Rufus Opus

Category: Blogspot Archive

Category: Blogspot Archive

  • On Geomancy

    You may remember the Geomantic Tumblers I recently purchased from Witchdoctor Joe (lord don’t let the check bounce [Edit: too late. Sending cash.]). I’ve been using them as single-roll indicators. Ask a question, roll, check the meaning, and go with that as an answer. It has worked well enough (100% accuracy on things I can prove), but it’s not that different from flipping a coin.

    The other day, talking to Fr. S.L., a brilliant man, prone to long monologues on political topics, but otherwise a decent fellow (for a liberal), the subject of the geomantic tumblers came up. He said I needed to make four rolls, get the Mothers, then get from them the neices and nephews and uncles and step-cousines twice removed… I didn’t know what he was talking about, if you can’t tell.

    It seems there’s an actual divination method associated with Geomancy that I had no idea about! Checking Joe’s instructions, I found that I was supposed to be looking for more details on geomancy from certain sources. Ignoring my arcane Googlemancy techniques, I decided to simply go to the web sites Joe suggested.

    From one of them, I think it was Greer’s site, I found a link that generates all the family members you need to do a reading (like Agrippa details in his On Geomancy book) based on the values of the four mothers you put into the program. You throw the tumblers four times while thinking of the question, recording the results of each throw. Put the values of each row into the sixteen blanks, and click “Generate Points” and wha bam! Instant results, witnesses and Judge included!

    So, having learned this technique for getting more detailed readings, I have already employed it to my advantage. Asking questions about various topics covered lately, I found the Arbatel spirits are Celestial and Terrestrial combined, a bit of both; I found that today’s job searches can generate new work in the price range I’m looking for, but it depends on meeting with the right people. (I did some Mercury Work with the Box to ensure I met the right people.)

    Anyway, it’s a nifty addition to this magician’s tool kit, and I can’t thank Joe enough. Buy lots from him.

  • Failures and Successes

    Well, yesterday I learned that I can’t always do things perfectly the first time I try them. I know, I should know by now, but still, I tend to think everything I do should work the first time, just because I’m me. Fr. POS assures me that’s too much to ask.

    Specifically, I tried to make a Pentagonal Figure of Solomon. I carved a beautiful one out of beeswax, no easy task I assure you. I measured the angles of the star, had each at a nearly-perfect 72 degrees, had all the names in and the symbols, and the Tetragrammaton… It was nice, it was really really nice.

    I poured plaster over it to make a mold for the silver. That sort of worked, well enough, but there were some bubbles because I poured it too thick too fast, and just did it … wrong. But when the plaster had dried, I put it in the oven for a couple of hours upside down over a pie pan to catch the wax, which melted out. The mold was close enough to let me get a decent seal and then have a little clean up to do with the dremel tool.

    I melted the silver, and poured it into the mold. I don’t have a smelter, so I used a MAP gas torch to melt it. It wasn’t a good, even melt, and I ended up oxidizing a lot of the silver (it turns to powder). Then when I tried to pour it into the mold, it solidified on the way, so I got lumps of silver drops in the mold. It sucked royally.The places where the silver actually landed on the mold didn’t even get a decent impression of the symbols. It really sucked.

    Lessons learned: I need more heat, a crucible, and a centrifuge. I need to do the stupid lost-wax thing the right way. And I need to not think I can do everything perfect the first time.

    Today, things went much better. I made a talisman for Haniel out of copper. In the hour of Venus, on the Day of Venus, I cut a copper tube, opened it up, and hit it with the MAP torch until it had begun to melt. I like to melt it a bit so that it’s actually solidifying in the appropriate planetary hour, and freezing the “energies” of the moment into the metals.

    I put a patina on it using the MAP torch and a quenching process, and then sanded the back of it using a dremel tool flap-sander bit. that was so it would rest on the electrodes of my Conjure Box and make a solid circuit.

    I engraved it with the Venus seal from the Magical Calendar (I figure Haniel and Anael are different spellings from different sources, but the same general spirit). I also wrote “his” name in Celestial Script on the seal. I conjured him using the Box and had a good experience. I’ll post about that next.

  • On Geomancy

    You may remember the Geomantic Tumblers I recently purchased from Witchdoctor Joe (lord don’t let the check bounce [Edit: too late. Sending cash.]). I’ve been using them as single-roll indicators. Ask a question, roll, check the meaning, and go with that as an answer. It has worked well enough (100% accuracy on things I can prove), but it’s not that different from flipping a coin.

