Rufus Opus

Category: Blogspot Archive

Category: Blogspot Archive

  • Bune Update

    As I mentioned in the Crystal Skull post, I’ve been Working with Bune on making the carved skull into a tool to aid in speaking with the spirits of the dead in general.

    In addition, I changed out the stuff inside the pot. It’s been over a year since I last did that, and the raisins and dates were mostly turned to dust. I took out some sweet grass I had put in, and I removed about a thousand little steel BBs. I have no idea why I put them in in the first place, maybe something to do with them being brass-colored or something, but in retrospect it was pretty stupid. Iron is anathema to the spirits of the Goetia.

    So now my Pot contains the following:

    • Dirt and rocks from the local branch of my bank
    • Four Herkimer Diamonds
    • One Orgone Generator
    • Lignum Aloes
    • Decayed bio-matter from various raisins and dates mixed in with the dust
    • Mistletoe (Venusian Herb)
    • Vervaine (Venusian Herb)
    • Coltsfoot (Venusian Herb)
    • Three Rosehips (Venusian Herb)
    • Myrtle (Venusian Herb)
    • Three pinches of Abramelin Incense (Traditional from Soma Luna; It has Cinnamon in it, an herb of Venus, and he always likes it)

    Now, it took me a couple of weeks to research these herbs and ingredients, track them down, order them and then have them get here. I bought a stone mortar and pestle to grind up the herbs together. On the day of the changing of the herbs, I cleansed the old stuff, picked out the uck, and re-interred everything.

    During the time I was working on gathering and researching Venusian herbs, and then after I had ground up all the herbs together and placed them next to me in the pot, I noticed some results.

    I attribute these generally passive results to just working with the herbs of the planet in a magical capacity. I don’t attribute it to Bune specifically.

    Regarding Bune, he seemed pretty happy with the changes. Less than a week later, I received a job opportunity through email that could result in a doubling of my income for at least three months. One cannot beat that with the proverbial stick.

    Assuming all goes well with the interview (the first two interviews have gone swimmingly), I’ve just got to point out that even in the midst of a really bad financial time with Jupiter in Capricorn, here I am making a fortune. If I land the job and everything goes well, it will be a couple of weeks to a month before the income actually doubles. Maybe that’s part of waiting for the expansion in measured steps that the Jup-Cap placement requires, but it’s also how things manifested when Jupiter was in Sag.

    So I’m more convinced than ever that the astrological timing doesn’t apply to the spirits of the Goetia. They are sub-lunar in my cosmology, and this result seems to reinforce that. A friend’s HGA told him specifically to ignore the astrological timing when working with Bune, so this kind of confirms that.

  • Captain OBVIOUS!!!

    Greetings faithful (and faithless hell-bound-heathen) readers! I should probably start a regular series of Captain Obvious posts. I do seem to make a lot of mistakes that in retrospect turn out to be pretty hard to have missed in the first place.

    Today’s is a simple lesson I learned while Mercury was Retrograde.

    I’ve had a rough Mercury Retrograde. It wasn’t too terribly bad with technological issues, but communications were sucky on many lists. And two or three times I got pissed at someone on a message board and wanted to curse them. :sigh:

    After years of doing the Work now, at a pretty clipped pace, I’ve gotten to a point where I really take it for granted that I’m a sane, rational, and pretty emotionally well-balanced person. So when I found myself thoroughly ticked off at really stupid things, I was a little surprised. I conjured Kammael on a Tuesday to fix whatever was messed up in my Martial sphere, and things settled down quickly.

    Anyway, I’ve learned a valuable lesson. I didn’t curse anyone, and instead behaved politely and respectfully, and apologized even, when I was wrong or at least rude about being right. And guess what? These people I wanted to “teach a lesson to” all turned out to be friendly when the dust settled.

    Yes folks, that’s right! If you’re nice to people, they can be your friends!

    Ok, so Captain Obvious gets a Sesame Street Lesson out of life. Only without the muppets.

  • Bune Update

    As I mentioned in the Crystal Skull post, I’ve been Working with Bune on making the carved skull into a tool to aid in speaking with the spirits of the dead in general.

    In addition, I changed out the stuff inside the pot. It’s been over a year since I last did that, and the raisins and dates were mostly turned to dust. I took out some sweet grass I had put in, and I removed about a thousand little steel BBs. I have no idea why I put them in in the first place, maybe something to do with them being brass-colored or something, but in retrospect it was pretty stupid. Iron is anathema to the spirits of the Goetia.

