Check out the latest post from the Bone Singer. 

In the Astral Warrior’s Handbook, I talk about making a talisman that you can use to open a portal to the Astral Realm simply by sitting comfortably in your chair and holding it in your hand while you mutter arcane Hebrew words that speak of the Intelligency of the Intelligencies of the Moon.

It functions as a portable vortex that you can open and close whenever you want to. It’s convenient for people who want to do a lot of astral magic, but don’t necessarily want to open a full time permanent vortex to the astral planes in their bedrooms.

These talismans are relatively simple to make. I used a herkimer diamond, and worked with the Intelligence of the Moon. I used the Modern Angelic Grimoire technique to conjure the Intelligence, and then set up the talisman so it would be triggered by speaking the name of the Intelligence. It’s a pretty simple ritual, and everything you need to make your own is online for free.

However, if you don’t have the time, or maybe Hermetic conjure magic isn’t your forte, or you simply would rather have one made by a professional who’s done it before successfully, I’m offering these talismans for $45 $75*. They will come with instructions on consecration (over the period of a full cycle of the Moon), as well as the Talisman Maintenance and Operations Manual.

A long, long time ago, I started writing up a book I called The Astral Warrior for fun. In it I was planning on throwing out all those concerns about accomplishing the Great Work, all that fuddy duddy old dusty musty grimoire bullshit, and just having fun talking about the joys of Astral Magic, romping about the astral plane fighting demons and saving the world.

And it is joyful. I love it. It’s like being a super hero in your own comic book. All those Neil Gaiman Sandman comics that talk about the land of Dream? Yeah, it’s like that. All the time. Beautiful stuff up there.

But as I was writing it up, I realized that I use astral magic every day. It’s an intricate part of the Great Work. I talk a lot more about strategy and approach these days, and when I talk tech I talk about conjuring and seals and such, but I’ve overlooked the fundamental basic stuff that makes it all stick together, the Astral Magic part of it.

Every time I conjure a spirit into a crystal, I’m gazing into the ball, but my third eye is wide open on the astral plane, where I can see and sense the spirits better, more clearly. When I’m doing a tarot card reading, the story line comes clear in the Astral, where I see the events indicated on the cards unfolding in the client’s world. When I’m doing cleansing and purification, initiations, or lifting curses for my clients over the internet, it’s the Astral realm that provides me with the ability to direct the magical effects around the world, bringing blessings, success, and victory to those with the balls to claim it on their behalf.

And every day at work, I’m keeping an eye on the Astral plane to get a feel for the currents in the air, to keep track of politics, to catch warning signs of imminent danger, or discord before it can manifest as something unpleasant for me personally. When I’m stuck in traffic, I’ll lift my awareness and see what’s blocking the flow, and see what I can do to make it better so things move more quickly (usually applied Mercury, in some form). When I’m trying to keep a low profile, I weave a glamour in the astral and cloak myself in it. When I want to influence someone my way, I slip into the astral and give them a nudge toward agreeing with me.

Astral magic is a part of all my magical acts. It’s everywhere!

So I wrote up the Astral Warrior’s Handbook. I think it’s entertaining, but it contains a whole lot of really useful information, and a technique for creating an on-demand portal to the astral realm whenever you need to using a bit of Aggripinian magic that might be a bit baroque, but is damned useful.

A lot of the things I touch on in this book are things that you can do much better if you’re also doing the magic I’ve been doing for years. The Gates Rites prepare you for this, as do the initiatory conjurations of the Archangels from the Modern Angelic Grimoire. Students of the Red Work Courses will be in a good position to utilize the techniques in this book, as will folks of other traditions.

The Table of Contents is provided below as an overview of what you can expect in this handy guide:

1 Astral Warriors ……………………………………. 3
2 The Astral Realm……………………………………. 4
2.1 Developing the Astral Faculty of the Mind …………… 5
2.2 Vortex Creation ………………………………….. 6
2.2.1 Opening the Vortex ……………………………… 7
3 Taking Form ……………………………………….. 9
4 Types of Astral Magic ……………………………… 11
4.1 Sniffing Out Magical Attacks ……………………… 12
4.2 Snooping and Spying ……………………………… 14
4.3 Reading People’s Hearts and Minds …………………. 16
4.4 Cleansing and Healing ……………………………. 17
4.5 Combat …………………………………………. 19
4.6 Manipulation ……………………………………. 22
5 Astral Magic in the Great Work ……………………… 23

The book is going for $11.95, my new favorite price to charge for eBooks. It’s 29 pages of stuff to do in the Astral Realms to get ahead and have some fun.

