So, how you doin’?

But so what?

I work from home these days, and I tend to take it for granted that I can just print off a picture of Hermes, light a candle and incense, say a prayer, and have instant magics on demand. I have to remind myself that everyone doesn’t live exactly like I do sometimes.

There will be no bonuses again this quarter due to poor performance. YOUR poor performance.

But things haven’t ever been thus! I too was stuck in a cube farm*. Most of the buildings I’ve worked in as cube-cattle have been pretty depressing places. If a place has cube farms, you can bet that even the middle management knows its getting screwed; there’s an air of quiet desperation that you can taste.

The astral miasma of places like that is pretty awful, and going into a place like that every day can get super depressing, super fast.

Fortunately, we’re magicians and we can do stuff about that kind of thing. A few well-placed sigils of Michael the Archangel of the Sun in corners, under desks, in cabinets, etc. can do wonders. I used yellow sticky notes, and simply sketched the seals out during the closest solar hour. Ideally you’d make them at home on a Sunday at dawn with the Sun in a Fire Sign, and your natal chart completely unafflicted, using the blood of a goat specifically killed by a flaming pheonix that just happened to be an Aries…

But life’s not always ideal. Sketch the seals in a Solar hour, and you’re good. Sketch them in a non-solar hour, and you’re still in a better position than if you hadn’t. When it comes to doing magic, there will always be a reason you don’t do it right now. Sometimes I wait, but mostly I recommend you do the magic now, and if there’s a better time for it, do it again then to reinforce the rite. Because you never know whether or not something else will come up later.

You’ll find your cube isn’t quite the downer it used to be pretty quickly. I found my cube became a depressurization zone for other people too, which I nipped in the bud ASAP. I had just cleansed my cube, I didn’t need them bringing their shit back in. Plus I had work to do.

So, you can just write the name Michael, and draw his seal under it (the part inside the hexagram), or you can get all CRAZY and draw out the whole lamen shown below. I recommend making at least one and putting it under your desk, but also a few more to place around the walls in inconspicuous places. When they are positioned, say a quick prayer to Michael, thus:

“Michael, thou Archangel of the Sun! Come now, come in Power, by your Name and your Seal, I call upon the forces of the Sun to cleanse this place! Consume utterly all darkness and drive off every unclean, parasitic, or plaguing spirit; sanctify and make sacred this ground, that it be a holy place wherein I can work in peace, FFS, Amen.”

Feel free to change that last part, or any of it, to suit your own style.

* For those who don’t know, a cubicle is a fabric-coated metal-framed pen that you keep domesticated office workers in; a cube farm is an otherwise large open space that has had rows of these cubes inserted with workstation hookups for computers and laptops. The fabric comes in two colors, suck-your-will-to-live beige, or crush-your-individuality-and-conform gray. I don’t know where they find these hues, but they. always. do.

We want what we want harder than most people. We value our desires in ways that others don’t. We look at all the “you can’t do that” comments in life, and we’re like, “who says? I do what I want.” It’s what drives us to accomplish the Great Work, to become a Power upon the Earth in this life and beyond, because we are driven to create the world as we see fit. That drive, that urge that compels us to become empowered magicians to clearly express our wills upon the Earth… that is what sets us apart from everyone else. We are arrogant enough to think we should be more godlike… because (really, underneath it all) we know full well that we could do better.

Because we are better, I’m sure you’ll agree.

As a result though, we magicians tend to have large opinions, for very good reasons. It should be no surprise that someone who is putting themselves through the rigorous and often painful process of the Great Work – refining the self, releasing the powers of creation, attaining the wisdom to use it well – is going to be pretty sure about themselves. The traits that make us good at this kind of thing are amazing powers of self confidence, and full awareness of our basic god-like natures.

A group of powerful egomaniacs with really healthy levels of self-esteem are likely to behave a lot like we really do in real life. Take offense, give hexes. Fortunately, most of it is harmless, because the kind of people who take offense and curse others are usually interacting with folks at about or slightly less than their own levels of attainment. So they curse each other with the same levels of technology, with the same levels of initiatory force, and end up basically sending the kind of shit that the other people are already capable of deflectinvg and banishing with their own levels of attainment.

