Fuck compassion!

Them bastards that suffer have it fucking coming, the lazy assholes. Get up and DO something about your fucking issues, for Christ’s sake! No one ever helped me do shit! Everything I know, I learned on my own, spent years studying, experimenting, shooting in the dark and hitting my own foot over and fucking over again. Now you want me to just fork it the fuck over to you for free so you can look at it and think about it sometimes and never fucking do anything with it? Fuck you.

I was homeless. I worked my way up to the upper middle class on charm and hard work. It ain’t easy, but fuck you, it’s possible. I know “flying a sign” gets you over a grand a week, I had to live in shelters with homeless scum. (That’s what they call it, those guys with the “will work for food” signs: Flying a sign. Like it’s a kite. A fun thing to do. And they bring home $200-400 a day. Or would, if they had homes. But they don’t. They buy hotel rooms and crack and booze. When they run out, they fly another sign.*)

Crippled from birth!? No excuse. Get a job. Roll on over to the local Christian Children’s Fund and charge them to take your picture to manipulate the soft-hearted gullible Americans into donating our precious $1 a month to them. So you can EAT. Besides, God wanted you to die, that’s why you were born that way. To starve. It’s his clay, he can make ugly miserable lumps if he wants to. Be thankful you made it this far.

Get the picture? I’m not really a compassionate kind of guy. I’m not quite as bad as I make out above, but on my worst days I can come pretty close. That bitterness behind the lack of compassion you see up there? That’s real. I have a lot of things in my life that I had to work my ass off for. But I didn’t do it alone, not by a long shot.

I really was homeless. What I leave out above is that I got off the streets because of my family. My mommy and daddy took me back in, gave me a home, and helped me get a job. They were afraid of me at the time, afraid I’d steal their stuff and their car and book it on to Texas or something. Because I was hooked on the “killer weed.” Heh. Silly parents.**

I had other things going for me. I’m white. I’m not proud of my race, but I’m damned thankful. White people have it easier in this world; even though Obama’s president, we still do. We didn’t do anything to earn it, other than oppressing every other color on the planet while we took the resources and used them to build our society.*** There’s nothing inherently better, smarter, aware, or more innately deserving about people with white skin. If you don’t believe me, check out Essex, Maryland. Or your local trailer park on a Friday night. Still, I get the job when I’m up against equally qualified brown-skinned people with heavy accents. Unless there’s a quota.

Another thing I have going for me is the third leg advantage. Women have a “glass ceiling” keeping them from climbing the corporate ladder. Men can climb faster cause we’ve got three legs. Like my skin color, I’m not proud of my gender. DAMNED THANKFUL though. Even if I didn’t get promoted over better qualified women, I’d STILL be thankful. For obvious reasons.

So I can’t say “Anyone can make something of themselves with nothing going for them, I did!” because frankly, I didn’t. I had a lot going for me. I had to work hard, but not nearly as hard as some people. It’s no excuse to lack compassion.

But what is Compassion, really? It’s like pity, but without any contempt. It’s not “feeling sorry” for someone. “Feeling Sorry” means feeling sorrow. Sorrow is a sign of something being out of whack, ignorance of a bigger picture. Buddhists believe something about attachment being the source of all sorrow. If you look at someone and feel sorrow, it’s an indication that you’re attached to something you shouldn’t be. If you equate sorrow with compassion, I think you’ve missed the point.

Compassion, in my opinion, is not a negative thing at all. It’s not feeling bad or feeling sorry for someone. It’s a good feeling, a positive feeling. Compassion, I think, is simply “wanting to help.”

I have a great deal of compassion for people. The homeless, people of other-color-than-white, and women. I want to help them succeed, to give them the leg up that I got just by being (mostly) sane, white, and male. I help them out by hooking them up with opportunities I find, and by sharing whatever wealth I might stumble across. I help them out by pointing out the fun stuff that helps us forget the negatives, the fun stuff that refreshes the soul, that encourages, illuminates, and inspires.

