In a recent post, Jason writes about five things modern Western Occultism needs to get over already. I agree with most of it, but with some comments. The five things are:

1. The HGA
2. The Goetia
3. Wicca Bashing
4. Quantum Physics
5. System Hubris

1. The HGA…

I both agree and disagree with the notion that we need to escape the gravity of the HGA. On the one hand, it’s totally overblown in modern Western Occultism, or at least, it was until people started achieving it and talking about it. We should totally escape the gravity of the overblown myth of the HGA.

But today we’re seeing a sea change where the HGA is concerned. People aren’t treating it like the final goal of all magic and expecting to get fully Enlightened when they talk to it once. And people are understanding it better too. It’s not a Gateway to Enlightenment, it’s an entity, a spirit, a familiar spirit. It’s your chief go-to spirit. It’s like Scirlin in the True Grimoire, or like the Head Spirit in ATRs. It’s also a lot like the Spirit Guide of the New Age movement, if you listen to it.

The system of magic I practice is your basic European Renaissance conjure magic. While K&CHGA is not necessary for this system to work, I promise it makes it so much easier.

2. The Goetia

Hell yeah, I totally agree with Jason on that one. “Goetia” isn’t even a book, it’s a type of magic, like … Conjure Magic, Hoodoo, Necromancy, and so forth. Jake Stratton Kent has written a lot about this in Geosophia and The True Grimoire, and if you really want to understand “Goetia,” you’ve got to read what he’s written, imo. Goetia can be beautiful, but not if you’re talking about a single book when you use the word.

3. Wicca Bashing

Also totally agreed. I thought Wicca was stupid based on my experiences as a Wiccan in my teens. Turns out it wasn’t Wicca that was stupid, but teenage RO. In my adulthood, I had the good fortune of meeting some actual Wiccans who practiced it and had something to show for it. Joe changed my mind about it a lot, demonstrating that there is something of awe about Wicca, something that is totally and completely of Deity at work in the system, not just a bunch of pretenders and political statements about Christianity and Patriarchies in general. Jack also helped change my mind, showing me that Wiccans aren’t all basing their practice on fairy tales, and with Nicole, demonstrated convincingly that the ones who were working the Fairy Tales were probably doing cooler magic than me.

4. Quantum Physics

Yeah, just, yeah. Totally.

5. System Hubris

I had a bit of a problem with this one for a long time. When I started finding magic that really worked, really well in the grimoires, I was fucking bitter about the years I wasted on GD and Chaos Magic. I bashed both with equal vehemence, not because I had to bash ’em to make my system look better, but because I was fucking pissed, and didn’t want anyone else to waste their time like I did.

But like Wicca, I met people who practice those systems and seem to get something out of it. I don’t generally bash the entire systems anymore. I haven’t bashed Chaos Magic since I found out it’s essentially Agrippa’s methods presented in early-90s slacker lingo. Nothing wrong with that.

I’m still pretty bitter, though. Sort of like ex-Catholic Wiccans are bitter about their time in the Church. The more I try to write about how I’m over this one, the angrier I get. I’m ridiculous.

So fuck it. I may very well bash the systems for being weak again in the future, but that’s just me and my issues with it. I know and understand that the system I practice is the very best … for me, and that others will find their happiness in the GD where I did not, the same way I find happiness in Christianity where so many others do not.

But knowing and understanding this fact doesn’t make me over my personal bitterness that the GD system and its children didn’t work for me. I haven’t reached escape velocity on this one, not yet.

But it’s not because I have to piss in someone else’s water to make mine taste sweet. It’s because I went to the well and drank their water, found it bitter, and then found a sweet well with pure water. One day I might get to the point where I can say, “Oh you’re drinking GD Water? Have you tried Hermetic Springs? I find it sweeter, myself,” but today I’m still in the “I drank that, and it tastes like SHIT!” phase.

Duhn duhn duhn!

Ok, so I wrote a big ass post about how my cultures sucks when it comes to dealing with the dead, and it was long and highly detailed and boring as shit.

So fuck that.

I did make a cool graphic for the post that would be a shame to waste:

This shows how many of the different types of ghosts there are that I’ve run into on a regular basis. The names of the Dead above are based on the Roman classifications.

