Gordon’s post today talks about fish. Because fish are cool. Fish nerds are also cool, but they smell funny and I really don’t feel comfortable shaking their hands because I walk away and hours later catch a faint whiff of brine that makes me wonder if it was really fish they were handling. And then I have to scrub.

But Gordon’s post was about shoaling sigils. He also went off on magical diaries, making a lot of valid points about how they aren’t that necessary.

I want to talk about shoaling and schooling magicians.

Gordon says:

Shoaling.
Think of it like birds flocking but with a few key differences.
Firstly, the aerodynamic (in this case hydrodynamic) advantages aren’t as great.
That’s because fish ‘shoal’ when they aren’t heading somewhere, and ‘school’ when they are. Schooling gives a hydrodynamic advantage.
[snip]
Anyway, fish ‘shoal’ for some obvious reasons:

• To protect against predation.
• To indicate where there is food.
• To raise young.

The blogosphere we play in is a lot like a shoal of magicians. It protects against predation by creating a community of generally respected magicians, and people are hesitant to critique a member of the shoal because they are likely to get called out by another member of the shoal and get publicly ripped to shreds. It indicates where the food is by letting us all know what each other is into, and we “feed” on each other’s systems and experiences, enriching our own Work. It also provides a way to “raise the young,” that is, provide a single place for new and budding magicians to see a variety of approaches and receive a bunch of complimentary training from people whose primary system or approach might be too specialized for everyone.

Seems to me, this occult blogosphere provides the kind of stuff a lodge would provide, ideally, only without the dues structure and benefits of initiation and a cohesive regimen of structured progressive material, and that’s ok, shoaling doesn’t have to do that.

Schooling of magicians, on the other hand, is different. I recently got to participate in a small experiment with some other magicians, and the effects have been awesome. Working together on a team provided a very hydrodynamic advantage. It’s worth doing, and I’m looking forward to the next level, and future collaborations with people on projects. I like that it was research based, and not results based. I think that helped a lot. We weren’t working towards manifesting a pile of gold for each of us, or anything too restrictive, we were just doing the same things and recording our results, and then comparing them.

The courses I offered before provided a similar experience, but I think I had too many people at different levels of attainment to reap the same rewards. Generally, those who had done significant work before hand clumped together and succeeded, while those who didn’t have the same kind of experiences (from different backgrounds) had less impressive results. I’m going to be applying the results of the small experiment to the courses, and see if that helps streamline some of the benefits we all share.

And then he goes on a rant about mandatory use of magic diaries. His main argument is against the idea that writing in a little secret book is some kind of universal magical requirement. If that’s why you’re doing it, because you have to, I agree that there’s no point in doing it. I think anything done only because it is mandatory will be a lot less useful than something done because its value is known and appreciated.

However, the use of a magical diary in a flexible way is totally useful. Gordon implies the benefit of applying Project Management techniques to your magical efforts, and a magic diary is one of the tools that will help you accomplish that. It provides a record of your intended goal, the path you took, and where you ended up. Going back and reviewing that from time to time is essential. Otherwise you forget the original goal and think you’re right on target when you’ve completely turned around and went way over budget. It’s called “Scope Creep.”

I advocate the use of something like a Magic Lab Book. Record your hypothesis, your planned experiment to prove it, the actual results, and any adjustments to your hypothesis that must be made. In doing an extended working, keep track of your results after each operation, and record the things that happen relative to your project. It helped a lot with the recent Schooling project we did.

It doesn’t have to be that rigid, either. This is magic, we can do what we will. A Flip record of your Work, like the video log in Avatar would be pretty fun and useful. You can’t rely on your observational skills, but a record of what you thought you experienced is going to be a lot more useful than no record at all. The process of magic is sort of like going to the gym in that you do make progress towards a goal, and seeing where you were at, where you are, and where you hope to be compared to where you were before is damned useful. And who cares why the Victorians did it? If we use it for our own purposes, it can be redeemed and made valuable regardless of the errors of rich white pissing English men.

Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and even if that is inductive logic*, it holds true. A diary might not be a completely accurate and perfect record of what happened, but it’s better than having none at all.

Shit, I just realized that I’m a documentation specialist. Technical Writer. I record project history, progress, and report on it for a freaking living. Of course I’m an advocate for keeping a written record. He’s in MEDIA and MARKETING, for Christ’s sake. Heh.

Yeah, we may very well disagree on the importance of maintaining a comprehensive document trail. 😀

But like he said, it’s an “if you want” kind of thing. It helps, I use it, it might help you.

