Do you ever wonder why the stupid fucks get to live? The ones that just don’t get it?

They’re all made “in the image of god,” they all have the potential to accomplish the Work, and between now and eternity, they will all come to grace/enlightenment/attainment/unity with god, or whatever. Eventually. SOMEfuckingDAY.

It would take way too long to kill them all. The logistics alone are overwhelming. The ethics are questionable. And the smell of the cities afterwards…

Those are the two reasons I usually come to in my contemplation of why the pinheads get to breathe. I find myself contemplating this when I read about how it takes months to figure out that a white horse is not a horse, and what that means, and how it applies to life. It’s a big fat giant “No fucking shit!” when you get to the “right” answer.

I struggle with humility. I get prideful and arrogant. I get knocked on my ass when I argue with my betters because I think I know better than they do. It happens a LOT.

Why?

Because the world is full of morons! Folks with all the spiritual awareness of a bag of hair. Less, because at least the spirit of the bag of hair is aware. Most folks want to drink their cold Coors Light and catch a rerun of Mork and Mindy, and they’re fine people, but do you think they know that logic and rational mind is there to point out that there’s something bigger than the sum of the parts?

These are the things I usually think about when I try to figure out why muggles are here.

But tonight, I had a brilliant flash of insight! I finally “grok” what is going on, and the purpose of people like that! Without them, there would be no oil refined into gasoline or plastic, there would be no playstation, no guitar hero, and no flushable toilets. There would be no Network Operating Centers, no Data Warehouses, no fiber-optic networks. There would be no dynamic IP, no electronic fund transfers, and no online banking.

They’re here because…

Someone has to keep the internet running!

The local occult book shop sells these neat little Egyptian Perfume Bottles. They’re made of hand-blown glass, and are really pretty. Ever since seeing them, I’ve wanted to make one into a spirit pot. They look a bit too much like a Genie bottle to pass up.

I bought some in bulk, and I’m grinding the herbs now. I’m going to be putting together everything you need for a Goetic Spirit Pot (bottle) for a Duke of the Goetia. I’ve got a blend of Venusian herbs that I use with Bune, which I’ll put into the bottle. You’ll also get a blank copper talisman forged in a Venus hour that you can inscribe with the spirit’s seal of your choice.

The following table lists the Dukes of the Goetia, and links to their seal on Joe Peterson’s www.esotericarchives.com web site. The links are to his bookmarks on the page, and some of them aren’t perfectly accurate; you may have to scroll up or down a bit to get to them.

As you can see, the Dukes are pretty handy fellows to have on your side. If you’re interested in purchasing one or more, please visit my Products and Services page at the Rufus Opus web site. I have ten total available.

I never got around to having Barbatos reconcile the Africans that were having issues. It wasn’t important enough to me, and I don’t know if that’s a failing on my part, or a message in itself. My world, mine, is very small and very personal. Not private, necessarily, but personal.

I have, however, been working with Barbatos. I like the name, for one thing. It conjure images of pirates and the Carribean. Arr. I also have a plethora of pets in my house.We have several goldfish, three ferrets, two cats, and until a couple of days ago, one dog. We had to get rid of the dog because the allergies were killing us.

I love having a dog. I was working with Barbatos, and I developed a communion with the dog. She and I got along really well, and she was brilliant. Training was going great, except for crapping in the house, but that was because when we first got her, I yelled at her when she crapped in the house. She learned crapping was bad, and to hide it. After a while, I realized this was the wrong tactic, and stopped making a big deal when she pooped inside, and made a really big positive deal when she did it outside. Things were getting better, she had at least begun pooping BY the door, and I think a couple more weeks and we would have gotten things straightened out. Figuring out what she was thinking and feeling became really easy when I started Working with Barbatos. She didn’t understand me any better, but I was able to understand her in new ways.

I also developed a communion with the ferrets. When Rosco passed away, we got a couple of friends for Badger. One is his “wife,” and the other… well, he’s this HUGE fat ferret, older than Badger, and kind of mean spirited. He’s pure white and beautiful, but he’s just mean. He dominated Badger, and wouldn’t let him eat. Rosco had done the same. So the fat mean one is on the way out. Fuck him.