I have compassion for everyone to some degree, but some folks get more compassion from me than others. Specifically for the mage-born. We’re alive in a world that for the most part rejects magic. We’re stuck in a time that has raised to a “science” the idolatry of materialism. The texts we have in the West that claim to teach us magic are for the most part watered down attempts at reconstructing centuries-old techniques. Our Magisters are mere students themselves, students that have caught more of a glimpse of what’s possible than we have, surely, but still far from the Magisters of old.

I’ve mentioned before that I think of myself as a Hierophant. It’s not a pride thing at all, in case you’re wondering. I don’t WANT to be a Hierophant. I WANT to be a nouveau riche American upper class megamillionaire who sends his kids to the finest schools, buys yachts, collects cars, and buys and sells businesses for a profit.

But I have this drive to help people. It’s a compulsion. I’m not happy unless I’m sharing something I’ve learned, passing on an experience, or pointing someone new to magic to a passage of Agrippa that explains what they’re looking for. I get serious contentment from initiating people into the Hermetic Occult Traditions. I love finding people’s Genius names and guiding them through the travails of Samekh and Solar initations. IT makes me feel goooooood.

I believe it’s my purpose in life. When I die, I want to be able to continue in that purpose. That’s why I’m so interested in the Rainbow Body. When it occurs, the person experiencing it becomes a teacher of great power on the other side. In Christian terms, they become one of the Holy Saints, not just an ordinary saint, but the kind that can perform miracles for the people that pray to them. The kind the Catholic Church Canonizes.

It’s not based on a lust for power, or a desire to continue on after I die as myself. I believe all that would happen is that my Ruach would get empowered enough to continue to act from the spiritual realm on the physical realm while the Neschemah goes on to reincarnate again. Instead of sitting on a dusty shelf in the Akashic Record, I’d be living and moving and having my being in the lives of everyone I could help. It would be uber cool.

If things don’t work out that way, I’m fine with it too. I know that God has a plan for me, and whatever it is will make me more content than anything I could dream of in this lifetime or any other. It just seems that all my studies and the things I’m drawn to the most in this life are related to becoming this after-life teacher figure, a full-blown Hierophant.

In the Corpus Hermeticum, it teaches that we are to become Powers. We go up and join with God (remember our race and value, not literally become one with God who emanated us separately for a reason) and then turn into Powers, like the Powers of the Angelic realms.

In the “Celestial Hierarchies,” Dionysius the Areopagite atrributes the rank of “Powers” to the sphere of the Sun. He was a neo-platonist, and his works reflect the Hermetic teachings, as did most of the early Christian teachings. As a Christian, Dionysius provides modern Christian Magicians with an insight into the grimoires that even Agrippa lacked, imho. He describes the Powers thus:

The name of the holy Powers, co-equal with the Divine Dominions and Virtues, signifies an orderly and unconfined order in the divine receptions, and the regulation of intellectual and supermundane power which never debases its authority by tyrannical force, but is irresistibly urged onward in due order to the Divine. It beneficently leads those below it, as far as  possible, to the Supreme Power which is the Source of Power, which it manifests after the manner of Angels in the well-ordered ranks of its own authoritative power.

As you can see, this would be an ideal role for me as a would-be supernatural Hierophant. I don’t want to become an Angel, I don’t think it’s truly possible. However, a being of similar intent and function would suit me just fine.

So, compassion: I gots it. I want to help people get ahead, succeed, and be all that they can be without joining the Army. There’s a beautiful existence at hand, and the path is through the Solar sphere. Entrance into that particular role is how I would like to see my Great Work turn out in the end. That would suit me just fine.

*The thing about the homeless flying a sign is true, by the way. What I don’t mention above is that these people doing that are mentally ill. In the 80s, when Reagan was cutting back big government, he closed down a lot of mental institutions. The inmates were either jailed or just let go, into the streets. They’re still there. They can’t work because they are mentally ill. They take drugs because they are mentally ill, and the drugs give them a temporary release. They don’t save that grand a week they make because they are physically incapable of making plans beyond two days in the future.

**I just wanted a real life again. I was bi-polar and the weed made me almost-stable, as long as I got high every morning and stayed mildly high all day long. I prefer it to the meds I take now, but I can’t keep my job if I piss positive, so that’s right out.
 
