Rufus Opus

Category: Blogspot Archive

Category: Blogspot Archive

  • General Updates

    If you’ve subscribed to my feed, you’ll note that only the first bit is coming through now instead of the whole blog post. You have to click the link to see the full post. I know it’s a pain in the butt, but people were posting the entire blog on different web sites with their own Google adsense stuff all over it, so they were profiting off my work. Sorry, I don’t play that game.

    After seeing the cool new skin over on the Conspiracy of Pleasure, I couldn’t take my blog’s color scheme anymore, so it’s been updated.

    There’s no more adult content warning. I’ll try not to cuss as much. I changed it because Google’s adsense content crawler was checking the warning page to see what kind of ads to display, which is why for months you’ve seen ads for blogs instead of magic-related things. Lord willing, that’s going to change now, whenever the Google bots get around to this site again. Now that I’ve said Google a hundred times in this post the ads will all be about Google. :Sigh:

    Enought technical skullduggery. Back to the Great Work!

  • Been Busy…

    “You’ve been busy doing what, RO?”

    Well, since you’ve asked…

    I’ve been making a cool thing. The idea came up in a conversation about Goetic Circuits. Long ago, I blogged about how I think the spirits have a relation to electro-magnetic force, geo-magnetic force, and other stuff like that. Some places well known for being haunted have turned up abnormal geo-magnetic fields. The way the brain would have to interact with spirits is through electro-magnetic transference of thought. It all ties in together.

    But that’s a whole series of blog posts that I’ll get around to someday. Point was, I think spirits have a connection to electro-magnetic forces, and looking at those seals of the Goetia, I’m reminded of circuit drawings. Now I don’t know enough about electronics to know what the original circuit might have done. Maybe all the seals are parts of a giant computer, with Gold connectors, Copper wire, and so forth and so on. If they were plans for a computer, the details in the manuscripts we’ve received are trashed. It would take a smarter guy than me to figure that shit out.

    However I can certainly wire a copper seal in line with a flashlight or a motor. That’s nothing. Uncle Chuckie, as Inominandum posted, has this psionic seal of Solomon ray gun of death he makes. There’s a video on YouTube. I think it’s kinda lame. He has you put a paper seal in the battery compartment. And he has you hold the batteries and charge them up by thinking mean thoughts at them. :yawn:

    No solder, no switches, no fun. Fuck that with an ugly stick, as my grandmother used to say.

    So the other day, I got the wheels racing in my wee brain, and came up with a design. I wanted to run positive current through a seal and then on to actually do something. Light up a nightlight a friend and I thought would be neat. I got all the stuff to do this simple little circuit with, and then I figured I’d need to experiment first before plugging 110 volts through a seal in my basement.

    So I thought I’d start small, grabbed a nose-hair-trimmer that we’ve never used, and took it apart. All I wanted was the battery holder, but what I found inside was even better. A little electric motor and an LED light. I gutted the thing, wired it up, installed it in a cigar box with a couple of posts to put the metal seal across, and voila:


    That’s a Table of practice in the middle. You can’t see it too clearly, but the LED is smack dab in the center of the triangle. There’s a switch on the front that lets you turn on the motor. The picture here was taken moments ago, and the shellac is still drying. And it’s going to get more coats. The Table of Practice is based on Trithemius’, altered a bit for my tastes.
    Here’s what it looked like before the stain. In these pictures, you can see some of the aspects better.


    Here it is with a crystal ball on it. The Crystal ball is resting on a gold ring. I hadn’t burned in the Table of practice yet in this photo. The electrodes sticking up on the left of the ball are hand made. I melted down some copper wire, just enough to form a ball on the tip, and then drilled holes in the box the diameter of the wire and slipped them in.

    I’ve got a positive wire going to the electrode on the left, and the electrode on the right goes to the light. For the electricity to get to the light, some kind of metal must connect the electrodes. Last night I used my solid tin Jupiter Talisman. The light lit, and the crystal ball glowed, radiating light into my room as I slept. When I first turned it on, I started to feel like the air got more dense in the room. I conjured my HGA and asked him to open up and clear out the clogged parts of my astral body that were beginning to ache, and the feeling went away.