I haven’t run into very many of the Powerful Dead, at least, not knowingly. They’re like the local Heroes whose tombs are visited regularly, offerings left for protection and aid. My culture doesn’t do that very much. These guys are like the Saints of the Cahtolic Church. Most of my readers are familiar with a few systems that work with the Dead these days, so I won’t go over it all again.

Beneath them I put the Lares/Larvae with some coherence. They might remember who they were in life, and they might make good companions to magicians, or work well to protect the hearth and home if they’re like Ancestor spirits. You can hold a conversation with them, and they have more influence over the world.

Beneath them are the hordes of the restless dead. They’re convenient for magicians, but for most of society at large, they suck. They cause anxiety, and magnify mental illnesses that relate to the functions of the amygdala. I think many depression and anxiety disorders are related to this class of the dead. Everyone gets anxious or depressed some of the time, but it becomes a disorder when it lasts for long periods of time, or incapacitates you in some way.

These are the spirits I think should be regularly exorcised. They don’t bother me or my family because I’m a magician and I’ve set up my kingdom properly, but most people don’t know much about this kind of thing. The number of people with a practical eschatology is extremely small.

In my neighborhood, we’ve got some people celebrating the Dies de las Muertes, but it’s not like a festival of the dead, it’s just an excuse to get drunk. Halloween used to be about the dead, but these days it’s about kids getting the kiddie equivalent of their drunk on with piles of candy.

I’m all for partying and shit, I’m not saying we should stop drinking, or dressing our kids up in cheap costumes and gathering loot because the days are supposed to be holy or anything.

But these holidays served a practical purpose in the community, they cleaned out the accumulated weak/obnoxious dead. I drove down to Virginia a few weeks ago, and some of the little protestant rural towns we went through were heavy with the dead. Modern funerals are for the living, not for the dead. Pastors don’t bother praying a spirit to heaven, and their “consecrated” grounds don’t really seem to do much to keep the dead from walking. The air was thick with ’em in some places.

Now this makes magic a lot easier to do for magicians. It just takes a little Martial/Saturnian Work to get them to focus on making what you want happen. Most of ’em are weak and pretty useless on their own, but you get enough of them working on something you want, and they can be highly effective. I think it’s pretty rad that you can get a spiritual army together that can shake the foundations of the world using a simple nine-day rite.

But with my established relationships with other spirits, it’s never been necessary.

For non-magicians, it just sucks. They don’t know they’re haunted, let alone what to do about it. Red wine and xanax get a lot of people through it, but a regular cleansing would be better for them in the long run. I’ve started exorcising my secular friends when they start going loopy. It’s nothing formal that they’re aware of, but when someone in my circle of acquaintances starts exhibiting symptoms of a nervous breakdown, I perform a rite on their behalf to get rid of any Larvae that might be infesting their spheres. I figure it can’t hurt.

I’m careful not to accidentally get rid of any positive dead that might be around. I’m not going to just banish everything, blind to the fact that for thousands of years humans have had beneficial relationships with their dead. I know I don’t know everything about people’s personal spiritual lives, and I certainly don’t need any pissed off ancestor spirits gunning for me.

But I do my part to shrive the shades that would have been shriven if my stupid culture wasn’t more interested in getting drunk than living well. I’m not doing this out of the goodness of my heart. I personally have benefited from helping out my subjects. It makes my kingdom run more smoothly when the people in it aren’t being driven nuttier by the shades of the dead.

If I posted the kind of blog posts I have time to finish these days, they would be like this:

Boundaries are good.

Exorcism is good. More people should exorcise and get exorcised. Cause there are GHOSTS fuckin’ everywhere!!!

Everything that is, everything that was, and everything that will be began as an idea.

That’s a core premise of Hermetics. To apply Hermetics to our daily lives, we’ve really got to understand this fundamental core premise. This basic fundamental core premise. I mean, it’s so core that it bears redundancy. Hell it bears everything. That’s the idea of a base, a fundament, a core.

And a “principle” too, when you think about it.

They come first. Princeps. Before everything else.

Ideas.