***Not “Culture,” society. We steal cultures.

In our work with the spirits, we often find ourselves lighting candles in honor of the spirits we’re Working with. Biblically, this can be construed as breaking the First Commandment, that one about having no other gods before me. I’ve seen a lot of debate on whether that commandment means you can’t worship any God but Jehovah or whether it means Jehovah has to come first, or even if that just means that in the temple, you’d better not have any other god depicted.

Based on what I’ve learned from my spiritual experiments over the years, God is the source of the springs that manifest as other gods or angels or spirits. There is only One God at the source, and from that God springs everything that is, the Word, the seven Spheres and their intelligences, the Workman, the physical, Nature, animals, and even Mankind. The spiritual traditions of every culture, Christian, Buddhist, Persian, or Aztec teach the same goal: Remembering and Reclaiming our divine heritage; bringing awareness of that source-ness and at the same time our individual embodiment of it to our daily lives, and eventual death. And beyond.

So to me, the idea that you can even have a God before God is fundamentally off. I think the only reason the Jews received that commandment was because they were CHOSEN by God to be an example to the rest of Mankind. That law (and the rest) is for the Hebrews. He offers plenty of evidence in the rest of the bible that he was (and is) revealing himself to other nations, tribes, cultures, and lands in addition to the Hebrews. Melchizadek, for instance, received Abraham’s tithe. He was a Priest of the One true God, right? Hell, later on, Jesus is said to be the High Prest in the order of Melchizadek. Dude was pretty important, but not Hebrew, not the Chosen people, and not bound by the Law. Paul mentions too that God revealed himself to the gentiles in their poetry when he’s talking to the Athenians. He quotes “in whom we live and breathe and have our being” from a Pagan poem. He also says the altar to the “Unknown God” is an altar to Jesus.

So, when I’m lighting a candle in honor of Bune as I ask him to get me a windfall of riches, I’m not placing a God before God Jehovah. I’m going to a manifestation of the One True God that manifests to every culture as he sees fit, the specific part that is there to bring men riches and eloquence, and putting in a request. The candle isn’t an idolotrous offering, it’s a way to “lift up the prayer” into the spiritual realms. Heat rises. As the wax is consumed, the request is raised. As the wax is transformed by the fire, the physically spoken request is transformed into its spiritual components. In revelations, we see angels bringing incense before God, and it says the smoke is the prayers of his people. Smoke, fire, prayer, they’re all part and parcel of the same thing.

Sacrifices in general intrigue me. It wasn’t the meat that God wanted in the old testament. It was the smell of the burning fat. Says so in the Bible. You know how GOOD burning fat smells? Maybe not if you’re a vegetarian, but maybe you get the same out of burning olive oil or something, I dunno. That delicious smell that makes you want to consume, that’s the offering that’s being given to God. Here God, eat the smell of the burning fat, and forgive my sins while you’re at it.

Personally, I wish he’d just take my own fat away, without making me exercise or eat less. In a way though, it makes my exercise holy when I think about it that way. Kind of gross, but sacred too.

I’m getting off topic.

Point is, I don’t think lighting a candle is idolatrous if you’re doing it with the full knowledge that the being you’re Working with is a manfestation of the Monad God the Father that makes everything. If you’re just lighting candles to images without thinking about it, thinking it’s the image that’s going to make shit happen, I thionk you’ve missed the boat and will have a lot less success in your Work. It’s the Spirt represented, and it’s the the thing that represents itself as the Spirit that you’re really working with. The candle’s just sort of there as a physical reminder of what it is you’re doing in your Work. It’s you rising through the spheres and returning in power, rising to the level of the spirit and bringing back via your prayer the result you seek.

I hope this makes sense.

BOTA. I don’t know much about them. Builders of the Adytum. I don’t have a lot of experience with BOTA initiates, and I haven’t delved into their background or anything. I vaguely remember something about them being the Golden Dawn without all the Egyptian Pagan imagery. Which I guess leaves Christian Rosicrucianism. I know they study the Tarot a lot. I know something about the Cube of Space is in their system, I think. I believe they use the GD-Kircher Tree of Life as their map of the spiritual cosmos.

That’s about all I know about the group. Google will likely tell you a lot more than I can about them.

