So in the spirit pot post, I forgot to mention that “spirit pots” are a tool that comes from the ATRs, living traditions that have a lot in common with the system I use. There’s a harmonic between the grimoires of the Renaissance and the living ATRs today. Some ATRs use the same grimoires I use, in fact. Some use grimoires that I don’t use, but were around when the grimoires I use were around, like the St. Cyprian text. I believe it could be argued that the ATRs incorporated the grimoire traditions of the Renaissance, at least in part, and I think there have been periods of time between now and the 15th century where the only place grimoire magic has been performed has been in the ATRs, and maybe some small Dutch communities scattered across the Appalachians.

So, you know, respect to the ATRs.

The Hermetic practices I use are the syncretic result of the beliefs of Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, and Israel bumping elbows in the first few centuries AD. My personal practices are the condensation of the Hermetic beliefs as they manifested in the 15th century. I draw from manuscripts and papyri that have as much or more missing as they have present. Getting the grimoires into a working tradition takes ingenuity, insight, and intuition. Fortunately, it’s guided by the spirits we work with, and they show us how to breathe life into some things that are only mentioned in passing in different places.

Vessels used to house spirits are mentioned in a few places in my studies of grimoire practices and the Greek Magical Papyri. The story of Aladdin’s Lamp comes from the Persian magical tradition, which has stories of spirits living in not only lamps, but the rings and amulets more familiar to grimoire readers today. The Lemegeton has the famous Brass Vessel to trap the spirits, which shows up in Shaharazad’s tale of the man who found the demons Solomon bound in a brass vessel washed up on the shore. The demiotic texts make use of a vessel for divination that you draw the gods into with various suffumigations. Mystics and magicians of medieval times were said to have so many oracular brass heads that people didn’t even think there was any magic related.

There’s not a lot of info on how the vessels were used, but for rings and amulets of similar functionality, appropriate herbs and stones were gathered and consecrated at propitious times, and put together using the same methods I described in the “spirit pot” post. But there’s something that should be noted about these vessels I’m talking about in my Hermetic practices:

They aren’t Spirit Pots of any ATR. They are not nganga from the Palo tradition. They aren’t ancestor spirit pots. They are vessels used to communicate with spirits that function as high end talismans. My instructions are an adaptation in harmony with the spirit conjure work I do in my Hermetic practices. They are not instructions for performing authentic ATR practices, and using them doesn’t make you a hoodoun, voudoun, santero, or palero in any way, shape or form.

What I’ve done is taken bits and pieces of different aspects of my Work, Aaron Leitch’s inspirational notion that the brass vessel of the Lemegeton and the Nganga of Palo were related, and I’ve put together something that works nicely in my practices. My Hermetic practices. And it works really well, for a reason.

Early on in my work with my Holy Guardian Angel, I had the good fortune of being guided to the Dehn translation of the Book of Abramelin. I read this book at a key point in my magical metamorphosis. I had been reading Pow Wow, or Long Lost Friend, and I’d gotten my hands on a receipt book from a hoodoo worker. I’d been doing Angel magic using the Trithemius method for a good minute too, and conjuring the spirits of the Lemegeton’s Goetia. I was doing a whole lot of conjure work, and actually doing the things the spirits led me to do to work with them. I was talking to Paleros, Santeria initiates, folks who were at least claiming to be initiates into Hatian voodoo, Curanderismos, Jake Stratton-Kent with his translation of the GV and during the time he put together Geosophia, and a couple people into things I don’t talk about, and we were comparing notes about what we learned and the kinds of things the spirits have us do.

Then I read the Dehn translation, which included things the Mathers’ manuscript had lacked, and it read just like the receipt book and Pow Wow, and it was exactly the kind of thing I was doing under the tutelage of the spirits. I mean, exactly the same kind of techniques. It was like everything came together all at once. The key manuscript for gaining Knowledge and Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel was a receipt book used by a conjure magician who would have been right at home with my circle of practicing practical magicians.