Where the fuck do they come from? The Mind of God, the Nous of the Hermetics and their Neoplatonic kin? I picture a darkness so perfect and sublime it has never known the light, even though it is the source of all light. A black pool of pure consciousness without limit.

In the Hermetic mythos, at least, the way I remember it at the moment, this Infinite Dark Consciousness created existence as we know it by contracting itself a bit, by removing itself from a part of itself, while leaving some parts of itself behind. When everything was One Mind, and there was no material realm, that One Mind had to permeate everyfucking thing. Nothing could exist except itself because it was perfectly balanced and unified and  undifferentiated. By removing most of itself from a part of itself, it created the material realm. What we play with in our under-matter-scuba-meat-suits is Infinite Mind without the fullness of the rest of Mind within it.

And this happened because the Mind had an Idea, and that Idea was The Physical Universe.

And then many things came to pass. Governors came into being, each one an Intelligency, a Mind that was the self aware aspect of one of the engines of existence, echoes of Aspects of that Mind. Man came into being, an Idea Spoken, and we took the shape and form and aspect and image of that First Father, Nous, the Mind that Thought, and Spoke.

And we came to Earth, and we had Ideas of our own, and we set about speaking them into being in our own little worlds. And that’s Kingdom Management, using the powers of our racial heritage, our divine nature, our birthright-by-right-of-being-God’s-Images, to create and maintain our material and spiritual realms.

If the Earth were Down and the Mind of God were Up, the whole projection of Ideas is Downward into Matter from the Mind of God.

Makes sense, we think we’re in our heads at the top of our bodies, and we project our thoughts and intents through our bodies, most of which is below us.

I personally think we are awarenesses that exist above and slightly “behind” our brains, but not in the material world, and we use the brain as a steering wheel for the car that is our flesh. Sort of.

Still, we’re pushing our Ideas downward.

The path of spiritual attainment is the movement of awareness up this Down-Pointing Process, remembering who we Are, all the way up to the Nous-Source of the Mind.

Ok, if you’re still reading, good on ya’. I haven’t had time to blog in a while, so I’m feeling rusty, especially in the get-to-the-point department.

When I do my Kingdom Management stuff, I take my Idea for what I want to have happen up through the seven Spheres of the Planets, and past the Pleroma, and deep into the Mind of God, where all is darkness, and “I” only exist as a reflection of an Idea. From there, I express the Idea downwards, rushing like a current downwards, through the spheres, gathering boundaries and blessings, the firm will to exist, igniting in flames and light, from which it is engendered and flows into the details and components that take final shape before passing to the Elemental Kingdom of Earth, a fully formed honest-to-god material thing, or situation, or desired result.

That’s what’s happening, the high-level process, but I do this by meditating and through prayer, reaching upwards with my awareness to my source, focusing through praise and intent to the highest of realms. I express the Idea through rites and ceremonies in each Planetary Sphere, or Zone.* That’s the Way Hermetic Magicians do it.

But think about it for a minute.

Where did this Idea of “mine” come from? It came from the Mind of God, just like I did, and just like everything else did. When I take my idea up to the layer of Mind-awareness and drop it off and slide down through the Planetary Chain of Manifestation Halfpipe like a stoned snowboarder, I’m not taking something of my own up a path, I’m simply tracing it back to its source, and maybe empowering the Idea into being by paying specialized attention to it, making it happen. The inspiration is sourced in the Divine. The decision to make it be is made in the material, and the magician peels back the layers of the Idea that it gained, and then adds more layers on top of that to make it real.

I’m a friggin’ yo-yo. Or I’m on some kind of spiritual trampoline, descend, hit-bounce, ascend, descend, hit-bounce higher, ascending, descend, hit, use that to go even higher…

I’m getting dizzy just thinking about it.

This is why I don’t focus on the metawoowoo. I’ll stick with the metajuju.

Ideas. They come from the Great I AM. We are that. They come from us. They really are “our” ideas. From Ourselves-Made-Perfect.

When we Get Ideas, Ideas that we really want to make happen, it’s important that we do so. When you get an inspiration to do something, anyfucking thing, it is vital that you make it happen. It’s not just some whim or passing fancy, it’s really what you should do, if it appeals to you. When you really want something, that’s a good sign that you should do something to get it. It’s like God-Mind-Code for “Instructions on what you should be doing with your life right about now.”