    So what to do with the little electric motor thing? Jason Miller, a.k.a. Inominandum, suggested a “Tibetan Prayer Wheel” to spin the request out into the universe. Works for me!


    There’s a handy little switch on the front so I can either have the light on by itself, or the light and the motor running. I can’t just run the motor, because the little thing that would make that possible is really tiny, and my hands were shaking. I couldn’t solder the wires without slopping solder all over a bunch of other connections and ruining the circuitry. Plus I’d broken the three-way-switch that would have made it work without me needing to solder shit.

    So how am I going to use it?

    Well, there’s scrying. That’s easy. Throw a tin Seal of Jupiter on the ‘trodes, and conjure Tzdqiel. Scry away. Should work for everyone else too, Copper, Iron, Lead, Mercury (blended copper-tin-lead-etc.), Gold, and Silver. I can put different kinds of crystals over it too. Spheres seem to radiate outwards. I had a crystal point over the light earlier, with a Bune seal across the ‘trodes and my original seal that I made a couple years ago with my request for $7,142,867.14. It feels good with Bune on there. It’s like a feeling of happiness fills the room.

    I’m also going to use it during meditation along with this timer Jason posted. Judging by the feelings I’ve gotten while it’s running with different seals on it, I’m thinking it will work as a good diagnostic machine too. If someone’s got a Jupiter blockage in their sphere, like I did last night, they’ll feel it when the Juptier talisman is on. Likewise the other planets.

    Assuming the spirits feed on electromagnetic energy, this is a good way to reward them as well.

    And I can change the battery pretty quick and easy too. The box is an upside-down cigar box with a lid that slides out.

    Now that I’ve got the basics down with a low-voltage test rig, I’m moving on to the full-powered 110v job that plugs in without shutting down the neighborhood. This one will be incandescent, and likely no motor. The only electric motors I have that run on that much juice are from an old vacuum cleaner and an electric weed eater. Both are rather heavy, rather big, and rather loud. Heck, even the little nose-hair-trimmer engine is loud enough. (If you ever had those little monster trucks that you put a double A battery in and switched on, and they just went straight-ish when you were a kid, it’s the same little motor inside.)

    And it’s totally NOT UL LISTED. It could blow up or start a fire. I’m no electrician, I’m just playing at home with a soldering iron and some solder.

  • Plaster Cast Talismans of the Goetic Kings

    Well, everything’s all set. I’m now taking orders for plaster casts of the talismans of the Kings of the Lemegeton’s Goetia. They’ll be leafed in gold-colored foil, not real gold for now. After I get some overhead capital built up, I’ll invest in some real gold leafing.

    For now, I’m selling at $4.95 each, or $35 for a set of all 8.

    Email me if you’re interested. I’ll get it set up on my web site later this weekend or some time.

    This is not the “how to get rich” using the Goetia post. I lost steam on that article, and it’s going to be pretty long. I might just post it as a web page on my site. I dunno. I’ll keep you all updated.

  • And he will not let any word fall to the ground…

    In keeping with the theme from yesterday, I’d like to talk about one of the things I muse about. Why my magic is more successful than other people’s.

    I know, it sounds damned conceited. It’s not my fault. Everything I’ve tried to do with magic has had some kind of result. I read on message boards that people have done magic and had “no result,” and either I’m special, or they’re doing something differently. (“Differently” is a nice way for me to say they’re doing it wrong, but I’m really trying to be nice because I pissed people off with the Fuck George Carlin post. Those sensitive little [expletives deleted] mean a lot to me.)

    Please note, I’m NOT referencing Jason’s blog or experiences any more in this post. He just got this thought train aimed in the direction it’s going in. I’m not saying my magic is better than Jason’s, and I want to make sure that’s not how this comes across. He’s got a lot more experience and successes under his belt than I do, and I’ve got nothing but respect for him.