This put ceremonial magic itself into a whole new light. I was able to read Agrippa and see it as a living, breathing system recorded by a savant who wandered Europe gathering hermetic lore. I saw the tables of correspondences of herbs and planets as the detailed ingredients list for putting together sunthemata, talismans that brought together the harmony of Sacred Geometry, the Intelligence of the Spirits by Name and Seal, and the things of the plant, animal, and mineral realms that all corresponded to the Idea that was manifesting as the Intelligence, the Spirit, the physical materials, and the situations I wished to influence.

I saw it all in a big harmonious flash, realizing that the folk magic of Russian Orthodox and Crowley’s primary goal for magicians were different faces of the same magical practices. I saw a single magical tradition that spanned from thousands of years BC to the present day, a tradition that includes the ATRs practiced in South and Central America as much as it includes the Renaissance Karcists, the 1st century Hermeticists, and the Ancient Greek Goes. We do the same things, gathering flowers, lighting candles, chanting, meditating, praying, orating, exorcising, and making talismans of various types to act as physical manifestations for the spiritual powers we work with to create our world.

Our traditions have always enriched one another.

Some folks are sensitive about it. The way the different traditions have nourished each other has almost always been through the conquering and subjugation of one people-group and their culture by another people-group and their culture. The conquering culture comes in and redistributes the conquered culture’s property in ways that are most beneficial to the conquering culture. The oppressed culture gets screwed. Over time, the cultures blend with varying degrees of homogeneity, and become something different than either culture was before one conquered the other. The conquered resent the conquerors. Some oppressed people feel like anyone from the conquering culture who expresses interest in their beliefs is pillaging the intellectual property the same way the conquerors pillaged the personal property.

Think about your magician friends though. I was talking to Jason Miller the other day, and he told me about a meditational technique he uses and showed me how to do it. I used it just last night in my Thursday rites. Aaron Leitch’s wife is an initiate of an ATR, and it was through his exposure to her practices and discussions with her that he made the link between his Solomonic experiences and her ATR experiences. I talk to Fr. AIT about Hoodoo and Alchemy, and we exchange techniques and tools through our blogs and personal exchanges.

Magicians of the conquering and conquered cultures did the same throughout history. The Egyptians and the Greeks had a lot of conversations about philosophy and magic, and they worked well together. The politics didn’t interfere, the magicians made use of their circumstances to exchange information and technology.

Usually it’s done in a respectful way, sometimes not so much, and there’s always a group of people from each culture who think the result of the syncretism is shit and only their original pure system was worthwhile, and never mind that their original pure system is the result of the last time they conquered someone or were conquered themselves.

I try to be respectful of the traditions of others, because everyone doesn’t see it as a single system that spans all space and time, with different dialects in place in different times and places. But there are more practical reasons for being respectful too.

You can’t always just drag and drop, copy-paste shit from different systems together and get a harmonious end result. I called the vessels “spirit pots” and probably shouldn’t have, because that implies they “are the same thing” as the spirit pots used in ATRs, and they really aren’t. The creation of spirit pots in ATRs is a specialized process, and there are rules that need to be followed, traditions that deserve to be treated respectfully. Taking my instructions and applying them to your Ancestor spirits in an ATR kind of way could be dangerous, I don’t know. I doubt it’s any more dangerous than Balthazar warned in his post, but I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong before, once or twice.

And look, seriously, listening to me and doing what I talk about can hurt you, because for all I’ve done and accomplished and experienced, I’m not perfect, omniscient, or omnipotent. Totally fallible here.You’re getting information about doing magic that changes the world from a blog on the internet. From a guy who thinks he’s right about everything, even though he’s got years of failures, explosions, and all kinds of scars covering his hands from playing with fire and metals provign that sometimes he fucks up. And I’m sure I’ve got some raised toxic metal levels in my blood from all the talismans I make in my garage.

I don’t tell you to do anything I don’t do or haven’t done, so you can at least rest assured that anything you suffer from my instructions, I’m suffering too. I’m sure that will help make you feel better when your world is falling apart.

