Now available through my eBooks page: The Rufus Opus Guide to Business Fundamentals.

It’s short, it’s really basic, but it covers the fundamentals of business process and core theory that books like The Four Hour Work Week and Rich Dad, Poor Dad assume you already know. It’s some truly simple concepts that you probably DO already know, but I really wish I had something like this when I was starting out in this whole business thing. It would have focused me on the important things I had to realize on my own up front and saved me a lot of grief.

Because the info is so basic, and the book is so short, I’m charging very little. $3.95 nets you your own copy. The target audience is anyone who’s read the books I mentioned above, but felt frustrated because they assumed you understand business processes most folks have little exposure to. It’s also good information for people who haven’t read those books, but are considering getting into business for themselves.

Please note, there is no occult information included in the book whatsoever. I was going to add a bunch of money-making magical techniques, but that will come later, if at all. Jason covers that better than I could anyway.

Note: Someone pointed out to me a month or so ago that the PayPal Buy Now buttons on my eBooks page took them to the Google Checkout page instead. If you paste the code for the two options too close together, some browsers, like Chrome and FireFox just take you to the first form on the page. Irritating. I fixed it by adding a lot of space between the buttons, but it’s … ugly. One of these days I’ll make a beautiful web site and people from all around the world will praise my genius. Or maybe not. Web design is excruciating, and templates are free.

So this guy is complaining that Moloch’s list isn’t fair because Moloch doesn’t discuss ATRs there, even though it’s technically “evocational magic.” Moloch spent years developing his list, it’s got 444 members, and he runs it with an iron fist. He talks about the kind of conjure magic he likes, and he always has. He doesn’t discuss ATRs on the list because he knows they require specific expensive initiations to work right, he knows his average subscriber can’t afford those initiations, and he knows that anyone who knows enough about the ATRs to be able to discuss useful conjuration methodologies would be forbidden to do so by their oaths. So basically, any public list that talks about ATRs is going to be spreading misinformation at best, dangerous information at worst. So he doesn’t allow ATR discussion on the list.

Instead he talks about the kinds of conjure magic you can do without paying exorbitant fees for initiation. Stuff from traditional grimoires that works really well. His list is a treasure trove of useful information on different ways to conjure spirits. He’s cool like that.

The guy that’s complaining about the list being “discriminatory” because Moloch won’t allow discussion of ATRs there is exhibiting symptoms of a spiritual malaise that I feel should be addressed. It’s a sense of entitlement that we have to shed when we get serious about magic, because it ruins all our Work.

People seem to think that just because something exists, they have a right to use it however they want. Whether it’s someone else’s discussion group, someone’s written books, or an entire tradition with built-in safeguards that exist for a reason, people think they can just take whatever’s around and use it in whatever manner “feels right” to them without consequence.

I’m guilty of that too, by the way. I’m no saint. My approach to the Lemegeton’s Goetia is a perfect example of someone who didn’t want to follow the rules because I thought I knew better than the grimoire authors about the class of spirits I was dealing with. Arrogance. I also felt that because I had been initiated to a certain degree, I was entitled to rewrite the grimoires the way I thought they should work. It worked with the Modern Angelic Grimoire, after all.* Why not with the demons too?

I’ve mentioned it before, but my house burned down because I cut corners and thought I was ahead of the game. I stopped treating my spirit familiar like the demon he was, and started treating him like an old friend with characteristics and traits he didn’t have. My bad. My sense of entitlement screwed the pooch. You don’t get to do whatever you want with whatever you find and have it work perfectly.

But the main problem with a sense of entitlement goes a lot deeper than the fact that it’s physically, spiritually, and emotionally dangerous in the occult to just take things that aren’t yours and pretend you can do whatever because you have a different belief system and therefore get to make your own rules. The main problem is a spiritual disease that will do far worse than hurt you, or even kill you.

