I don’t have any kind of formal post in mind today, but these are some random thoughts passing through my mind about Teachers in general. Approaches to teaching, phases we go through, things we think about. Moods that come and go.

They’re all things I’ve thought or felt at various times as a teacher, some more often than others. They’re also things I see in my fellow teachers of occultism, and if you’re a blogger, you’re included in that category in my cosmogram.

• Everybody’s a Fucking Idiot but me, so send Me your Money!
• Oh my GOD, this is AWESOME SHIT right here, you gotta fuckin’ TRY it, like NOW! Hurry, you’re just wasting time!
• Fuck this shit. I quit.
• To date, these are the things I’ve learned, but there’s a lot more
  to go. I’ll put it in words that work best for me, but you’ll have
  to figure out the meaning in your own way, or discover a meaning behind
  the symbols that is better suited for where you’re at in your life’s
  context.
• Oh my god, no one ever listens to me! I’ve been saying that shit for years, for fuck’s sake. Jesus, people, catch the fuck up.
• FUCK! I was wrong… still no refunds.
• If you had only done the research, and the practical Work related to it, you wouldn’t be arguing with me. Try it some time, and then you’ll see that I’m right, or you’ll at least be better qualified to argue with me.
• Holy shit, I’m more enlightened than YOU!? Fuck.
• Some shit works, some shit doesn’t. The journey’s not that great, and the destination is less pleasant than anticipated. And I’m pretty sure they made it that way on purpose just to keep you moving on.
  
• No shit, Sherlock.
• Oh my god, really? Really!? I need a drink.
• Hey, this is stuff that helped me achieve a measure of happiness that I am currently enjoying. Hope it works for you as well as it works for me.
• You’re doing it wrong.
• I will RULE TEH WORLDS!!! And you can rule yours too!
• You did what? And it did what? Sweet! I gotta try that some time.
• You’re doing it right!
• Now what?
• Hmmm. That’s interesting. Let me think about it.
• I used to be an adventurer like you.

I think that about covers the moods and approaches I’ve been through since starting out in this teaching gig, not necessarily in any kind of chronological order. Ego, ambition, disappointment, excitement, the thrill of the hunt.

It’s interesting how many of them are more about other people than about where I’m at and where I’m going. Relationships with other people are important, apparently. And I have an inclination to think I’m right that is usually justifiable, but maybe not as accurate as I’d like to think.

And there’s an irritability that drives a lot of my Work, a certain Holy Dissatisfaction that keeps me moving onward and upward. That’s neat. Should have gotten its own post, probably.

I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong with feeling any of these ways at different times, except that first one, and most of us get past that before we really start becoming useful teachers. I cycle through most of the rest regularly.

I don’t really know why I’m posting this. Usually when I write the random-thought posts, they sit in the draft bin for years before I get around to deleting them. But I think I’m posting this so you’ll think about how teachers are, how they act, and remember that they’re people of varied interests and moods, just like you. Learn from people, but take what they’re saying with a grain of salt. Sometimes they’re brilliant, other times they’re assholes, and in the end it’s all beautiful.

Until you take an arrow to the knee.

When you go through the painstaking process of creating all the tools, talismans, implements, and Magic Circles of the traditional grimoires with the heart of the true magician, on fire and enflamed with the passion of your true Love, you go through one of the most rigorous and life changing initiations possible.

The creation of a real talisman, from raw metal to finished, engraved, consecrated talisman is a process of transformation that is Alchemical in every sense of the word. After you’ve made and consecrated a talisman, you’ve interacted with the Four Elemental Kingdoms in all three of their phases, you’ve spent an extended time in the presence of the spirit who works through the talisman, and that interaction as you and it worked together to create the finished thing and brought it into being in the material plane has forever changed the harmonics of your sphere. You’ve been tuned through the properties of spiritual resonance.