And for the Google Checkout users:

And please let me know if the buy now buttons don’t work. Sometimes I have issues.

I’m selling more magickal stuff on my Products and Services page at my web site. This time I’m hoping to make some money off “Angel Conjuration Kits.” Everything you need for Love, Wealth, Health, Career Advancement, or Psychic development. That’s all I’ve got so far.

I’m debating putting up something to do with magickal protection from attack, an Angelic equivalent to an Uncrossing rite, but I haven’t decided what would be safest for the most people in my audience. I’d use Saturn and Mars personally, but I don’t know where you all are at with Mars or Saturn, and I wouldn’t want to set off a series of unfortunate events in your life.

Oh, and for the record, the Wealth rite is based on my Fourth Pentacle of Jupiter from the Key of Solomon rites. They’ve gone really well so far. Two days into it, and we’ve already got an increase of income to show for it.

Right now, we’re in the Jewish mystical week between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the High Holidays. I’m not Jewish, but I’m human, and the High Holidays are meaningful in a human context that applies to me even though I’m a Hermetic Christian.

On Rosh Hashanah, I took the time to remember where I was a year ago, and where I fucked up, and who I fucked over this year. This week I’m repenting and atoning where necessary, and planning the year to come. On Yom Kippur I’m doing a Saturn rite to seal the plan in place, and then I’ll be traveling to the spirit realm throughout the year to get help and support in implementing the plan.

In figuring out my plan, I went back to basics. Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here? What do I want? What has to happen to get me what I want? What spiritual aid will be most appropriate?

I am a human being, made in the Image of God. I am a magician, called to move between the spiritual and material realms to gain power and insight, to take my place as a manifestation of the Divine and resume my proper role of Creator and Maintainer of my world. I am directly responsible for most of what I experience. I am responsible for my reactions to the things I experience that are not direct manifestations of my decisions, thoughts, and actions. The things I experience this year will be the results of the things that I have done and will do, mostly.

I am the nexus point of the spiritual and material realms. Through me the world I experience is created. In the material realm, the Realm of Elements, the Ideas in the Mind of God take shape and form, the spiritual powers that contributed to the fleshing out of the Idea are reflected in matter. In the spirit realm, I am in all the heavens at the same time, in communion with my spiritual brothers and sisters. I am in a world in motion, where the powers and forces I deal with in the spiritual realm are at play. I am in the realm of the Effect, experiencing my spiritual and material realities from a constantly moving reference point of consciousness that travels across space and time under the guise of “now.”

And most of what I experience already happened a few milliseconds before I became aware of it enough to react.

I am here to create and maintain my world. I gain the wisdom and power to do so through my spiritual practices. I get clues about the future through divination and direct revelation. I get clues about what I need to be focusing on from my desires, and my interests. I get clues about where my next projects will lie from my inspiration, my Muse, my Genius.

As for my plans, and what spiritual aid is necessary to accomplish them, well, you’ll just have to wait and see. Let’s just say this coming year is going to be a lot of fun.

Heh, Jason forever cracks me up. At Crucible, he had a tinge of jealousy because he and Andrieh were all over the place describing their paths, and I was able to sum it up by saying I kept to Agrippa.

But as I recently mentioned, I do chakra work too. And a lot of my spiritual understanding is heavily influenced by Crowley. And Taoism. And I did Eckankar and Soul Travel too. When he mentioned that I was all, Sugmad! Good times! And I’ve done GD stuff, and Modern Magic, and ADF druidry, and Celtic Wicca. I’ve been an Erisian Mystic, ever so much more advanced and understanding than those stupid Discordians. Chaos Magic? Well, yeah. Rootwork? Maybe sometimes, something similar. I use the oils made by root workers. I’m really fond of the charms of Pow Wow. I’m into charismatic Christian Kerygma magic, and I make use of various Catholic stuff in most of my rites these days.

