Rufus Opus

Category: Blogspot Archive

Category: Blogspot Archive

  • Crisis!

    Frankincense prices are going to be going up. Stock up now.

    Also, if you live in areas where it will grow, consider planting some trees now. They’re in danger of being lost due to over-harvesting and global climate changes, and just bad farming techniques. I don’t think my area is warm enough year round to support them, but I’m going to try to raise some here. Maybe I can build them a shelter, or keep them in a greenhouse in the winter or something. Maybe global warming will change the climate enough to make it a viable crop around here, who knows.

  • Magic, Magic, Everywhere!

    So a friend posted something on FB about how great it is that pacifiers were invented, and I got one of those weird interests in it, and googled the history of pacifiers. I don’t know why it sparked my interest, but I just sort of figured they’ve been around forever because most parents learn on their own in the first couple of weeks that if you put your finger in their mouths, they stop crying and fall asleep. I figured humans have been using them for 10,000 years in one form or another, and I wanted to see what a neolithic pacifier might have looked like.

    It turns out the modern pacifier goes back to the 1600s, at least. And look at this:

    In England in the 17th–19th centuries, a coral meant a teething toy made of coral, ivory or bone, often mounted in silver as the handle of a rattle.[1] A museum curator has suggested that these substances were used as “sympathetic magic”[2] and that the animal bone could symbolize animal strength to help the child cope with pain.

    Magic. It’s everywhere. Why the fuck would I give a shit about the history of the human pacifier? I dunno. Seemed interesting at the time. And I found magic in it.

    This New Year, New You thing Deb’s doing is important. Radical transformation of your life through applied magic. Magic’s in the cracks and crevices of every aspect of existence because it’s how the universe works.

    And we have the privilege, the honor of being called to this, chosen to be magicians. Everyone doesn’t get that calling. Everyone doesn’t get shown the keys to the manifestation process of the universe. We’re a specialized elect group among humanity. Shamans, priests, magicians. We stand as the fulcrum between the worlds Above and the worlds Below, we speak things into being, encapsulating the invisible inspirations and ideas into symbolic form that take on layers of existence as they come down the chain of manifestation into being.

    That’s my model, anyway, basically the water vapor cycle. Ascend, condense, fall, evaporate, repeat, but it’s magic and not water.

    Whatever model works for you, use it. Create your world.

  • Losing Weight, like Magic

    Eighth Sphere magic is really good for weight loss. Last year around this time, give or take a month, I was around 220, and by the end of winter I was back up to around 230. Spring hit and I lost some weight, and I went on a diet, and I lost some more. I made it down to 217, and then started creeping back up until a month or so ago.

    Before Thanksgiving, I decided I wasn’t going to get fat this winter. I weighed myself then, and I was at 226. It was getting colder, and I knew I wouldn’t be doing much exercise, and the holidays were coming. So I did some magic, 8th Sphere style.

    I went into myself and raised my metabolism, ever so slightly. I did it by meditating on it for a couple of minutes. Pictured the chain of manifestation from the Idea world of the Nous to the manifest corpulence, and just sort of raised the vibration of the body manifestation current a bit so it would result in a slightly higher metabolism. You wouldn’t believe how very subtle the changes were. Sooooo subtle.

    And then I just went about my business. I ate holiday food, ice cream and pie and more pie, and cookies and cakes and egg nog til I was sick once, and then I had a little more pie, because I like pie.

    And this morning I’m looking in the mirror after showering, and I wasn’t disgusted by my front proportions. As much. So I weighed myself at work,* and I’m down to 213. Two weeks ago I was at 216. Considering the millions of calories I ate, I’ve got to say, not bad.

    Do I recommend it? No, it’s dangerous. Taking conscious control over shit that’s designed to be autonomous can lead to fucked up bullshit, like blown livers. I know how to fix anything I might fuck up, I go to Raphael of Mercury for shit I don’t understand about health, and he takes care of me, or clients. So having a strong relationship with the Archangel of Mercury leaves me with the confidence to make those kind of adjustments, in really small amounts, but I don’t advise it to anyone else.

    But man, it’s convenient.

    Pie.

    *I don’t own a scale. If I need to know how much I weigh, I’ll find one somewhere. If it’s that important. Oh, and work has a scale for their Biggest Loser contest, which they cancelled because the Virginia office and the Baltimore office were getting really evil with each other in the competition.

  • Business Booster Reports

    I suspect a lot of my friends and colleagues secretly think I’m insane when it comes to the Business Booster rites.* I charge $1,200 for it. That’s one thousand, two hundred dollars right there. Insane, right? Who’s going to invest over a grand in magic?

    Smart people. That’s who.