    Yesterday I touched on one aspect of why I don’t consider a ritual complete until I’ve succeeded, and how that makes for fewer “failures,” per se, but today I’d like to point out something else that can make some folks uncomfortable. But don’t freak out.

    One of the things that makes my magic so effective, in my own most humble opinion, is that I am a Christian magician. Most of the Magic I do is based on some form of the Christian Neoplatonic systems that Agrippa recorded in his Three Books of Occult Philosophy. That makes it pretty easy. I also have several assurances from God, the ultimate creator of the physical and spiritual spheres, that I don’t have to worry about making my magic work; he does it for me.

    And the thing is, he does it for everyone, every human being made in his image, if that person wants him to. Just get to now God a bit, spend time in his presence. Feel him, know that you are his child, an emanation from him in his own image, created to spend eternity with. Remember your race and your value to God. It’s worth the time spent.

    And don’t worry about Christianity or Judaism, or Zen states, just pour your heart out into meeting your Source, your Creator, the Prime Mover, the All-Seeing eye, whatever. Get to know him, and let him guide you. He’ll guide you to your HGA, he’ll guide you to the things you have to do before you die. He’s totally cool to hang out with. He never eats all the Cheetos.

    And he won’t let any word fall to the ground without it bearing much fruit. He tells the seeds to bloom, sort of, indirectly, and he makes sure that your words will bear much fruit too.

    Oh yeah, He expects you to think before you say stupid shit.

  • Plaster Cast Talismans of the Goetic Kings

    Well, everything’s all set. I’m now taking orders for plaster casts of the talismans of the Kings of the Lemegeton’s Goetia. They’ll be leafed in gold-colored foil, not real gold for now. After I get some overhead capital built up, I’ll invest in some real gold leafing.

    For now, I’m selling at $4.95 each, or $35 for a set of all 8.

    Email me if you’re interested. I’ll get it set up on my web site later this weekend or some time.

    This is not the “how to get rich” using the Goetia post. I lost steam on that article, and it’s going to be pretty long. I might just post it as a web page on my site. I dunno. I’ll keep you all updated.

  • Saturn and the Sun

    I strongly urge you to do a ritual today that involves conjuring the Intelligences of Saturn and the Sun together at the same time. There is a beauty in the interaction between Saturn and the Sun that is truly profound and life changing.

    For your convenience:

    Saturn: God name – Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh (IHVH Extended), Archangel – Tzaphqiel, Magical Calendar Archangel – Cassiel, Intelligence – Agiel, Spirit – Zazel.

    Sun: God name – Eloah, Archangel – Michael, Magical Calendar Archangel – Raphael, Intelligence – Nachiel, Spirit – Sorath.

    Links for sigils:

    Agrippa’s Seals of the Intelligences and Spirits
    Magical Calendar Sigils of the Planetary Angels

  • Saturn and the Sun

    I strongly urge you to do a ritual today that involves conjuring the Intelligences of Saturn and the Sun together at the same time. There is a beauty in the interaction between Saturn and the Sun that is truly profound and life changing.

    For your convenience:

    Saturn: God name – Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh (IHVH Extended), Archangel – Tzaphqiel, Magical Calendar Archangel – Cassiel, Intelligence – Agiel, Spirit – Zazel.

    Sun: God name – Eloah, Archangel – Michael, Magical Calendar Archangel – Raphael, Intelligence – Nachiel, Spirit – Sorath.

    Links for sigils:

    Agrippa’s Seals of the Intelligences and Spirits
    Magical Calendar Sigils of the Planetary Angels

  • Forgotten Things

    I was talking to a friend of mine, Frater Servitor Lucem, in IMs a few minutes ago. We got to talking about the coming Depression, the economy in general, and what to excpect. Along the way, he gave me a brief history of the things that have happened since the last Depression. These are important things to know. He lived through it, as his mother and grandmother immigrated to the US in the 1930’s and he grew up knowing what had happened. I’m younger than he is, and most of my friends have the same general understanding of history I do, I suspect. Chances are you know all this, but here is the brief overview of what happened that lead us where we are today.

