Apparently, there’s nothing in my Modern Angelic Grimoire about calculating planetary hours. And furthermore, I don’t seem to have ever written a blog post about it. I remember long discussions on yahoo groups about it, I think, and I must have just assumed everybody knew that part. Woopsie!

Planetary hours are periods of time during the day that are ruled by the Seven Planetary Governors.

The idea that each time period is ruled by a planetary spirit can be found most clearly spelled out in Trithemius’ De Septum Secundius, the Seven Secondary Intelligences. He explains how each of the Planetary Governors rules over a period of time that lasts 354 years, and tracks it back to the beginning of time as he knew it. He shows how the events of each age demonstrate the nature of the ruling spirit.

Similarly, each day of the week is ruled by a planetary governor, and each hour of each day is ruled by a planetary governor. When you are planning planetary magic, the most potent time to perform a ritual is during the Planetary Hour of the Planetary Day. The ruler of the Day has the most influence during his assigned hours of his assigned days. It’s easier to establish communications during this time, an the powers he can bring to bear are strongest.

In The Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals, Trithemius provides tables showing which Angels rule each of the Seven Days. Each day is divided into 24 hours, and one of the seven Planetary Spirits governs that hour. That means that it’s a good time to create planetary talismans, and to conjure the assigned planetary spirits.

The time period covered by a planetary hour is seldom 60 minutes long. Sometimes a planetary hour lasts an hour and twenty minutes, other times only forty-five minutes. This happens because the “hours” are divided into two equal sets of twelve time periods, twelve during the day, and twelve during the night. Due to the rotation of the Earth, summer day hours are longer than summer night hours.

To calculate the time periods represented by a “planetary hour,” the magician must figure out how many actual hours there will be during the day, from sunrise to sunset. Find the times of sunrise and sunset, and sum up the total number of hours and minutes that pass between the two. I convert it all to minutes and divide that total by 12. You do the same for the night hours, measuring the amount of time between sunset and the following sunrise, and dividing that total by 12.

Once you know the length of time each planetary hour will last, you can begin to chart the planets that rule each hour. Make a numbered list from one to twenty-four down the left side of a page. Write the Start and End Times of each Planetary Hour. Next you’re ready to start adding the planets that rule each hour.

To figure out the first hour angel, you need to know what day it is. Each Day is ruled by one of the seven planets. The first planetary hour is always ruled by the same planet as the planetary day. Today is Friday, Freya-Day, and is ruled by Venus. The first hour of the day was also ruled by Venus. The following list shows the planetary rulers of each day.

• Sunday: The Sun
• Monday: The Moon
• Tuesday: Mars
• Wednesday: Mercury
• Thursday: Jupiter
• Friday: Venus
• Saturday: Saturn

Now you know the planetary ruler of the First Hour of every day. To add the rest, you need to know the Chaldean “Order of the Planets.” This is the order that you pass through the planetary spheres on your way from the Sphere of the Fixed Stars to the Sphere of the Earth. For Golden Dawn Kabbalists, it’s the Lightning Path beginning with Binah, Saturn. The order is Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, The Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon.

Next to the starting and ending times for the first hour, write the name of the planet that rules the Day. The second hour is ruled by the next planet in the Chaldean Order of the Planets. Since today is Friday, the first hour is ruled by Venus, so the second hour will be ruled by Mercury, the third by the Moon, then we go back to the top of the list, so the Fourth is ruled by Saturn, Fifth by Jupiter, the Sixth by Mars, the Seventh by the Sun, and the Eighth by Venus again. The list continues through each of the Planetary Hours until you’ve got a ruler for all 24 time periods.

Note that the Planetary day begins at dawn and doesn’t end until Sunrise the following morning. The day doesn’t start at midnight.So if I were planning a ritual for Venus today, I could pick any Venus Hour between sunrise today and sunrise tomorrow, even though my calendar thinks it’s Saturday starting at midnight. It’s not magically Saturday until dawn.