If you think you know everything, you’re going to end up prolonging the Work until you can get over it. I tend to forget sometimes, but I’m here for a reason. I study Magic on purpose. My goals transcend this lifetime, and go a hell of a lot deeper than anything I happen to be doing in the moment. See, I do magic to accomplish the Great Work. Whenever I start thinking I know more than the spirits, the grimoires, or the master magicians and adepts I’m honored to be friends with, I stop progressing in the Work. I stagnate, and get stuck at whatever level of attainment I happen to be at when my pride sneaks in, and I start feeling like the world is my toy to play with as I see fit. I stop going Up to the Source to return to Earth in Power and wisdom to use the power effectively, I just sit in my pool of power I’ve got so far and shoot it out at random targets. I cut myself off from the true potentials.

What I’m trying to say is that a full cup cannot be filled. If you already have “all the power of the universe,” you’re stuck wherever you’re at. I know for a fact you’re not where you want to be already, I know there are things that you want to improve in your life. I know this is true because it is true of everyone on the planet. The planet itself, existence, seems to be fundamentally engineered to provide less than we want. Either that, or we’re fundamentally designed to always want more, different, better. I think we miss our Source, and we try to fill that ache with stuff, or other forms of improvement, but even then, I still always want more, a closer relationship with God, a better understanding of what I’m supposed to do in the situation I’m in, and how it all fits together in the overall plan.

No matter what you think you know, or have seen, or experienced, there’s always more to come. If you cut yourself off from the “more to come” because you think you’ve already got it, you can’t get it. That’s why when it comes to traditions of initiation that are shrouded in secrecy and oaths need to be worked with from within. You go through the progressive stages of initiation, and you play the hand you’re dealt according to the rules of the game. If you don’t, you’re not playing the game at all.

Now, this doesn’t mean you become a grimoire-thumping true believer who only follows the rules, and turns off their brain. Some of the grimoires were bullshit, others were simply imaginative flights of fancy, and all of them were designed to be used by people who understood some basic things, either because it was culturally general knowledge, or because they had received special instruction and empowerment in a Mystery or seven. You’ve got to question, challenge, and test the things you’re working on. You innovate and incorporate, you syncretize with insight and wisdom.

But you can’t do it with a sense of childish entitlement. You’ve got to do it with an open mind that keeps sight of the long term goals. You take your knowledge up through the spheres with you, and get input from each Intelligence on the way, and then you talk to the Source of the knowledge itself. You keep doing that, keep your eye on the Work, and you won’t get caught up in stupidity.

*Note: It worked with the Modern Angelic Grimoire because I didn’t change anything in the technique at all, I just rewrote it in modern English, and kept the traditional requirements intact.

I wrote a long sarcastic post about how people should be good, pointing out in great irony and wit that people have been telling each other for 10,000 years that they should be nice to each other, and then I summed it all up with a poignant reminder that only individuals mindfully aware of their own individual behavior will be able to manage this, and a warning that some people never will be nice regardless, and that they should probably be killed before they spawn more like themselves.

And then Google ate my post.

It’s probably for the best, I have a feeling recent work with no-thing-ness is going to come through as apathy at best, nihilism at the worst, and it’s not how I am.

So… Magic and stuff.

I figured out why it’s so hard to use magic to do anything useful. I’ve spent most of my time lately going in depth into the whole process of manifestation for a number of different projects I’m working on, and it hit critical mass. I get why it’s so difficult to get specific results, and why general influential type magic works better than laser-focused stuff.

It’s because manifestation is fucking hard. And complicated.

First, it takes shitloads of raw power to add layers to Ideas before they get dense enough to manifest. Most of the power coagulates into form, and it takes a ton of power to make a very small amount of mass. You know Einstein’s equation, E=MC^2? It’s how we get so much energy out of a little bit of mass. Well, it’s true the other way, to make mass, you need a ton of energy. One gram of gold takes the equivalent of the energy released if you explode 21,481 tons of TNT.

Twenty-one THOUSAND Tons of TNT. To make an ounce of gold.