* I totally disagree that inductive logic is inherently an error. I’m a fatalist with Calvinist tendencies, so I’m not surprised. I’m also a Taurus, and I use Practicality as a philosophical knife when dealing with philosophical Gordian knots. Even though you can’t really determine that the sun will rise tomorrow based on the fact that it has always done so before, you aren’t going to divest your holdings in solar panel production companies, are you? Even if it’s an imperfect tool, it can be used effectively, with caveats.

Kathy, a long time friend and the original inspiration that got me doing the Work in the first place*, lo those many years ago, brought up a good point in the comments on my last post.

Kathy pointed out that abandoning all forms of terrestrial, or sub-lunar spirits would leave a gaping hole in my practice, leaving me all unbalanced and ready to topple over. Toppling sucks.

But for the record, I’m not abandoning sub-lunar spirit work, nor is my core philosophy changing all that much, really. I’m just achieving some goals I had aimed for and lost sight of, and getting rid of one set of tools in favor of others. I’m de-energising the Lemegeton’s Goetia, but there are a myriad of other spirits that are available without the bite.

At my core, I am above all else a practical magician. I know lately I may have seemed sort of flighty, but there’s a lot going on up above and down below. As it stabilizes, things will return to a more normal flow, and all these neat little tricks I’m seeing so easily now will likely fade, and I’ll have to work my ass off to reclaim this post-initiatic high I’m on. If it’s anything like what I’ve been through before.

But the point of all my magic and striving towards reclaiming my full potential, the point of becoming a Power if possible is not to ascend and be beyond all this pesky material reality, oh no, the point, the freaking essence of what I do is all about being fully me, to the most, for the highest purposes of all: to do what I want, when I want, and have the world be a better place as a result. To do as I see fit and have that be the Right Thing to do, and not just for me, but for everyone.

The goal of making the Philosopher’s Stone is to reach the phase of Projection, where you grind it up and use it and make lead into gold, sick into health, mortal into … well, still mortal, but with longevity, long life. And that’s still my goal.

I want to make the world a better place. Cheesey, eh? I don’t care, I just want to tend my garden, and to have all who pass through feel at peace and at rest.

And have some good conversations along the way.

* Kathy was a single mom who had gotten the shit end of the stick for many years. She had limited resources, but a strong calling to the Occult. She singlehandedly figured out the Ars Paulina, pretty much, with a little help from Chris Warnock and Aaron Letich and a couple others, and started making traditional magical equipment in her home. She lived 40 miles from civilization, if I remember right, and she still managed to overcome all kinds of hardships and achieve an amazing amount of success with her Natal Angel. Seeing how much one person could accomplish in this art of ours inspired me to get out of the arm chair and start doing real magic per the grimoires. Her inspiration of me also resulted in this blog you’re reading. I figured if it was possible for her, it was possible for me, and then I wanted more people to be encouraged by seeing my success, so I went public. You’re reading this because of her. It’s all her fault. Pretty much. 😀

The cosmology I use is based on the system used by the Hermetic magicians of the first through third centuries AD as recorded in the Corpus Hermeticum, specifically the Divine Pymander. In this system, the Earth is the manifest physical realm and is at the center of a series of concentric spheres. Within the physical sphere are the four spheres of the elements. Closest to the Earth is the sphere of Earth, followed by Water, Air, and then Fire. These four elemental spheres combine to form the Sphere of Sensation, the physical realm.

Surrounding the Sphere of Sensation are the Celestial Spheres. They consist of the Seven Planetary Spheres, also referred to as Heavens, the Sphere of the Fixed Stars, and the Sphere of the Prime Mover. Agrippa and the Hermetic authors of the Corpus Hermeticum began numbering the spheres at the Sphere of the Moon:

• 1st Sphere – The Moon
• 2nd Sphere – Mercury
• 3rd Sphere – Venus
• 4th Sphere – The Sun
• 5th Sphere – Mars
• 6th Sphere – Jupiter
• 7th Sphere – Saturn
• 8th Sphere – Zodiac, Fixed Stars (includes the Mansions of the Moon)
• 9th Sphere – Sphere of the Prime Mover

Note that this system counts “up” from the Earth rather than “Down” from the Prime Mover. Students of Modern Magick are familiar with the Golden Dawn’s kabbalistic Tree of Life, and tend to count “Down” from Keter, which corresponds to the 9th Sphere of Hermetic cosmology.

I think the difference is that in Hermetics, you start from where you’re at consciously, the physical realm that gets most of our attention, along with all the drama and thrills we go through on a regular basis. As you progress through the spheres, performing the Great Work, you “de-energize” the things in your sensate sphere that keep you from reclaiming your full potential, your rightful heritage as a member of a divine family sourced in the Prime Mover.