Now Balthazar accused me of dumbing down the spirit pot thing for Western consumption. I was hurt by that, as it wasn’t my intent, and I thought he knew me better than that. But I can see where he’s coming from, I didn’t say all this stuff in the original post, he doesn’t understand how it all came together for me. And maybe even knowing how it all came together won’t matter to him because he’s worried that I’m going to screw someone’s life up by giving them advice that doesn’t work in his experience, or he thinks I’m ripping off the ATRs or something.

My whole approach to this process is to present the Great Work in an approachable way, taking it from the realm of the impossible dream/interesting theory to the living reality. Some folks would see that as “dumbing it down for mass consumption,” and that’s their right to see it that way.

A reminder though, my intent in writing this blog is to get you to personally do magic and interact with spirits because the results will be you personally taking strides along the path of the Great Work. The sooner we all get it done, the sooner we can stop incarnating and suffering, or so I hope. If getting you to do magic is dumbing it down for mass consumption, so be it. I’m guilty as sin.

Ok, so one of my clients asked me what to do with the Evil Daimon name that you can generate from your natal chart using a table of pretty simple correspondences. I explained to her that the only thing I do with mine is bind him in lead to keep him from making my life much worse than it already is. It also keeps those who know when and where I was born from being able to use it to work mischief against me. She asked me to encase hers in lead for her, and for low low rates, I quickly agreed.

It was not easy. Back in the day, I used a log to make a little Genius altar kind of thing. I made a place of reverence for the Genius, and I hollowed out the base a bit and sealed my Evil Daimon in lead in there. It wasn’t that difficult, I put down a layer of lead, tossed in the name of the spirit engraved in steel, and then put down more lead. The steel tried to float to the surface, but I was able to take care of that.

For the client, I thought I’d just encase the steel with her evil daimon name engraved in it in some lead. Damn near impossible, man. I had it totally encased once, and when I went to engrave the seal of Cassiel over it, a chunk of lead went flying and revealed the name of the spirit a bit. Just enough to leave it a toe hold in her life.

So I went back to what worked for me. I took some old wooden disks I have lying around the garage and glued five of them together into a cylinder and clamped it together. They’re a couple inches wide or so, and maybe an eighth or a quarter of an inch thick. More toward an eighth, I suspect.

Ignore the mess. Seen here: Disks, clamp, glue, and the solder iron stand that I use for the wood burning. And some other stuff.

When the glue dried, I hollowed out a space big enough for the piece of steel with the evil daimon’s name engraved in it, and then I melted some lead into the crevice, filling it about half way. Then I put in the spirit name, and covered it in more melted lead. It tried to float up to the surface, but I was ready for it this time, and held it under the molten lead with a thin metal wire, and yeah, it got hot, but not that hot.

I made another one to demonstrate the hollowing technique. This was after I woodburned the client’s, seen on the left. The Big fishing weight is my lead source. And it really is lead, I checked. These days they sell tin ones, so you have to be careful.

When it had sealed up, I took the metal wire out, and hit the whole thing with the blowtorch, just enough to melt the surface, filling in the hole left by the wire. Then I melted more lead over that, and when it cooled, engraved the seal of Cassiel over it, in a Saturn hour on a Saturday after conjuring him for his assistance in the matter.

Man’s best friend.

When it cooled, I glued another disk over the lead, and woodburned in the Secret Seal of Solomon from the Lemegeton’s Goetia, this time under the auspices of Mars and Saturn combined.

First I drew out the Secret Seal in pencil. I can’t free-hand woodburn it in from memory, I’m not that good.

Oh, did I mention I bound the evil daimon to the steel using Mars in the first place? Should have mentioned that. I carefully conjured the evil daimon into the steel piece bearing its name AFTER I conjured my HGA and Kammael of Mars, and bullied it into the metal where it didn’t really like to be at all. I needed some help to get it to stay there from Kammael. Oh, and when it wasn’t in lead in wood for a couple days, I kept it in a Triangle of Art where it couldn’t bother anyone.

