Rufus Opus

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  • Just what are those spirits up to?

    Have you ever wondered why exactly the spirits are so helpful? For years I suspected there was some plot or conspiracy behind what was going on, from the GWB to the Illuminati. When I went through a fundy phase, I was convinced they were demons trying to lead me away from Christ (never mind that they all pointed me back to Christ anyway). In my secular human phase, I assumed the advanced technology of some members of society was being used to manipulate otherwise talented individuals to keep them from interfering with the plan for interdimensional control.

    I think I’ve finally got it figured out. It has to do with their intrinsic nature. Each of these spirits is a self-conscious non-corporeal intelligence. It was created (or emmanated) in order to direct a current that influences manifest reality. For instance, Jupiter is an aspect of God that is assigned to dignities, prosperity, and offices of authority. Venus is an aspect of God that has influence over the domain of the heart. They each have a set of skills and talents that they’re really good at.

    These spirits are helpful because that’s what they do. They want to spread love, or assign dignities. That’s what they exist for. While they have general work to do, every time a specific mage calls upon them or their representatives, they have the opportunity to work with another intelligent aspect of God that wants to communicate with them. It brings them joy.

  • Bored Magi

    I have come to believe that there is nothing more dangerous than a bored magician.

    Some people get bored and torture their victims, like a cat toying with a mouse that was unlucky enough to catch its mercurial attention. Some people sit back and mock others. Some people take their boredom and invest it in whatever madness they’ve been keeping on the back burner for just such an occasion.

    On the whole, I’d say those who toy with others are probably the safest of the bunch. I’m in the camp of “let’s make things interesting,” and that usually means conjuring something I haven’t before, or making some magical craft in the Lab. The gold-painted Sculpey Seal of Bune was probably the least dangerous, and most amusing.


    The Crystal Skull was less amusing, but more interesting. The Spirit Pot has been the most profitable and has provided the most long-term fun.

    I also use this forum to discuss things that are on my mind, like Bored Magi. 

    I’m not saying I don’t toy with people on message boards when I’m bored, or that I don’t mock people. I’m probably the worst offender when it comes to that.

    That’s dangerous though. I’ve been reading Patrick Dunn’s latest book, and I’m only on the intro where he talks about the possible etymology of the word “ABRACADABRA.” One possible original meaning is “I create as I speak.” This is the epitome of what I practice as a magician. Made in the image of God who created through Logos, the Word, and created to continue this Work in the world around me.

    When we speak, as magicians, we are changing the world. Everyone does it, but I think magicians have a little more power behind their words as a result of their closer-ness to the Source of our being. Watching what we say is important. I called someone an “unmedicated bipolar” person on a list today. I don’t know if that’s what they are or not, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out later that I was right. Did I seal it into being by saying it, or was I just commenting on what was apparent already? Does it matter?

    I don’t know. On the one hand there’s the real possibility of megalomania. On the other, there’s the real possibility that everything we speak into being does come into being. Maybe not EVERYTHING, but … still. Better safe than sorry, I suppose.

    So my advice to anyone else and especially myself is to think before you speak, and speak proactively. Have a list of good things to say, not like affirmations, but as alternate text to put forward when confronted with a situation that you could make worse.

    I’ll get started on mine.

  • Learning Goetia the Easy Way – Kinetic Meditation

    I sold a set of the plaster seals of the nine Kings of the Lemegeton’s Goetia last week. The images in this post are scanned wooden blanks that I used to make the Sculpey molds for the plaster casts. I discovered some flaws in my process, but it all worked out in the end. I had to soak the wooden seals in oil to get them not to stick to the Sculpey. The “size” used to make the gold leaf stick to the seal gets rapidly absorbed into the plaster, so the leaf doesn’t stick to regular plaster, unless you use all the size, and then you can’t make out the engraved seals. I’m trying a polyurethane seal now. As soon as they dry, I’ll see if a couple coats of poly seals up the plaster enough for the glue to stay on the surface. (Edit: It worked!)

    But that’s not the point of the post. Just passing along information I’ve picked up. The point is this:

    I have learned SO MUCH about the personalities of the Kings of the Goetia by engraving their seals. I worked from the online version of the Goetia primarily to get the seals. I like some of Crowley/Mathers more stylized seals, but there’s something more authentic, more “down and dirty” to the seals on Joe Peterson’s site. They were carved into wood, I think, or were drawn by an unsteady hand. They look “lived in.” The seals in the Crowley/Mathers translation are too perfect to be made by the hands of any but the most practiced or naturally talented craftsmen. I’m neither.