When someone like Mr. Ashen or Mr. Cecchetelli goes through the process of creating the tools for his Solomonic rites, he’s going through that initiatory process of talisman creation at every stage of the preparation. His heart’s aflame with the passion of his intent, and that intent blazes through the Spheres, a clarion call to the Spirits.

How many of these initiations do they go through to perform something like a conjuration from the Lemegeton’s Goetia? How many times do they end up inscribing the Ten Names and Seals of the Intelligences of the Spheres? At least twice, for the lion’s skin belt, and for the Magic Circle they stand within. You make a MAgic Circle full size, and it’s incredible how you feel standing in the center as the paint dries. You feel the spirits aiding you as you write out their names, and if you’re trying to do it without the right heart, the right attitude of reverence, they invariably smack you down and make you start again.

It’s a Holy process.

A process of transformation.

If you’re having a hard time seeing and hearing the spirits, take a few months and devote it to creating all the implements of the grimoire of your choice. The Almadel, the Arbatel, the Ars Paulina, the True Grimoire, the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals, Crossed Keys, the Order of the Black Powdered Octopus, The Greater Key of Solomon, Abramelin, Samekh, the exercises in Strategic Sorcery or Protection and Reversal Magic.

Do them well, do them honest, do them pure and true, or as true as you can, and it will start that process of change that leads to the visible and audible manifestation of spirits.

Unless you’re spiritually blind and deaf. It’s a condition that some people have, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of, although it’s certainly frustrating. If you’ve gone to all the work of putting together a straight, by-the book rite, and you’ve performed it at the appropriate astrological timing, and you’ve meant every word you’ve uttered, from the heart, and you’re still not getting anything, and you’ve done it a lot more than once with zero results, don’t despair. There are several grimoires that suggest working with a seer because the simple fact is this: Everyone doesn’t see or hear spirits. That doesn’t mean the magic doesn’t work, it just means some folks are deaf and blind to the spirit world for whatever reason.

And who knows… it might be for a very good reason.

As I prepare for tonight’s Jupiter rite (3 minutes and counting), I can’t get that Mumra thing out of my head.

Without the “Evil” part, and without nearly as much maniacal laughter afterwards, that’s how I feel when I conjure up my HGA before doing the rites.

Fraters Ashen and Cecchetelli, two magicians who I respect highly as individuals and co-Workers in the divine sense, have recently posted their views regarding the visible appearance of spirits to magicians when performing grimoire magic. I do not disagree with any of their statements or conclusions, but I do have concerns about their emphasis on the visibility of spirits and the ability to clearly hear the spirits speak.

Mr. Ashen has made it clear that he doesn’t believe your average guy walking down the street, peeking in through a window during a conjuration is going to see the spirits the magician sees during the rite. I’m pretty sure Mr. Cecchetelli would also agree that the things the magician “sees” during the ritual are not necessarily going to be seen by anyone else standing in the room with him.

Mr. Ashen presents a cogent theory about why this happens. If you don’t have the framework to mentally process the presence of the spirit, you don’t see it. He gives the following example:

An excellent story I heard from my
anthropology class was about a researcher who went to investigate the
powers of a shaman somewhere in the south Asian jungles. The shaman was
curing an afflicted boy who’s disease was caused by a local demon the
village people said. …. During the exorcism, the tribes folk all saw
the demon fly out of the boy and break a limb of a tree with its body as
it left. The anthropologist was present, felt strong winds arise and
witnessed the breaking limb but could not see the demon…. A great case
study as I recall, the researcher was amazed and quite disturbed but
didn’t have the “aptitude” or mental language to see the spirit
directly.. In the realm of hypnosis and mental/unconscious comprehension
… You see this a lot.

And this is why I’m concerned about the emphasis: if you don’t have the ‘aptitude’ or mental language to see the spirit directly, you will not see it.