    So now my Pot contains the following:

    • Dirt and rocks from the local branch of my bank
    • Four Herkimer Diamonds
    • One Orgone Generator
    • Lignum Aloes
    • Decayed bio-matter from various raisins and dates mixed in with the dust
    • Mistletoe (Venusian Herb)
    • Vervaine (Venusian Herb)
    • Coltsfoot (Venusian Herb)
    • Three Rosehips (Venusian Herb)
    • Myrtle (Venusian Herb)
    • Three pinches of Abramelin Incense (Traditional from Soma Luna; It has Cinnamon in it, an herb of Venus, and he always likes it)

    Now, it took me a couple of weeks to research these herbs and ingredients, track them down, order them and then have them get here. I bought a stone mortar and pestle to grind up the herbs together. On the day of the changing of the herbs, I cleansed the old stuff, picked out the uck, and re-interred everything.

    During the time I was working on gathering and researching Venusian herbs, and then after I had ground up all the herbs together and placed them next to me in the pot, I noticed some results.

    I attribute these generally passive results to just working with the herbs of the planet in a magical capacity. I don’t attribute it to Bune specifically.

    Regarding Bune, he seemed pretty happy with the changes. Less than a week later, I received a job opportunity through email that could result in a doubling of my income for at least three months. One cannot beat that with the proverbial stick.

    Assuming all goes well with the interview (the first two interviews have gone swimmingly), I’ve just got to point out that even in the midst of a really bad financial time with Jupiter in Capricorn, here I am making a fortune. If I land the job and everything goes well, it will be a couple of weeks to a month before the income actually doubles. Maybe that’s part of waiting for the expansion in measured steps that the Jup-Cap placement requires, but it’s also how things manifested when Jupiter was in Sag.

    So I’m more convinced than ever that the astrological timing doesn’t apply to the spirits of the Goetia. They are sub-lunar in my cosmology, and this result seems to reinforce that. A friend’s HGA told him specifically to ignore the astrological timing when working with Bune, so this kind of confirms that.

  • Crystal Skulls

    So, a couple of days ago I was sitting here in my computer chair, where I spend most days, and for some reason, I found myself thinking about Crystal Skulls.

    I saw a special on Crystal Skulls on the History channel, or Discovery, or something like that a few months ago. I suppose it was timed to coincide with the latest Indiana Jones film, which I haven’t seen. What I remembered specifically was that the skulls were most likely created in the 1800s using modern tools according to modern forensics, and that regardless of the origin, people report having strange experiences around the crystal skulls.

    I had a lot of experience with the New Age movement in my youth. I owned Melody’s Love is in the Earth book. I read her description of every rock my local store had in stock. I had some pretty fantastic experience playing with the “energy” of the stones. So I know that Quartz crystal acts as an amplifier of whatever energies it comes in contact with, and that there is something to the whole crystal movement.

    I also understand the way the human mind guides spiritual interactions through the use of symbols. I don’t prescribe to the information or psychological models that try to explain magic in terms of pure human mind, but the tool of the magician is the symbol. I know the skull is a powerful image in anyone’s mind, and that it has all kinds of associations that would result in a crystal carved into that shape attracting specific spirits. These spirits would be affecting people in exactly the ways that crop up in the reports of strange phenomenon surrounding the crystal skulls.

    So I have this dremel tool. It’s modern technology at its finest. If a crystal carved in the 1800s as a fraudulent antiquity can accidentally result in spiritual experiences, then what would a crystal skull carved by a magician under the auspices of a particular spirit be capable of?

    So I popped over to the local occult store and bought three pieces of Quartz. Two were mostly-clear points, about two inches long by an inch and a half wide. The third is rose quartz.

    So what I’m doing is carving these pieces of quartz into skulls. I’m no great artist, and this is my first attempt, so it’s a bit rudimentary. It makes the point though.

    The point to these crystals is to make it easier for the owner to contact the spirits of the dead. I figure it will be useful to necromancers and mediums. As I begin each carving session, I conjure Bune to imbue the stone with his powers of making spirits appear. Things are progressing nicely so far. I haven’t had any weird results yet, but the thing isn’t finished either.

    Here’s a crappy picture of where I’m at so far. As you can see, the crystal point is still attached, and the skull is only roughed out. I’m considering leaving it as is, and just polishing the crap out of it until it shines like the top of the Empire State Building. (Yes, I just made a Little Orphan Annie reference.)

    When it’s ready, I’ll be selling these little babies on my Products and Services page at my web site.