    But to engrave a seal into wood, you have to know it pretty well. I drew each seal a couple of times, getting the feel of the proportions, learning how it was “supposed” to go. Then I had to scale it to two-inch disks. At first I tried doing it all technical using graph paper and rulers and protractors and compasses like I was some kind of master draftsman. Things kept turning out wrong. They looked straight, and the proportions were technically accurate, but they felt wrong. So I went back to free-hand drawing, and it worked much better.

    As I drew the seals, I found myself immersed in each one’s details. Little circles that might have marked the beginning or ending of their name on a Kamea, crosses and daggers, hearts, tridents, and classic demon tails with the pointy barbed tips. I saw how the seals were expressions of each spirit, direct revelations of themselves to people. I saw how tracing each seal was itself an act of conjuring the spirit. I understood Nazca Lines, Pictographs, and the development of writing from the moment we took on fleshly form through James Joyce.

    (It stopped at James Joyce because, frankly, NO ONE UNDERSTANDS JAMES JOYCE. That was the point of Ulysses, and all the Bloom freaks out there can’t prove anything. It was just bullshit.)

    But in tracing out the seals by hand, you are joining with the countless aeons of other people who have evoked this spirit, from the crazy drunk blonde in Australia getting revenge on some shiela to the African engineers of ethnic cleansing, to the Popes of France. I mean, you’re joining together with bastards and kings from across time to conjure up the spirits of hell to get what you want. You’re entering the myth, becoming the myth, and making it real. It’s some powerful stuff.

    I’ve come to understand why people think the Lem’s Goetic Spirits are manifestations of the human psyche. It’s more than “They don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.” Honest. I can grow spiritual compassion.  Anyone can. If they want.

    It’s because they do the magic, and they feel parts of their brain warm up when they trace the seals. They feel the shift in the vibration of their spheres that comes when you start drawing out seals. They attribute it wrong, of course, but that’s fine.

    (Note: “Of Course” almost always denotes SARCASM, or that which should be mocked. And not just when I use it. That’s what it “really” means for everyone. Watch tomorrow, and every time someone says “of course,” you’ll see that whatever they’re referencing is completely worthy of endless ridicule. When I use “of course,” I do it on purpose. Unlike those dweebs you work with. They don’t know what they’re doing, they’re barely fucking human. Of course.)

    When you put that pen or pencil to the page, and move it along the ancient pathways, you immediately get the attention of the spirit you’re working with. It checks in on you and sees what’s going on. If you seem like you’ve got something interesting going on, it sticks around and helps you understand its seal a bit more. You feel where the guy recording the Seal was coming from. You get the feeling that you know where he messed up and had to leave it that way because it was close enough and he was out of parchment. You get the feeling you know how to extend something just right.

    So how do you know it’s “real”? I mean, how can you tell a spirit is influencing you, and it’s not “just” your ego thinking it knows better than the grimoires? Do it a lot, and you’ll get what I mean. Do it with different seals. Draw them out, and pay attention. Here’s what I mean:

    Balam. He’s got this three-humped B, an arrow, what looks like an IAO permutation, a trident and a spear-thing. Oh, and a pointy pointy tail. The three-humped B has these little squiggles coming of the top and bottom where the humps meet the vertical line. They could be artistic flourish, or they could be the remnants of the starting and stopping points of the spirit’s name on a Kamea, or Tablet of some kind like the Great Table of Enochian Magic, or the Tablets of the Planets in Agrippa. You can’t tell by looking at it, and it’s apparent that the one in the manuscript at Joe’s site is drawn freehand. The squiggles are disproportionate. You can’t tell if it was on purpose or not. I went with my intuition on this one, and made the squiggles more reflective of one another. It was that feeling I described above.

    Vine. The Peterson seal from the manuscript is just ugly. In trying to copy it out, I understood why. If the original dude recording the seal didn’t grok the spirit, then he would make the kinds of mistakes that were made. It’s got seven “humps,” and one in the manuscript is heinous. It has an out-of-center cross coming down, and you can tell it’s just not right. There’s little circles inside this one part that don’t line up with anything. I tried “fixing it” the same way I tried with Balam’s seal, and it just didn’t work. I stylized it, I made it my own, I tried rulers and measuring so each hump was equidistant, I tried everything I could think of to make it look right, and I still had this empty feeling, like a void where the “Eureka!” should have been.