Got that sitting around? Have you been initiated to the degree that you could handle that much power on any of the planes of pre-existence without burning out? Assuming you’ve got the reinforced, remodeled, re-engineered sphere of power to handle that kind of raw energy, have you looked at everything that goes on to get that power to manifest?

It goes from the Idea-world to the Form-world, and takes on layers under the careful administration of vast powers and principalities. By the time a thing manifests, it’s been influenced by the Intelligences and Spirits of 12 constellations, 7 planets, and 4 elements. They’ve got power and wisdom and skill in making things happen you just can’t have. You’re not old enough. They know the recipes for grass, the proportions of each planet that have to work together influencing the proportions of the elements for the specific manifestation to occur. They know who to nudge with what inspiration when it’s just right to get the thing they’re supposed to make happen to happen when it’s supposed to.

We don’t.

So what’s the solution? How do you get your magic to be effective? What’s the secret? I think I can sum it up rather simply, by stealing an observation one of my favorite students made the other day in an email. We were talking about hoodoo rites, specifically the one Balthazar posted on Gnostic Conjure, and he said “Magick that has a style like Hoodoo is awesome. They create little Microcosmic stories of the thing you’re trying to manifest.”

That’s it! That’s how magic, successful, practical, results-oriented magic really works! You tell a story about how the idea manifests in the mind of God and then materializes as it goes down through the spheres before hitting this one. You have representations of the spheres involved, you conjure the intelligences to manage the proportions, you involve multiple fronts strategically, hitting multiple layers to shepherd the desired result into manifestation. Jason’s testimonials from his blog lately show how this works, you conjure an opportunity, and then you conjure the result, you anoint your hands and shake on the deal, you dress your paperwork, you bend over the dude you need to agree with you. You shoal your sigils or whatever.

You take a symbol and do something symbolic with it, but you tell a story.

Crowley once commented that the tools of the Magician are the tools of a scribe, because he saw that the Magician is a story teller. Look at the Magus card in his Toth deck if you don’t believe me.

I think the overall reason most magic is weak or fizzles out is because people like to pretend it’s really easy to make things happen, and it’s just not. It’s hard. And complicated.

I’ve been watching Pirates of the Caribean: At World’s End a lot lately. Actually, my kids have been, and it’s been on in the background. At the end, when they’re all set to destroy the East India Trading Company’s ship, they yell, “Full Canvas!” That means they unfurl all their sails and go as fast as they can. They release their full power, not just the main sail, or the littler sails with fancy names that I don’t know about, the full canvas, everything they’ve got. That’s how the stories have to be told, fully, not just a piece of the story, not the plot with no characters, or the characters with no plot. The whole thing.

Heh, I love Gnostic Conjure. Today he’s got a post on Frenemies. And it uses GUNPOWDER!

I love using gunpowder in my magical rites. I miss Goetia because I had a lot of opportunities to use it with those spirits in particular. Bune loved it in his spirit pot, and there’s something about the smell of just-burned gunpowder that reminds you of hell.

Do I need to point out that it’s dangerous, extreme caution must be used, a (very very) little goes a really long way, and don’t be stupid? Probably. So pretend I did.

I like the way he suggests you use it, with the candle igniting the little charge. I’m absolutely positive someone somewhere is going to use too much, ignoring his emphasis on a tiny little pinch, and it’s going to blow the candle, shards of shattered jar, and molasses all over the room.

And I feel really bad for that person, for sure.

So where do you get gunpowder, you ask? WalMart, of course! In the sporting goods section, because how can it be a sport without gunpowder? At least, that’s where I got mine last time I bought it. And it’s not really gunpowder, it’s flash powder for black powder guns. But it works. In college, an acquaintance invited me out to a quarry to blow up some pipe bombs he’d made from the stuff, and a good time was had by all.

My local occult and Wiccan supply shop would never sell gunpowder. They do, however, sell both sulfur and salt peter in small amounts, which combined in proper proportions with powdered charcoal (plain old Kingsford, not match light, not self-igniting-incense coals) makes gunpowder. I’m not giving out the exact proportions, but it wouldn’t take long to find it on the internet.