I think this shit happens most at the adolescent stage of the development of the magician. After you’ve got some power and some wisdom, but before you’ve come to really integrate the fullness of the spheres you’re working with. Around the time when you have discovered you can change the world so fucking easily, but you haven’t been doing it for long enough to understand how the long term consequences will unravel your best intentions. It seems to be the people who’ve been doing this magic shit for about a decade or so, with some years as an armchair mage, some years as a dabbler, and then a couple years studying grimoires and a few months to a couple of years worth of actually conjuring spirits and getting results.

But when you get through the Seven Spheres a few times and start scratching at the Eighth sphere, you grow past this phase. You realize other magicians have other things to do, that we’re all doing our thing, and that we are most powerful ruling our own world, and how futile it is to fuck with anyone else.

That’s why Jason and I disagree about things and never hate each other or curse each other. We both have reached the phase where we appreciate the differences of other magicians’ opinions, and we’ve realized that once someone has K&CHGA you can’t really curse them anyway. At least not with any decent, ego-appeasing effect. We save our hexery for those moments when it will be effective, and enjoyable. We don’t waste time on bullshit.

Unless we want to. Then we get all evil.

I recently heard about some bullshit in my sphere. A couple mage friends a couple degrees removed from me and my Elite Group of Super Advanced Magi Who Are at Least Out of Our Adolesence(TM) are going through shit. Because they’re angry. And hurt. So they’re going to throw curses.

I advocate a Thunderdome experience for folks like that. Two magi enter, two bruised and slightly embarrased, but wiser magi leave. I think it’s healthy, the whole “as brothers, fight” thing.

But honestly, it’s childish.

Fuckin’ kids.

This magic stuff has gone to my head. I can tell. I really believe this stuff, and it seems to work. It’s not my fault.

“World creation is friggin’ complicated. In Crowley’s Thelema, we learn the magick number is always 11. That’s seven planetary spheres and four elemental ones. Every magical act that we perform takes the intricate layering of the seven planetary forces around an idea before turning it over to the elemental forces to make the Idea manifest materially where we can experience it.

Think of the possibilities! Think of how many different things we can create! Think of all the steps in the process! Imagine how many ways there are to screw up! Now remember how piecemeal the grimoires are, and the likelihood of finding anyone who understands this well enough to pass on more than warning stories and really crude techniques!

Sure would be cool if we had an awesome teacher, eh? Someone who could introduce us to the spirits we need to meet to learn how to materialize our desires… someone who could train us, teach us, help us, someone who loved us, and was intimately invested in our personal ascension… Someone to protect us from our own ignorance, who would provide the wisdom we needed when we needed it to help our struggle to become creator gods pass without so much gods-damned drama… Someone like the Holy Guardian Angel!” 

Hey everyone, I am no longer offering the Hermetic Diagnosis service. It takes too long, and most of you already know what they’re going to say, honestly. You rock, and you should do more magic. That shit that’s bothering you will go away as soon as you change the things that caused it and maintain it. Do more magic. Make the small changes that are easy and see if they help, if not make the larger ones. Leave the person who makes you feel bad about yourself. Ask the person you like out on a date. Do more magic. You’re probably right about what you want, and if not you’ll figure it out faster trying to get it than you will wondering if you should try or not.

And do more magic.

There you go, all wraped up in a nutshell.

Defense.

(See: Mars)

As she mentions in her latest blog post (Shabbatai!), Harper and I performed a Saturn rite this weekend. It went really well, and she outlines the steps we went through for the conjuration, so I’ll try not to repeat too much.

My experiences were very much in keeping with hers. I saw an old man’s face in the crystal when we conjured Tzaphqiel, and he just sat there staring at us. There wasn’t a lot of interaction, the way there usually is. Harper is often filled with the Spirits we summon, and the conjurations can get really intense. Having a standy-offey spirit was sort of weird in comparison to our usual experiences.

I should note that we conjured Tzaphqiel instead of Cassiel. I’ve been working with the names of the aRchangels from the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals for a few months, because I liked them. I wanted to switch to Tzaphqiel because I’ve been … ahem, I’ve been studying KBL and doing Golden Dawn derived rites lately. It’s been pretty cool, all things considered, but that’s another post.

