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/)

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.

Cool pic, eh? Any mechanical engineers reading this spot the problem with any gear set up like this?

I was just thinking about how sometimes a woman will make a suggestion about something that a man would never even consider. It happens a lot in my work. the Department Heads are mostly white males. They can’t do anything but guide others in their work. Literally, they can’t. They can barely work their email and blackberries most of the time. Most of them have assistants that schedule all their meetings.

It’s the mid-level management that is chock fulll of women. They have this intuitive grasp of how things need to work. In my career, I’ve found that there were many times that I wouldn’t know the details of a situation, but I had a pretty good grasp of the situation in hand. I made some decisions, set the ball in motion, and then talked to a woman about it. “But isn’t this, this, and this true?” she would say. “Hmmm…. yes….” I would reply, realizing that I had just screwed up.

The simple fact is that women have this ability to know things. They don’t communicate it well to men, usually because men and women have different ways of looking at things. That is the main problem between the sexes. Clear communication.

But I’ve developed this sense about things. There are times now in my life where a woman will be telling me that I’m wrong about something, and they’ll have all these reasons to prove their point, but they just don’t add up to me. It’s like they’re using words I use in completely sideways ways.

But there’s this feeling I get around my right shoulder blade. Sort of an extension of the heart chakra, or maybe (this just occurred to me) it’s where God took the rib. I call it my Man Sense. It gets warm when a woman is correcting me, and I don’t know why she’s right, but she is anyway. I’ve learned to trust this feeling. It guides me, and it improves my performance.

Men and women are complimentary. We are different in design, function, interpretation, and approach. These differences have caused countless clashes, but they are supposed to be there so we can understand this world we live in better, and do our jobs right while we’re here.

Men, learn to use your man sense. Next time you’re frustrated with a woman who’s babbling on about why you’re an idiot, instead of arguing check your man sense. Is she right? If so just accept it and move on. You don’t have to understand why she’s right. You possibly never will. Even if you do, it won’t change the fact that you’ll be doing the same thing regardless of your understanding. If you want to bend your brain into feminine angles, go ahead, by all means. But me, I just trust the man sense.

Morning, folks. Just a reminder… this blog is for you to learn to accomplish the Great Work. I like to try to make money off it sometimes, because it’s fun. Money is a marker system, keeping track of time and worth and value and everything like that. It’s fun to use it as a mundane scorecard for my magical Work. Not that you have to be rich to be successful, I’m just saying. It’s fun. For me. When I’m winning. It sucks when I’ve let things slip, but it’s always recoverable. So far. Your mileage may vary.

But what’s even more fun for me is when I get emails or comments about how people are using the experiences I’ve had to further their own Work. I’m trying to show people that magic is relatively easy. Any bumbling bafoon can do it. EVEN ME. You don’t have to be a highly skilled artist to do this stuff. Your Work can look ugly. Ugly works too.

Looking at the requirements of making all the stuff you need to do magic “by the book” is intimidating. But if you’re willing to experiment, and keep some basic safety mechanisms in place, your experiments won’t be any more dangerous than any other mad scientist on your block. And you’ll have invisible forces helping you, grateful that you’re putting them to work.

And let’s face it folks, the Spirits are a lot more forgiving and flexible than we like to pretend. If you don’t have silver, draw a Moon Talisman on a blank piece of paper. You can consecrate it to the Moon by drawing her planetary sigils around the border if you like. The spirits will work with that. Wands and Daggers and Cups and Disks are fun to collect. Planetary talismans are fun to make. But they aren’t the magic. They aren’t required to do the magic. What’s required ultimately from any magician is little more than a pen and paper and a whole lot of ambition. Aim for God, and if you only come close, hell, you’ve come a long way.

The other day someone sent me an overview of what they’re working on, a bit of their setup, and they talked about a technique they’re developing to cast silver. It looks really interesting, and I can’t wait to see his work. Awesome stuff. Made me feel really good, because one of the reasons I talk so much about how to do stuff is to get people doing it. Finding other magical crafters is fun. So if anyone else has any special neat tricks they’re working on to produce some powerful artifacts, feel free to let me know. Heck, start a blog about it and email me a link. I’ll publicize you to the fullest extent of my abilities.