As an ingredient, it’s best used when you want some explosive results. If you’re going to put it into a spirit pot, use a very, very small amount, and make sure it’s mixed in well with the soil so it doesn’t explode when your house catches on fire.

Kammael’s influence should be included with this ingredient because he’s the Archangel of Mars, and it’s important to have some intelligence involved when you’re doing magic with gunpowder. I mean, obviously the intelligence isn’t coming from the magician, eh? You’re playing with explosives for Christ’s sake! Not frickin’ smart!

But fun.

Trace the seal of Kammael over the powder when you’ve made it. Only make what you need for the rite. Do not store the left overs. Do not dispose of the leftovers by tossing it on the charcoal briquette just to hear it sizzle and pop. Do not pack it in PVC pipes and toss them on the Samhain bonfire when no one’s looking, and then start screaming, “It’s SATAN, I knew it!!!” when it blows up.

If there are any leftovers, mix it up (gently) with dirt or its equal weight in more carbon, and then sprinkle it finely in your garden, plants, or in the grass. Plants like potassium nitrates and sulfur and carbon.

So I was thinking about how enlightened I am today. Not totally, I have some issues, a ways to go for a while yet, but I’ve made some decent strides, accomplished a lot, and picked up a few tricks.

So I figured I’d try levitating. You know. Because I’d like to fly.

So I stood up from my chair at the desk here at work, flexed a muscle in my lower-right abdomen I didn’t know I had, and kept right on going up. I was freakin’ thrilled, loving it, I was totally flying, in the office, not even Jesus had done that, and I looked down and saw my body falling back into the chair, and as my butt hit the seat, my consciousness slammed back into the flesh. Seems I popped out through the crown chakra thing and left the meat suit behind.

Sigh. I’m kind of getting sick of the “needs spiritual sight to see how cool I am” aspect of this enlightenment thing. I get it, I understand it’s like this for a reason, but why can’t I be exempt from the rules?

Probably because I’d master invisibility and rob a bank, and then fly away with the loot.

Just guessing.

Not quite as enlightened as I’d like to think.

And have mostly already registered. Well done!

If you haven’t registered, it only takes a minute.

Oh, and I was wrong yesterday, my readers are roughly spread out across the political spectrum pretty evenly. That’s good to know. Apparently Magic is something we can all come together on, setting aside political differences and focusing on the Work. Good show!

Ok, so three of you fine readers have gone through my voter registration button. That’s right, I’m keeping tabs on you. Three people so far care enough to vote this election. Now, judging by the comments, most of you readers are commie pinko liberals. I am a sane and rational capitalist conservative. And you read my blog anyway! Ha!

Scribbler is a good friend, blogging companion, and fellow graduate of a series of personal and empowering Lunar Mansion initiations that have left us brothers in a very small spiritual family.

He also regularly gets my jokes, and I would love him for that alone if nothing else.

Today’s post is awesome. The last couple of my posts (the more-serious ones, not the smartass ones) have been about finding the freedom to choose what to give a shit about, without getting stuck in the giving a shit process. As usual, Scrib lives out the things I try to write about without even thinking there’s anything special about it.

Last week I cooked “Fauxganoff,” my own creation consisting of egg noodles, browned ground beef, salt-pepper-garlic, concentrated cream of mushroom soup and sour cream. It’s a family favorite and a lot of fun to say. “Whatcha doin?” “Fauxganoff.”

But while cooking it I started to realize some things about the Planetary attributes of the ingredients, and how the recipe was very much a ritual, and the results among my family were right what you’d expect from a Saturn-Lunar rite with egg noodles. The magic of cooking was right up in my face, and today Scrib’s taken it to another level. Satori while cooking is, apparently, pretty common. And his analysis of magical tools, the part of ritual played by cellular consciousness of the implements used in traditional magic is pretty awesome.

And he mentioned something about the blogosphere that sums up my own experiences too. Good stuff. So go read it. It’s time well spent.