I’d like to focus instead on a person I knew a while ago. His name online was OtterBodyExperience. He was an ER tech, and I had the good fortune of meeting him in the flesh when he came to Baltimore for some training a couple of years ago. Prior to that, we had an online correspondence that lasted a couple of years on The Great Work yahoo list. When it was dead and only two or three people regularly posted, he and I were often two of the three.

Without comparison, this guy knew more about the Western Mystery Traditions than any other man or woman I’ve ever met. He was so into the depths of the Tradition, the Mysteries, that there was nothing I’ve run into that he hasn’t touched on somewhere in his weird posts. He posted in weird puns, using odd capitalizations, making people have to think about not only the words, but the homonymns that make them up. It took a bit to get through the style to the message, but there was a value to that too. It showed how many layers there were to everything we take for granted, even the simple communications we exchange on the internet.

It seems like his understanding grew out of the Tarot. He could communicate almost any spiritual truth through the imagery of the Major or Minor Arcana. He had gone through the BOTA training, and had learned things about the cards that no one on the planet that I’ve met has ever demonstrated. He explained the Art/Temperance card and how it WAS Liber Samekh to me in a way that explained Dehn and Mathers’ Abramelin, the HGA, and Liber Samekh in a way that nothing else could. He explained Michael the Archangel in a way that I can’t begin to describe, and that too continues to haunt my studies.

I personally can’t get into the Tarot to the degree that they do in BOTA. At least at my current state of understanding. I have issues. Levi applied the Hebrew Aleph-Beit to SOME trumps of the Tarochini cards that were popular in the European courts as he interpreted them, and applied a history to them that is doubtful, fantastical, and in my opinion, arbitrary. he got rid of some Trumps that he didn’t have a letter for, combined imagery for others to make it fit his idea, and published his interpretation as if it were the secret mysteries of the ages.

However, it still holds value to many. I don’t think anyone believes there was ever a “real” Christian Rosenkrutz, but Rosicrucianism is still a meaningful path for many. God knows I use a tarot deck for divination on occassion. I have a mini-Rider-Waite deck that suits my purposes well. It’s a hold over from y early ceremonialist training. I prefer Joe’s Geomantic “tumblers” for divination, but regardless, it works.

I don’t know what else went into forming this man into a spiritual adept full of wisdom besides his BOTA training. However, if you have any resonance with the Tarot, based on my experience with Otter, I feel confident recommending the BOTA organization for people looking for a lodge experience. If it led him to the level he was at, then it’s got to have something to it that will hold value for you.

I’ve had some things on my mind a great deal lately. I’ve spoken before about the goal of the magician as long as we are in the flesh. I may have mentioned that the goal of a magician, per the Hermetic texts, is to become a Power. Last night while reading the Greek Magical Papyri, I found this:

“When you die he will embalm your body as befits a god, and taking up your spirit will carry it into the air with himself. For an aerial spirit [such as you have become] having been united with a powerful assistant will not go into Hades.” (Papyri graecae magicae I.54)

I’ve mentioned before that I think the Supernatural Assistant described in the Greek Magical Papyri is the same entity as the HGA. I asked my HGA while reading the description if he could do all the things described, and he confirmed it.*

I just realized I haven’t written up (or at least I can’t find) my dissertation on the Emerald Tablet here. It explains a lot of basic concepts about the Great Work that I wanted to link to so I didn’t have to repeat it yet again, but apparently I haven’t written it. I did talk about it. I remember writing it though. Shit; shit shit shit.

Ok, well anyway. The goal of the magician is to ascend to the heavens and return in power to create the universe, according to the Emerald Tablet as I see it. That’s a quick summary. We’re images of God, God created by emmanating, and that’s what we should be doing to, and we do it by going up through the Seven Heavens, getting purified, getting more Power, and returning to the earth. That’s the “while we’re in the flesh” part.

But in the Corpus Hermeticum, it talks about how we’re supposed to also be leaving behind at each sphere some negative aspect of ourselves. I’ll get to that expanded post eventually, but I touched on it here. When we have accomplished this, we become a Power.