Here’s a neat little trick of the universe. Applying the order of the planets to the 24 hours of a day always results in the last hour of the day being ruled by the planet that precedes the ruler of the next day. So tomorrow is Saturday, ruled by Saturn. The first hour of tomorrow will be the Saturn Hour, so the last planetary hour today will be ruled by Jupiter. It always works out that way. The last hour of a Thursday has to be ruled by Mercury for the first hour of Friday to be ruled by Venus, and lo and behold, it always is.

The following table provides a quick guide for you to use to figure out the ruler of each hour of the day. You’ll still have to figure out the start and finish time for each planetary hour of the day, but this gives you a quick reference:

Now, for those who can figure this out by hand, more power to you! I prefer to use software, such as SolarFire Gold, Timaeus, or ChronosXP. Online, you can find a planetary hour calculator at http://lunarium.co.uk. They also produce a “widget” for the personalized iGoogle home page that I use. You simply enter your location, and it displays the current and upcoming planetary hours for your location. It’s pretty convenient, and takes a lot less time than figuring out sunrises and sunsets.

When planning your rituals, it is best to conjure the spirits during their planetary hour of their planetary day. If that’s not possible, the next best time is during their planetary hour, according to Agrippa. So if you really need to do a Solar Conjuration rite, the Sun hour of Sunday is best, but any Sun hour of the week will do. The first time you conjure one of the Intelligences of a Planet, I strongly recommend that it be during the planetary hour of the planetary day. Make sure you include the phrase, “and return to me in power when I call you by your name and by your seal” in your license to depart, and that will pave the way for quick contact in case of emergency.

When scheduling your personal initiations into the spheres, try to find a planetary day and hour combined for the fullest effect.

I just got the biggest payment of my life for my Work. It totally puts this whole “magic for money” thing into perspective for me, and it all just clicked. I understand why I do this better than I have before as a result.

Here’s the payment I received:

My daughter was born 3 months early with Apgar scores of 1 and was dying..her hemoglobin was less than 2 and she was profoundly ill. She was given only an hour or two to survive. I used the [Modern Angelic Grimoire] to ward her incubator and her health improved. I was warned, on several occasions, that just because she survived the night didn’t mean she would live much longer AND if by some chance she did happen to survive, her quality of life would be devastated. I did the ritual twice a day until we were discharged from the hospital several weeks later. I went home with a perfectly healthy baby. She just had her first birthday and is not only babbling, clapping, laughing etc. but she is walking! She took her first serious steps a few days ago and hasn’t looked back.  Despite the fact she still looks like a nine month old (which technically she should be) she is acting like any normal baby her age. The doctors saw her yesterday and were astonished.

First off, I’d like to point out that it was the Magician who did the magic, the Angels who did their Work, and my only role was to have rewritten a quick, easy, and effective system of magic in modern language.

I’m also not claiming that my book will save your premature baby’s life, make you rich, or get you laid. The book is useless without a magician to use it, and the information in it has been around for 600 years. My role was just sort of like a water boy; I’m not the water, I’m not the fountain, I’m just the delivery system. I don’t take any personal credit for what was done for her child.

I am, however, very grateful to have played the role I did get to play. Makes me feel damned good. And that’s worth more than a hundred million dollars.* I could die on the way home tonight, and I’d die content in the knowledge that my Work accomplished at least one good thing, and really, that’s the most valuable thing you can earn in any lifetime.

* Note: if you have a hundred million sitting around gathering dust and interest you don’t need, let me know. I’m here to help.

If you’re ever in a circumstance that requires contacting me for advice about your problem, by all means feel free to do so! My advice is not going to be all that great, as I tend to be a bitter cynic, but sometimes a pragmatic urge towards what you already know needs to be done can be useful, and I can handle that.

But here’s the approach I prefer:

• Get to the point quickly. The first sentence should say, “RO, can you help me with [my love life, my financial situation, telling me how to get rid of this stupid demon, getting better reception during conjurations, etc.]?” 
• Give me a synopsis of the causes and effects of the situation; provide enough detail to put the problem in context, and get rid of the stuff that doesn’t really matter.
• Let me know what you really want to have happen, your ideal solution.