And really, One cannot go against the Word of God.

* I like the term “Zone.” Expect to see it again.

Kingdom Management never ends.

My new job pays well, but it’s very time consuming, and I’m doing things I’ve never done before with a very tight deadline. It’s hectic, and the learning curve is steep. I’m building a document monitoring system out of SharePoint, and not even the latest version. It’s like trying to make a space shuttle out of legos. The end result might look like a space shuttle, from a distance, but get too close or try to actually get to space, and… you’re gonna have a bad time.

So, I’ve conjured Cassiel of Saturn for occult wisdom (figuring out SharePoint reminds me a lot of trying to figure out Enochian Magic). I also worked with him on time management, making my work hours more productive so I can meet the impossible deadlines. I’ve also Worked with Raphael of Mercury to help me figure out the design solution and where to find a big enough hammer to pound this mofo into shape. I’ve done other rites with the other planets to keep things under control and my efforts successful as well.

Having the seven planetary talismans made and on hand all the time is super convenient. It gives me a way to at least influence every aspect of my manifest reality, and in many cases to be able to control it entirely. I’ve been particularly impressed with the abilities of some Saturn Spirits under Cassiel to provide access to the key pieces of information I need in a timely manner (JIT – Just in Time). There’s been a lot of synchronicity and deja vu involved today. Definitely something I needed.

I started writing this on my Birthday, May 13th, but I got distracted and forgot about it. So… uh, Happy Belated RO Day… from… RO. Yeah.

Well, another year’s gone by, and I’m going through yet another Solar Return. Happy Birthday to me!

So, I use Pandora for music entertainment. I created a station based on Cake. Over the months I’ve been listening to it, I’ve liked and added the similar artists that appealed to me, and it’s become my go-to background music for astral rituals and for writing in general. Thought I’d share it for those into similar stuff.

Weezer’s playing now.

So a student of my courses sends me these really detailed fascinating questions on a semi-daily basis. We’ve had some really interesting conversations, and it’s neat talking to him.

Today, he read Jason’s recent post about the Vajrakilaya Amulets (which I heartily recommend), and asked this gem:

Today’s question has to do with reconciling philosophical opposites among what appear to be equally valid traditions. […] So can the eclipse really effectively work two different ways for 2
different people simply because they hold different belief systems?
That’s starting to sound dangerously like magical tech is subjective and
only works because you believe in it.

The answer is an emphatic Yes! The eclipse can indeed effectively work two different ways for two different people because they hold different belief systems. But that in no way implies magical tech ONLY works because you believe in it.

In both the East and the West, magicians perform rituals and spiritual acts based on their beliefs. These spiritual actions have a tuning effect on the magician’s sphere. It’s like tuning the harmonic vibration of the magician’s sphere. As the magicians’ spheres are developed and attuned to the different harmonics of the occult tradition, they are able to process the forces released at the eclipse in different ways.

As a result, the Eastern occultist will be able to sit under an eclipse and have the consequences of both Good and Evil actions amplified 10,000 times. Any spiritual activity to benefit others and themselves performed during the eclipse will be amplified. Anything that would have a negative consequence would also be amplified 10,000 times*.

Jason’s taking advantage of this amplification of all spiritual activities to create talismans that remove obstacles. He’s able to do that because he’s gone to Nepal and received initiations and empowerments, and performed spiritual exercises for many years that have attuned his sphere in a way that lets the forces released during an eclipse amplify everything. So the talismans he creates will be very powerfully tuned to remove obstacles as a result.

A Western magician doesn’t have the same beliefs, and their practices have evolved around the belief that the eclipse is a particularly unfortunate time. These practices tune our spheres in a way that results in the eclipse forces coming through negatively.

Here’s another way to look at it:

Diesel fuel works great in diesel engines. If you put diesel fuel into a gasoline engine, you’re gonna have a bad time. The engine technology is different, so even though the fuel is the same no matter which engine you put it into, you won’t get the same results. The guy who built diesel engines believed diesel was a good solution to the problems he had. A guy with a gas engine can believe diesel is a good fuel all he wants to, it won’t make it work in his engine the same way it works in a diesel engine.