     I got this update today in my email:

    Just wanted to update you on progress. So far my productivity increased, I estimate it’s worth approximately 15,000 per year net income. I also just received word I will be receiving an additional 16,000 per year for some new areas of responsibility I will be taking on (requiring at most 4 hours of work per month). Overall [the Business Booster rite is] resulting in approximately a 15% increase in net annual income.  So basically if a person is willing to work hard,  and do the magic work, the business booster program is a no-brainer for wealth enhancement. 

    Your program has been great and I wish for others to tap into this financial method in these times of the tight economy.

    15% increase in net income? So if he invested $1,200, and he’s getting back $32,000, the Return on Investment (ROI=(Gain on investment-Cost of investment)/Cost of investment) the client saw is about 25:1. Not too shabby!

    Now, not everyone has the same degree of success. My initial trial run test subject increased his business by a lot more, while another client in very different circumstances saw very little in the way of wealth, although they did manage to break even (which was also a huge increase, as he’d been losing money before the rite).

    Another client brought me in at his business’s inception, and he’s still in the exploratory phase of launching the business. He hasn’t seen any large windfalls, but his success rate has been consistently high. He’s in FOREX trading, and with the volatility of the global economy, I understand his conservative approach. I’m saving up some money to invest with him when he gets things going, and then I’ll be blessing the FUCK out of his work. Weekly.

    But the people who have taken the rites seriously, done their part to draw down the powers and build on the foundation we lay down in the Saturn Rite have consistently seen really incredible increases in profit. 15-30% increases. In this economy.

    You better believe I do this for myself. Cha-Ching!

    And as word spreads among the business community (really slowly, because who’s going to admit they use angels to improve their business over a martini power lunch?), and the clients start getting bigger and richer, I’ll be able to charge more and more for this.

    Heh.

    Heh heh.

    Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

    I love it when magic works like it’s supposed to. Like in the deal.

    * Probably for other things too, but that’s a thousand other posts.

  • NYNY: Prompt 1 – Make Way!

    GTFO the way, RO’s coming!

    That’s how I figure the universe feels whenever I start getting organized.

    The first prompt of the New Year, New You experiment is about Making Way, clearing out the old crap that stand in the way of whatever we’ve got planned.

    I posted three of my major projects I’d like to tackle this year, and when I stilled my mind enough to really think about getting started on it, my mind just sort of shut down. See, I’m a busy guy. A very busy guy. Back in April I started doing major Jupiter rites on a regular basis, and the expansion and flow of blessings came right in. A lot. And brought a lot of work with it.

    So I need to clear things out before I even have the space to think about starting anything new. The major things I’ve got to get done are finishing up the Red Work series of courses, and a ton of client work.

    I do, however, have a ton of work to do on my car and house…

    Actually, I have a ton of work that needs to be done on my car and house. There’s a difference.

    See, I’m not a mechanic or a handyman. I’m the unmechanic, the unhandyman. I tried to replace my broken window on my car last night and broke the door. So I have a broken window and a broken door now instead of just a broken window. I have holes in my walls from when I tried to fix the handrail on the steps. I have holes in my ceiling where the plaster fell down when I tried to fix the paint that had bubbled when my air conditioner’s condensation pump blew a hose. I have holes in the plaster on the walls in my living room from trying to hang curtains.

    I’m a writer, not Bob Villa. So I’m going to write some money-making stuff and pay someone else to do that shit. Know your strengths, know your weaknesses, and make your strengths support your weaknesses. For me, that’s writing paid copy.

    After I finish the Red Work series of courses, and the client work.

    Clearing out my headspace is a bit more difficult. I’ve got stress from work, and stress from home. My day job is in a precarious position at the moment because America’s Congress SUCKS MOTHERFUCKING DONKEY BALLS. My contract was cancelled because the automatic cuts that went into effect last time they couldn’t set aside their differences and run the country impacted Medicare, and my job was to come up with a way to save $10.2 billion. We were making progress, but not quickly enough, so they canceled the project and told Obama they’d save the $10.2 billion somewhere else. So I need to do some magic on that, and get something lined up to pay the mortgage next year that’s a little less sporadic than online occult sales.
    My home-based stress is just your normal father-of-three crap. November 21 is my son’s birthday, followed by Thanksgiving, my daughter’s birthday December 12th, Christmas, my spouse’s birthday January 14, and my other daughter’s birthday January 25th. I hate November through January. The stress has been known to overwhelm me.

    But the solution to this problem is to catch up on the client work. For example, by doing the Hermetic Diagnoses for other people, I travel the seven spheres and spend hours in contemplation and meditation, communing with the spirits. That in and of itself is really good therapy, and it melts the stress. Other client work will further get me done with stuff.

    So those are my plans for Making Way for the projects I have planned.

  • How to post links in comments

    With Deb’s New Year New You thing going around, people are posting links in google’s blogger comments that you can’t click on.

    I’m guilty of that. But I don’t like to have to select the link, hit copy, go to the browser address bar, hit paste, then hit go when I could just click a link.