Here it is woodburned, before the stain.

When all was said and done, I stained it a nice dark color and let that dry, and then followed up with some clear poly to give it a thick rich gleaming coat. Well, I tired, but the stuff I had was the weak sauce. It sealed the thing, but it didn’t give it the luster I was hoping for. It still turned out beautiful, in my opinion, but see for yourself:

Finished Spirit Trap

The client was very pleased, even though it took a month to get to her.

If you’re interested, the steps are all here, and it’s not that hard, except getting the Genius/Evil Daimon names, and Quaero Lux had an online name generator somewhere that made it pretty easy, if you’ve got some astrological skillz. It took an hour or two of actual work, and a few days of waiting for the glue to dry, and the stain to dry, and the poly to dry.

If you want me to do it for you, I’ll do it for $125. You must be able to provide your full birth details though, where you were born, what time you were born, and the date you were born. I have to have all three. I tried to rectify a chart once for a client, and failed utterly and miserably. That was one of the very few times I refunded a client their money too, I failed so bad. So if you don’t have the info, don’t ask for one, I’m serious.

[Edit 02/21/2012: I’m not making these for people anymore.]
And honestly, do it yourself if you can. It takes some know how and some initiation, but mostly it takes the willingness to try.

This technique works for just about any kind of spirit that’s bothering you, too, not just the natal Evil Daimon. It seals them off from affecting you in your kingdom. Don’t go thinking you can trap YHVH with something like this, it doesn’t work that way, but it does work to keep them out of your business.

Hey fellow Blogger bloggers, have you seen the new draft.blogger.com site? I’m loving it.

Ok, I’m having a total shit day here at work. I’m totally feeling Martial and want to kick some ass, but it’s just not an option. I haven’t had time to answer emails or blog or anything lately. Kingdom management is a pain in the ass. I need a break.

So fuck that presentation for a bit. I’m blogging.

Today, Dhr. Balthazar wrote a post about working with the dead, and he mentioned the following:

my warning was mainly directed to those wishing to create spirit pots, spirit dolls, bundles and so forth for the dead. This is a somewhat more nuanced form of muerto work, during which things can in fact go wrong. Trickster spirits love containers. I mean they LOVE, containers. 

That got me thinking about my experience with Spirit Pots, and how the techniques I learned help mitigate that kind of thing, so you get a post about how to work with Spirit Pots safely and effectively, because I can bang it out quick and I need to think about something relaxing, peaceful, and centering, and nothing’s better for that than some good old applied hermetics.

Spirit Pot Overview

A spirit pot is basically a high-end talisman. It is a physical object you’ve dedicated to a spirit that becomes its physical manifestation point in your world. It is a portal through which the spirit sends the forces it uses to influence your world. It is a communication point that you use to send your requests and offerings into its realm, wherever that may be.

By giving a spirit a physical manifestation point in your life, you’re granting it your authority to change your manifest reality. You’re giving it more power too, because now it has a foothold in your world. It’s a really potent way to bring a spirit’s influence into your life, and it guarantees that you will experience the forces the spirit represents first hand.

The spirit pot also functions as a mini-altar. You can put whatever items into the pot that relate to the spirit. This seems to give the spirit more power to affect your life, more influence over events that transpire. Anything you put into the pot will affect the way the spirit manifests in your life. Things in harmony with its essence help it function better in your world. Soil from areas you want it to influence extend its power to those areas.

The spirit pot is, in many ways, the body of the spirit you’re working with. You feed it, clean it, and take care of it the way you take care of your own body. You can put it wherever you want it to have more influence, or you can put it on your altar to grant it influence over all things that manifest in your life.

The Spirit Pot Itself

Spirit pots can be made out of any container. I like brass vessels because they have a mercurial nature by virtue of being a blended metal, and Mercury/Hermes plays a big role in my Hermetic pursuits (as you can imagine). They can be glass boxes, craft boxes, cigar boxes, clay pots, tea kettles, decorative metal bowls, silver, or organic woven baskets, or even old oil lamps like Ali Baba found. They can be any kind of vessel or container.