Now, theoretically, a Western magician could harness the maleficent forces of an eclipse and use it to create a talisman that could, again theoretically, be used to destroy things. This could include things like obstacles.

That’s a lot of theory though, and it would take a magician who has been through similar levels of Western initiation and empowerment as those Jason has been through in Eastern traditions. Then when they used it, they would need to be skilled enough to be able to direct the forces only at the obstacles without getting any of it on themselves. And they’d need to keep it somewhere safe when it wasn’t in use, being aware of the ongoing effect it would have on their sphere.

So it’s dangerous for Westerners to try this kind of thing.

But that leads to the inevitable question, what about the Talismans? Will Jason’s talismans cause havoc and evil evil darkness in the spheres of Western Magicians who buy them? Will they be Eastern diesel fuel in our Western gasoline engine spheres?

Fuck No!

Jason’s sphere is attuned properly to process the forces of an eclipse to amplify his consecration rites 10,000 times. The rite is amplified by the eclipse, his sphere transforms the forces into his intended result, i.e. a talisman that removes obstacles, and the resulting talismans are 10,000 times stronger than the same talisman created outside of an eclipse.

These talismans are focused by the rite to become projections of this obstacle-destroying power that will radiate into the sphere and life of the magician. Their sphere won’t be processing any of the forces of the eclipse, Jason’s sphere has already done all that. All we’ll be getting is obstacle-destruction power, and plenty of it.

So if you’re a primarily Western Magician, you shouldn’t worry at all about Jason’s talismans having any kind of negative effect on you.

And if you’re a Black Brother, it’s a good time to make that Blasting Rod. Out of that wood you gathered from that tree that was destroyed in that hurricane.

* Note, I’m not an Eastern magician, so I doubt I’ve got it 100% accurate, but that’s my working understanding.

So Gordon wrote recently about the need for neuroplasticity, and the effectiveness of faking being happy to create actual happiness. Not long after reading his post, another one of those smart European occultists who make me think about shit commented to me on FaceBook that I was missing a major piece of the overall puzzle with my post on scrying, and after trying to argue a bit, I realized he was right. And thus, I was wrong.

Which I hate.

Long time readers of my blog will know that when I’m wrong about shit, I admit it and own it right away. I change my mind and/or practices so I’m not doing something wrong anymore. This is because I really want to accomplish the Great Work successfully in this lifetime, and I’m willing to be humble enough to publicly admit it when I’m wrong, if that’s what it takes to win.

But more than that, I’m a self-righteous prick, and the only way to get away with being a self righteous prick is to be as much of a prick about your own wrongness as you are about everyone else’s*.

Neuroplasticity, the ability to adapt your brain’s chemistry by adapting your thinking and activities is a key thing in the Great Work. Sometimes I get to thinking I’m hot shit on a silver platter once in a while, and then I get reminded in uncomfortable ways that I’m more of a cold turd on a paper plate than I like to think. There’s always so much more to learn, so much that I’ve forgotten, so much left to do. I’ve got to be able to be mentally malleable, I can’t get stuck in a position of wrongness out of stupid pride, stuck in patterns of behavior because I can’t admit I was wrong. That ain’t why I’m here.

Gordon was talking about how he was on an extended downer and needed to get out of it. My problem is every bit as bad, but I get stuck on an upper. I get to thinking I’ve done all this stuff and I’m great, like some kind of Grad Student of Occult University, and then I get reminded I’m still playing on the playground in Elementary School (literally and figuratively). Yeah, I’ve been through the initiations of each of the planetary and elemental spheres, I’ve done a lot of the Work, I’ve ground up the Stone and Projected it into the world.

Kid’s Stuff

But that’s kid stuff. Necessary, vitally important kid stuff, but kid stuff nonetheless. There’s a lot more left to do. And I’d be doing it if I would just be a bit more productive in some areas of my life that I’ve been unproductive in.

Scrying is an important and necessary tool for accomplishing the Great Work using the Hermetic rituals I use and teach. The Modern Angelic Grimoire is based on scrying. The path to ascension that I’m using is based on that simple conjuration rite. Everything I said in that post is true and applicable in the context of the accomplishment of the Great Work and the conjuration of spirits.