If writing those things up doesn’t answer the question you have, send it to me and I’ll tell you what I think.

While I enjoy being told how cool I am, and I really like the emails from Africa that start, “GREAT LORD RUFUS,” the praise and stuff isn’t necessary. Feel free to skip ahead.

Now please note, this applies to people who haven’t purchased my time. When I was doing the Supernatural Assistant Course, I encouraged people to take their time to tell me all their problems. I signed up for that, in that context, and it was fun. The most fun I’ve had in years, in fact. I miss giving that course.

I forgot how stupid people can be. You’d think I would remember, but I guess I’m just naive. I recently joined Tribal Blogs, a secular blog community designed to promote people’s blogs. Normal people’s blogs, apparently. I started a discussion group for Occult Bloggers, and the site owner popped in and asked if we were just talking about astrology, or if they needed to keep us away from the cats and dogs. She asked if I bite heads off chickens, and put a little smiley face after that, because it’s funny.

Ha ha, it is to laugh.

I don’t know how some people have the patience and generosity in their hearts to educate the ignorant. I didn’t cuss her out, I calmly replied that I’m an esoteric Christian attempting to accomplish the Alchemical Work using the techniques of Renaissance conjure magic. I explained, nicely, how offensive it was to be asked if I bite heads off chickens, and then I deleted my membership.

The Norms get nervous at the mention of the occult. I haven’t seen that in years, mostly because I blend in, and hang out with people who know the difference between a phurba and an athame. When I joined Tribal Blogs, I figured there would be few occultists, but it might work to be a good platform for promoting my blog anyway. I never expected to run into that kind of ignorance. I’m not a very good diplomat to the realm of the mundane. I’m much more comfortable discussing the nuances of spirituality as a career choice than I am explaining that no, in fact, I don’t bite heads off chickens, and yes hide the dogs, but only because I’m allergic to their dander.

One of the things I want in life is to be stupid wealthy and have all my needs provided for by doing the things that I enjoy the most. The only thing I really like to do (besides being a Father) is magic. Ideally, I would be able to get rich, or at least strongly supplement my income by writing and teaching about what I love to do.

But one of the things Kenaz got me thinking about is how I don’t provide for my readers the kinds of things I think warrant getting supported financially by them, above and beyond the simple purchase of my books. I’ve tried to lay out in recent blog posts the basic criteria for what a spiritual leader ought to provide their followers/congregants/covens/cultists in order to deserve to receive the kind of support Kenaz advocates for Pagan Elders, and that I’d like to get for myself.

I think to deserve the “kept” lifestyle, we need to address within a spiritual context each of the following areas in the lives of our clients/students:

* Financial Security
* Physical Health and Hygiene
* Emotional Well-Being
* Mental Health and Hygiene
* Spiritual Attainment

Financial Security

The Teacher needs to be able to provide their students with the basic techniques that will enrich their students personal lives. We need to be able to make their lives physically, fiscally better. If we expect them to give us money, we need to provide them with the means to attain it. Since we’re talking about spiritual leadership and instruction, the spiritual lessons of financial management need to be addressed. This should include money magic, of course, but at a deeper level, it should pave the way for financial responsibility, fiscal maturity, and the spiritual methods for attaining this state. For me, that could mean an analysis of the financial aspects of each of the planetary spheres, spiritual initiations into those mysteries, and practical conjure magic that taps into each of the planets’ powers appropriately.

Physical Health and Hygiene

The body is the Temple of the Soul, the material manifestation of what we are while we wear it. There are all kinds of mysteries related to the body that should be addressed by the Teacher. We should teach the spiritual principles that lead to physical health and well being. That can include healing techniques, and methods of spiritually diagnosing the sources of physical illness, but it can also include preventative and maintenance measures that focus on the union and harmony of the body, mind and spirit.