    Then this warm inspiration hit to check the Crowley/Mathers seal. I did, and I saw how it had been presented, and what the “right” way was. I remembered something Belial had shown me about his seal, and it all clicked together. The seal is a picture of a crown, or a helmet, or a mask. As soon as I understood what it was, I was able to sketch out the seal just “right.” That feeling of correctness that flooded me left my arm hairs standing up.

    See how the techniques were different for different seals, and yet still informed by one another? That has become a hallmark of the spirits in my Work. In my day-to-day existence, I find a way to do something, and I use it from then on. Like in Microsoft’s Word, you can do the same thing like a bajillion different ways. Some are faster than others, some are actually logical, sort of. I’m using the techniques I developed in Word when its releases were still numbered. Even if I find a faster, easier way to do something, once I’ve learned how to do it I usually stick with it. That’s how I am in myself.

    When I’m being informed by the Spirits, I can feel them offering new ways to do things, and they appeal to me. It’s a very subtle thing about myself that I’ve noticed in my getting to know me, and I can tell when I’m not doing things the way I normally do. That’s why it’s so important to Know Yourself.

    Someone posted on the Solomonic group the other day that they wanted to learn the Goetia. Almost everyone on that list is an author or aspiring author, and they’re almost all interested in the Goetia. The archives are fabulous resources of excellent information. I can’t recommend enough that people interested in learning Goetia should go out and research other magicians that have worked with these spirits to familiarize yourself with their experiences. From Lisiewski and Konstantinos to Jake Stratton-Kent’s pact work to Moloch the Radionics Sorceror. From Poke Runyon to Lon DuQuette. From the liberal chaos magical blogs to the conservative reconstructionist traditionalists of the world. From Chris Warnock to Pat Zalewski. Crowley, Mathers, Agrippa, hell even Levi.

    But not Dion Fortune. Not ever her. And don’t read the Kyballion. I mean it. If you do, do not ever quote from it. Chances are very, very good that you’re misrepresenting it, and it’s misrepresented to start with.

    Read, read, read, and read between the lines, with one ear cocked and listening to the Voice of your HGA, Genius, or the Holy Ghost of your belief system. Listen from your spirit to the spirits of the authors, not their personalities, but their experiences that lie behind their words. Separate the message from the word the way you have learned to separate the voices of the spirits from the voice of your own mind. Study.

    But… A faster way is available. Draw the frickin’ seals! Read the description of the spirit. Draw it’s seal. Write out its description. Draw its seal. Draw its seal again. Draw it some more. Buy a dremel tool and some wooden blanks from Wal Mart. Make sure you’ve got a steel cutter tip of some kind, the smallest spherical ones work best for me. Wooden disks are in the craft department. They have squares, circles, triangles, and a ton of selection of just wood stuff for crafters. I bought a boat to paint for fun for a buck too. Pick up some of that. I don’t care what it’s made of, this is kinetic meditation we’re talking here. It’s not an actual conjuration and communication with the spirit. It’s a tactile communion with it instead.

    Anyway, once you’ve got the sketching of the spirit seal down to an art and science, then sketch it on the wood. Engrave it. Start by tracing over the design lightly with the tip of the tool. Focus on how the tool behaves as you work with the grain of the wood as opposed to how it behaves when you work against it, or worse, if you’re trying to engrave a curve diagonal to the grain…

    (If a dremel tool is out of your financial budget, get a wood burning tool. It’s like $12. Wood’s cheap. Scrap works for this. Go without lunch for three days, or dinner. Save $12 and buy a damn tool. It’s an investment, you cheap bastard. Some readers of this blog might not even make $12 a month, and that’s shitty… but I’ll bet you have SOMETHING you can engrave wood with. A knife. A nail. Be creative. Adapt. Or you’ll never be a decent magician. Nothing works exactly as described, ever. Get used to it and make do, or give up and go get a job. And a shower and a haircut, you hippy.)

    As you focus on the crafting of the seal, you’ll find your mind detaches itself from the process, but it remains silent. The process of engraving the Seal draws the attention of the Spirit it represents, and you become aware of its presence. Pay attention to information that comes to you at this point. The spirit is watching you engrave the seal, and talking to you as you make each part. A scene unfolds, or you hear a story about that part of the seal. You understand what each part of the seal represents within the textual description of the spirit. It becomes illustrated in a way that it wasn’t before.

    Now, when you’re ready to conjure the spirit, you know a bit about it. You’ve Worked with it a bit, and your sphere is being affected, adapting to the new vibrations. It is incorporating the harmonies of this new entity. You’re performing a part of the Great Work, adding a crescendo to the overall melodies of existence.