    Click This Link or the Title of this post to see a selection of articles written about the Crystal Skull phenomenon.

  • My HGA said it was fine, but Jesus won’t let me curse him

    As sometimes happens on occult message boards, a minor spat recently broke out. I had the audacity to tell someone how spirits work, and they were completely offended, even though they have never conjured a spirit in their life. How DARE I try to force my beliefs down someone else’s throat, right?

    I mean yeah, that’s what I do all the time. I hang out behind abortion clinics with a Bible and a two-by-four, and when the women leave, at their most vulnerable, I teach them to do candle magic using the Psalms under penalty of many beatings. Oh, I make them read Timaeus and the Corpus Hermeticum at gunpoint too. Because that’s the kind of magician I am.

    Right.

    So anyway, one thing lead to another, and I had the urge to curse him, to teach him a lesson. Nothing major, just an initiation into Working with Spirits. The first lesson is recognizing the spirits are real and present. The best way to learn that is to have one pop up at 3:33 a.m. and say, “Hi!” while holding a Bible, some candles, a two-by-four, and copies of Timaeus and the Corpus Hermeticum. All in separate hands.

    At least in my humble opinion.

    So I picked the spirit, made sure it was something he could do. I checked in with my Agatha Daimon/HGA, and he said nothing particularly bad would happen as a result. As usual, he was not very forthcoming with helpful advice on how to torment the people I’m stuck sharing the planet with. I’ve learned not to ask.

    So, with confirmation from my Daimon, and the Spirit ready and willing, I was all set to send off a Mercurial entity to mess with the dude’s life. A little bit. For fun. All I had to do was wait for the appropriate time to do the ritual.

    So I killed some zombies.

    After dying to a particularly cheatin’ ass Devil’s fireball that totally should have missed me, I waited patiently for the game to get to the level where the weapons started getting really good. I felt this sudden urge to meditate, a sensation like I was being called by a very familiar Voice.

    I immediately moved my little guy behind some barricades, checked to make sure I didn’t need to pause the game, and answered that still small voice of my Lord.

    The conversation wasn’t in words, exactly, but it went something like this:

    “Hey, Jesus, how’s it going?”

    “Not bad, I still hate that M&M joke, and I still forgive you for telling it. Again.”

    “Heh heh, yeah…”

    “Look, about cursing that incompetent ignorant uppity arrogant pipsqueak on that message board…”

    “Yeah? He’s got it coming, my HGA said it’s cool, and he’s my own embodiment of the Logos, right? He’s like the Holy Spirit, so I can just do it, right, no problems?”

    “No. Don’t curse him.”

    “Oh, come on Jesus, please? He’s totally asking for it. He wants to be cursed. I promise, it won’t even hurt him. It’ll just ruin his fun this week. And make him realize there’s more to this magic stuff than he wants to admit. It’s healthy!”

    “Nope. No cursing him.”

    “Oh, alright, fine. Can I at least initiate him into Tiphareth via path 26 on the GD Tree of Life? That’s not a curse, it’s a blessing!”

    “No. You can’t use the Devil for your own revenge this time. When he goes that way, it’s going to be part of my timing.”

    “He’s not even a Christian!”

    “I know.”

    Things went on, but that’s the gist of it.

    So I can’t curse him. Lucky son of a bitch, too, let me tell you.

    We talked about why the HGA said it was at least ok, and yet Jesus wouldn’t let me. This messes with my understanding of the cosmos, after all. I tend to see my HGA as a little sliver of Christ that communes with the sliver of Christ in me. I tend to treat him as if he were Christ, in that I spend more time with him than with Jesus. He’s got access to everything I could get directly from Jesus, and he’s less awe-inspiring. I mean, he’s awe-inspiring, but you know, it’s like he’s in a form I can understand differently and Work with differently than the form of Jesus Christ who died on the cross for my sins. It’s my problem, I know, but every time I look at the scars it reminds me.

    So I asked Jesus about that. He said the HGA is my assistant, my helper spirit. Like a familiar at this point. It’s not a moral compass. It doesn’t care about “Right” or “Wrong.” It knew this conversation would take place, and it went along with my plans anyway. I had relegated it in my expectations to a role it was content to function in for this particular task, and so Jesus stepped in on his own to explain things to me.