The oft-maligned armchair magician, our Sunday-Morning quarterbacks who read the grimoires, or at least the For Dummies versions of whatever system they’re trying to be Subject Matter Experts in at the moment, or even those who spend twenty or thirty years reading about magic without ever stepping into the Ring are the subject of today’s thoughts.

I’ve bashed these losers in passing for years, in part because I was one for many years, and in part because they seem on the surface to know what they’re talking about, and I ended up wasting a lot of time arguing with them about details they didn’t really have a framework to comprehend. I loathed them for many years.

But recent events have caused me to reconsider my stance. You know how to conjure the Ruach of a dead magician to teach you the finer points of something they’ve written? It’s fairly simple, really. You simply take their written materials and use that as a talisman, and you call on them in the names of the Intelligences of the Moon. You go on an astral journey to a meeting ground in the lower heavens, a sitting room beneath your astral temple, or a preserve in an astral national park.

They teach you in dreams, or in inspirations or conclusions reached while reading their books. They help you understand the meaning they were pointing to while writing.

You know how when you as much as look at a seal of a spirit with intent, it starts seeing you back? I’ve noticed it while practicing sketching seals of demons and angels. They’re closely tied to the patterns of squares, lines, circles, crosses, triangles, and all the other geometric shapes that make up their images. You can’t really read about a spirit in detail without it noticing a flicker of a disturbance in the force.

Now think about these armchair magicians… not the really annoying egotistical asshats that only read magic books to be able to proof text their way into looking smart by tearing apart others. Their surface knowledge of a system leaves them woefully inept at attacking people with experience. Ignore these knuckle dragging dweebs.

But the serious student of occult knowledge who reads and studies and discusses the principles of magic, have you ever thought about what’s going on inside their spheres over the years? The Great Work is the art of amassing the ore that contains the Stone, and then treating it through pressure, heat, time, and various chemical purification processes until it is refined and rarified. These armchair magicians are absorbing tons of occult material that sits percolating in their spheres, being affected by the stresses and pressures of life. It makes an egg, and it incubates, waiting the signs and signals that it is time to be hatched and revealed.

A friend of mine thinks he’s not much of a magician because he’s studied more than he’s practiced. Yet his insight and understanding exceed my own in many ways. Practical work is necessary to attain initiations into the spheres, you’ve got to conjure the spirits to Work with them consciously and attain the full benefit of their influence, but there is still Work being done in the spheres of the Armchair Initiates that is valuable and worthwhile in ways they won’t appreciate until later.

The animosity towards armchair initiates in general leaves them feeling embarrassed, ashamed, I think, and less confident in their results than they should be. I think it’s about time for scholars of the occult to be given a little slack, and a lot more encouragement than they’ve gotten in the past.

Gordon’s post on publishing better than Crowley is pretty wicked stuff.

I’d like to add a trick for would-be occult authors. If you haven’t noticed yet, a blog is a book nursery. Ideas are spawned, developed, organized and published, in nice chapter-length sequences. They give you a place to hone your craft, and help people at the same time. Writing a post at a time is less daunting than a whole entire book, and after a year or so of steady blogging about whatever you’re magically dealing with, you’ll have a manuscript’s worth of material ready to go on a cohesive topic or three.

All it takes is editing at that point, sewing it all together into a pretty little poppet, and you’re good to go.

Jhonn, and then Jack posted about this guy they know who both agree has some kind of spiritual parasite on him. Both expressed a mingled compassion and disgust, and I can fully understand that. I didn’t watch the videos because I’m trying not to pollute my brain with any more bull shit.

But running into people with parasites is pretty common in the occult world. Working with spirits tends to give you spirit sight, the ability to see when people are being influenced by spirits. Once you’ve started seeing them in your Work, you’ll see them everywhere if you pay attention.

While doing my Goety Work, I ran into a lot of Nepheshim, the parts of the human soul that are supposed to die with the body, but often find ways to linger through offerings made to ancestors, finding geomagnetic or geoelectrical sources of food, or by attaching themselves to the living and triggering the amygdala (panic attacks, depression, and multiple forms of anxiety disorders) to release the emotive food they live on. These spirits are the most common entities I’ve seen, and while they are individually rather weak as a rule (with some exceptions), gathering up a legion or so isn’t that difficult, and they’re the original “Will Work For Food” spirits. With enough of these guys aimed and working for you in creative ways, there’s potentially no limit to what you could get to happen.*

But for most who end up running into schools of them on the astral, you become host to a spiritual parasite. Regular banishings and visualizations of golden or white light helps, even the stuff you read in Fortune’s Psychic Self Defense or whatever it was are effective against these guys.