    Oh, before you do any of that, you should work with your HGA. I mean, do the same thing. Figure its Genius Name and write it a few times in every magical script you can find a reference to on the internet. Focus on Agrippa Book 3, chapters 29 and 30. As you do, you’ll get to know the spirit. Engrave its seal or Name in wood, or metal, or something. Make a talisman. This communion with the HGA is essential to your work with the Goetia, in my opinion. In my Work as a magician, I strive to be the fulcrum between the manifest and unmanifest. As you work with the goetic spirits, your sphere adapts. Keep Working celestial spirits to maintain your position relative to God. Don’t lose sight of the big picture and your place in it, or you’ll end up in a “wasted burned out nut job” phase of the work, and that’s no fun.

    (Kittens make terrible blog helpers. In case you were wondering.)

  • The Puppet Masters

    Contacting Spirits that move between the aetheric planes is a relatively simple process, I’ve found. Whether you’re looking to speak with an archangel of a sephiroth, an earth-bound (i.e. goetic) demon, or a planetary intelligence, they’re ready to talk and are just waiting to get in touch with you. The process is simple: draw the symbol that represents them, open a portal to their dimension, and then ask them to show up.

    But why would you want to meet them? For years in my occult practices, I truly believed I had no interest in working with them. I would do a Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP), and sure, that involved calling the four archangels that surround the throne of God, but then I would go on to do whatever ritual I had in mind at the time. Usually, this was either financially related or emotionally related. Either I was trying to get more money by landing a better job, or I was trying to bring peace to an emotionally chaotic situation in my life or in someone else’s. Occassionally I would perform a healing ritual for my sick friends.

    What I’ve found out lately is that I’ve always worked with “spirits.” Whether they are gods of a pantheon, or a sigil I created in my harried Chaos Magick days, the fact is that I would summon intelligent autonomous entities to provide energies to create change according to my will. Since receiving this revelation, I’ve begun studying specific catalgues of spirits, and I’ve found an amazing set of well-defined, documented entities that have greatly expanded my ability to perform targeted magickal rituals.

    Whether I work from the Goetia of the Key of Solomon, the Archangels of the Sephiroth, or the Olympik Spirits of the Arbatel, I’ve found that they are incredibly responsive and willing to perform their assigned duties as quickly as possible. This knowledge has translated to incredible power. Not the “power-mad, dominate the entire universe and reap untold wealth and glory at the expense of all others kind of power,” the physics potential-energy power.

    So why would you want to contact spirits in your magickal path? Because that’s the way magick is done. All magick is based on contacting god in his infinite rays, or the representatives of his energies as they manifest in this world.

    Are you trying to raise the tincture of your sphere to become a better person and advance in the Great Work? Evoke the spirits that exist in the realm of Atziluth of the qabalah. Their very presence will begin to transform your own sphere, raising your tincture (tincture refers to the vibrational level, the intrinsic quality) of your sphere, your soul.

    Looking for ancient knowledge or hidden texts? The list of Goetic entities is replete with spirits capable of bringing you knowledge from the spheres. Entities from Briah and Yetzirah of the qabalah are also great at this. They bring books into your life related to the subjects you ask them about, or simply tell you what you need to know.

    How about getting prosperous or getting health? The spirits of Assiah of the qabalah work at the mundane, physical level. Being closely related to the material realm, they are wonderful resources for manifesting wealth, health and prosperity.

  • The Puppet Masters

    Fellow blogger and general gadabout E. Keith Boyne tipped me off to this cool service called “WOWIO.” You may have already known about it, but it’s free books, legally. You can read them with a web browser. I read The Puppet Masters by Heinlein the other day. Today I’m going to delve into something about the relationship with my HGA, and I’ll be using that story to illustrate my points. Click the title to read the story if you want more context for the post. It’s relatively short, and Heinlein writes easy.

    Ok, so the story line is this: aliens invade and take over people, riding them like mules, only without consent. Being a Heinlein novel, it’s fairly sexist, but with an eye towards radical femininism (no, not feminism; there’s a difference). He’s always got the hero metamorphisizing from an observant, pragmatic, but weak underling into a Juggernaut of right action. There’s always a Father Figure who oversees the initiations and development of the hero, and when the metamorphosis occurs, it is the Father Fgure usually who identifies it and acknowledges it. In this story, it takes the Father Figure to point out to the Hero that the metamorphosis had even occurred.

