Rufus Opus

Category: Blogspot Archive

Category: Blogspot Archive

  • Vouchsafing

    I mentioned the Doing Magick blog my friend started in a previous post. In Paradigm Formations, he mentions the following:

    So I spoke to one of the more famous goetic magicians around, Lon DuQuette. He gave me advice that both fit into my normal mode of working and blew me away. He said the trick to dealing with Goetic spirits involves worship. Not of them but of the ultimate — his term, the Goddess. He said that act is basically one of giving the goddess energy so She can raise you up. Inversely, the relationship with a demon should be accepting or ‘vouchsafing’ its energy so you can raise it up. By vouchsafing, I took his meaning to be that the energy so given, must be used is accordance with the cosmic flow in order to achieve full effect.

    The way DuQuette uses “Vouchsafing” is what I wanted to talk about. In my recent posts about the Hierophant, this is the idea I was trying to get at. The Hierophant is vouchsafing the “energy” of those he’s teaching or guiding. I don’t think of myself as a teacher, although guide might be closer to what I imagine myself doing with these public discussions of magick.

    The trouble I found myself in came, it seems, not only from the “student” performing a Bune rite, but also because I wasn’t performing any of the vouchsafing duties that come along with the role of Hierophant.

    I don’t entirely agree with Fr. BH’s interpretation of vouchsafing. I don’t think it’s how you use the energy, I think it’s more about getting the energy that’s been vouchsafed to you where it needs to belong. At least as it pertains to this Hierophant thing I’ve got going on.

    I see it as scarves or banners that go where they’re supposed to as you rise through the spheres. Sort of the collection plate you’ve passed in church. You’ve been vouchsafed the money because you’re representing the church, but you drop all the cash (well, most of it) in the total collection that goes to the back office where it’s made ready to deposit. You’ve been entrusted with something, and you’ve got the spiritual responsibility to see that you’re taking care of what you’ve been given.

    Someday I’ll write a book about teaching, and base it on the Hierophant. Pay no attention to the fact that the only real classes I’ve ever taught were 4th-grade Sunday School, and I had a book to teach from.

  • Meditation on a Spark

    I was thinking about rising through the Spheres of the Planets tonight, and the image of a spark came to mind.

    You know, bonfires, they shoot out sparks. The sparks rise up high into heavens before they burn out. A little tiny ash floats back down to the earth. Every bit of it that could burn is consumed.

    So we’ve got seven planetary heavens, right? And under the lowest, the Lunar sphere, hanging off the lowest edge of heaven is the Elemental sphere of Fire, the highest and purest form of matter. Below that is Air, and below that Water. At the bottom is good old solid Earth, the most material of material realms.

    And here’s this spark. It’s sunshine and minerals from the earth consumed in the release of all that energy it absorbed while it was alive. As it goes through its final transformation, it shoots up through the aethers aiming for heaven, using the heat of its own combustion to get higher, and leaving behind a husk of itself to drift back down to earth, empty of all the power and effort that went into creating it in the first place.

    So, neat stuff. I don’t like ham handed mataphors, but I do seem to have a habit of using them myself.

  • Outgrowing

    Someone mentioned on a list that “When you really know yourself, the Goetia is not needed any more.” Personally, I think that’s one of the more retarded, but also self-explanatory statements I’ve ever seen.

    I use the Goetia style of magic because it is an effective means to accomplish mundane Work. There are things you need to have done, and you need to have them done by spirits who are closer to the material realm than the Angels and Intelligences of the celestial spheres. When you “know yourself” as a magician, you also know what your role is in the manifestation and maintenance of creation. If someone hasn’t figured out that their role as a magician is going to require them to perform Goetic magic on occassion, then, well, ok then. There you have it.

    But why would someone think that? Once again, people have watered down Magic to include some really weak and stupid thoughts. If the nimrod that posted the above statement had spent more time studying where he came from and his celestial and material brothers and sisters, he’d know a lot more about himself than he does. But in “Knowing himself,” he hasn’t bothered to look beyond himself.

    You CANNOT “Know Yourself” if you do not look BEYOND your SELF.

    Bad news, narcisists, it’s not all about you.

  • Bela Bartok: Tapping into the Power of the Early 20th Century

    This morning, on my way to stinking work, I had the good fortune to hear a story on NPR about Bela Bartok. He was a Modernist composer who wrote some lovely dark-themed music based on the cultures of Eastern Europe, and it totally reflects the post-industrial Modernist influence of the late early 20th century.