    The other day, talking to Fr. S.L., a brilliant man, prone to long monologues on political topics, but otherwise a decent fellow (for a liberal), the subject of the geomantic tumblers came up. He said I needed to make four rolls, get the Mothers, then get from them the neices and nephews and uncles and step-cousines twice removed… I didn’t know what he was talking about, if you can’t tell.

    It seems there’s an actual divination method associated with Geomancy that I had no idea about! Checking Joe’s instructions, I found that I was supposed to be looking for more details on geomancy from certain sources. Ignoring my arcane Googlemancy techniques, I decided to simply go to the web sites Joe suggested.

    From one of them, I think it was Greer’s site, I found a link that generates all the family members you need to do a reading (like Agrippa details in his On Geomancy book) based on the values of the four mothers you put into the program. You throw the tumblers four times while thinking of the question, recording the results of each throw. Put the values of each row into the sixteen blanks, and click “Generate Points” and wha bam! Instant results, witnesses and Judge included!

    So, having learned this technique for getting more detailed readings, I have already employed it to my advantage. Asking questions about various topics covered lately, I found the Arbatel spirits are Celestial and Terrestrial combined, a bit of both; I found that today’s job searches can generate new work in the price range I’m looking for, but it depends on meeting with the right people. (I did some Mercury Work with the Box to ensure I met the right people.)

    Anyway, it’s a nifty addition to this magician’s tool kit, and I can’t thank Joe enough. Buy lots from him.

  • Arbatel Spirits

    In recent conversations with Fr. POS and Optimystic, the subject of where in the cosmology the Arbatel spirits belong has come up. They both place the spirits in the celestial or super-celestial realms. Personally, I think they’re more like the Spirits of the planetary tables, that is, terrestrial reflections of the celestial governors.

    Opti pointed out the Arbatel says: “They are called Olympick spirits, which do inhabit in the firmament, and in the stars of the firmament…” (from aphorism 15). He also pointed to Aphorism 16, which says:

    There are seven different governments of the Spirits of Olympus, by whom God hath appointed the whole frame and universe of this world to be governed: and their visible stars are ARATRON, BETHOR, PHALEG, OCH, HAGITH, OPHIEL, PHUL, after the Olympick speech. Every one of these hath under him a mighty Militia in the firmament.
       
    […]

    So that there are 186 [196]7 Olympick Provinces in the whole Universe. wherein the seven Governours do exercise their power: all which are elegantly set forth in Astronomy.

    (From Joe Peterson’s Twilit Grotto, The Arbatel.)

    So the question remaining to my mind is “What is the Firmament?” Aphorism fifteen identifies their inhabitation as being both in the firmament and in the stars of the firmament. Why do both have to be mentioned? Opti interprets it as the super-celestial heavens. He could be right. He provided a dictionary definition that seemed to say the heavens. In Old Astronomy, the term meant “The orb of the fixed stars; the most remote of the celestial spheres.”(1)  That would place these spirits clearly in the super celestial realm, thus ending the debate.

    I’m stubbon though. I looked up the meaning of the word in more detail, and found from Easton’s Bible dictionary this(2):

    from the Vulgate firmamentum, which is used as the translation of the Hebrew _raki’a_. This word means simply “expansion.” It denotes the space or expanse like an arch appearing immediately above us. They who rendered _raki’a_ by firmamentum regarded it as a solid body. The language of Scripture is not scientific but popular, and hence we read of the sun rising and setting, and also here the use of this particular word. It is plain that it was used to denote solidity as well as expansion. It formed a division between the waters above and the waters below (Gen. 1:7). The _raki’a_ supported the upper reservoir (Ps. 148:4). It was the support also of the heavenly bodies (Gen. 1:14), and is spoken of as having “windows” and “doors” (Gen. 7:11; Isa. 24:18; Mal. 3:10) through which the rain and snow might descend.

    Based on this, and the very Biblical tone of the Arbatel, I believed the Arbatel spirits are within the realm of matter primarily. The physical planets and sphere of the physical stars is certainly not what is referenced by the spiritual spheres of the neoplatonists. If we travel to Mars for colonization, the martian settlers won’t be considered to be in the sphere of the wandering stars, will they? All matter is within the sublunar realms, and the planets and stars serve as signifiers of their relative positionings in the divine or ideal realm. The actual spheres of the planets and fixed stars do not manifest physically.