The other night, my daughter came running in with Badger, all in tears. He wasn’t eating, and he wasn’t playful. I told her he was depressed, and needed to be separated from the fatty, given lots of attention, and his own food. No, she wailed, he’s sick and must go to the vet hospital. :sigh:

$165 later, the vet explained that he was depressed, should be separated from the dominant male, and played with. I knew that was the problem, without having any training in animal psychology or anyhting, I just had this communion with the ferret. I took one look at him and knew what his deal was.

And then there’s the goldfish. They’re easy to forget about. The other night I dreamed they were dead. Specifically this really cute little frog, one of my favorites. In the morning, I went down to check on them, and the frog was alive, but VERY HUNGRY. We hadn’t fed them in a couple of days, as my wife has been ill. She usually asks each night before the kids go to bed if anyone fed the fish today, and since she’s been sleeping by the time they go to bed, I have been derelict in her duties.

So the fish were communicating with me, or Barbatos sent me a dream about the pets, I dunno.

His powers of Reconciliation aren’t quite universal. He seems to be best at reconciling people in positions of authority. There’s a manager here at work who doesn’t get along with another manager at all. They are career employees, have worked here for years, and have disliked each other for most of their time together. I’m working with Barbatos on them, as I’ve been pulled in to take notes on a meeting between them, and they’ve managed to get along well enough so far on this project.

However, I recently had a person join the RealMagick yahoo group who conflict revolved around. Whatever residual reconciliation powers might be residing in my sphere from my work with Barbatos weren’t enough to bring peace and harmony to that particular person. Not that it was a great loss, and maybe if I cared enough I’d send Barbatos to influence her directly, but honestly, she’s too annoying to worry about. It was nice to have a fresh voice on the list though.

In case you’re wondering, not ONE person sent me a dollar. By the time I was done with the Remote Viewing part of my previous post, I was in a zone, a mental state that I can only describe as highly tranced out. I figured reading it would make you trance out too, and that you’d send me a buck given the proper motivation.

Experiment FAIL. So much for my AMAZING POWERS OF MESMERISM!!!

Jason wrote a great blog post explaining Strategic Sorcery in Action. I think it’s a must read for all magicians who wonder what the Great Work looks like when you’re doing it.

Another friend of mine, Fr. Servitor Lucem, wrote a series of articles at Rending the Veil (the archives STILL aren’t up, if you know web administration and have some free time, email Sheta there) about his own attempts at strategic magic. While he got exactly what he asked for, he learned a lot in the process.

When I perform manifestation magic, I tend to contact a single spirit, state my request, and then let the spirit handle any additional details. While this is effective, it is only effective to a degree. The things I have happen that are truly awesome usually involve working with multiple spirits, and have a bit of planning involved.

I am paying attention to this fact.

A book I read, The Four Hour Work Week, taught me that the key to wealth isn’t a single job (no kidding), or a single investment. It comes from setting up multiple streams of income. They don’t have to be huge sources of income, they can each provide a hundred or so dollars a month. After setting up enough of them, you’re bringing in a few thousand a month, and some are more effective than others, and some less. You cultivate the ones that pay well, and you keep on growing until you’re getting what you want.

This is a principle that applies to the Great Work as well. I’m in Project Management for my day job. That gets things done and keeps everyone working on the project focused on what they are supposed to be doing. It involves analyzing specific requirements, designing solutions, executing the design, implementing the solution, and then monitoring and controlling the solution while it is being used. The final stages are closeout and lessons learned, which feed into future projects.

As a Magician accomplishing the Great Work, I need to apply these techniques to my magic as well. I have some health issues to address, and there are friends and family that could use my help as well. I have a couple of “You: out of my Universe!” projects going on at the moment that I can use this information on. There are a few things I want to accomplish using the spirits of the Pseudomonarchia. There’s this guy I’m planning on turning into a first-class active full-time magician with something to contribute to the world.

The gold brick project … I’m still wanting to stick to a single spirit at a time on that one because it’s a hobby. I have ACZINOR of the Earth Tablet, and probably whichever Senior rules the Sun as well to Work with on that, and if they don’t work, there are the gnomes that I can send to fetch me one. I don’t want to mix systems on that particular front because it is a more controlled experiment. I don’t NEED a gold brick, I just want one.