    Who cares? Magicians care. We have to. So many of our modern occult influences condensed in the Modernist period. Crowley, Mathers, Fortune, and even the Chronicler Regardie were products of the illuminated age brought about by the wealt

  • A Working Magician’s Blog

    A friend of mine, currently going by the nom de plum “Fr. Bone Head,” has started a new blog. He’s recording his own work, sort of as a public Magickal Diary, and he’s been brutally honest so far in his posts. I’ve known him for a while now, and I know his experience with the spirits is very strong.

    He’ll be describing his work in detail at the blog so I’m going to let him tell his own stories. Suffice it to say, I wouldn’t recommend anyone that didn’t deserve it. This is a working magician, and well worth the read.

    He’s been pretty prolific so far, so I suggest a subscription to his feed to keep up.

    Click the title above, or visit from this link:

    Doing Magick

  • A Working Magician’s Blog

    A friend of mine, currently going by the nom de plum “Fr. Bone Head,” has started a new blog. He’s recording his own work, sort of as a public Magickal Diary, and he’s been brutally honest so far in his posts. I’ve known him for a while now, and I know his experience with the spirits is very strong.

    He’ll be describing his work in detail at the blog so I’m going to let him tell his own stories. Suffice it to say, I wouldn’t recommend anyone that didn’t deserve it. This is a working magician, and well worth the read.

    He’s been pretty prolific so far, so I suggest a subscription to his feed to keep up.

    Click the title above, or visit from this link:

    Doing Magick

  • Mr. Cecchetelli’s Latest

    A long, long time ago, I worked in an organic new age grocery store produce department. Having lived and worked on an organic farm/hippy cult commune for a year qualified me in their eyes for the job. I know a lot about vegetables now as a result.

    The employees tended to be into a lot of weird shit, and I fit right in. We’d be stocking the produce and talking about Eckankar and Soul Travel, or debating LSD vs. Ecstasy. There was an espresso and juice bar there too, so we’d do shots of wheatgrass and pound crowbars, and talk all kinds of weird shit, really quickly.
    I worked with a guy named Zeus. His parents named him that. On purpose. I thought that was pretty cool, and hard to beat as far as having a bad-ass name from birth. And then they hired Abraxas.
    Abraxas was an interesting fellow. His parents had named him after, he said, the God of Magic. My ears perked right up and I tried to have an occult discussion with him. I quickly learned that in spite of being named after the “God of Magic,” he knew nothing about magick. He didn’t know Peter Carrol, never heard of Robert Anton Wilson, Malaclypse the Younger, Anton LaVay, Donald Michael Kraig, Austin Spare, Israel Regardie, or Aleister Crowley.* 
    So I started researching Abraxas, the God of Magic on my own. I hopped on Altavista, which seemed to have a lot more occult information than the other search engines of the day, and went to town. 
    The first thing I thought I found was that it was misspelled. It was Abrasax. And while “God of Magic” is part of the story, it’s not the whole story at all. I found myself reading gnostic texts, learning about the Archons and the Demiurge, Sophia and the Pleroma, and the role of Abrasax in different Gnostic sects. It was my first exposure to non-Christian mystical texts written in the first through third centuries, and it was mind boggling. I couldn’t figure it out just by reading it, for the first time in my life. 
    Mr. Cecchetelli, author of Crossed Keys,  has managed to wade his way through the morass and meet the God himself. He’s been Working with him and writing up his next book, The Book of Abrasax. I can’t wait for that one. It’s going to be a really interesting read. My favorite parts of Crossed Keys were the personal anecdotes he provided. I love reading the experiences of other magicians doing magic, it confirms my own experiences, and I can pick up really neat little tips and tricks that other people have figured out. It helps refine my praxis.
    Mr. C is now offering talismans based on his successful experiments with Abrasax. The talisman he’s making provides both protection and prosperity. That’s a brief summary, they do a lot more than that and he explains it in detail on his blog post. 
    I happen to know the current of Jupiter Mr. C Works with regularly, and with that involved in the creation of any talisman that brings prosperity, I know these will be particularly powerful talismans, and I whole-heartedly encourage you to buy one for yourself. I rarely buy talismans, I prefer to make my own, but this is something I’m getting for myself as a treat. 
    * This was in my Chaos Magick daze, and these authors were about the extent of my exposure to occult materials; I believed that Aleister Crowley’s Book IV was the epitome of Western Magick, and that Peter Carroll had discovered the secret means to get around having to do all that Work to make your magick effective. It was the ’90s, and I did a lot of drugs.