Most people simply do not have that aptitude when they begin practicing magic. Mr. Ashen talks about how his ability to “see” and “hear” the spirits grew over time. He didn’t start out seeing and hearing spirits clearly. Mr. Cecchetelli also talks about how he had been doing magic for a while before he began to see and hear the spirits. No one, not even Lisiewski believes the spirits are going to be visible to everyone during a
conjuration. There’s too much evidence to the contrary in the grimoires
themselves, and all through the historic source material of the
grimoires, and in our personal experiences with the spirits. The spirits
appear only to the magician conjuring them, or their scrying
assistants.

The ability to see and hear the spirits comes, in my experience, after you’ve started contacting the spirits. The more time you spend with them, the more you become like them. As you reclaim your divine heritage and come to terms with your role in existence, you get the senses you need to be able to interact with your spiritual co-creators in the hierarchy of spirits that manifest the World. The Great Work transforms you from a lump of mostly flesh and bone with some basic urges to survive and a curiosity about this whole “magic” business into a consciously aware Creator and Maintainer of your existence, the half-god, half-human fulcrum between the manifest and unmanifest realms who ascends to the heavens and returns in power to create their world.

It’s a process. You develop the skills to see and hear the spirits over time.

And until you do, you aren’t going to be able to see anything, or hear anything. That doesn’t mean your results aren’t real. If you set your expectations at the outset of your conjuration endeavors at visible appearance and audible voices, you’re going to fail. If you reject all your experiences that aren’t in line with this expectation, you’ll reject everything that happens that leads to the ability to see and hear the spirits.

I’ve talked to people who have performed the very strict requirements of the Lemegeton’s Goetia, including the making of the lion skin belt, who have had visible and audible manifestations of the spirits. I’ve also talked to a few people who bought the lion skin and made the belt the way the grimoire says who experienced absolutely nothing. It’s not the belt that makes the magician.

I’ve never made or used a lion skin belt. The system I use is based on the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals. I reduced the complexity to write up the Modern Angelic Grimoire and provide new magicians with everything they need to perform effective conjurations the same day they buy the book. I did so because it’s most important to me to get more people doing magic.

When I perform conjurations, I use an even more modified adaptation of the Modern Angelic Grimoire. I use a cigar box that I’ve got wired up to light an LED after the current passes through a metal talisman placed across two electrodes poking up through The Box. The LED lights up my crystal ball, which rests on an bezel. The crystal ball sits in the center of the Table of Practice from the Modern Angelic Grimoire.

I’m so far removed in my practice from the original Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals that I doubt whoever wrote it originally would be able to discern that I based my practice on that manuscript.

Yet I have used this method to conjure spirits across the spectrum of Hermetic spiritual hierarchies to visible and audible appearance. I have “actually witnessed the poundings on the wall,
flashes of light, smells, moans, screams, voices, and visible appearance
of a spirit,” as Mr. Ashen puts it, even though my methodology is vastly different from his. I’ve felt that divine bliss Mr. Ashen attempts* to describe towards the end of his post.

But I will still tell my students that these phenomena do not matter, at least, at first. They are not required for successful magic, and poltergeist activity does not guarantee you’ll get the things you’re Working towards in your conjuration. What good is it to have a haunted house if you’re not getting any Work done?

And I have yet to meet any magician who has experienced this stuff from the very beginning of their work, although I’ve met plenty of magicians who spent hundreds on lion skins and made their belts to specification who had as much to show for their efforts as someone who printed out a Table of Practice and a Lamen and used a coffee mug full of colored water to scry into.

Yet I also understand why he says, “To me, its a cop out, I smile yet feel sorry for the new magicians who settle for these words.” 

It does sell the whole experience short to say that this stuff “doesn’t matter” at all. It is important, nothing transforms your perspective on what we’re doing with magic quite like a visible and audible spirit manifesting in front of you. The idea that this stuff never happens, or should never be expected by the magician at best robs the student of the possibility of something cool, but at worst leaves them completely unprepared for when it actually happens. I personally believe that if you spend time conjuring spirits, sooner or later you will see and hear some weird shit. 