Then there’s just my own personal life that this can be applied to as well. Work, home improvement projects, wardrobe, diet, exercise, parenting… What is it we’re talking about here? Taking responsibility for controlling your life as it manifests around you. Planning, reasoning, and then acting on the decisions made, following up on it, making it happen, taking care of it, and then learning from everyhting. Progression, action, building, making, doing, creating, Rising and Descending in Power, by this were all things created.

Strategic Sorcery: The Great Work in Action. Jason rocks.

(Jason Miller, also known as Inominandum, is the author of Reversal and Protection Magic. Again I say, if you don’t own the book, buy it, it’s about more than Protection and Reversal, it’s about doing magic.)

Most of my faithful readers know about Inominandum (Jason Miller)’s book, Protection and Reversal Magick. Either you read his blog, have read the book yourself, or you remember me mentioning it a while ago.

After speaking at Thelesis (an AWESOME experience that I’d GLADLY do again), I found myself suffering all the symptoms of being hexed. I don’t know if I offended an attendant, or if my Christian presentation upset the OTO Egregore (The Christians to the Lions! is a Crowleyism that runs deep in Thelema, from my own experience, although NOT at Thelesis, they were truly a great group of folks).

I like to think it was an Ordeal. I took on the mantle of Hierophant in a more active way, and the Powers that Be saw fit to test my mettle to demonstrate to me that I need to be aware that if I’m going to teach things of a spiritual nature, I can expect a spiritual test to demonstrate I have the right to do so.

However, the most probable cause was simply Mercury going retrograde the day after the Thelesis lecture.

Anyway, whatever the cause, I ended up in exactly what Jason describes in his book as a “crossed condition.” It was relatively easy to fix, once I recognized the symptoms, and things immediately got better after a quick ritual. Having read his book gave me the ability to figure out that something wasn’t working right and a clue about what to do to fix it.

If you haven’t already, you really should buy and read this book. It also provides some insights into a method he uses to work with Hekate that would be really useful to people looking for a way to use traditional grimoire magical techniques in a more pagan friendly way than is sometimes presented in the classical grimoires themselves.

I collect awesome blogs to read. My latest addition is from a Brazilian Portuguese fellow who accidentally conjured (imo) Barbatos by doodling his seal.

http://sheddingmoleskin.blogspot.com

The division between matter and spirit is an interesting conundrum. In the Corpus Hermeticum, God contracts part of infinity leaving a sphere of smoking matter. In the contraction, he had to remove everything from that sphere *except* what would later become “matter.” So, it’s safe to believe that the stuff that became matter existed within God eternally “before” the contraction.

Now, did *all* of the “stuff” that became matter that was in God before the contraction get dumped into that sphere? Or is there still the “stuff” of matter in the Ain Soph Aur-Pleroma-Infinite Light of God? If it all got dumped, we have a foundation for saying Spirit is separate from Matter. Both combined were the infinite Monad. (Oh, wait, that would mean that after the contraction, the Monad became somehow less than what it was before the contraction, and the pros and cons of this difference can be argued.) If God separated himself from matter, he would no longer be infinite.

Since I’m not literally light floating in a sea of light, it’s safe to say the contraction occured. I don’t know what the ramifications of this contraction are.
Based on my experience, there’s no “where” I can go without running into evidence of God. I tend to be more animistic lately, Working with the spirit of my laptop as I type, for instance, thanking it and treating it with respect. I believe all spirits are a manifestation of God, and the more I treat my “stuff” as if it a spirit indwelled it, the better things seem to work. So I guess I’m currently in the camp that God is in the earth and Matter, while separate from God, is indwelled nonehtless by God in some form.

Hmmm. When speaking to the Athenians, Paul quoted a Greek poet who said, “In him we live and move and have our being.” As an apostle inspired by and given the Words by the Holy Spirit, his acknowledgement of that phrase as a manifestation of the truth og God’s being-ness would indicate that the World *is* God.

So matter is God, but a dumped part of God, and is indwelled by manifestations of the Spirit of God. With the “ISes” used in the previous sentence indicating a logical map tht helps me understand where I’m coming from, not necessarily a declaration of truth.