  • Daimon Brainstorming Sessions Part 2

    This is Part 2 of the Daimon-Brainstorming sessions that resulted from my recent experiences with getting sick from a Bune operation gone awry. For background see “The Weirdest Bune Thing Yet” and “Daimon Brainstorming Sessions Part 1.”

    Picking up where we left off, I had woken up feeling great after performing a really quick rite with my spirit pot that houses Bune. That doesn’t really convey how much better I was feeling than before, the difference was totally miraculous. But I also wanted to make sure it didn’t happen again by following up on the Hierophant information I had received through the tarot divination and the first brainstorming session with my Daimon.

    So that night, I sat down with my Daimon, and we talked. I can’t really convey the conversation because I don’t remember the actual dialog. I took notes, but it was the information we were discussing that I wrote down, and not the conversation.

    Basically, I asked it what I should be focusing on to enact the resolution shown in the tarot reading (Hierophant, six of Wands, King of Wands). It revealed I hadn’t been plugging into the Above spoken of in the Emerald Tablet of Hermes. Most of my magical practices are pretty mundane-focused. I haven’t been doing a lot of Scrying of the Aethyrs, rising through the Spheres, or traveling through the heavens in a fiery chariot like Ezekiel did.

    And the Daimon reminded me that this is why the Hierophant is the Hierophant. The roles of the Hierophant are a reflection, a side effect of his relationship with God. The Hierophant gets his knowledge and experience and the ability to be a Hierophant on these spiritual journeys, and from contemplating the Divine Source.

    I hadn’t been doing these things much lately.

    So the next most obvious question was, “What should I actually be doing then?”

    We brainstormed for awhile, and what came out of that was a Merkavah–esque meditative ritual that includes visiting each Sphere of the Elements, the Seven Heavens (classical planetary realms), the “Heaven of the Stars” symbolized by Chokmah on the GD Tree of Life most are familiar with, and then the realm of the Prima Materia, the First Material that manifested in Kether. From there, my Daimon said, I needed to travel through the Pleroma and into the Divine Darkness in which the Creator dwells. After I was finished, I was to return going through each of the spheres in reverse order and then grounding out.

    This was all to be done in the Body of Light, making this a meditative and contemplative ritual. I don’t do many of those, and this one pretty much makes up for that fact.

    To begin, I lit a candle in my Lamp on my altar to represent the Light of God. Then I lit my incense charcoal and got some Abramelin Incense burning. It’s my favorite, and since I always start with a conjuration of my Daimon, it’s always appropriate.

    I then sat in my Comfy Chair (every magician should have one, as Patrick Dunn says; mine is IKEA’s Poang chair with the matching footstool). I had my notes. I entered my astral temple. I performed the rite. It took a while.

    First I conjured my Daimon. We have an agreement, I call, he comes. Next I quickly traveled up through the Elemental Spheres in my Body of Light. In the realm of Earth, I took on the form of a Bull, in Water the form of a Man, in Air the form of an Eagle, and in Fire the form of a Lion. When I got to the Lunar realm, I conjured Gabriel, the Archangel of the Moon using her Name, Seal from the Magical Calendar, and the name of God Shaddai El Chai. I then traveled through the Sphere of the Moon in my Body of Light with my Daimon until we got to the Gate leading to the Sphere of Mercury.

    At that Gate, I conjured Raphael, Archangel of Mercury. I follow the Trithemian school of placement for the archangels Raphael and Michael. This means that they are switched from what you see in the Magical Calendar link above. The seals stay with the planets, as they are the seals of the Intelligence of the planet. Only the names “Raphael” and “Michael” are switched from the Magical Calendar’s representation in the Trithemian school of correspondences.

