Ok, so I had this fast track to taking over the world and making it dance to my mad piping. It ran into some snarls along the way and was temporarily derailed by a momentary concern that should have been dealt with in better ways. My bad. Ooops and shit. Now that that’s taken care of, we’ll just be moving right along.

Things are… mmmm, Good. Beard stroking, warm beside the fire as the cold winds blow outside, enjoying a quality cigar and pondering the future as I listen pyromantically to the whispers of the flames as they dance across the embers. That kind of Good.

My Elemental Spheres have been balanced by some recent Work, and I’ve relearned some things about manifestation that I had forgotten lately. I’ve reclaimed a great deal of the things I’d let slip away in the Distracted Time, and as my Above has gotten sorted out, my Below has been keeping steady pace. Assuming I haven’t fucked anything up, in a few short weeks, I’ll be back where I was before things got screwy, and I’ll be able to pick up where I left off and move right along to the next phase of my plans…

Gee, it’s almost as if I brought about a purifying fire refining me and purifying my essence to better accomplish the Work.

Fuck, I hate this process sometimes. As far as world-views go, perhaps a cosmology that requires calcination as a precursor to massive achievement and reward leaves something to be desired. I would much rather have discovered that the secret methods manifestation and empowerment came from eating Kit-Kats and drinking Monster on the beach in a land where it never gets fucking freezing outside. Is it asking too much that my personal pleasure and instant access to infinite resources at whim be the key to global human transcendence forever without any suffering on my part at all, ever? Apparently.

Whatever, I’ve been through the fire, damnit, and I’m ready to reap the rewards. There had better be a fucking Red stone that turns everything to fucking gold when this shit works out. Signs indicate this is indeed the outcome, but if not, I will be kicking some ass.

Uhm.

Things are indeed getting better though. Inventory updated, progress noted.

Five Columbia students busted for selling drugs at three frat houses and dorms – NYPOST.com

A friend of mine posted on his Facebook status something about when you’re carrying around a Saturn bag, don’t be all shocked when you start feeling depressed and gloomy. Excellent advice!

One of the biggest dangers in magic, at least, right now as I write this because I’m thinking about it, is forgotten magic. You do a spell or make a talisman, or conjure up a spirit and ask it to do something, and then you go on about your life. Two weeks later when it’s starting to manifest, you’ve forgotten all about it and miss out on the opportunities you’ve engineered, or you’re not directing the forces you’ve put together into the original intent anymore.

When you make a talisman and start wearing it, like my friend above did, it begins influencing your sphere immediately, but the cumulative effects take a while to start manifesting. A luck talisman will start filling your sphere up with luck, but it’s like pouring hot water into a bowl of cold water. It takes a while to warm up, but if you keep the source flowing, keep pouring hot water into the bowl, eventually the bowl and the water in it will all be hot. A luck talisman is pumping luck into your sphere, but it can take a while to hit full potency.

With the Saturn bag, I doubt he started feeling gloomy and depressed all at once. I didn’t ask, but there are a lot of good reasons to carry around a Saturn bag. If you want occult wisdom, or longer life, or there’s something you’re working on shutting down and you could use a little more binding power in your actions, you can carry it around and direct the forces it’s emanating into your actions.

I do this by paying attention to what I’m doing. I picture the force in my mind as a sort of mini-star. It’s sending out light and other forms of radiation, and is also a gravity well, drawing things into orbit around it so that its effects can be regulated, the way the Sun’s solar effects are regulated on each of the planets in our solar system by the duration of the orbit and the distance from the sun.

It’s your job to direct these forces. I’ve made a Solar Talisman before and consecrated it to Michael, and put it on a shelf, and forgot all about it. The talisman was directing general Solar forces through the Michael seal right about into my brain as I sat in front of my bookshelf working. Mart of the seal was the symbol for Leo, and it wasn’t long before I began manifesting decidedly Leo-ish personality flaws. Being a Taurus, the influx of Leonine forces was strange and new and different. I was a Royal Pain in the Ass at that point, and it took people familiar with Leo issues to help me understand what was going on.

A little more direction of the forces was applied, and things got remarkably better. I had intended the talisman to fill my office with solar forces that would keep the parasitic spiritual Larvae accumulation under control. I didn’t have a lot of time to spend on maintenance, so I tried to automate it. I assumed that the Michaelian forces of the Sun would just automatically drive off the negative spirits, which it did, but I didn’t anticipate the other effects. So I had to take the steps to attune the forces more specifically.