Now, “Powers” in the time of the writing of the Corpus Hermeticum were sometimes Arial Spirits. In the Corpus, it’s pretty clear that they’re talking about becoming an Angel like the Angels that help you become an Angel. Of course, you don’t become literally an Angel, you become a manifestation of God with more supernatual Powers that you can use to help other people.

Note: Powers, Angels, Spiritual Guides, HGAs, Geniuses, Gods, etc. all have one thing in common: No Body. No flesh suit to flap around in on the earth. So I think it’s safe to say we can’t become a Power the way the Corpus suggests while we’re still flapping meat to wheeze sounds at each other. Most folks** don’t get out alive, so there’s a death of sorts involved.

The Emerald Tablet covers what to do while you’re in the Flesh. It also covers how to get to a point where you’re ready to get out of the Flesh and become a Power. It’s a roadmap, sort of. It doesn’t tell you how to get out of the Flesh and become a Power, but performing the activities described in the Tablet will result in you getting ready for the Eighth and Ninth Spheres where this can occur.

Enter into the picture the Rainbow Body. Jason mentioned it to me in passing, and I totally got sucked into it. We were talking about the East vs. the West in the big miscommunication, and I was trying to get in touch with all the power of my past lives or something. He mentioned the Hermetic work “The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth,” which has been extremely interesting and has lead me to Working Iophiel from Agrippa’s Scale of the Number Ten. I’m trying to learn the Hymns of Silence now, and they are truly beautiful.

But the Rainbow Body of Dzogchen and becoming a Power in Hermetic practice are similar enough that I think they’re different manifestations of the same spiritual “impulse” that Fr. BH calls spirit communications, only received differently in different cultures. I’ve been working out how to accomplish this Rainbow Body thing at my death. I even told my spouse about it in case I die and all that’s left is some hair and fingernails. I wouldn’t want her to freak out.

So last night I was going over the Greek Magical Papyri again, and lo and behold, there it was, buried in PGM I.54. This spiritual assistant, this angel in the rite that you get that has all the same characteristics as the “Supernatural Assistant” and the “HGA” is also able to “embalm your body as befits a god.” Embalming was the process of preserving the body, but the gods don’t. have. bodies. So I’m thinking there’s a transformation of the body going on here that is illuminated by the other references we have in the Western mystery traditions in the Corpus Hermeticum. These things were all coming out of the same part of the world at around the same period of time. Lots of overlap.

My understanding of the Rainbow Body is that when you die, your Ruach gets a new body and can basically do all the things that a “Power” as described in the Corpus can do. I believe the Neschemah-eternal part of the soul goes on to reincarnate, but I’m still in the tentative-formation phase of the theory, so that might change, I dunno. Rather than sitting in the Akashic record gathering dust while you wait for the Immortal spark of yourself to finish reincarnating, you get to continue to “live” and “breathe” and “have your being” in a Body of Light. Pretty cool shit, actually. Those Tibetans have stories of people that were reborn as demi-gods and stuff, and we have our Saints in Christianity. Except our Popes and Pastors don’t tell us not to propitiate Saints because they cause trouble. Unless they’re Protestants and call it idolatry.

So, in conclusion, I think (the spirt that we modern magicians call) the HGA might be able to either physically transform you into the Rainbow Body, or at the very least provide the instruction, initiations, and empowerments required to be able to transform into the Rainbow Body at the time of death. Like Yoda and Ben Kenobi did in the Star Wars trilogy. And you know you want that.

*For those who prefer to make their own inferences from more scholarly than the Voices in my head, compare the description of the HGA rites in Mathers’ introduction to The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, the descriptions of the Genius in Agrippa’s Book 3 of Occult Philosophy (chapters 21, 22, 26, and 27), and the description of the good and evil daimons in the Divine Pymander (verses 22 and 23). Check out the rest of the Greek Magical Papyri over on Al Billing’s site, and read the essays there on the spirits. The history of the HGA can be readily traced through these sources.

**Enoch; Elijah. Exceptions. If your name doesn’t start with an “E,” you’re fuct, apparently. Don’t tell me Jesus doesn’t start with an E, he totally died. And even if you buy that stupid “swoon theory,” his name was also Emmanuel, so fuck you, I’m totally right, and you’re a lu-hooser. I mean, scholarship demonstrates the lack of foundation to your arguments.