The closer you can get the container materials to the essence of the spirit, the better. Iron pots for Martial spirits would be acceptable, but they’re no good for ancestor spirits, or most terrestrial genius loci spirits.

The form should be suited to the purpose too. Old brass lamps make sense because they are designed to turn fuel into emanated light. They project what’s contained within in a useful way into the world outside the lamp. Very excellent metaphor.

Boxes are used for storage, so if you’ve got a box you’re using, make sure you leave the lid open when you want the spirit active. Round bowls or pots can be used, but circles can confuse and trap a spirit.

And that brings up another interesting point, geometric shapes have spiritual properties. Circles and squares mean something to spirits. Agrippa has a chapter on it, but I don’t have time to look it up at the moment. It’s important to consider though. Square boxes make sense to me because there are four elements, and if I make a spirit pot, it’s to get the spirit access to my material realm. Circles also make sense because they provide a continuous contact point with the rest of the world, projecting in all directions at once. You can get hexagonal and octagonal decorative vessels that might have some numerological correspondence to the spirits of the system you’re working as well.

As you can see, the type of vessel you pick is going to depend a lot on the spirit you’re working with, so before you even begin picking out the type of pot, it’s a really good idea to to get to know the spirit you’re making a pot for.

The Spirit

You should have an established relationship already, and have worked with it more than a couple of times before you start moving towards a dedicated talismanic object that you’re going to give that kind of footprint in your life.* 

When you’ve worked with a spirit a few times, you pick up its preferences and its resonance. You’ll know what types of things to include, and if you’re not sure, you can ask them directly. Be warned though, there’s not much that you’ll offer a spirit for their pot that they’ll turn down. They can use anything, as long as it isn’t totally opposed to their nature, and they can even use some of that too.

Also, when you get to know a spirit first, you’ll be drastically reducing the chances of getting a trickster spirit. You’ll know right away if the spirit that takes up residence in the pot isn’t the same one you’ve worked with before. There are other mitigating techniques to include, but this is the best defense against getting the wrong spirit I’ve found.

Listen to the spirit when you’re picking out the vessel and the things to include. I go to the goodwill, flea markets, garage sales, and this one antique shop where this guy buys stuff from estate sales to pick out my spirit pot, and I take a second to picture the spirit’s seal, call it by name, and ask its opinion on the pot I’m picking out for it. It only takes a second, and again, you’ll have an established relationship with the spirit that grants you this kind of access to it before you start picking out pots. Can’t stress that enough.

What Goes in the Pot

When you’re gathering the stuff that goes inside, get the spirit’s opinion as you pick the stuff out. I like to shop at the local occult supply shoppe, and they have a wide assortment of crystals. When I pick out Jupiter stuff, I have a wide selection of blue stones available, for example, and I’ll ask the spirit I’m working with which one they prefer. The Lapis Lazuli I used in the Jupiter talismans was Lapis and not Azurite because that’s what they preferred at the time. Go shopping or gathering with your spirit, and make the spirit pot a cooperative venture from the very beginning.

I like to put together a wide variety of things for my spirit pots. I believe it needs soil from whatever grounds you want it to cover. Money pots should have dirt or stones from your local branch of your bank. Domination pots should have dirt from wherever you want to dominate, like your office, or the local Moose lodge or whatever. You can add dirt to the pot at any time after you make it, so don’t stress too much about getting something for any situation that might arise later before you begin. At the very least, you should add some soil from your own home if you want it to affect your daily life.

I like to include a stone that is holy to the entity in some way as well. Lapis, axurite, rose quartz, amethyst, whatever stones are appropriate to the spirit. I always toss in a herkimer diamond because I think they’re just funky. I’ve used orgone generators too, but these days not so much. I think some form of clear quartz is essential, because they are like crystallized light.