Emotional Well Being

The Teacher should provide instruction that results in emotional well being. We live in anxious times, and many of the spiritual dramas that I’ve seen unfold in people’s lives are magnified by the emotional mess overshadowing their decisions, experiences, and memories. The doctrines we provide need to enable the manifestation of positive emotional experiences and equip them to deal with negative emotions constructively when they inevitably arise.

Mental Health and Hygiene

The teachings we give should strengthen the rational mind, feed it and train it without giving it total autonomy over all that we do. The intellect is a powerful tool, but it can take over everything else, and when that happens, we turn into “Black Brothers,” building our towers brick by brick with pieces of information gathered from the Abyss of Da’ath, but divorced from the physical, emotional, and spiritual growth that should come with incarnation. We didn’t bother with going through all those spheres of manifestation to sit around and think smart thoughts all the time, or to know it all. We need to teach people to use their minds the same way we teach them to use their bodies.

Spiritual Attainment

This is the most obvious area a spiritual teacher should address, and that’s why I saved it for last. It gets almost all the attention on my blog, and I tend to think that I’m doing enough to warrant people’s financial support because I’m telling them how to freaking create their universe! But teaching the techniques of conjuration, and talking about the benefits of initiation aren’t enough. We need to provide the signposts and initiations along the path that lead to understanding holistically why they incarnated, and what their personal relationship to all things around them, above them, and within them happens to be.

-end of overview of requirements-

Now, it should go without saying that in order to provide this kind of comprehensive teaching that really makes people’s lives better, we need to know what the fuck we’re talking about. We can’t be hypocrites, or at least we can’t be blatant hypocrites. I can’t teach fiscal responsibility and be living a fiscally irresponsible life. I can’t teach forgiveness and harbor long-term grudges.

I’m not saying we have to be perfect before we can teach, because even imperfect people have something to pass on that’s of value. But what we’re teaching needs to be true, and the evidence needs to be there in our own lives. We may not always deal with our emotional urges appropriately, but we need to be able to talk about specific times when we did and the benefits it brought us. Otherwise we’re just frauds, and we’re not only ripping off our students, we’re ripping off those who really can teach by making their potential students cynical and bitter.

Blogger’s being weird with comments. If you’ve commented up until now, I have approved your comments, but they aren’t all showing up on the page. Hopefully Blogger gets it fixed soon, there were some cool ones out there.

In my previous post, I talked about the logistics of the “tithe,” the offering of 10% of your gross income to the Temple or the Church. This money is supposed to cover the operating costs of the clergy, provide the clergy with food shelter and clothing, and the things they need to get by in life.

I also talked about what I consider the criteria for clergy getting supported by the congregation: If the clergy is providing information, instruction, and insight that leads to the laity having a better financial, emotional, and spiritual life, they deserve to get supported so they can spend more time developing the materials that would help more people get more money and happiness and gnosis in their lives.

There’s a Mystery of the doctrine of the Tithe, a spiritual truth that translates into substantive blessings in the lives of those who practice this discipline. I believe the Tithe is appropriate because I personally know that you get a lot more than you give when you tithe, and I’m not talking about the umbrella services of the church or whatever it is your tithe supports. There’s a spiritual mystery to it.

First of all, where does everything in the Universe come from in the Hermetic Cosmology? Everything, we believe, is an emanation of God. Some people call it by other names, others are more comfortable leaving it nameless. I prefer to think of it as the Prime Mover, the First Father, but people I have deep respect for see it as an impersonal force, a fount of information that expresses itself in various levels of complexity that we experience and sort through in our lives.

Whatever. I find it hard to have a personal relationship with knowledge, it’s all cold and compassion-less. Not much fun in that.

So everything is a manifestation of God. that means you and me and the chairs we’re sitting in, the clothes we’re wearing, and the cat shit that stinks up my basement if I don’t change the litter box. Everything that exists is a manifestation of God according to Hermetic doctrine.

If everything that exists is a manifestation of God… who does it all belong to? Whose money gets put in whose account when you get paid?