    So at the Gate of Mercury, I conjured Raphael using his Seal and the God Name Elohim Tzabaoth. I traveled through Mercury to the Gate of Venus, and did the same with Haniel using the God Name Jehovah Tzabaoth. For each of the remaining spheres, it was the same, conhjure Archangel using the Sigil, name of the angel, and appropriate God Name, and then travel the sphere to the Gate to the next Sphere. After Venus, it went Sun-Michael-Seal-Eloah Va Da’at, Mars-Camael-Seal-Elohim Gibor, Jupiter-Sachiel-El, Saturn-Cassiel-Jehovah Elohim.

    When I got to the Gate to the Heaven of the Stars (roughly corresponding to Chokmah on the GD Tree of Life, I conjured Ratziel in the God Name Jah. I used the name Ratziel spelled out in the Celestial Script for the spirit’s Seal. After traveling through that sphere, I conjured the Archangel Metatron using the Name Eheieh to get access into Kether.

    The rest can’t really be described in words. I continued traveling through what is represented by the three negative veils. The first negative veil, the Ain Soph Aur was to me the Pleroma of the Gnostics. Multiple heavens, multiple entities that spoke in light instead of sound. Very interesting. I think that’s what you go through when you scry the Enochian Aethyrs, but I don’t know that to be true, just a suspicion. After that, I went through the Divine Darkness that Dionysius talks about. This is a must-read, in my opinion. Click that link later.

    Then I returned through the Spheres I had ascended through on the way up, conjuring each spirit at each gate until I reached the Elemental realm of fire. There I conjure Michael Angel of the the Element Fire and had him guide me through the Sphere to the Gate to the Realm of Air, where I conjured Raphael to lead me to the Gate of Water, then Gabriel who lead me to the Gate of Earth, and finally Uriel, who lead me back to my own Astral Temple. I thanked him, and my Daimon and then got up and did some grounding-out exercises.

    It took SIX HOURS. Strangely, three of those hours were spent in the Realm of the Moon on the way up. The rest took much less time. I had a lot of Lunar things to deal with. I may or may not blog about them. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of your own things to discover if you choose to do a rite like this, although the Moon realm might not take you as long.

    Dee does say something about needing to travel three times around the Earth in the Realm of the Moon before you can reach the next sphere in his Hieroglyphic Monad though, and I hadn’t known that before doing the rite. Maybe that’s part of it, I don’t know.

    Well, that’s Part 2. I wanted to get these out tonight before I forgot some of the details.

    Good Nigh, and Good Magick.

  • Daimon Brainstorming Sessions Part 2

    This is Part 2 of the Daimon-Brainstorming sessions that resulted from my recent experiences with getting sick from a Bune operation gone awry. For background see “The Weirdest Bune Thing Yet” and “Daimon Brainstorming Sessions Part 1.”

    Picking up where we left off, I had woken up feeling great after performing a really quick rite with my spirit pot that houses Bune. That doesn’t really convey how much better I was feeling than before, the difference was totally miraculous. But I also wanted to make sure it didn’t happen again by following up on the Hierophant information I had received through the tarot divination and the first brainstorming session with my Daimon.

    So that night, I sat down with my Daimon, and we talked. I can’t really convey the conversation because I don’t remember the actual dialog. I took notes, but it was the information we were discussing that I wrote down, and not the conversation.

    Basically, I asked it what I should be focusing on to enact the resolution shown in the tarot reading (Hierophant, six of Wands, King of Wands). It revealed I hadn’t been plugging into the Above spoken of in the Emerald Tablet of Hermes. Most of my magical practices are pretty mundane-focused. I haven’t been doing a lot of Scrying of the Aethyrs, rising through the Spheres, or traveling through the heavens in a fiery chariot like Ezekiel did.

    And the Daimon reminded me that this is why the Hierophant is the Hierophant. The roles of the Hierophant are a reflection, a side effect of his relationship with God. The Hierophant gets his knowledge and experience and the ability to be a Hierophant on these spiritual journeys, and from contemplating the Divine Source.

    I hadn’t been doing these things much lately.

    So the next most obvious question was, “What should I actually be doing then?”

    We brainstormed for awhile, and what came out of that was a Merkavah–esque meditative ritual that includes visiting each Sphere of the Elements, the Seven Heavens (classical planetary realms), the “Heaven of the Stars” symbolized by Chokmah on the GD Tree of Life most are familiar with, and then the realm of the Prima Materia, the First Material that manifested in Kether. From there, my Daimon said, I needed to travel through the Pleroma and into the Divine Darkness in which the Creator dwells. After I was finished, I was to return going through each of the spheres in reverse order and then grounding out.