But there’s more to magic than scrying spirits in crystals, and even more to it than Hermetic theory and practice.

This thing that we do teaches us very specialized, very focused tools in our Hermetic laboratory. We learn through conjure, initiations, integration of forces, and the exercise of taking authority over your kingdom. We learn by taking responsibility for the things that happen in our lives, to us and through us. We learn important skills and insights about the universe and the process of manifestation, and our roles in that process.

These things we learn though, they apply to more than the system of the Hermetic Great Work. Scrying is the reading of the Mind. Rituals are the gathering together of specifically harmonic things here in the Spiritus Mundi, the material reflection of our Heavenly Homeland, to accomplish specific aspects of creation. This magical act we do, it’s the observation and participation with a massive harmonic field that transcends the dimensions our flesh can sense, but nevertheless includes everything we see and feel and hear and see, intimately. It’s like the universe is strings, and we are the musicians strumming them, rubbing rosined bows across them, striking them in rythyms with velvet hammers through levers and keys to create the melodies we experience.

When I was scratching at the doors of the Eighth Sphere, I caught a glimpse of how you can do that with a thought, a symbol, a word, and a gesture in an instant. Without tools or conversations with anyone else, just your mind and your body and your breath working in harmony to express the Will of God.

Getting to that point is a matter of shifting awareness from the down-here-looking-up to the right-here-looking-out perspective, where “right-here” is everywhere, including the Unmanifest. It’s the actualization of AN EYE, what Eye none knoweth. It’s becoming consciously aware of being the Participant-Observer.

Amoghapasa, a Bodhisattva I found googling around. Check out the Dude on his head, above and slightly behind him. I’m no Buddhist, but it looks like the Participant-Observer to me.

Hermetics is a path that takes you to the point of being able to open that eye and be that person, that observer within.

See, I think you need to go through the elemental and celestial initiations to get to know who you are and what you’re capable of doing. The spirits of the spheres train us, retrain us that is, to remember what it is we are, fundamentally, creator-gods.

I’ve been focusing a lot on what happens after you die for a couple years. I’ve been looking at all this stuff that we do from the perspective of “training for what comes next.” I’ve been looking forward to doing more of the Great Work to prepare to be a Power when I die. Along the way, I’ve learned about controlling the world, manifesting it according to my will and desire, for the benefit of the world in general, not just for myself. And I was into that because it was training for the “real” job to come, in my next phase as a Power. You know. When I’m dead.

And that’s where I think I missed the point. At a very weird level. We aren’t training here to learn how to die, we’re training here to learn how to live.

So yeah, all that scrying stuff, it’s very much important to learning how to live. But it’s a skill that is applicable outside of the Magic Circle, outside the boundaries of the ritual room and your astral spiritual laboratory and playground. It’s a life skill, to be used as much as your body’s vision and hearing. The Mind is written in the clouds, the leaves of the trees, the flight patterns of birds. It is the stuff of awesome.

The rites and rituals, they teach us how to read the Mind of God in the material realm, what to look for, how to listen, how to see. But the things we learn are to be used today, right now, all the time, on purpose. It’s living as a human being, mortal and immortal, united for love.

* For example, some subscribers to my blog will have received a post about how Hermeticism doesn’t teach that the Universe is ONE earlier today that has since disappeared as if it never existed. I was, uh, stupidly, stupidly wrong. It does teach that, and I had forgotten that it was traditional, and not just some Kybalion crap, and in my urge to make someone else look stupid I made myself look even more stupid. I was in stupid-fucking-moron mode because I was so busy throwing shit at someone else that I didn’t realize I was covering myself in shit in the process. It pays to check your hands once in a while, throwing shit makes ’em stink.

Let’s go blow up a bridge!

Er… no, fucktard.

Ackshually…

Conform like a motherfucker, make a bajillion dollars, sell your soul to the capitalist scum to get elected, along with your secret cabal, and when you get in office…

FUCK SOME SHIT UP!

Come on, you stupid motherfuckers! You’re already sociopaths, for christ’s sake! Use your God-Given Talent and take over the fucking world!

Don’t blow up bridges. You stupid fucking morons.

Occupy Congress. Make change.