Philosophically understanding, theoretically seeing that everything is an emanation of God is pretty simple. Seeing our paychecks as a direct provision from God is something else altogether. After all, God didn’t work for that money, didn’t put up with my boss’s bullshit for 60 hours while only getting paid for 40 last week. Hell, God manifested as my boss in the first place. Why should I give him the first 10%?

It was easier when people were in an agrarian/nomadic culture. The crops depended on the right amounts of Rain and Sun, the animals’ health depended on the same. The weather was under the direct control of one or more Gods, so it was easier to see that what you had at harvest was a direct manifestation of the local deity’s pleasure or displeasure with you. His pleasure was maintained by offerings.

The Tithe, while in essence an offering, was different. The tithe was the portion of the year’s earnings that belonged to God no matter what kind of weather you get. Spending the tithe was stealing from God. Sacrifices and offerings were given above and beyond the tithe. They weren’t automatically God’s portion, they were your specific attempt to express gratitude to or request favors from the deity receiving the offering. Tithes weren’t sacrifices, they were a public acknowledgment that everything was God’s anyway.

One of the neat things about the tithe is that the more God blesses you, the more he gets. It’s sort of an incentive for God to give you more, when you think about it. Not that he needs the tithe, everything is his already. Everything IS God and he doesn’t need anything more. “My God ain’t short on Cash, Mister,” as Bono put it.

But if God doesn’t need any of it, what’s the tithe for? Is it just a conspiracy by the Clergy to keep themselves in business? It does keep them in business, it’s true, but in order to manifest, it had to be purposed in the Mind of God. The tithe is part of the Purpose of God.

The tithe is a spiritual discipline. It’s a gift for us, a tool, a practice that reveals a secret about the manifestation of God. See, when you give the tithe regularly, off the top, you prosper. It’s weird, but when you give money away, intentionally donating it to God in whatever manifestation of clergy or spiritual teacher he manifests in your life, you have everything you need. Why? I don’t know. But it works.

It’s the one thing in the Bible that God commands people to do that he also says you can test him on. You give God 10% of your income, and watch the blessings pour in. It’s a spiritual law. It doesn’t come from the person or group you gave it to, either. It’s not that direct. I tithed on my unemployment when I was unemployed, but did the Church that got the money provide for me and my family? They brought me a couple of casseroles, but they didn’t pay my rent or my utilities bills.

But those bills were all paid. For almost a year from 2002-2003. There’s no explanation for that. The need would arise, and a pile of money would appear. I didn’t get ahead financially, but I maintained my existence. I know a lot of people who tithe regularly, and they are living testaments to this spiritual fact. If you give the first 10% of your income to god’s representatives in your life, whether they deserve it or not, you will be blessed. Your physical, material life will have a spiritual foundation that provides for all your needs. The tithe and the resulting blessings forms the solid bedrock of financial prosperity that everything else we do with magic can add to over time.

See, the Church, by teaching this spiritual truth even though it has been misrepresented as coercion (“give me money or burn in hell”), is actually giving the laity a spiritual discipline that personally and miraculously benefits them. That’s why they deserve to get the tithe, because they meet my criteria for making your life better through their doctrines.

Because this revelation of spiritual truth was recorded and popularized primarily within the Hebrew and Christian religions, pagans miss out on the benefits. Their clergy misses out on a regular source of income (though typically only 10% of the congregation tithes regularly as noted in the previous post). The coven members or grove members or whatever miss out on having all their basic needs met consistently by the powers of the gods.

Magicians miss out too. We miss out on a chance to learn something fundamental about manifestation magic.

Now, if you want to enjoy the benefits of the tithe, but you aren’t Christian or Hebrew, and besides the Romans tore apart your Temple in 70 AD anyway, there are some things you need to understand. The tithe isn’t Christian or Jewish. It’s one of those spiritual laws that apply to anyone. You don’t have to tithe to an organization; anyone in your life that is doing God’s work (or the Work of the Gods, whatever) would be a good person to receive the tithe. Anyone who teaches magic, paganism, or any spiritual practices that benefit you personally and draw you closer to God is a worthy recipient of the tithe. That includes BLOG AUTHORS like Jason, Kenaz, and Witchdoctor Joe. Scott Rassbach, the good Gnostic Monsignor qualifies. Yours truly wouldn’t be a bad choice either. I would be honored to be the recipient of your tithe, but I’m not 501c3 compliant, you totally wouldn’t get a tax credit.