    So here’s how to post a link in a comment on blogger:

    Type this:

    <a href=”

    Then paste your link.

    Then type this:

    “>

    you’ll have this:

    <a href=”http://link_address.com”>

    Or this:

    <a href=”www.link_address.com”>

    Now type the text that you want to link to the site. Like “My blog post participation.”

    then type this:

    </a>

    Altogether, you’ll have:

    <a href=”http://link_address.com”>My blog post participation.</a>

    And it will look like this in the preview of your comment:

    My blog post participation.
     

    And then you can add “HTML Programmer” to your resume.

  • No One Understands Me…

    Ok, well, I shouldn’t say “no one” understands me. The fact is that most folks seem content, at least, with the things I do, and seem to grasp that these posts I make here and on message boards are the records, thoughts, observations, and witticisms that come from my personal efforts to accomplish the Great Work.

    There are some folks who don’t get it though, and I’m not so enlightened that I can just accept that some people won’t get it. I’ve got this overwhelming urge to explain myself to my detractors in the naive hope that they will understand what’s going on at Rufus Opus.

    Why do I focus on Wealth and Prosperity primarily in my posts? Mainly because that’s something everyone I know can use help with, or could have used some help with at one point in their lives. I try to demonstrate that it’s not hard to make a talisman for great wealth and riches. I try to get people to do magick that serves them personally. I’m laying out bait, as it were, to get people doing magick.

    When you do any ritual that involves conjuring the angels or archangels of the higher realms, they have an effect on the magician. Each interaction with a higher power results in that higher power rubbing off on the magician a little bit, getting them closer to accomplishing the Great Work. Every conjuration of a spirit transmutes the magician’s primal material just a little bit, refining it, making them a better person, making them more magickally aware, more accomplished, and better-balanced.

    I could focus on all the philosophical implications of magick, and tell people how to do theurgical rites alone, but most folks will read it, think it’s a good idea, and then do nothing else. I know, I was there for years. But when I started doing the real stuff, I started growing spiritually as a side effect. The truths of the platonists and neoplatonists revealed themselves to me. I gained insight into the workings of the universe. I conquered character flaws, became more generous, and all the things that a spiritual person ought to experience.

    So that’s why I teach people the basics of material-manipulation on this blog. That’s why I sell the Angel Conjuration Kits that appeal to the basic needs and desires of humanity. If someone buys the Love Angel conjuration Kit and does the Work to get themselves their soul mate, then they will be hobnobbing with the Archangel of Venus, who will naturally attune their spheres, cleansing out their own problems and burn off the things that hinder them in the process.

    I didn’t think I needed to tell the more advanced adepts that this is why I do things, but a couple of people who should know better seem to think I’m in this for the money and that I think magick is all a scam, a way to pull a fast one.

    It is, in a way, a shortcut to everything you could possibly desire. But at the same time, you will undergo the four stages of the Alchemical Great Work. You can’t have mastery of the universe without the transmutation of the soul. It’s nice how that works.

    So for all of you who have thought that my magickal techniques were just for money, you’re wrong. I just don’t talk much about the spiritual aspects of the Work because really, you’ll need to experience them and interpret them within the context of your own life. The techniques I provide are a catalyst for the Great Work.

    That should sum it up. If anyone still thinks I’m in it for the money… well, let’s just say I’m not getting rich off anything I do online. I cover my expenses for the web site, and make a little more on the side, about enough for a dinner at Bob Evans once or twice a month for me and my family.

  • Opening the Book of Lambspring

    Plug Saturday continues! Though technically it’s Sunday now here.

    It is with great joy that I get to review the latest work by Fr. AIT, of Heavens within Earth and the Book of Coelius fame, founder and expounder of the Ordo Octopi Nigri Pulveri, true Priest of Kronos, and generally Good Egg.

    He told me about The Opening of the Book of Lambspring before it was published, and I got an advanced copy and spent a few hours going through it with him, comparing notes and exploring the symbolism of the images. It was a good afternoon. It was one of those moments where we got to talking like old school Hermeticists. We didn’t always agree, but we each had something really cool to bring to the table for discussion. If you’ve  had a chance to talk shop with someone who’s done as much Work as you have, you know what I mean. We were riffing off each other’s insights as we harmonized with the Emblems and talked through what we saw.

    But I’m probably getting ahead of myself. First, a bit about the Book of Lambspring. It’s a series of alchemical images that reflect different phases of the Great Work pictorially. Each image captures the phase of the Work, but all in the language of the birds. The imagery that is meaningful if you’re a fellow alchemist who understands the Ideas behind the forms they take. But there are few on the planet comfortable enough to claim to understand it, and fewer among those who have any right to make that claim.