Dude….

Unbefuckinglievable. I don’t have a dissertation on the Emerald Tablet here. I totally thought I did, but I’ve checked and rechecked, and either I never have explained in detail the Emerald Tablet as I see it, or I just can’t find it in my blog posts. I’m trying to link to it because it’s all the stuff I need to talk about in another post, but I never talked about it here, it seems. I talked about it to the folks at Thelesis when I gave the Modern Angelic Grimoire talk, and I think I mentioned it in the neoplatonic basics series, but … shit. It’s got to be here somewhere.

If I can’t find it, I will write one up. It’s the CORNERSTONE of my practice, my understanding and application of the Work. Or at least the best representation of that that I’ve found.

I’ll get around to it.

At the Doing Magic blog by Fr. POS, I was recently exhorted to comment on a comment to his blog. So there will be something magical posted here today before I go to sleep.

I’m snipping the interesting background of Anonymous, mainly because I’m not a Pagan. I have no insight into the approach or the specifics she mentioned.

I can, however, comment on the following question she posted:

“Does magick allow for continual reincarnation for the sake of change in time, culture and social context?”

First, there is no good reason for putting a “k” in magic. I do it, on occasion, and when I do it’s because I usually read the word in Agrippa, and he spells it with a “k.” I think. Or it could be that I’ve been indoctrinated by all the Ckrowley I read in my youth and sometimes I slip.

Second, I totally agree with the Frater’s essential message of his post: I unequivocally believe that yes, Magic allows for continual reincarnation for the sake of change in time, culture and social context. To me, Magic is based on understanding how God (the Monad, First Father, the Good) manifests through the different Heavens, the Spirits he emanates to represent aspects of himself, and most importantly, the REVELATION of himself provided by each Spirit you Work with as a magician.

I would rephrase “reincarnation” with “revelation.” Magic not only allows for the continual revelation of God, but is the interaction of Man with these continually revealed aspects of himself.

I would quibble with certain parts of Frater BH’s post, but I really liked 99% of what he said and how he said it. Terming the communications of the spirits (or gods) as “impulses” that we then interpret is excellent. It encapsulates the basics of how I have experienced communications with the spirits. People ask me if I hear voices, or see visions, or if the spirits appear physically before me all the time. I receive “pulses” of communication from them that may unfold to me as a vision, or as a voice, or something else, like a tactile sensation, or a smell. I have a deep love of words, so I often get words in my communications. Artists like Sucae would likely hear more music or see more visuals.

I do strongly disagree with the idea that one should write off symbolism that doesn’t align with the spirits’ standard symbolism. A friend conjured Raphael, and ended up with a being that was carrying a sheaf of wheat. He performed the LVX signs, and the spirit wavered and disappeared, and Raphael came forward in a more appropriate form. Fr. POS is more restrained than lots of folks that dabble in magic though, so I think his response to a spirit appearing with whacked out symbolism would be that of an experienced magician: note the differences, challenge the spirit with something like the vibration of the appropriate name of God, or asking it to perform some act (symbolically) to prove it is whom it claims to be representing.

But at the same time, I agree with what he was saying about being open to a spirit presenting symbolism that is within the spirit’s purview, even if it doesn’t match what you think you know about the spirit. They know more than we do. He’s just experienced enough to understand what to do if a spirit looks off somehow. Maybe I’m used to dealing with newer magicians than he is, I dunno.

But getting back to the point, I work in a lot of traditional ways, but the spirits I conjure are not stuck in the 15th century. They are alive and well in the 21st century, and they are not ignorant of the changes that have occurred in the last 600 years. I draw from the older traditions because they aren’t as muddied as the post-1899 occult sources are. They don’t include a bunch of “scientific” theories that have been discredited, rephrased, and discredited again in their language the way Bardon and Chaos Magic do. They don’t try to appeal to modern institutions for validity the way so many modern texts do. It’s true that they appeal to the institutions of their time, including Catholicism or Protestantism, depending on which religion was being implemented by the State where they were written, but I can identify with that, and it resonates well with my own beliefs and experiences. We’re so far removed from when these institutions had to be appealed to in secular America that the texts can be weighed and evaluated on the success or failure of their rites alone.