And that’s awesome.

If you want that kind of result, if you require that level of manifestation to overcome your doubts about the veracity of your practice, and these particular manifestations in your mind will serve to prove to your skeptical self that you really are experiencing the spirits and not just imagining things, then by all means, go for it. I would advise that you temper your expectations, and not take failure to see the visions or hear the voices right off the bat as a reason to give up. Keep at it, and sooner or later you will see enough to believe.

And frankly, the closer I’ve gotten to the actual instructions in the grimoires, the more manifestations I’ve seen. Mr. Ashen made me an ebony wand to the specifications given in the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals, and when I use it, the air is filled with power from the moment I pick it up, and the visions of the spirits in the crystals come through with more clarity than when I do not. It’s like I don’t have to try as hard to see what they’re trying to show me.

But to me, the proof of your magical effectiveness is not found in the visions or sounds you hear during a rite. The proof is in the transformation of your life, and the consistency of your results over time.

* I say “attempts” only because it’s precisely the kind of experience that can’t be described accurately; Mr. Ashen does as good of a job at describing it as is humanly possible.

In other news, having passed the Winter Solstice, the days are getting longer. PLVS LVX, I said in the last post, More Light. That’s a good thing for those of us stuck in the cold bleak wintery regions of the planet*.

Jupiter went Direct today, or it will sometime if it hasn’t yet. Months of retrograde are gone, and we can again tap into the current of his blessings and expansion and have it be without detriment. This is good.

And the Moon is now Waxing. The time of the Unmanifest passing into the Manifest realms is upon us.

In the darkest hours of the coldest season, the momentum of the world shifts, and slowly begins to flow in new directions.

This Thursday, in other words, is a really good time to start doing some Jupiter Manifestation magics. Also, it’s a good time to start that whole “Getting in touch with your HGA consciously” thing.

Do magic.

Create your world.

Like a boss.

* This year, not so bad. Sunny and warm right up til Christmas, the worst part was just the rain. I can handle cold rain. Global Warming: Terrible catastrophe, may bring the END OF THE WORLD, but also may bring Texas like weather to Baltimore. Gotta look on the bright side of things, yo.

So I had a tearful Christmas night. I was listening to Oh Holy Night on the radio on the way home from looking at The Miracle on 34th Street here in Baltimore, and I started tearing up when it got to this part:

Long lay the world in sin and error pining
til he appeared
and the soul felt its worth
a thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices
for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn
Fall on your knees
Oh Hear the Angel voices,
Oh night divine
Oh night when Christ was born.

It was the “Hear, the Angel Voices” part at first. Because you know, I Work with them. They’re awesome. They celebrated the night Christ was born, the choirs of the heavens filled the sky with the music of the spheres.

But the more I thought about it, the more the song made sense to me on a deeper level. Long lay the world in sin and error pining, til he appeared, and the soul felt its worth. It’s the night the Logos took flesh to come down to the material world and show mankind once and for all there is no separation between Mankind and Godkind, that we are family, all twinkling manifestations of Light in Extension, and the darkness of the world cannot ever change that, no matter what we do.

I talk a lot about how the Enneads of Plotinus showed me how the point of the Neoplatonists was to reclaim the divine race of humanity, to discover its eternal value. That’s the song’s central theme. And I got it, that thrill of hope, and weary with the state of things in this world, I too rejoiced. Yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

So we’ve made it through the darkest part of the year, and now the days will grow longer, and the Sun shall return to us again. Each day, there will be more light. PLVS LVX. More Light.

I don’t know how you celebrated making it through the longest night this year. I do know a substantial number of you readers don’t celebrate the birth of Christ as the most awesomest thing evar, and I understand the many reasons for that.

But however you celebrated this year, I hope it was beautiful.

Now, get ready, because here comes the Sun.