    And this is important to you magicians that seek to become members of the Invisible College. Our role in this world is to take notice of these things. You may not feel called on to do anything about this with your spiritual resources, but I am.

    His comments begin below:

    See, when the Depression was underway, there were also Commies. The rich people were really afraid of the Commies, because the Commies had a nasty habit of killing the people they took over from.

    So, the New Deal came about. Not because the rich people were being so nice about things, but because they were afraid they might die. Communism was seen as a really serious threat. Nazism was, in part, a reaction against the Communist threat. Democracy was in some big trouble in the ’30’s. People seriously wondered whether it had a future.

    So, the New Deal made for some social re-engineering that helped people along, but mostly because people who have nothing to lose, and know it, are extremely dangerous.

    Enter the Second World War, and things really heat up.

    Democracy pretty much successfully defends itself against the Fascists, but only at the cost of allying with the dreaded Commies. Afterwards, the Cold War was the big showdown between Communism and Capitalism. Both systems are more or less bankrupt in many of the same areas, but capitalists have more wealth, and provide better incentives.

    Besides, what we had in the West wasn’t at all pure Capitalism, anyway. There was a strong Socialist streak left over from the New Deal. More equitable distribution of wealth led to enormous overall wealth in the West. So much so that we were able to bail Western Europe out of certain death by starvation.

    However, after a few decades, the rich, once again, became tired of sharing, and started to take back what the New Deal had given the rest of us. And when Communism finally gave up the ghost, they said, “Hey, don’t like what we’re about? Tough shit, where are you gonna go?” And they took away all the restrictions that had been put in place to prevent another depression.

    And they took back a lot of the social programs that came out of the New Deal, and bankrupted the rest (like Social Security).

    And here we are.

    Pretty much where we were in 1929.

  • Goetic Magic


    Everyone should read the Goetic Magic blog.

    http://goeticmagic.blogspot.com/

    Brother Boyle from the Conspiracy of Pleasure blog has been posting a few interesting tales, and I’ve received an email from Yuzuru detailing his conjuration experiences with the four archangels of the LBRP. I’m cleaning it up a bit, but it should be posted soon. I’m including it because it’s technically a sub-lunar rite, sort of, depending on how you look at it.

    I’ll be updating it more frequently too, lord willing. I invited most of the people I know to co-author the blog, but most folks have worked primarily with celestial spirits. I’m surprised, personally, because I thought I was pretty average, and I’ve been doing this goetic stuff for a couple of years now. Most folks into Magic that I tend to befriend are into the Great Work, and don’t seem as interested in goetic stuff as I am.

    However… I expect the posting to pick up as soon as people start reading it. Something about being read makes folks want to participate.

  • The Great Work in Theory and Practice

    Well, today the Great Work died.

    Not the real Great Work, I’m talking about the Yahoo group. It’s been on its death bed for a while, but it was fun, nevertheless, to visit. Sometimes it would sit up in its hospice bed and talk about magic, or the “good old days,” or have pieces of wisdom to pass on.

    Today I woke up and went over recent messages from the group, and as usual there was little to do with the Great Work. There was an interesting thread on politics though. Obama and McCain. Both of the Moderators are Obama supporters, but one of them, “ILV” is a little more … bombastic and caustic in his support of Obama.

    Someone stated her reasons for supporting McCain after ILV asked, and like a rabid dog, ILV attacked her mercilessly, claiming she had no ethics, was racist, and so forth and so on. The last thing he had to say about the subject was an insult to her, saying he should know better than to engage in a battle of wits with the unarmed. That kind of arrogance was completely uncalled for and way over the top.

