After one particularly persistent reader rode my ass for weeks, I’ve finally added the PayPal buttons to my eBooks page for all the books I’m currently selling. I still prefer Google, they keep less of my money, but PayPal’s all popular and stuff.

I also put up a graphic for the RO Guide to Demon Recovery. I was tired when I posted it to the site last night. Er, this morning. Didn’t feel like doing much.

http://www.rufusopus.com/products_and_services.htm

[Edit: And now they actually go to PayPal when you click ’em.]

Well, one really good thing has come out of my bad magic experience with the Lemegeton’s Goetia demons. After charging headlong into Solomonic magic and getting all into demons, and then getting burned, and then having to clean up the mess, I’ve developed a nice set of practices that work really well to eliminate the effects of Working with demons from the magician’s sphere.

In a purely hypothetical context, not saying I have any available, or would consider it myself, but just suppose someone had stumbled on the secret of developing homunculi consistently and and had adapted a procedure to keep them in a stable, dormant state prior to their “birth,” at a relatively low cost.

Would it be ethical to sell them on eBay for $4.95 plus shipping and handling? The dormant state would keep them safe during transportation. I figure everyone would want one, but then everyone would have one, and they wouldn’t sell anymore. It would likely be a fad, like sillybands, and when the homunculi “died” and reverted to their prima materia, no one would want any more. Kind of a built in lifecycle. Like Sea Monkeys.

Chances are the lucky mage would get about 6 weeks of popularity out of it, and another 6 weeks for news of their stench to get around. Could probably sell a few million in that time, right?

How’s your heart. Are you aligned properly? The Heart Chakra should be lined up square against the keyboard. The center of the chakra must be perfectly aligned with the center between the G and H keys. If it not properly aligned, the chi will not flow. The words will not work. The language will be boggy and the point will not pierce the reader’s thick skull.

There is art, oh blogger. The kata again! Index fingers on the F and the J. Do not look at your fingers! Feel the raised bumps on the keys. These are your touch points, this is your horse. A blogger’s kung fu is only as strong as their horse. Break their horse and they have nothing to ride.

Again!

Go through this Flikr album some time. There’s something about the pictures Sucae takes, something both momentary and eternal.

Strategic Sorcery: HEKATE CLASS AND RITUAL

What if your ritual results were always children? How would they manifest? A wealth spell kid would be what, greedy? Pragmatic? Beautiful so you can put her in modeling and make a fortune? A CEO with razor insights? A great actor? Probably would depend on the ingredients and formative belief structure.

A love spell child that’s just lust… what kind of kid would that be?

Interesting to think about that. What kind of kids do you want to bring into the world? What kind of future will they bring about in 30 years, all the spell children you’ve brought into the world over your magical career? Are you particularly proud of what they’ve become? What do they say about you as a person?

As magicians, we have at our fingertips all the angels and daimons and legions and tribes of spirits that make things happen in the material realm, and the impulse is to conjure the ones directly related to the things we want or need right now to make our lives better, like money. Conjure lunar spirits who govern growth and recession at the right time to grow your business, Mercury and Jupiter spirits for financial luck, Venusian Dukes to procreate wealth in our spheres, Expedite to hurry up the arrival of cash owed, Solar spirits to manifest gold, the Holy Guardian Angel to get a lifetime’s supply of comfort, and so forth.

But while these specific spirits might play a crucial role in the manifestation of these things here and now, they are still working together in concert with all the other spirits of the spheres extending all the way to the Nous, or Mind of God in the higher levels of existence. Getting these particular end-gate guardians/facilitators involved can end up unbalancing the overall process, impacting the stability of the results.

But working with the Archangels or Intelligences of the spheres on gaining initiation into the higher spheres results in shifts in the magician’s fundamental approach to life. Sachiel of Jupiter can provide an initiation that brings a “wealth/health/good fortune” harmony to your sphere that subtly changes how everything in your life manifests. The results aren’t as flashy or immediate, but they eliminate the ongoing crises that result in the perceived need for an Expedite or Bune to provide a fast-fix. Go to the Archangels and get the initiation that changes you, and you won’t need to do a specific conjuration of Bune or Expedite, you’ll already have the forces they represent balanced and working for you as you integrate the powers of the different spheres of manifestation.

Most thaumaturgical rites for immediate physical results are treating the symptoms of the problem, not the cause(s). That’s fine, and should be done, in fact. If you broke your arm, you’d get it set and put in a cast first, and then start checking on whether you’re getting enough calcium and exercise to make your bones strong. You’ve got to treat the immediate symptoms as they arise, but if the same symptoms keep coming up you need to address the disease. 