I also include incense that’s appropriate, usually in resin form. Powders work well too, and you can crumble up a stick incense if you like. Scent is important to spirits. It’s invisible, but you can sense it, and that’s a very spiritual quality. There are whole tables of perfumes and aromas that are pleasing to spirits in the grimoires for good reason.

Plants are also important to include. Flowers of the appropriate color, sweet smelling grasses, fragrant saps, and tobacco are always good. Herbs, leaves, vines, and seeds are all good to include. Dried fruit is seldom turned down, but you’ve got to remember to change it out once in a while.

As you go along with your pot, you’ll be adding and removing things to suit your current needs. When I needed Bune to work more actively, I put cayenne pepper in the pot to heat things up. For dream communications with the spirit, you can put in a small vial of lunar-consecrated water in it. This can be used to send specific visions to others as well, if you’re into that kind of thing. Just remember, whatever you do to others, they’ll do to you sooner or later.

Animal products are also things you can put in a pot. Alligator claws, eagle talons, bear teeth, small skulls, or whatever else you think is appropriate that fits in the pot can be used. Just remember, it’s like giving your spirit a familiar of its own to work with and through. Toss in a bear tooth, and don’t be surprised if your spirit starts sending you the spirit of the bear as a messenger, or manifesting through bear imagery in your daily life or dreams. Do you want your spirit to have a rattlesnake familiar? Think about that shit before you toss that neat rattle you got in Arizona as a kid in the pot.

Consecrating the Pot and its Ingredients

Ok, so you’ve gathered the stuff and you’re ready to put it all together. This is a big deal, and should not be treated lightly. Consider it the moment of conception, when you create a physical body for the spirit to inhabit. You’re putting the guts together inside the skin and breathing life into it, sort of. It’s very golemish, in a way, and you shouldn’t be surprised if your spirit pot grows legs and travels around. I never saw my Bune pot move, but it was often in places I didn’t recall putting it, and when I was ready to decommission it, it was stolen.

The first thing you’ll want to do is pick a good time for it. You’ll need a half hour or so set aside with no interruptions. I work mostly with planetary spirits, so I use planetary hours and days to pick my timing. For your pot, pick an auspicious time that resonates with the entity you’re calling.

Begin by consecrating the vessel to the spirit. What right do you have to consecrate the pot? Is it because you’re a human being made in the image of God and you are accepting your role as co-creator and therefore the pot will be consecrated because you say so? That’s how I do it, so I start with a prayer to the First Father, thanking him for the opportunity to create the world and the authority to do so. Then I conjure my HGA, and get him to help in the process, asking him to make sure the right spirit appears, and that the vessel is prepared according to its requirements. Then I conjure the spirit who is actually going into the pot, and make sure they’re present for the duration of the rite.

Then I cleanse the pot.

When you do the conjuration of the spirits using the Modern Angelic
Grimoire, there’s a part where you command the crystal to only allow the
spirits you’re calling in. You do something similar when you consecrate the pot. Talk to the pot itself, address the spirit
of the object, and tell it that it has been consecrated to the spirit,
tell it not to let any other spirit in, and seal it to the spirit
itself. I do this by basically sprinkling it with Holy Water while saying, “In the name of the father + Son + and Holy Spirit + I cleanse you and consecrate you to be the physical embodiment of [Spirit Name]. Let no other spirit enter, and serve the spirit well as its embodiment within my world.”

Next you mark up the vessel. I engrave the seal of the spirit and any related god-names on the outside of the pot using dremel tools for metal pots, or I use a paint pen. I like silver paint pens, and the spirits don’t complain. I know one guy who got decent results with a sharpie. Your mileage may vary.