    And explain things to me he did. The kid’s got his own problems and isn’t taking any of this as seriously as I am. He’s just farting around on the internet, and here I sit in my perfect job (I asked to be chained to a desk in my house instead of being chained to a desk at an office, and I got it), surfing the internet all day, playing video games, and hanging out with my family while I manage the documentation of a project remotely. I’ve got nothing better to do with my time than curse the dude. I’ve also been itching to do some magic, but I’ve done everything I wanted to do.

    So, Jesus set me up with some more interesting projects, better uses of my time. I learned a little bit more about the “HGA.” I also learned a lot about the hypothalamus in the brain, and some other stuff.

    Now, I can imagine how this sounds to a mostly non-Christian audience. Here’s Frater R.O., the neo-platonic magician, a Christian Conjuror who summons spirits most Christians call demons, talking to Jesus.

    Really though, it’s not my fault. He called me.

  • 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!

  • Just what are those spirits up to?

    Have you ever wondered why exactly the spirits are so helpful? For years I suspected there was some plot or conspiracy behind what was going on, from the GWB to the Illuminati. When I went through a fundy phase, I was convinced they were demons trying to lead me away from Christ (never mind that they all pointed me back to Christ anyway). In my secular human phase, I assumed the advanced technology of some members of society was being used to manipulate otherwise talented individuals to keep them from interfering with the plan for interdimensional control.

    I think I’ve finally got it figured out. It has to do with their intrinsic nature. Each of these spirits is a self-conscious non-corporeal intelligence. It was created (or emmanated) in order to direct a current that influences manifest reality. For instance, Jupiter is an aspect of God that is assigned to dignities, prosperity, and offices of authority. Venus is an aspect of God that has influence over the domain of the heart. They each have a set of skills and talents that they’re really good at.

    These spirits are helpful because that’s what they do. They want to spread love, or assign dignities. That’s what they exist for. While they have general work to do, every time a specific mage calls upon them or their representatives, they have the opportunity to work with another intelligent aspect of God that wants to communicate with them. It brings them joy.

  • Oh, so that’s what the HELL is going on…

    We interrupt the regularly scheduled nothing new or magically oriented topics brought to you by Head for the Red for the following important News Item:

  • Ex Drama, Mortis


    Out of the Drama, Death.

    Ok, I’m not a Latin scholar. Canum Latinum, that’s the best I can do with my current skill sets. Maybe Ill get the Rosetta stone software for Latin. In the mean time…

    Out of Drama, Death.

    So I went from being bored with lists to starting shit on them. I got a moderator warning. And the mod totally likes me, too. She’s put up with my shit for years, and when I get a mod warning from her, I know it’s usually warranted. So I check myself.

    This time, I was already aware that something was off, but I hadn’t really done anything about it. Do you get like that? You know there’s something “off” in your sphere or alembic or whatever your metaphor for your spiritual existence, but you don’t bother with figuring out what it is right away because your really just don’t feel like it?

    That happens to me more often than I like. So what’s going on? I haven’t done anything lately that I don’t usually do. I’ve been slipping in my ascension through the spheres. There’s been nothing new to report in any of the spheres for months, it seems. Like I ask the archangel of the sphere if there’s anything I need to work on, and it’s like, no, and I’m all, thanks, please continue to integrate the forces of your sphere into mine, and he’s like, yeah ok, and I’m off to the next sphere. Same old same old.

    Plus there’s been a slew of 12-year-olds in the house for the last month as my daughter has started making friends around here after a year. They’re fun, alive, full of life and potential, and annoying as shit. AND they eat a lot. I can’t keep a bag of cheesy poofs around to save my life.

    I spent a couple of weeks fixing my spirit pot with Venus-based herbs. Bune’s been enjoying it, and I have an opportunity to double my income that manifested a couple days after adjusting the contents of the pot.

    I’ve also been developing an interest in crystal skulls. More on that in a bit.

    Let’s see, there’s been a horrible astrological conjunction for the last couple of weeks too. Saturn and Mars have been conjunct in Virgo for a while. That’s a lot of heavy, malefic energy pouring down on us. Venus and Mercury have been combust as well.

    So basically, I’m just hitting a “plateau.” You know, like a mountain, but with a flat top. It goes from a steep climb that takes a lot f focus to a flat, plain expanse that doesn’t take hardly any effort to traverse, and nothing really happens. You can see for miles if anything’s approaching, and… it can be rather boring if you’re more interested in climbing.

    The maintenance phase of the Work in between the times when you do something major are like plateaus. Lots of magicians stop at a plateau. The daily grind distracts them from the Work because nothing’s really going on, and they get frustrated, so they start making drama for themselves to have something interesting going on.