It doesn’t matter WHO you give the tithe to, because you aren’t really giving it to THEM. You’re giving it to God, as a means to recognize that everything is his already anyway, in faith that he will provide all your needs. It’s the intent that determines the spirit you receive, as Agrippa says, and when it comes to the tithe, it’s the intent that you are giving it to God that triggers the blessings in your life. In the Bible, it says that if you can’t make it to Jerusalem to give the tithe to the Temple, you’re supposed to take the tithe and EAT IT. You use it to have a celebration in honor of God. You and your friends, family, strangers, the poor, everyone in the community feast on the tithe in thanksgiving to God, and then whatever is left over is left out for the animals to eat.

That doesn’t mean you get to take the first 10% and go to the movies and say it’s in honor of God, by the way. Any secret justifications for spending the tithe on yourself negate the whole thing. It has to be for God, and the best way to do that is to take 10% and give it to someone doing what you consider God’s Work on Earth.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve seen some posts and comments that mention a certain sense of entitlement among some students who come to teachers, who maybe buy a $25 2-hour workshop, and expect the teacher to become their 24/7 confidant, conspirator, and confessor. Kenaz recently posted his thoughts about how a pagan community ought to support their “Elders” because the Elders have done so much for them, and how it’s not right that Elders get so little support from their fan base when they have needs of their own.

Kenaz talks about the sense of entitlement among students, but there’s a certain hypocrisy there I’d like to address, and it’s not about Kenaz personally. Kenaz mentions Bonewitz’ lament that people don’t take care of pagan elders, and I’ve seen similar laments from people talking about the Ciceros, the Sam Websters, and any number of other leaders within the spiritual communities who spend a lot of their time writing, coordinating, teaching, and helping people along their paths.

First of all, lots of freeloaders want to get all the spiritual wisdom of the universe given to them for free. There’s a guy who calls himself Digimob who goes around stealing occult author’s writings and publishing them on torrents. He calls it a labor of love, and defends his theft using the old “Information Wants to be Free” argument popularized by the hacker community, and even embraced by at least one Information Model spiritual group who came pretty close to recreating the neo-platonic cosmology using terms from the digital age, with Information as the Monad, not entirely self-aware, but expressing itself in various forms of complexity.

Bullshit. If I write a book, I expect to get paid. You wouldn’t expect a jeweler to give away the products of his craft, yet people think that my books ought to be free because they’re information about spiritual topics. It’s like they think it’s somehow less work or something, or that the hours I spend writing aren’t worth as much as the hours a jeweler spends… jewelering.

Look, the information is freely available to anyone willing to do the research and the work; if you want my opinions, experiences, and a quick-reference guide to the distillation of the resources we have on neoplatonic magical practices of the Renaissance Traditions that I spen the time developing, you can pay me for it. Or make your own. Asshole.

Ok, so I’m clear about that, right? I know there is a sense of entitlement among the masses that isn’t appropriate.

But there’s a sense of entitlement among occult teachers that isn’t appropriate either. They want to have all the benefits of a priestly caste, but they don’t have a congregation. They want all the money that they think goes into a megachurch,* but they don’t understand that occult teachers are not shepherds of their congregations. Occult students don’t go to one occult teacher and expect them to provide the management of their spiritual lives the way religious congregants do. As soon as a fan of an occultist’s work begins to behave like a congregant of a church, expecting spiritual advice and counseling, help with whatever drama is going on in their lives, etc., the occult teacher starts bitching about the nut jobs he has to deal with.**

We occult writers simply do not provide the same level of support and outreach and services to our followers that a church provides.  Even if the pagan community did provide that kind of support, there just aren’t enough pagans to support a paid clergy. In a church, they have the “tithe” that pays for the overhead costs of running the church. The tithe is 10% of the congregation’s gross income. The fact is, only about 6-10% of the congregation regularly tithes. The rest give offerings, sometimes, of a couple of dollars here, a twenty there, or for special projects the church is doing, like visiting Africa or helping single mothers or pregnant teens.