You know, honestly, the best thing you can do for spirit work is to get all the right ingredients and time it all correctly, and make sure it’s all correct by whatever system you’re using, but if you can’t hit the center of the target, I’ve repeatedly found the spirits don’t give a shit. As long as you’re close, or in harmony, they are usually pretty ok with whatever you’ve got. that doesn’t mean you don’t try hard to make it as accurate as possible, and it doesn’t mean you’ll get the same quality of results if you cheat, but it’s better to have a paper origami box you made by hand written on with ball point pens than nothing at all.**

Next you consecrate the items. I anoint them with holy water (and usually abramelin oil too) and tell them they’re consecrated for the purposes of creating a harmonious vessel for the spirit.

Then you assemble the pot. Put all the stuff in the pot, and formally request that the spirit you’ve conjured enters into its vessel. Make a show of it, don’t be afraid to breathe life into the pot. It’s called exsufflation, breathing a spirit into a pot. “As I breathe into this pot, enter now this vessel and take up residence, and through it gain authority within my realm” blah blah blah. You know, make some shit up that sounds nice and embodies the intent.

Working with the Spirit Pot

Ok, so you’ve got the pot, it’s got a spirit in it, and it’s time to tap that spirit’s influence to get something you want. Go to the pot and conjure up the spirit and tell it what you want. Ask it if it needs anything added to the pot to help it out. Sometimes it will tell you how many candles to light nearby so the light falls on the pot, other times it will tell you what foods to leave on a plate near the pot.

Whenever you need its help, talk to it. Don’t be embarrassed, it’s there all the time and ready to hear you. Talk to it out loud, because you’ve given it a body. Thinking at it doesn’t change anything any more than thinking at a person in the room changes them. The more you learn to treat it as if it were the spirit, the more you’ll be able to do with it.

And don’t worry about those people who will think you’re crazy for talking to inanimate objects. I mean, you already qualify as insane in their eyes because you really believe you’re a magician with the power and destiny to change the world as you see fit. Fuck them and their sanity.

Ok, back to work. Have fun all!

* Remember, creating a spirit pot is granting a spiritual entity a physical form with the expectation that it will have more influence over your material realm. Think carefully about who you want to have access to your life, and don’t be surprised when they start using the influence you’ve granted them.

** Except when it’s not. Sometimes you fuck yourself royally taking short cuts or making substitutions in ignorance. Do your best, really, because it matters.

So, you know that smack down I knew was immanent by the way I was all convinced of my god-ness?

Yeah, it took less time than usual to manifest. No couple of weeks for me. Sigh.

At least I was at the beach the last couple of days, and have the bandwidth to endure.

“I’m really more of an “og” god.”

Wow, I didn’t expect to stir up any trouble with my last posts. Apparently I’ve left some Golden Dawn initiates all concerned though. Fr. Sincerus Renatus expresses his respectful opinion here. Morgan Drake Eckstein follows up here.

I think I addressed the concerns they express in the Follow up post, specifically in the last few paragraphs. The idea of enlightenment bombing your enemies is a very tricky ethical issue. It’s thorny. That statement I made about being a Christian and doing this kind of magic for their own good was drippingly sardonic on purpose. I don’t know if that came through strongly enough. My ironic wit perhaps doesn’t translate well across borders.

The warnings at the end are all about the consequences you face when you take it on yourself to “make someone better.” If you’re going to play god, you’d damned well better be at least a lower-case god, or it’s going to hurt.

It’s approaching hubris to think you’re at a point where you can determine where someone else is at in their path and what they need to do next, right?

Well…

You know those Hermetic Diagnoses I provide? It’s part of my job to know where people are at in their path as it relates to the planetary spheres. I’m a professional, and my clients tell me I’m damned good at it. I know where people are at, if I check, and I happen to have a lot of faith in my divination talents when it comes to this arena.

So yeah, as a matter of fact, I can tell where people are at and where they need to go. But that’s not all I did that got people upset. I had the audacity to send a punishing spirit, AND to then dare to put someone in the Alembic and start the fires below. How dare I take it on myself to mess with their spiritual destiny, their fate…

Well…

Fate. See, I’m in the flesh as I type this. I’m not just a spirit floating around with highly developed telekinesis powers that let me type without a body. I’m really human, ten fingers, ten toes, one nose. As a result of being in the flesh, the experienced Hermeticist will understand that I must have passed through the sphere of Saturn on my way down to the material realm. Consequently, I TOO am subject to Fate. I’m part of it, in fact. An agent of Fate. It’s my fate to suffer the shit talkers in life, but it’s also their fate to be in my kingdom, and to become the subjects of my god-practicing sessions.