    And that’s what I’ve been doing. The way I see it, creating drama is a negative means of providing entertainment. It doesn’t get me closer to God. I don’t find myself sharing anything particularly useful to anyone by being a contentious bitch. I’m not putting my energies into purifying anything by starting shit on lists, that’s for sure.

    So after taking a quick inventory, I changed tactics. Instead of just starting shit, I decided to actually talk about things of substance. Instead of grumping around, I’ve found an interesting side project to occupy my time. It doesn’t take any specialized knowledge that I haven’t already got, it’s just putting the techniques I’ve developed to date into practice in another realm. I’m monitoring my internal feelings too, to see how I’m doing, and why I might be feeling pissy in each moment that I feel pissy. It’s been an interesting exercise so far, and I’ve only been doing it for a day.

    It boils down to reacting to how I feel vs. creating a scene that makes me feel a particular way. I don’t like being a bitchy magician. I don’t like it a bit. So I seek my pleasure, and that comes from being what I really am, a manifestation of God, taking part in the creation of the World. It’s a great attitude adjustment. Remembering your race and value, that you are of the divine Race (REGARDLESS OF SKIN COLOR), and your Value is determined by whether you’re actively participating in Creation or not.

    So out of Drama, Death. Death is change, mortification, decomposition, and breaking down the useless shells into something fecund, nutrient-rich, and pathogen free that will make the flowers grow. Or the Oak, or the corn, or whatever you plant in it. Even a Rose. The bitchy pissy magician must die, be digested, and refined for the next stage of the Work.

  • Solve et Coagula

    The other day, I was reading Ouspensky’s “The Symbolism of the Tarot” over at the Sacred Texts web site (www.sacred-texts.com). In the section “What is the Tarot”, he used the word “problem” in a sentence that shed new light on an old question of mine.

    Regarding the study of IHVH, he said “The study of this Name (or the four-lettered word, tetragrammaton, in Greek) and the finding of it in everything constitutes the main problem of Kabalistic philosophy.”

    He wrote in 1913, and his use of the language is different from my own. When I say I have a problem, I don’t usually think about it as a good thing, or as a subject of research. I think of “Problem” as something that’s bad, negative, something that is impeding my ability to enjoy life. In Ouspensky’s mind though, a problem is the central core of a philosophy.

    It got me thinking about how philosophy is a solution to a problem. When you have a problem, you try to solve it, and that got me thinking about the old alchemical axiom, Solve et Coagula.

    I’ve tended to think about the process of Solve et Coagula as the process of breaking apart a conglomeration into its individual parts, refining it, and bringing the parts back together as a new and better whole. That’s how the Great Work has manifested for me. But to the Solve stage, you must first recognize on some level that there is a problem that needs to be solved. What’s my problem? What is it that I’m trying to solve?

    The goal of “reuniting with God” is the solution to being separated from God. I’ve understood for a long time that the separation is only one level of existence, and that ultimately no one is separated from God. Through the Logos, the way back to Union and communion with the Divine was paved. So my problem isn’t that I’m not united with God.

    I perform the Great Work because I want to be a better person. I want a stronger character, I want to pass on a legacy of doing the right thing for my fellow incarnate beings to my children and grand children. I want to help people, and not be a selfish, lazy, ungrateful man. My problem is that I do the wrong thing instead of the right thing.

    At any given moment, I have a pool of energy I can draw on to do something. I can go for a walk, give money to the poor, or insult some moron who cut me off in traffic. The potential for whatever I do is always there.

    How that energy manifests is determined by what I decide to do. My decisions are influenced by my impulses towards selfishness, and how I’m going to make myself happy in the next moments. I’m a conglomeration of parts, some parts of me want to do the right thing, others jsut want to do the lazy thing. The way I make my decisions is heavily influenced by these component parts. The parts of myself that have control over my energy resources, my potential determine what I’m going to decide to do with my potential in any given moment, in any situation.

    The solve process is where the component parts are melted down, and the imputities are taken away. The Great Work is to get rid of the negative components, and allow the positive components to dominate the decisions, to control the manifestation of the potential I carry.

    So what is the Great Work? At this point, it’s a series of little problems that need to be Solved and Coagulated. Each of my “High Magic” rituals need to be focused on resolving the problems in my character that I’m made aware of through the Conversations with my HGA. There are areas of ignorance about the roles of the archangels I need to Solve. There are problems of the heart, mind, and spirit, each of which will need to be addressed, and in the process, perhaps the greater Work will be accomplished.