Here’s some quick figures. Let’s pretend I’m a pastor, and my blog followers are my congregation. Figure the average income of the followers is around $30,000 a year. If 10% tithe, I can expect to bring in around $42,000 a year. Out of that comes all the expenses of running a church, the rent/mortgage, the hymnals, the energy to heat and cool the building, and the weekly bulletins, plus the maintenance and administrative costs. There’s not much left for a salary when all is said and done. That’s the kind of life modern clergy can expect to live, if they have a belief system that the majority of people even believe in.

The occult genre represents about 6% of the total number of books sold in America each year. That means about 6% of America is interested in the occult. With roughly 300 million people in the US, that’s about 18 million people scattered from coast to coast and in Alaska and Hawaii. Most of these purchases are one or two books, and then the person moves on. Maybe 3 out of every 10 people who have ever bought one or two occult books actually goes on to do anything long term with the occult that would require a teacher. That leaves about 5 million people. You’ve got pagans, ceremonial magicians, hoodoo and vodousants, and all the people of the New Age and the Far East competing for the interest of these 5 million people, all scattered across the country.

The odds of having enough of a local community interested in what we present to be able to afford to support a full-time clergy are astronomical. It’s totally unrealistic for any pagan or occult teacher to expect the occult community to provide for them.

If we each had millions of followers who had reached financial and medical heights of success and attainment as a result of our teachings, then we would have a right to expect the people to provide for all our needs. I’ve got 139 Followers of my blog; are you richer and happier because you read this?

The fact is, no vodou book has made anyone so rich that they should pay the author anything more than the cost of the book. No occult books, even the ones that do tell you the answers to the Mysteries of the Universe, give the reader a happy life. All the things I talk about require you, personally, to do a lot of Work to make it useful. All I’m doing is entertaining you while informing, and hopefully inspiring you to do the Work.

My primary goal in doing all this is to have some magicians to talk to with similar experiences and attainment. Sure, I’d like to get rich, and if you use my information to get rich and it works for you, you fucking owe me 10%! But until I start teaching you things that make your life better, substantially better, until I start offering you the kind of support a priest offers the laity, I have no right to expect anything more from you than the money you pay for my products.

And comments, you could at least comment more on the posts. I spend all this time writing the posts, you can take a minute and comment.

* Megachurches are the exception, not the rule. They’re rare, and they never last long. The life cycle of a megachurch is this: a charismatic leader arises with a message that is appealing to the masses, that is either geared towards prosperity or emotional peace, or some combination of the two. Whatever it is, their message resonates, there’s a huge surge of increased membership, they get a short-term influx of donations from their starry-eyed followers, and they start building huge churches, producing television shows, radio shows, and lots of books about their idea. They finance all this shit, and it takes a year or so before all their planned stuff can actually start coming to production. By the time it does, the starry-eyed followers have moved on to the next TD Jakes, or Benny Hinn, or Marilyn Hickey, or Bart Pierce (the APOSTLE OF BALTIMORE!!!), and they go bankrupt, their buildings are foreclosed on, and their mistresses, no longer getting the fancy gifts, start going public with their affairs.

** And rightfully so! Your purchase of one book or course or whatever you paid isn’t going to support me for the 8-12 hours of advice, counseling and therapy that it will take to get you over whatever drama you’re going through!  We should get $45 an hour to listen to you bitch about how you fucked up your life and tell you how to fix it.Then maybe you’d get to the point.

It must be noted that practical magic manifests exactly the same way that everything else in this created universe manifests: via natural law. If you’ve done your magic right, there will be nothing but synchronicity to indicate there was anything “supernatural” going on.