My main goal is to accomplish the Rainbow Body of Dzogchen and become a Powerful Dead, like the Egyptians did.

But at Crucible, I was presenting an overview of using Hermetic Magic, based on Agrippa, to rule your world. So I kept it to that. It summed me up for the purposes of that particular space and time.

We’re all more than a label can cover. I like “Magician” because it fits well enough, but I firmly believe all labels are lies, and no word can accurately and fully communicate the Idea it represents fully. Words are shit, but they’re the best thing we have to communicate with.

The Detroit Lions have sucked donkey shit for years in terms of being a professional football team.

Here’s their record:

Year  Wins-Losses
1998     5-11
1999     8-8
2000     9-7
2001     2-14
2002     3-13
2003     5-11
2004     6-10
2005     5-11
2006     3-13
2007     7-9
2008     0-16
2009     2-14
2010     6-10

You’ll note that the last time they even won more games in a season than they lost was in 2000.

Then some British kabalist, with as much interest in
American football as any proper British man should have, picks the
goddamned Detroit Lions to run a series of experiments on. “A Lion has Roared” he calls it.

In the last four games, the Lions have won, and won hard. They’re facing the Bears next week, and they’re favored to win. It’s still early in the season, but right now the Lions are tied with the Packers for the lead in their division. In my opinion, that’s pretty unbefuckinglievable.

I’m watching this experiment with a great deal of interest. I’m looking forward to seeing the results at the end of the season.

Sports though? Really? What has the wins/losses of the Detroit Lions have to do with magicians? Fuck, if you don’t know the answer to that one, shame on you. Simon Tomasi’s blog is “Trainee Golem Builder.” He’s in training. He’s experimenting, practicing. He’s taken on a project that can have pretty obvious results. He’s testing his skills, flexing his magical muscles. He’s learning how to influence the world.

He picked something he doesn’t really give a shit about (I don’t think), American Football. It might not seem like a big deal, but Detroit’s going through some major shit. They don’t have a lot to be proud of right now. They don’t have a lot, period. They’re broke and desperate, the Somalia of the United States. A successful home team can be a morale booster that slops over into all aspects of the city’s economy, crime, and future expansion. Every win brings a little bit of joy to Michiganders who have been consistently disappointed for a decade in their team’s performance, in their treatment by the unions and the auto manufacturing companies, and their government. The indirect consequences of a winning season in Detroit could be huge.

Well begun, sir. And good luck.

A fabulous time indeed!

I had one of the best weekends of my magical career this weekend. I finally got to meet Jow and Deb, excellent people, and I had a really interesting conversation or two with Andrieh Vitimus. I got to meet Kenaz at long last and hear him speak. Totally different than anticipated, still totally inspiring. I met Frater Servitor Lucem and his lovely wife Lavanah after years of correspondence and exchanged magic over the distances, and I am so relieved to tell you he is much better looking in real life than in his online pictures. He sent me a picture once that scared my son. I think he had a Palpatine lens on that camera.

I had long and interesting conversations with one of my Gents for Jupiter fellow members (who also happens to be among my top favorite students) and her wife, and she’s awesome. Truly. I bet you solid money she’s the only one of my students who could draw Kammael’s seal from memory. Except maybe Victor. Absolutely brilliant.

There were several logistical issues that came up for me. Traveling plans will be better planned in the future. And I will hopefully not forget my laptop next time. Thanks Mr. Miller for letting me use yours. And thanks Mr.s Salem for introducing me to DropBox, which allowed me to have my presentation all available when I needed it instead of stuck on a hard drive two and a half hours away.

Perhaps the highlight of my trip was getting to sit in on three of Jason Miller’s classes. I think it was three, anyway, the details are already fading into a blur of pleasant enjoyment and good times. Ok, two and a panel I shared with him. And we finally got to sit and talk for almost an hour uninterrupted. I plan to do that with him more frequently.

I’ve gotten to see Jason speak publicly four times now, and I’ve gotten to compare his teaching style to my own and those of other presenters. If you ever get a chance to attend a Jason lecture, you should make every effort to go. He drives the main points home without being an ass. Highly enjoyable, enlightening even. 