But sometimes, as in the case Jack and Jhonn’s acquaintance, people can pick up things that are … bigger, stronger, worser. Some are like beefier versions of a Nephesh, something that’s been around a while and has learned not only to feed and survive, but to thrive on people. Other times people can pick up a spirit of place with ill intent. Not all the Genius Loci are friendly. Heracles had to fight several Genii Loci in his Tasks, for example.

And of course, there are demons who will demonize humans given a chance.

I like the term “Larvae” to refer to these entities. Gordon posted a neat ritual from ancient Rome that was performed yearly and involved scattering black beans around the house while performing an oration. I suspect the beans absorbed the spirits, and were then planted. This returned any spirits that were haunting people to the cycle of reincarnation that Plato and Hermeticists loosely followed. They believed that those who did not attain their potential in the form of a man were demoted to the form of a woman**, and then to an animal, and then to a vegetable, and finally to a mineral state of being.

Jason’s first book on Protection and Reversal Magic offered a lot of useful techniques for getting rid of these kinds of things, but when they’re attached to one’s self personally, it can be difficult to accept you’ve got one. Or a Legion in some people’s cases. They can be pretty convincing that they’re innocuous, and even helpful entities. They can offer techniques that really work, and they can appear as many things.

How can you tell if you’re being possessed, obsessed, or demonized? How do you know if an entity, or paradigm shift is really what it appears to be, and not the product of something looking for a free lunch, or up to some plot that requires you doing a certain thing at a certain time?

You can drive yourself crazy worrying about it, and even if you didn’t have an infestation of spiritual Larvae eating your essence, the anxiety generated by worrying about whether your HGA is secretly SATAN can attract a pool of ’em in no time.

If you’re worried about it, the first thing to recognize is that you have a problem. Either there is a Larva, and that’s the problem, or you just think there’s a Larva, and that’s the problem. Either one can cause mischief in your life. Fortunately, the solution for both is the same: Exorcise. If you do have an infestation, a good Exorcism will clean you right out. If you don’t, it won’t hurt. Incorporating some form of Exorcise in your regularly scheduled Work is useful.

The Stele of Jeu, that is, the Headless Rite makes for a formidable Exorcism. I generally stick to the Betz version, with a few modifications based on my experiences. I substitute the name of my HGA where appropriate, and “Agathosdaimon” for “Good Messenger of God.” I also change “deliver him, NN, from the daimon that restrains him” to “deliver me, [my name/Hermetic Title] from any daimon that restrains me”. It takes very few minutes, and can be worked in at any time. I prefer Sunday nights or Wednesdays, or both as necessary.

One of the more important things to realize as a magician, however, is that you always have a spiritual ally fighting off these things on your behalf. It comes with being born, and wears the names Agathosdaimon, Genius, and Holy Guardian Angel. Its name is hidden in your Natal Chart, and regardless of the level of conscious communion with this entity you have attained, it is still working on your behalf all the time. It’s not proof against stupidity. We can conjure up a dark passenger through ignorance or just corrupt intentions, and that can limit the effectiveness of our Spiritual Ally in protecting us.

Learning to trust this spirit is essential, and if after performing an exorcism with its assistance you find yourself losing a spirit or source of peace and power in your magical Work, don’t panic. Learn to accept it, don’t conjure it back into your life, no matter how beneficial it may appear. The HGA will explain why it removed entities if you ask it. It will show you in vivid detail the tendrils of disgusting ooze the thing had immersed in your sphere.

Performing regular exorcism and trusting the results will build up your relationship with the HGA, and will  open more avenues to reclaiming your divine race and value than it will close. Trusting your HGA also provides a level of peace in your approach that itself becomes a natural barrier to attracting Larva.

* Of course, that’s necromancy, and tends to leave the magician who works with these fellows infested if they slip and forget to cleanse their spheres well after working with them. If you get into necromancy, and then find yourself all nihilistic, depressed, or anxious, you’ve got a problem you need to address. You’ve picked up a Larva. My Work with Bune granted me a degree of native exorcist, and directing them away with a statement carried enough weight to keep me clean, mostly, but regular Exorcism involving something like the powers of the Agathosdaimon or Michael the Archangel is a best practice mages do well to adopt.

** I disagree with the idea that being a woman is less than being a man, for the record. I think that’s a cultural oppression thing that reflects the politics of the time rather than the spiritual truth. It’s actually a step up from older beliefs, though. Before Plato’s Republic talked about Soul Mates, theologists and spiritual cosmologists doubted women had souls at all.

Dude, are you nuckin’ futs? There are things that are no one’s god damned business, things that are not going to be discussed.

But there is no bottom to the rabbit hole you’re going down. Tunnels of Set indeed.

It’s annoying to have to use it, and I prefer the Google buttons, but for those who use PayPal, I’ve set up some buttons for my eBooks on the right.