    Knowing I could be wrong, I performed some divinations that indicated I was partially right and partially wrong. The Arbatel spirits have qualities that make them both Super-Celestial entities, and terrestrial entities. They seem to be, based on divination, a combination of the Spirits and the Intelligences from the Kameas of the Planets in Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy.

    So, based on the research, conversation, divination and meditation, I’ve decided I won’t be ordering the spirits of the Arbatel around like servants. Instead, I’ll keep my approach formal, as if  it were one Vice-President speaking to another within a corporation. By divine right, magicians are granted the abiltity to petition the spirits of the Arbatel, but there’s no real authority over them provided in the grimoire. Instead, the only authority they are answerable to is God himself.

    This rather helps explain why so much of the Arbatel focuses on your behavior. As a Christian saved by Grace, this behavioral thou-shaltism smacks of righteousness by works rather than by grace. That is, you do nice things and you get rewarded. I’m in Martin Luther’s camp, that salvation is by grace through faith alone. Works, good deeds, being nice to animals and not splashing panhandlers in the rain while cackling gleefully at their misfortune… that’s not going to get you anywhere with God, who says the righteousness of man is as menstrual rags before him. (mmmm, tasty.)

    But we aren’t talking about salvation, atonement or being in a right relationship with God. We’re talking about magic petitions to spirits for direct intervention. Maybe you do have to be all righteous and pure to get anything out of the Arbatel spirits, and they don’t see the Cross when they’re measuring up whether you deserve their blessings or not.

    hmmm. Well, it’s something to think about, anyway. But like I said, I’ll stick with the Goetic spirits for now. They recognize your position with God via the sacrifice of Christ readily enough.

    Notes:
    1. “firmament.” Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary. MICRA, Inc. 29 Oct. 2008. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/firmament>.
    2. “firmament.” Easton’s 1897 Bible Dictionary. 29 Oct. 2008. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/firmament>.

  • Arbatel Spirits

    In recent conversations with Fr. POS and Optimystic, the subject of where in the cosmology the Arbatel spirits belong has come up. They both place the spirits in the celestial or super-celestial realms. Personally, I think they’re more like the Spirits of the planetary tables, that is, terrestrial reflections of the celestial governors.

    Opti pointed out the Arbatel says: “They are called Olympick spirits, which do inhabit in the firmament, and in the stars of the firmament…” (from aphorism 15). He also pointed to Aphorism 16, which says:

    There are seven different governments of the Spirits of Olympus, by whom God hath appointed the whole frame and universe of this world to be governed: and their visible stars are ARATRON, BETHOR, PHALEG, OCH, HAGITH, OPHIEL, PHUL, after the Olympick speech. Every one of these hath under him a mighty Militia in the firmament.
       
    […]

    So that there are 186 [196]7 Olympick Provinces in the whole Universe. wherein the seven Governours do exercise their power: all which are elegantly set forth in Astronomy.

    (From Joe Peterson’s Twilit Grotto, The Arbatel.)

    So the question remaining to my mind is “What is the Firmament?” Aphorism fifteen identifies their inhabitation as being both in the firmament and in the stars of the firmament. Why do both have to be mentioned? Opti interprets it as the super-celestial heavens. He could be right. He provided a dictionary definition that seemed to say the heavens. In Old Astronomy, the term meant “The orb of the fixed stars; the most remote of the celestial spheres.”(1)  That would place these spirits clearly in the super celestial realm, thus ending the debate.

    I’m stubbon though. I looked up the meaning of the word in more detail, and found from Easton’s Bible dictionary this(2):

    from the Vulgate firmamentum, which is used as the translation of the Hebrew _raki’a_. This word means simply “expansion.” It denotes the space or expanse like an arch appearing immediately above us. They who rendered _raki’a_ by firmamentum regarded it as a solid body. The language of Scripture is not scientific but popular, and hence we read of the sun rising and setting, and also here the use of this particular word. It is plain that it was used to denote solidity as well as expansion. It formed a division between the waters above and the waters below (Gen. 1:7). The _raki’a_ supported the upper reservoir (Ps. 148:4). It was the support also of the heavenly bodies (Gen. 1:14), and is spoken of as having “windows” and “doors” (Gen. 7:11; Isa. 24:18; Mal. 3:10) through which the rain and snow might descend.

    Based on this, and the very Biblical tone of the Arbatel, I believed the Arbatel spirits are within the realm of matter primarily. The physical planets and sphere of the physical stars is certainly not what is referenced by the spiritual spheres of the neoplatonists. If we travel to Mars for colonization, the martian settlers won’t be considered to be in the sphere of the wandering stars, will they? All matter is within the sublunar realms, and the planets and stars serve as signifiers of their relative positionings in the divine or ideal realm. The actual spheres of the planets and fixed stars do not manifest physically.