With a title like that, you know it’s got to be a good blog post. Uh. Right? Um. We’ll see.

So, Wicklow2012 comments thus on the Sorting things out post:

When you say that “it all ends” do you mean for the spiritual realms as well as the temporal? I had always supposed that there would be change and flux in realms beyond the material (as above so below) but I never pictured an absolute end to them, it’s a rather daunting idea really (for me at least). If you wouldn’t mind I’d love to hear more along this line. My personal death I accept (what else can I do?) but the ultimate void for absolutely all things, I admit that would be the most unkindest cut of all. 

Well, the last sentence has me a bit concerned, but nevertheless, I’m going to carry on and explain my thoughts and perspectives, and hope that everyone can see that it’s not really all that unkind or cutting.

I do indeed mean “it all ends.” The spiritual realms, the planetary spheres, the angels and demons, their homes, everything. Life as we know it from a temporal and eternal stance, everything we have documented from our dreams and visions, everything we’ve learned and experienced: it all ends.

As a Christian Magician, I see the end of all things foretold all through the Bible. Isaiah talks about the heavens being rolled up “as a scroll,” Peter talks about it in his epistle, and it pops up in Revelations as well. In the end, everything goes away, and even Jesus gives up his crown and returns to the Source, and God is All in All. When it’s all said and done, all that will be is the Source.

What happens to us? Well, first let’s remember the Hermetic lessons of Who we are. We are manifestations of God, emanations of his essence that exist to enjoy existence. As Crowley put it, we are “but an EYE, and what eye, none knoweth.” We are observers and participants. We are made in the image of God, and we are creators who manifest things through Words, just like God. We speak things into being, taking the invisible Ideas and giving them form that can be communicated and manifest. We are little drops of God, the microcosm of his macrocosm.

As a drop returns to the oceans that spawned it, we too shall return to God. “Self awareness” will fade, and we will remember who we have been all along. We shall not cease to exist in essence, but we will cease to exist as separate individuals. What comes next, we don’t know. But we have some clues.

In Revelations, we get a New Heaven, and a New Earth, only this time without the ocean. We know that god is essentially unchanging. He created everything we experience at least once (the Bible hints that there was another phase of existence pre-Genesis; the waters over which the spirit of God hovered had to come from somewhere, and we know he’s fond of ending phases of existence in floods). There’s no reason to believe he won’t do it again.

We also know that things progress. Life evolves, we grow spiritually, we progress through stages of initiation and understanding. I personally believe we’ll do it all again, only at a higher frequency.

Now, these thoughts are all based on my limited experience. I can only barely remember what’s happened to me in this life, and my memories of previous incarnations are less than perfect. I’ve always existed, to my conscious memory, within the matrix of time and space. Remove time as a factor, and everything happens at once. Remove space, and there’s no room for separate existence. There is only all-knowing, all-being. Where we go from there is pure speculation.

Fundamentally though, I don’t think anything will change. We’re already God, we just forgot while we were playing around in the park. I think God manifested as us and everything else because that’s what we wanted to do, collectively, as a whole, and we had the power and knowledge to do so. I think it’s mostly fun, even though there’s also the suck factor.

The most important thing to keep in mind though, imo, is that while everything ends eventually, and we don’t really know what happens after that, it doesn’t really matter much as far as we are concerned individually. Regardless of anything that comes after, we still get to live out every moment we have between now and whatever end cometh. Everything ends, but until then, life is what we make of it, given what we have to work with. The sky’s the limit, as they say.

So in the final analysis, I don’t take things that happen in one lifetime too seriously because it’s all going to end anyway. I also don’t take the end too seriously because we know for sure that what we get is what we have, and it’s all for us as long as it lasts. This balancing act results in freedom. Freedom from the temporary pain and drama, and freedom to create my world as I see fit. It provides the thing Anton Ego was looking for in Ratatouille, that most rare and hard to come by item that puts all things into proper context: Perspective. I can’t always choose what happens, but I can always choose what I’m going to do with what comes.