I was nervous, but probably shouldn’t have been. I wanted a noobier audience for my presentation than I got, it turned out to be the people I didn’t need to cover basics with, so half my presentation was something I could have skipped and moved on to the meat of daily practice and beyond.

Quick note on if you’re the only presenter there in a tie: Don’t be surprised when the conference members ask you when desert and coffee will be served, the only other people in the hotel wearing ties were, after all, waiters. Still, I think it was necessary for me to wear one. For personal reasons.

Oh, and the final lesson I learned: an hour and a half is not long enough to cover the entire Great Work and the role of the magician. I figured I’d have that bit done in half an hour and we’d have plenty of time to talk about projection and strategy. By the time I got to the Strategy part, I was reduced to… “Read Jason’s book, and do it, it works.”

Feh.

Anyway, there is video, and if it’s as rough as I think it will be, fuck you you don’t get to see it. I was rushed on the parts I wanted to take my time with.

But the good news is, now that I’ve presented publicly a few times, I’m more comfortable standing up in front of a camera and giving lessons in person. Expect video to play a stronger role in RO stuff in the future. So much fun.

A magician friend is going through the painstaking process of putting the gods of a particular pantheon onto the Golden Dawn Tree of Life, correlating the deities from the myths to the sephira. I couldn’t resist giving her some good natured shit over the process, but it was all in fun.

I’m opposed in principle to the idea that you can take all the gods of any pantheon and plug them into the Tree of Life and come up with a one-for-one match up that is, on its own, a standalone meaningful thing. I don’t like that kind of solipsistic eclecticism. You end up with stupid shit like “Celtic Thelema” when you try to do that kind of thing.

Back in the 80s and 90s, there was a boom in the pulp fiction occult publishing industry that was made up of basically taking one nationality’s approach to divinity and plugging it into the GD-Ceremonial Magick-based template of Wicca. Crafting a Wiccan Tradition by Raven Grimassi comes instantly to mind, a “how to rip off a culture and still get mediocre results” handbook. We got his Book of the Holy Stregha (Italians gots Wicca!) that way, which stands right up there in my esteem with Dancing with Dragons (Dragons gots Wicca!) and Faery Wicca (Faeries gots Wicca!).

Now I’m sure some people have gotten great and incredible life changing awesome results using Faery Wicca or Dragon Wicca. Sweet! Good on ya!

But I think the traditions and lore would provide a more meaningful experience with the divine and its manifestations if it were approached from within its original context, or as close to it as you can get. I think the fey in particular are a tribe of spirits that need to be handled with a great deal more respect and protective eyewear than is generally recommended. And dragons… I mean, come on. There are no “dragons of the quarters”.

That said, there is still a great deal of value in mapping out pantheons on the Tree of Life. I make fun of the GD a lot because most of it is shit, but there are things in the system that are marvelous. Take this post
by Nick Farrell for example. I read through the first few paragraphs
with my usual meh, more GD blah blah blah, but it’s Nick, so at least it
will be said well, and then about halfway through I’m sitting back
going, “Oooooo, pretty!”

The Tree becomes your sorting system, a set of fixed definitions that you can compare to the deities of a culture to get insight into your own interpretation of them. As long as you remember that the correspondences you’re mapping out are your interpretations based on your understanding, it’s useful If you start saying “Cthulhu IS the Intelligence of Netzach!” you’re in for some cognitive dissonance.

But the exercise itself makes you think about the entities you’re mapping out, makes you consider them, contemplate them, and probably research them a lot more. You find things that reveal aspects of both the entities AND the Tree of Life that you might not have considered before. Aspects of deities that don’t fit the apparent standard definitions of the sphere may be giving you clues to look for in other entities associated with the sphere. Cthulhu’s propensity to eat cultists, for example, can give you insight into those aspects of Venus that relate to death and decay that get missed when you’re focusing on the procreation aspects.

As a technique to get more information, more thought about the relationships between the gods and your own understanding, it’s beautiful. It’s like reading the Orphic Hymns to get an insight into the Planetary Intelligences. It doesn’t mean the gods of the planets are the same thing as the Intelligences, but it grants you nuance in your own relationships with them that you might otherwise miss.