Anyway, we went for Tzaphqiel instead of Cassiel this time, and I thought it would be pretty much the same experience, the way Tzadqiel and Sachiel tend to be pretty much the same. It was not. Cassiel fills the room all heavy and dense. He is FATE on site when he comes. He is full and present and expectant, and he fills me with an awareness of his presence. Tzaphqiel was less intense, and a hella lot more observant. Expectant. Tight-lipped and sealed. I felt like I had to do the talking. Which was actually ok, but I didn’t understand what was up until later.

Harper did some research afterwards and found several parallels between our experiences with Tzaphqiel and those of other folks. The common theme in descriptions of this Archangel in modern literature revolves around the word “watcher,” with the emphasis being on the things Tzaphqiel observes coming down from the unmanifest to the manifest, and vice-versa. So seeing a face of a hoary old man looking at me intently makes perfect sense. I felt observed.

So I went into the statement of intent:

“Open us now to hear (+), and to receive (+) and to express (+) the accumulated wisdom of your sphere as we need it in these temporary lives. Make us fit vessels to bear the Wisdom of Jehovah Elohim, make us wise in your ways, yea make us wise in your ways.”

The (+) indicates making the sign of the cross, specifically over the wine that became a eucharistic sacrament we later consumed.

Then I saw a young face superimposed over a dead face, a lot like the Anatomy Occultus face I referenced the other day.* I saw that face obscured by scintilating glimmering web-like occlusions in the crystal, and then I saw those fade away, revealing the face again. I understood without hearing a word that what I was seeing was the means to attain that which I desired.

Saturn is the first sphere through which an Idea passes on its way to manifestation in the Hermetic cosmology. It’s also the last sphere things pass through as they return to the unmanifest as they fade from this world into the experience of the Source of all. In this sphere can be found the wisdom of all that has ever been intended, and the experience of all that has ever happened, all that ever was, all that is, and all that is to come. ALL of it. All the time. In all the times.

So that’s what I wanted to be able to tap at will. And that’s what I saw. To get there, remember that we are the was/is, the youth-in-death and death-in-youth, be in touch with that mortal-immortal selfness, remember clearly that we are immortal gods made flesh for the sake of love and the experience of our lives, recall and reclaim our essential nature, and that wisdom is ours for the taking. Just get past the glimmery glinty shit that gets in the way, tune out the bright shiney, and focus on the essential nature of ourselves-in-toto, us perfectly manifesting for the pleasure of it all.

And then we’ll simply know.

After the rite, we went to bed, and I woke up fucking freezing. Like ice. My extremities were extremely cold. feet and hands, and I couldn’t warm up, even though it was in the 60s outside, and warmer inside. Took a hot shower to get the chill driven out completely.

That passed, but I’ve been feeling the forces integrating into my sphere eer since. I dreamed of being eternal, like Doctor Who, and saw specifically how the things I spent my time on changed immediately from mundane to epic. Because when you live forever, you have time to do whatever the fuck you want. I found myself restructuring my personal time, scheduling workouts, daily practie, meditation, LRPs, LRHs, fucking journaling, and my new day-job work, and the things I can do to get to the stuff that makes me happy. Effiiency, effective spending of the currency of our times upon the Earth.

And tapping into all that, it’s really a simple thing, it’s turning the attention inward and upward, seeing past the illusion of both, and being what we are. Lifting the “veil” of all the things we get wrapped up with on a daily basis, and seeing that simple truth of who we really are underneath, and why we’re here.

And yeah, it’s something we can do, any time we want to.

Just remember who you are.

Any time you want to.

* The sales of that image have raised over $700 for Dove and Serpent Oasis in less than a week. You guys ROCK!

Today I was ever so pleased to receive a long-awaited piece from a fellow Mage and artist by the name of Chuk Vinson. He put together a print called “Anatomy Occultus: A Study of the Tree of Life” as both a magical study of the ToL and Adam Kadmon, but also as a means to raise funds for his local lodge (Dove and Serpent, Atlanta).

(Yeah, and it’s that shirt.)