It’s vitally important that we remember that the word “Kabbalah” in Hebrew means “revelation” though. It’s not a static thing. Emanationist theories from Persia and Greece that form the foundation of my Work and beliefs more than the Kabbalah were also considered to be constantly revealed. The words we use for spirits, be it angels, daimons, or malakim originally meant “messengers,” and let’s remember that’s what they still are: bearers of messages, revealers and representatives of specific aspects of God.

So if you use gods of the Pagan myths to interact with the Monad in his various incarnations, don’t expect them to be stuck in the forms and thoughts of their myths from 2500 years back. They will reveal what they represent, and we will interpret their pulses of communication as best as we are able to. In 2000 years, it will be different, and yet the same.

Nothing Magical today of note.So far anyway.

But I found this image in my ongoing battles with workplace stress and boredom:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/suecae_sounds/2271579673/

A nice tribute to his daughter? A horrifying image that will haunt my nightmares? I can’t tell.

Maybe it’s the curve of the arm?

I really love the photos Suecae takes of nature stuff, and mad props to his blog.

But that face on that arm… And when they’re old, and the skin cells have regenerated a few hundred times, and the detail is gone, and the image has that old tattoo look… I just… no. Never mind.

I managed to free up some major bandwidth the other day. For the last three years I’ve been a member of a yahoo group called “RealMagick”. For the last year or so, I’ve moderated it at the request of the owner. Last week, a couple of trolls popped up and I handled them, but then the list devolved into a long series of character assasinations and other stupidity.

I realized that I’m spending no time developing the things I want to develop, and still spending time trying to get people who have little interest in learning true magic stay on topic. So I quit. It’s been amazing how much bandwidth that freed up. I was getting between 20-80 inane emails a day, worrying about people’s mutual respect, and trying to get the topic of conversation to somehow be related to magic.

The final strawwas when the people that consistently posted on topic had their characters assasinated by the people who don’t. I figured out that the real problem was that people who know about magic aren’t really liked by the people who pretend to want to know about magic. They pretend to respect us, they pretend to have an interest in what we’re saying, but when it comes to questions like, “Have yuo started performing Samekh yet?” the answer is always “No, because…” Likewise, “Have you conjured ANY spirits yet?” or “Have you read that chapter of Agrippa I referenced that is the source for the book you’re talking about?” or “Did you follow up on the tips so and so gave you?”

Fools. Most of my angst with the magical community comes from being surrounded by fools. I had hoped to teach them bout magic, had hoped to at least provide a forum where they could express their thoughts and questions about magic, but primarily they are only interested in yelling at one another and playing “My dick’s bigger than yours.” And that’s a game women play as readily  as men on the message boards, believe you me.

So enough with the groups. There are a couple I will maintain a membership in, those that discuss magic, or at least consist of my social network of magicians, but all the large groups can bite my ass. Much more time for blogging and book writing now. And course REDEVELOPMENT because I STILL haven’t found my motherfucking thumb drive. I’m annoyed about that.

A reader sent me the following link to a bit more of the story of what happens to Randolph Carter. It’s a jointly-written extrapolation of the original story by Lovecraft and an “E Hoffman Price.” I don’t know who Price is, but the expanded story, while interesting, I think somehow loses something in the rewrite. At the same time, it provides more of what I wanted to talk about. The Opening of the Gates.

In the original Silver Key, we read about the slow wearing-away of Randolph’s abiltiy to Dream, and the misery and detachmnent, the apathy with the things of the world that came about as a result. In reading this part of the story, I couldn’t help but find parallels in my own spiritual growth. I’ve also been hearing “Wish you were here” by Pink Floyd a lot lately. The lyrics, “Did they get you to trade, your heroes for ghosts, hot ashes for trees, hot air for a cool breeze…” keep popping up in my mind lately. I feel a certain peculiar resonance with the almost neo-Modernist pathos expressed.

One of the things I’ve learned about this particular feeling is that it means there’s something going on spiritually that I need to address. It comes along with a certain inertia that is difficult to overcome, and a frustration, an unfocused angst that doesn’t have any real reason for existing.