    Knowing I could be wrong, I performed some divinations that indicated I was partially right and partially wrong. The Arbatel spirits have qualities that make them both Super-Celestial entities, and terrestrial entities. They seem to be, based on divination, a combination of the Spirits and the Intelligences from the Kameas of the Planets in Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy.

    So, based on the research, conversation, divination and meditation, I’ve decided I won’t be ordering the spirits of the Arbatel around like servants. Instead, I’ll keep my approach formal, as if  it were one Vice-President speaking to another within a corporation. By divine right, magicians are granted the abiltity to petition the spirits of the Arbatel, but there’s no real authority over them provided in the grimoire. Instead, the only authority they are answerable to is God himself.

    This rather helps explain why so much of the Arbatel focuses on your behavior. As a Christian saved by Grace, this behavioral thou-shaltism smacks of righteousness by works rather than by grace. That is, you do nice things and you get rewarded. I’m in Martin Luther’s camp, that salvation is by grace through faith alone. Works, good deeds, being nice to animals and not splashing panhandlers in the rain while cackling gleefully at their misfortune… that’s not going to get you anywhere with God, who says the righteousness of man is as menstrual rags before him. (mmmm, tasty.)

    But we aren’t talking about salvation, atonement or being in a right relationship with God. We’re talking about magic petitions to spirits for direct intervention. Maybe you do have to be all righteous and pure to get anything out of the Arbatel spirits, and they don’t see the Cross when they’re measuring up whether you deserve their blessings or not.

    hmmm. Well, it’s something to think about, anyway. But like I said, I’ll stick with the Goetic spirits for now. They recognize your position with God via the sacrifice of Christ readily enough.

    Notes:
    1. “firmament.” Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary. MICRA, Inc. 29 Oct. 2008. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/firmament>.
    2. “firmament.” Easton’s 1897 Bible Dictionary. 29 Oct. 2008. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/firmament>.

  • Things Wot Need to be Mentioned

    There are over 10,000 Hells, it seems. The Mantises (Manti?) are restless. And the Hyenas are stalking. Fortunately, they’re scavengers, so most of what they stalk is safe as long as it isn’t dead.

    You aren’t dead, are you?

  • Administrative stuff

    See that Email the Author link below? If you’ve ever used it, please note that it hasn’t worked the whole time it’s been there until now. So if you sent me any emails, I wasn’t ignoring you, or too busy. I never got them. Thanks to Fr. POS, I found this out and addressed the issue. Feel free to contact me about any posts, comments, or whatever. I made a couple of friends I IM with now through that very process.

    Oh and another thing, if you leave a comment on my posts, chances are I’ll answer them in the comments below. There’s an option for you to subscribe to follow-up posts, so if you want to see my response, check that box. Otherwise you’ll forget for months and when you get back to it, you’ll want to carry on the conversation and I’ll have no idea what you’re talking about.

    I think that’s everything for now.

    Happy camping.

    Oh, P.S. I’ve been getting a lot of “I admire your work” emails. Please do not feed the ego. It’s large and takes manly steps while walking already. The fact is most of my stuff is fun and utilitarian, but there are artists out there that deserve more credit.

  • Strange Days

    Nothing interesting popped up in the Mercury work yesterday. I didn’t get around to it. :sigh: Excrement occurs.

    We’re living in strange days, friends and compatriots. I went off on Dude that wanted to do the apocalypse rite, and I think he’s plannig on doing it this Saturday from the posts he’s made since then. Or he’s going to off himself. He’s been vague enough to let it be interpreted either way.

    To him, I say: Don’t kill yourself, you’ve got a lot of potential, and you’ll be wasting it by offing yourself. Prove you’re an Adept by facing life on its own terms from a position of authority, not as a victim. Don’t be a bitch.

    Now, assuming he’s going to go through with the Enochian-Goetic working to bring about Revelations’ series of events… Time to come clean. Years ago, I wrote my own Enochian Apocalypse ritual. I didn’t know shit about Enochian or Apocalypse at the time. It looked pretty bad ass though. I tried to get other people to do it, just in case it worked, but no one was interested. Years later, I know what would have happened if I’d gone through with it: I would have gone through my own apocalypse. The rest of the world would be fine.