Which brings us to another point. Do I think I’m God? Long time readers know I do not think I’m God. I’ve argued against that a lot. I’m part of the sum total that is God, but I am not all of it. I’m just part. I’m an individuated consciousness, I have a divine spark, but as long as I experience my existence from my point of view, I know I’m not God.

I am, however, made in his image. God made us, in my opinion, to experience his creation, and also to keep him company. We are like God. We are the answer to the question that is “Michael.” We’re little-g gods, made to participate in the creation and maintenance of the world the same way God did it, as outlined on the emerald Tablet. We take ideas, we speak them into being, we pass them through the Spheres and we create the world. We Work with our brothers and sisters in the cosmic hierarchy in maintaining and ruling our kingdoms. We are equipped through occult practice to meet the responsibilities of running our world as we see fit, in power.

The initiations we go through bring us wisdom as well as power. The wisdom keeps us from using the power wrong. The wisdom also comes from using the power wrong. Those warnings at the end about how much hypocrisy the universe will put up with? Yeah, that’s called “experience.” Painful experience that I wouldn’t trade for a life of luxury and wealth.

The nice thing about this kind of rite, this enlightenment bombing, is that it cannot succeed if it is outside of God’s will. Or the True Will of the person, or their Destiny or Fate or Karma or whatever. It is the kind of thing that if you try to do it and you ought not to, you will personally reap the rewards of the attempt instead of your intended victim.

And that’s a really good thing. I’m a “MOVE, or move me” kind of guy when it comes to obstacles. I’ve been around the block enough to know that I am not perfect. I know when I meet an obstacle or an ordeal that resorting to magic will help me, no matter what, because it will either move the obstacle, or it will teach me how to move around or even to use the obstacle to my advantage.

It might hurt. Initiations usually do, and it hurts like building muscles hurts. Painful, terrible to endure, it really sucks in the moment, but when the pain is gone you’re left with two things, power and the wisdom to use it.

I’ve been around the block a few times. I don’t think I’m a 9=2, or at Jesus’ level of ascended master. I don’t think that’s really necessary to accomplish my purpose here on Earth. I do know that if it is necessary, my life will unfold in a way that makes it inevitable. I’m not holding my breath though.

I do think I’m at Jesus’ level in some ways, but mostly in the ways he said I would be. “These miracles are nothing compared to the shit you’re going to be doing!” he said. Sort of. “Have I not said you’re a god?” He said that too. He also said we’re all children of God. Just like he is. He’s our brother, our big brother, the eldest, the First, but still an emanation of God, just like us. We have the same Dad, and Dad loves us all the same. We’re all as necessary as Christ. We all have just as important fates to fulfill. And we’re given the powers we need to accomplish our goals.

And the powers we receive are guides, too. You don’t get to conjure evil daimons if you’re not supposed to ever conjure them. That power exists for a reason. So far, I’ve found it exists primarily to cast evil spirits out of other people’s lives. It brings healing and peace of mind. But I also find in the Divine Pymander that the evil daimon is sent to the impious to afflict them until they return to the pursuit of their Source. And that’s all I did with my issue. I sent a spirit to afflict them in a minor way, and then I did what I could to bring them back to pursuing their Source.

It occurred to me to do this because it’s my fate that it would occur to me. I perform microcosmically the same functions God performs macrocosmically because I’m his microcosmic image. I take all this stuff we’re learning and studying and practicing seriously. I believe it. It has strong explanatory force. It makes sense.

And if I’m wrong, I’ll get slapped down, and I’ll emerge a better man for it. And that’s alright by me.