We live in a world where we experience the ongoing effects of causes that began days, weeks, months, and years ago, stretching back to the beginning of time. (Or at least that’s what it looks like from here.) The path of the Hermetic Magician outlined in the Corpus Hermeticum moves us from only experiencing and reacting to the end results, the effects, to being the causes of specific intended outcomes. Probability math and chaos science demonstrate how many millions of variables go into any given outcome, and no human can consciously direct all of them at once. But the conjuration of spirits to obtain initiations and favors on our behalf, results in the magician getting the skills and talents to direct the forces from higher levels in the chain of manifestation so that the causes all work together to form the intentional results. We become forces of Cause, conscious participants in the causal process rather than simply reactionary recipients of the effects.

That’s what the Hermetic Magic path outlined in the Corpus Hermeticum provides. Agrippa’s Three books of Occult Philosophy is a catalog of the data you need to become a Power operating consciously on the planes of premanifestation as well as manifestation. The end product of the Hermetic process is a magician capable of not only treating the symptoms, but also adept at identifying and treating the cause before the symptoms can manifest.

My next magickal project will be the Shem angels. When I first began Working with Spirits, I started with the Seven Archangels of the planets, intending to familiarize myself with them before moving on to more complex systems. Originally, I intended to move from the Planetary Intelligences to the Shem Angels, then on to the Ophanim, and then towards the Enochian system. At this point, I still intend to work the Ophanim system at some point in the future, but the Enochian system I’m wavering on. Time will tell.

At this point, I’ve only begun formulating some ideas about the Shemhamephoresh angels. I’m definitely in the Initiation phase (for those with Project Management experience), where I begin to gather and analyze data regarding the project. I need to understand what the Angels are, how they fit into the cosmologies, and then identify means of conjuring them efficiently and repeatably. At that point, I can begin to record their attributes as they manifest in my life. That’s a ways down the road though.

I got the “go-ahead” on the Shem angels from my HGA last week. I was reading in Agrippa that the Shemhamephoresh spirits were “better” than the angels of the planets and elements. I thought that was interesting, but there’s nothing about how to Work with these particular spirits. So, I did what we all do, I hit Google up for some leads.

The two primary resources I found that had useful information in them were Aaron Leitch’s essay and Section V of Robert Ambelain’s Practical Kabbalah Part II. Both of these sources link the Shemhamephoresh angels to the zodiac.

Personally, I’m not convinced. Not entirely, at any rate. The evidence for the angels to be astrologically linked is very strong. There are 72 names, one for ever five degrees of the zodiac. Aaron’s essay goes into a lot of the reasoning behind the attributions, and it’s very in-depth, and extends back centuries.

However, the connections just don’t hold true enough to me at this point. I’m holding myself open to the idea they might be zodiacally related, but there’s more to placing spirits than the numbers they have in common with the zodiac.

The names of the Shem angels are derived from three Hebrew verses of 72 letters each in Exodus 14:19-21. From Agrippa, we learn that the names of spirits are derived from the verses in the Bible that describe their qualities. The verses describe the Angel the Lord sent to protect, teach, and make a way for the Israelites as they escaped the Egyptians. The Angel’s presence was indicated by the column of smoke by day, and the pillar of fire by night that remained with the Israelites for over forty years. The Cloud remained with the Israelites at least as far as the edges of the Promised Land, but it’s hard to tell exactly when the Cloud and Fire returned to Heaven. We do know that the Cloud of the Lord’s presence returned to the Temple of Solomon, leaving all of Jerusalem weeping in awe.

In tracking down the Angels’ history, I found they are aligned with the rays on the crowns of the twenty-four elders seated before the throne of God. Now, these elders are closer to the Throne of God than the seven candles representing the planets. They’re also closer to the Throne than the twelve angels that guard the gates of Jerusalem, placing hem above the zodiac as well.

Based on this information, I’m planning on researching the spirits’ manifestations outside the requirements of astrological timing. I am currently of the opinion they operate outside the “rules” of the planetary governors. I could be wrong, but finding out is one goal of this particular project.

Now, Ambelain’s section of Practical Kabbalah Part II includes seals for each of the spirits. These seals are copied and presented by Zalewski and Poke Runyon in other works, but Ambelain warns against their use, claiming a six-year operation using the seals resulted in cancer, obsessive thoughts of suicide, and other unpleasant results. Poke and Zalewski don’t mention it, and the general consensus of the magicians I’ve talked to about this is that Ambelain was full of crap. Either it was a false warning, or he was just wrong.

Regardless, the seals come from a manuscript much later than Agrippa’s record of the angels. Agrippa knew the angels’ names, and knew they were used in magick, but did not offer any indication that they are related to the zodiac. If the seals were created under the auspices of the zodiac-link, they’ll be useless to me. Besides, I don’t like using symbols I don’t understand or that I’m just not comfortable with, and these definitely fall into that category.

I’ll be working the spirits using the conjuration ceremonies of the 4th book of Occult Philosophy. The seals I’ll generate using some method from the time of Agrippa, or else something provided directly by my HGA. I haven’t figured that part out yet.