformation. The making, acquiring, and consecration of the tool are all reflective of an invisible process that is going on in the magician’s sphere, in the macrocosm above that they represent. Joe got a Boline, Scott is making his Elemental Weapons, and Jason carries his Phurba. All of these items are symbolic of a change in the magician in question, and indicate a process they have gone through, or are going through.

I call the time you are making or consecrating a tool an initiation. I think once the tool has been made, the transformation in the magician is going to be with them regardless of whether they happen to have the symbol of that change with them or not. At the same time, a ritual done with the tool will be more powerful than one done with a substitute, or one performed relying only on the attunement of the magician’s sphere.

Practically speaking, it could be the Magician that has the power, or it could be the tool that has the power, but I suspect it’s the tool empowering the Magician who also empowers the tool. Synergy. Regardless, it seems that rituals performed with tools have stronger results.

I believe that when it comes to making rapid changes to the physical realm by influencing the spiritual substrate, it is best to be able to do a ritual with the appropriate tools. It is second best to be able to do the ritual with symbolic substitutes. Least preferred is to have to do the ritual without tools, relying only on the power of the Mind and the resonance of the Magician’s tuned sphere.

(Yet Liber Samekh is performed entirely in the body of light. Just something to think about.)

The bottom line is that, while it’s fun and educational to debate the function and even necessity of tools in a magician’s repertoire, in practice I’ve found that sometimes I use the tools, and sometimes I don’t.

* Whichever finger holds the power of the universe, goddamned straight it’s a finger. Even if you don’t need a physical tool to do your magic, your body is still an extension of the Mind, which is yet another tool in a box.