Personally, I know that I’m feeling this way because I have not been making time for either a relationship with God or my magical practice, two things I consider separate aspects of a healthy spiritual life. I have been doing some Work with Iophial, and Rising through the Spheres at night before I go to bed, but I haven’t had the time to really finish the projects I really wanted to pursue lately, that is, finishing up the Hermetic Course curriculum (which is stored on a thumb drive that has annoyingly disappeared) and the new and improved Tepaphone.

I haven’t gotten to it because my job is very busy right now. I’m happy with it, but it is sapping my brain power. It’s getting interesting though. I get to do things in a leadership role now that I haven’t before, and it’s rather exciting. Good for my resume, and stuff. I’m also taking training for a certification that will increase my earning potential by leaps and bounds. It’s not BAD work, it’s just time consuming, and like a teen that would rather be getting everything they want RIGHT NOW, I’m all angsty.

So when I read The Silver Key again, it resonated in my sphere. It brought about a reminder of things I know, things I’ve been telling people in instant messages, and in my blog for years. It reminded me that the things that wear us down only have power over us as long as we are trapped by our inability to dream, to travel through the spheres, to open the Gates and pass through them into time and space.

The expanded story gets into some very interesting Gates and heady philosophy that is usually missing in as much detail in Lovecraft’s other work. I’m thinkng Price must have at least studied a bit about traveling through the planes, merkavah and hekalot, possibly the Kabbalah, or been a member of one or another esoteric society. There’s just too many things that are right out of the meditative and contemplative experiences I’ve had Working with the spirits, especially of Saturn, in that particular work of fiction for it to be a coincidence.

I didn’t turn into something clawed and monstrous though. That part was totally made up. Honest. Typing with scaly claws wouldn’t be too likely.

At any rate, we cannot forget that our paths are going to be muddled and distant from our long-term goals, on occassion, and when we do find ourselves in the valleys where we can no longer see the peaks, it is imperative that we stop in the midst of whatever is going on, and return to the Dream-realms to remember, to reclaim what we are.

I do this in acts of contemplation, because frankly, I don’t have time to conjure right now. I can throw a talisman on the Box at will, but when I try to scry lately, I see my boss and the deliverables I’m tracking peeking out at me.

I took a moment the other night, when I normally meditate on the Seals of the Archangels of the Spheres, and I focused as I went up through the spheres not on just getting up and back down before I fell asleep, but on listening, seeing, feeling the radiance of each sphere. I let my own sphere relax in the presence of the Archangels, instead of keeping it all business and messaging, and I just enjoyed their presence. I think I ended up leaving behind some of the crap of each sphere that I’m supposed to. It helped.

This morning in church, I took time during the worship service to pursue the silent hymns of the 8th Sphere. Doing so in the midst of vocal hymns was interesting, and I highly recommend anyone working with Iophial or the Archangels of the Zodiac to take the time on a Sunday morning to go to a church that sings. It doesn’t matter if it’s contemporary or traditional, but if you’ve forgotten the essence of what a hymn to the highest is all about, then you won’t have the context to understand what they can teach. If you’re a pagan, review the Orphic hymns, I’m pretty sure they’re around somewhere. The point is to worship, which is not a debasing or limiting thing at all. IT is freeing, and you can’t begin to understand the image you were made in until you are able to understand what you’re an image of. If that makes sense. My fingers are typing the wrong words lately.

Back to the Silver Key, in conclusion, I’d like to remind you of what it was that brought the Dream back to Randolph when he had lost it. He redressed his house the way it looked when he was a child and was still able to Dream. When he did, his dreams returned, and he learned from his ancestor of the Key, and how to open the First Gate to the realms of the Dream (Luna, Yesod anyone?). In the expanded story, he then learned the way to the Ultimate Gate.

So if you find yourself wondering when you exchanged hot ashes for trees, go back to the beginning. Recreate through similitude your surroundings from the time they were still trees, and see if that doesn’t jog your memory, or bring back to your mind the conversations with the mentors, elders, or ancestors that were also the keepers of your destiny.