    I know I’m not the only magician to go through that phase. It seems to hit when you’re around 25-27, coinciding with the Saturn Return, when Saturn returns to the same place in the heavens that it was when you were born. Your old boundaries of life are shaken away, and you set the stage for the next 25 years or so of your life. It can be emotionally violent. It’s a death and rebirth of sorts, but in a spiritual way.

    You realize that mommy and daddy, or whoever raised you, aren’t going to be there for you forever, and you have to face the fact that your life, for the rest of your life, is what you make of it. All you can control is your own actions, and how you react to others. Faced with this awareness of our own relative powerlessness, some folks decide to end the world as we know it. Kinda selfish, in my opinion, but I was there.

    It doesn’t work. Most folks who do this have nothing happen. Some folks go insane, I’ve been told. I don’t know anyone personally that went over the edge, but people I trust assure me that they know folks who ended up in the looney bin after this kind of thing. I’m sure a bit of googlemancy could turn up a couple hundred examples of people who are convinced they’ve ended the world, started the apocalypse, or done some kind of insane crap. One guy on OccultForums was convinced he was literally killing the archangels of the spheres of the Sephiroth, and literally destroying the “real” Tree of Life.

    Anyway, what’s likely going to happen to Dude is he’s going to instigate more fallout from his Saturn Return, and will end up going through his own personal apocalypse. Which might be good for him, I don’t know. I know the introduction to the HGA can be a lot like that, so maybe his HGA is getting him ready for the next level.

    Regardless, if he kills himself, I WILL bind his spirit into a little pot (shown right; your spirit’s home for at least the rest of my life, and I’ll likely pass you on to some other magician when I die too) and roast it slowly over coals for not listening to me. And then I’ll use him as a spirit bitch and force him to do really nasty stuff, like clean out Cthulhu’s fat rolls.

    (Note, I got that badass picture up there from this web site: http://civilizer.wordpress.com/2007/11/26/yet-another-award-for-bill-belichick/)

  • Administrative stuff

    See that Email the Author link below? If you’ve ever used it, please note that it hasn’t worked the whole time it’s been there until now. So if you sent me any emails, I wasn’t ignoring you, or too busy. I never got them. Thanks to Fr. POS, I found this out and addressed the issue. Feel free to contact me about any posts, comments, or whatever. I made a couple of friends I IM with now through that very process.

    Oh and another thing, if you leave a comment on my posts, chances are I’ll answer them in the comments below. There’s an option for you to subscribe to follow-up posts, so if you want to see my response, check that box. Otherwise you’ll forget for months and when you get back to it, you’ll want to carry on the conversation and I’ll have no idea what you’re talking about.

    I think that’s everything for now.

    Happy camping.

    Oh, P.S. I’ve been getting a lot of “I admire your work” emails. Please do not feed the ego. It’s large and takes manly steps while walking already. The fact is most of my stuff is fun and utilitarian, but there are artists out there that deserve more credit.

  • Heading for the Red?

    Words words words. I just deleted a huge old long post about how I’ve slipped in my Work, and replaced the Great Work with Working for money. After a lengthy discussion on sin, repentance, and how that works as a magician, after detailing out plans to get right with God through magic and balancing out my spheres with rituals, I had to face something uncomfortable. The only reason I wanted to get right with God was still so that I could get the money.

    What a pain in the ass.

    How do you kill the Golden Calf? How do you stop lusting for results, if you’re only trying to stop lusting for results to get the results you lust after?

    It’s totally absurd. I can’t stop wanting money. It’s good stuff. It buys good stuff. It solves a myraid of problems. Instead of turning away from wanting money, I’ve got to find a way to focus instead on the Great Work and getting money. I have to get in harmony. Integrate the passions for payola with the passions for God. To celebrate God in money, because it is, after all, an emanation from him as much as anything else is. It is what it is.

    So, fuck it. Back to Bune. He’s always pulled my fat out of the fire. I’ll let him take care of the money, and I’ll just go back to focusing on the Great Work. I’ll just quit spending the money I get from my magic on stupid shit. Be fiscally responsible. I’ll Work with Tzadqiel on that aspect of my spheres, because as long as I’m being irresponsible, no amount of funding that irresponsibility will result in Wealth. But I still need the money to get out of the hole I’m in. Ignoring that would be pretty stupid. Sure, I’ll start by cutting back expenses, going through the steps that all the financial gurus say to do (which is basically spend less than you earn, frickin’ duh), but when it comes to generating the wealth, I’m still going to stick with the spirits.