    Fr. AIT is among the ranks of those who know the language. He provides an analysis of each of these images, an interpretation as seen through the eyes of the Hermetic Magician. It’s one of the most interesting pieces of occult information I’ve had the honor of working with this last year, in fact. Each image is a key to a phase of the Work. Each image is a gate as well, but more on that later.

    Many of his interpretations are based on his personal experiences and training within the Golden Dawn Order to which he belongs. And he wrote during and after an incredible initiation based on the mythography of the “Great Rite,” so there’s a lot of emphasis on the holy sexuality of these images. He provides such broad hints at the mysteries of sex magic that anyone with an inclination towards deciphering the hidden meanings will find their way paved and easy, and won’t have to jump sacred fences and score tech in back alleys the way I had to. Here’s a hint: there’s no jacking off over sigils involved.

    I rarely mix sex and magic these days, though when I do, it sends out seismic waves that make the richter scale.* In our conversations about the meanings of the emblems, I tended to focus less on the sexual interpretations than he does, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong in any of them. Everything he says about each emblem is true. I prefer the parts where he sticks to the straight “Hermetic Magic” interpretations, though I suspect he’d argue they aren’t as separate as I like to think. And he might be right.

    I found it incredibly useful to treat each Emblem as a Gate. I would turn each emblem into a small astral rite, passing within each, becoming a part of the image, and seeing what it meant from within. Most of my observations lined up perfectly with Fr. AIT’s, and where there were differences, there was still harmony.

    This book touches on the deeper mysteries of the Alchemical process, and what it means to magicians attempting the Great Work through magical practice. It’s definitely on my list of things every magician should read at least once, though in all honesty you could spend a lifetime exploring each image, comparing experiences, and applying the lessons of each.

    *That’s hyperbole right there. That earthquake was a coincidence.

  • Sleep Paralysys, Night Hags, and the Work

    A friend asked me if I thought Sleep Paralysis or the Night Hag experience was greater or worse for people doing the Great Work.

    Starting with the basic cosmology, I believe the world as we know it is filled with spirits that we can’t see. Angels, fallen angels, elementals, and all the spirits of the dead that stick around this side of heaven, you know the drill.

    When we have strong emotions, we put off a certain kind of “energy” that can be sensed in a room or even a house. Some of the spirits we wade through every day can absorb nutrition from these strong emotions, the kind usually triggered by the amygdala.

    In order for the hags to be ble to feed off someone, they’ve got to be going through some kind of emotional duress or stress that has their amygdala working over time. Whatever the clonazepam does in the brain seems to patch this leak up in most people.

    The wandering hag spirit gets the scent of the leak and goes in for a free meal. Like a lamprey, the spirit attaches itself to the leak, and I believe it has something like the anesthetic saliva of a mosquito. this triggers that “I can’t move” effect in the brain, and if we wake up during the attack, we can’t do anything about it.

    As a magician pursues the Work, they’re patching up the holes, and learning new ways to deal with life that slowly eliminate the creation of any new leaks. So there’s less to feed on. We aren’t putting out a banquet every night for every wandering spirit.

    However, in the early stages, and especially during a Tiphareth Initiation, there’s usually a lot of pain involved. The “Gethsemane” experience, I like to call it. Crowley talks about the pain of a Tiphareth initiation in Liber XCV, “The Wake World.”

    “This Sixth House is called the Treasure House of Gold; it’s a most mysterious place as ever you were in. First there’s a tiny, tiny, tiny doorway, you must crawl through on your hands and knees; and even then I scraped ever such a lot of skin off my back; then you have to be nailed on a red board with four arms, with a great gold circle in the middle, and that hurts you dreadfully. Then they make you swear the most solemn things you ever heard of, how you would be faithful to the Fairy Prince, and live for nothing but to know him better and better. So the nails stopped hurting, because, of course, I saw that I was really being married, and this was part of it, and I was as glad as glad;”

    So until you get to the married part, if you haven’t done the Work in the previous spheres, you may have more hag experiences as the skin is scraped on your back.

    Also, as you progress in the Work, you begin to interact with the spirits more, and you get a few that hang around you. They tend to scare away the more aggressive spirits, wake you up before anything can happen, or just beat the shit out of the hungry ghosts that dare to infiltrate your sphere. Depends on the familiars you attract and work with.

  • Microsoft Never Heard of Neuromancer?

    Microsoft is looking for help developing applications for the home computer using the Kinect. They have the hardware interface designed, but one article I read that I can’t find now suggested that they needed help coming up with ways to use the Kinect as a human machine interface. So they’re offering start ups support if they’re going to be developing new ways to use the Kinect in the PC environment.

    I would just like to say… Neuromancer much? Build the fucking deck! And a wet jack. We’re already living in the dystopian corporate culture Gibson so bleakly predicted in Neuromancer, we might as well get the fucking tech that goes with it.