    I know the woman he attacked. Not personally or anything, but from other groups. She’s not as eloquent and trained in classical rhetoric as ILV is, but she’s a damned fine magician whose wit is proved in her Work, not her Words. Her ethnic heritage is racially diverse, to say the least. She’s had a shitty life. She’s had a run of really bad luck. Yet she still takes care of the oppressed. She’s a New Age spiritual healer and teacher, and she travels around the world performing exorcisms for people. She doesn’t get paid much for her services, and she’s downright poor. She really does it to help people. I don’t think she’s got everything 100% correct in her spiritual cosmology, but I know I don’t know everything either. It’s her heart for people that I admire. That’s the fruit of the seeds of the Great Work in action. You can visit her web site at www.astralhealer.com.

    She’s not a Christian, as far as I know. This isn’t solidarity with Christians or anything like that. And it’s not worldly politics either. I don’t like what McCain has become this year. It’s like he gave up the straight talk and hard-line moderate-centrist stance he had in 2000 just so he can win. ILV pointed that out, and he’s right about that. If I bother to vote (I agree with the global view that the puppet on the left and the puppet on the right are on different hands of the same puppeteer), then it will be for McCain in hopes that after he gets in office, he’ll go back to being the maverick he was before. But that’s if I bother, and that’s not likely. If I really cared about politics, I’d go to the spirits that run the world, like John Dee did.

    I left the group today because its leadership, the co-moderator ILV, acted like an asshole. I’ve talked with him off-list, and he’s a good person at heart. He’s a trained magician, and has a great deal of information to provide. He’s really smart too. But in his interactions yesterday with list members, he demonstrated a lack of objectivity, tolerance, and respect that is required to be a leader of diverse people.

    Obama spent twenty years in a church that taught hatred. He voted with his presence and his finances in support of that church, and as a Senator, he sanctioned the teachings of his preacher by belonging to the church. He should have, as a responsible leader, recognized that the hatred being taught was unacceptable from any race. The fact that he didn’t until it threatened his ambitions is sufficient for me to realize his “hope” and “change” rhetoric is only skin deep, but his ambition goes all the way to the bone.

    Me, I don’t sanction the leadership of the “Great Work” group anymore. Scarlet, the list owner, is too busy to monitor it herself. She’s not to blame here, except in her support of ILV as a co-moderator. I left another group she started and co-mods with ILV as well, Spirit_Summoning. Mostly for dramatic effect, as he didn’t have much to say there, but also for the principle. She killed the thread and the topic as soon as she became aware of it. She’s a good moderator, and this isn’t about her at all, beyond the fact that she kept ILV as co-moderator.

    Part of it is for the current drama, to have a chance to make a stand that is somewhat meaningful. Part of it is old-fashioned revenge. I was co-moderator of the Great Work list for a while, but then I went off on a caustic and vitriolic attack on ILV when he started acting like the veteran of Golden Dawn egroups that he is. I got reprimanded, demoted, and put on probation. I deserved it. I wasn’t living up to the responsibilities of being a moderator for a diverse group of people. I didn’t behave the way a moderator ought to. Now ILV has fallen into the same trap I did, and I get to raise a stink over it. Yay for me!

    The truth though, if I’m being really honest, is that I’ve lost interest in the droning of magicians who treat magic like a religion, with doctrines and dogma, but don’t use it in their lives. The Great Work list was intended to be a place where pursuants of the Work could discuss the Work. It’s become a place where believers in magic talk about stuff. That’s fine if that’s what you want, but it used to be the place I learned some very basic key concepts about the Great Work that lead me to where I’m at today. That group died to me today. (“You’re dead to me! Dead!”)

    I’m considering starting a list for people to talk about doing magic(k). Something interesting to me, something that can challenge me to do more and be more. Something like Agrippa’s Magic in a Modern Age, or Traditional Techniques for Modern Magicians. Somewhere to talk about how we apply the teachings from the old grimoires in a modern context, without worrying so much about trying to pretend like we live in the 15th century. If I do, I’ll announce it here.

    Oh, and tomorrow, look for the “how to get rich using magic” post. Or Thursday, if I don’t finish writing it today.

    Hope all my American readers had a great Labor Day yesterday. Mine rocked.