We, being in the image of the First Father, create the same way he did. We use the Logos, we speak things into being. When you make a talisman, you consecrate it to a specific purpose, generally speaking. Whatever that purpose is, you set it in place by speaking it over the thing you’ve created. You draw on the appropriate symbols, taking the idea and giving it a symbolic form in the physical realm. A luck talisman may have an image of Mercury, the Caduceus, or the wheel of Fortune, something that directs the forces emanating from the sphere of power anchored on the talisman.

When you’re carrying something that is that specific in its final form, it puts out the forces it represents through those symbols. But a planetary talisman, or a talisman of a spirit is a pretty general thing, and you’ve got to be directing the forces it represents, otherwise it just fills your sphere, and like water, seeks the lowest point to manifest.

When you put on the talisman, tell it what you want it to do. Tell it the specific aspect of the forces it represents that you want it to manifest. While you’re wearing it, remember you’re wearing it. Every once in a while, repeat the intent you have in wearing it, and direct the forces represented to manifest in specific ways. Saturn, bind the efforts of [business man X] in this meeting, or Saturn, provide the wisdom to see what hidden forces are at work in this situation.

Likewise with spirit conjurations. When you start seeing your results manifest, it’s a good time to revisit the spirit and continue to work with it in the manifestation process. If you’ve got a job lined up after doing a ritual for prosperity, call it back up and talk to it about how you want things to go next. Get advice and give further direction.

Happy Thanksgiving Day to everyone celebrating it tomorrow.

I am thankful for my blog readers, every beautiful one of you.

So, THANKS!

Now, back to the housecleaningcurtainhangingfurnituredustingbathroomscrubbingandsweepmoppery that must be done before we begin the piebakingcookiemakingsidedishpreparingcheeseandveggietraymakingcaserolebakinglastminutetripstothestoreforthingsIforgotstivities.

Tonight’s the night the course prices revert to normal. You’ve got until 11:59:59 EST tonight to get the 20% discount.

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Once upon a time, RO had a lot of time on his hands to post and set up posts on his blog in a way that brought a steady diet of ideas and interests he wanted to share to his audience. Then he got really busy, and these days writes a ton of posts in a morning and then nothing else for a week.

Uh, anyway, I can’t set them up to post sequentially like I used to from work, and I want to get stuff posted before I run out of time or forget, so sorry about the post clustering. As I adapt to my latest circumstances, I’m sure things will get back to a more even keel.

I think writing the Red Work Series of Courses has been the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. As I go back over the things I’ve learned so far and try to find a way to put it into meaningful words, I keep on finding all these cool things I picked up and forgot about over the years. It’s so cool.

I’m writing the Elemental Hierarchy lesson for the Black Work course now, and it’s amazing. Things I thought I understood years ago are making so much more sense now when I go back over them from my current perspective. Agrippa writes about things that are fascinating after you’ve been initiated into the Spheres and spent some time Working with the things he talks about, but until you have, it’s boring, complicated, and confusing. So much of his writing is referential to the actual experiences of a magician that I have no doubt that he was a practitioner and not just an occult journalist. His detailed understanding of how things work in the occult arts can only be explained by direct experience.

The first time I read through his stuff on the Elements, in the First Book of Occult Philosophy, chapters … uh, three through nine, I just didn’t get it. I understood the words, and I thought I grasped the concepts. I could read a correspondence table and understand the implications and the logic behind the linkages between things, but I didn’t have that gnosis, that knowledge that comes from experience to make it all really click.

After actually experiencing the three levels of the elemental spheres, the cardinal, fixed, and mutable aspects of each element, it makes perfect sense. Gates, Forces, and Manifestations. It took me years to understand what Agrippa says so plainly. It’s like someone says, “Put slot A in tab B,” it’s simple instructions, but until you understand tabs and slots, you won’t understand what he’s saying. But now I get it. Neat stuff, really neat stuff.

Anyway, for those like me going through this Great Work thing on their own, read, apply, and then go back and re-read is my advice. Helps put things into perspective a lot. I keep finding myself saying, “Oh, THAT’S what he was talking about!” as I go back over the basics.