    This was all to be done in the Body of Light, making this a meditative and contemplative ritual. I don’t do many of those, and this one pretty much makes up for that fact.

    To begin, I lit a candle in my Lamp on my altar to represent the Light of God. Then I lit my incense charcoal and got some Abramelin Incense burning. It’s my favorite, and since I always start with a conjuration of my Daimon, it’s always appropriate.

    I then sat in my Comfy Chair (every magician should have one, as Patrick Dunn says; mine is IKEA’s Poang chair with the matching footstool). I had my notes. I entered my astral temple. I performed the rite. It took a while.

    First I conjured my Daimon. We have an agreement, I call, he comes. Next I quickly traveled up through the Elemental Spheres in my Body of Light. In the realm of Earth, I took on the form of a Bull, in Water the form of a Man, in Air the form of an Eagle, and in Fire the form of a Lion. When I got to the Lunar realm, I conjured Gabriel, the Archangel of the Moon using her Name, Seal from the Magical Calendar, and the name of God Shaddai El Chai. I then traveled through the Sphere of the Moon in my Body of Light with my Daimon until we got to the Gate leading to the Sphere of Mercury.

    At that Gate, I conjured Raphael, Archangel of Mercury. I follow the Trithemian school of placement for the archangels Raphael and Michael. This means that they are switched from what you see in the Magical Calendar link above. The seals stay with the planets, as they are the seals of the Intelligence of the planet. Only the names “Raphael” and “Michael” are switched from the Magical Calendar’s representation in the Trithemian school of correspondences.

    So at the Gate of Mercury, I conjured Raphael using his Seal and the God Name Elohim Tzabaoth. I traveled through Mercury to the Gate of Venus, and did the same with Haniel using the God Name Jehovah Tzabaoth. For each of the remaining spheres, it was the same, conhjure Archangel using the Sigil, name of the angel, and appropriate God Name, and then travel the sphere to the Gate to the next Sphere. After Venus, it went Sun-Michael-Seal-Eloah Va Da’at, Mars-Camael-Seal-Elohim Gibor, Jupiter-Sachiel-El, Saturn-Cassiel-Jehovah Elohim.

    When I got to the Gate to the Heaven of the Stars (roughly corresponding to Chokmah on the GD Tree of Life, I conjured Ratziel in the God Name Jah. I used the name Ratziel spelled out in the Celestial Script for the spirit’s Seal. After traveling through that sphere, I conjured the Archangel Metatron using the Name Eheieh to get access into Kether.

    The rest can’t really be described in words. I continued traveling through what is represented by the three negative veils. The first negative veil, the Ain Soph Aur was to me the Pleroma of the Gnostics. Multiple heavens, multiple entities that spoke in light instead of sound. Very interesting. I think that’s what you go through when you scry the Enochian Aethyrs, but I don’t know that to be true, just a suspicion. After that, I went through the Divine Darkness that Dionysius talks about. This is a must-read, in my opinion. Click that link later.

    Then I returned through the Spheres I had ascended through on the way up, conjuring each spirit at each gate until I reached the Elemental realm of fire. There I conjure Michael Angel of the the Element Fire and had him guide me through the Sphere to the Gate to the Realm of Air, where I conjured Raphael to lead me to the Gate of Water, then Gabriel who lead me to the Gate of Earth, and finally Uriel, who lead me back to my own Astral Temple. I thanked him, and my Daimon and then got up and did some grounding-out exercises.

    It took SIX HOURS. Strangely, three of those hours were spent in the Realm of the Moon on the way up. The rest took much less time. I had a lot of Lunar things to deal with. I may or may not blog about them. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of your own things to discover if you choose to do a rite like this, although the Moon realm might not take you as long.

    Dee does say something about needing to travel three times around the Earth in the Realm of the Moon before you can reach the next sphere in his Hieroglyphic Monad though, and I hadn’t known that before doing the rite. Maybe that’s part of it, I don’t know.

    Well, that’s Part 2. I wanted to get these out tonight before I forgot some of the details.

    Good Nigh, and Good Magick.

  • Note to self…

    Well, I just finished watching the Grudge 2.

    Remind me never to take the evil spirits from people and feed them to my daughter, ok?

    It always turns out bad in the end.