    Metamorphosis. It’s one of the first five-dollar words they teach kids. They come home and carefully pronounce it and tell you about pupa (poo-pa-… and much giggling ensues), and crsya-crysa-chrysalises. Their eager faces are thrilled, and they can hardly belive what they learned themselves. And they crown it off with the shining medallion, “That’s Me-ta-mor-pho-sis.”

    How important is progressive metamorphosis to us as spiritual beings if even the secular atheist scientists that design the school curriculum insist on teaching that big old word so young? They don’t teach a-biogenesis first, even though you’d think that was more important since life supposedly sprang from not-life. No, they start with metamorphosis. It’s something the kids understand and have experienced, and it sets the scene for what’s to come. It’s also the fundamental process of Natural Law.

    In our relationships with our HGA, a spiritual metamorphosis is going on. We start out like the main character in the Puppet Masters. He’s a servant of a shadowy intelligence gathering organization that reports directly to the President. An agent. He takes orders and does his job. The details of his life are foggy, as he shifts from identity to identity with each passing job. He can’t even remember what he originally looked like. He goes by Sam, the name his boss gives him for most of the book. Much later we learn his name was “really” Elihu, although he ultimately becomes Sam.

    As we get to know our HGA, we go through some shit. Not pleasant and happy shit. In the story, the shit was the aliens. They were basically a goo that attached to the back of a human and took over through the nervous system. They made the host totally submissive, and thoughts from the entities seemed like their own thoughts, and were obeyed without question.

    That’s us. We’re ridden by our nepheshim. It’s the Master that must be obeyed, no matter what. The HGA comes along and tells us that we’re slaves, and we can be reborn as free men, if we’re willing to overthrow the Master and take control ourselves. And he helps us get there.

    Fast forward over a lot of important stuff, and you’ve recognized the problem, and learned a lot about the enemy, and you’ve got some good ideas about fixing it. The people around you are jabbering away about shit, and not doing what has become obvious to you as a result of your experiences with the HGA. You stand up in a moment of frustration and say the obvious, and all eyes turn to you. You’ve solved the problem, and not only that, something else has changed.

    In the story line, the Hero hits this point and the Old Man steps aside, and hands the mantle of authority to the younger man. He recognizes that he has been replaced in the leadership role of the battle when Sam comes up with a brilliant solution to the problem while he stood there unable to do it himself.

    Sam had no clue, and didn’t want the responsibility, but at that point it was too late. The Old Man knows when the time has come to pass on the crown, as it were.

    In our relationship with the HGA, I think we go through similar stages. In the beginning, we get awoken by the HGA. We’re basically trying our best to stumble around after its voice, like walking in someone else’s house at night trying to find the bathroom. Eventually we learn to see, and can guide ourselves without bashing our shins on the coffee tables. The HGA teaches us, trains us, and tunes us to the frequencies of the higher spheres. It paves the way upwards, gets you in good with the other angels, and even watches your ass when the demons come prowling.

    Then, when you’re ready, it steps out of the way and demonstrates that you’re the one who is the Man, made in God’s Image to be a cohort and friend.

    Metamorphosis. Progressive sanctification. Transformation. Trans-Abyssal Technologies. Living in the knowledge of who you are and what you are. Contemplating your (divine) Race and (eternal) Value.

    And then Returning to the Earth in Great Power, as the Emerald Tablet says. Me, I try to exist at the fulcrum between the macrocosm and the microcosm, and then go to whichever end of the “lever” I need to at the moment. I suspect a Buddhist may posit that there is no fulcrum, no lever, and no macro to this micro -cosm.

    Which is one of the many reasons I’m not a Buddhist. I’ve seen behind the illusions, yet the illusions remain… AS IF THEY SERVED A PURPOSE. And me, I’ve found that purpose through my Work with my HGA. It’s still being refined, metamorphing into what it will become, and that’s alright with me.

  • A quick plug

    Mike Rock, familiar to many of my cohorts, but maybe not to all my readers, has started blogging. Again. Hopefully this time he will be more consistent, as he’s one of those pacticing magicians I consider to be in the Invisible College.

    His blog be here: http://blog.mike-rock.com

    Among the feathers in his cap is his ongoing translations of the Picatrix from French manuscripts. When I made the 4th Pentacle of upiter, I used the colors of the planets and signs from the Picatrix, and it was his site that provided the info, if I remember correctly.

    He’s also been known to put the Hymns of Orpheus to modern music. Musician magicians fascinate me. I know and understand the “harmony of the spheres,” but I’ve never heard it. I tried playing guitar for a while, and had to take a break (I gave my freaking guitar to the freaking Church in a fit of donative ecstasy; regret!).

  • Ron Paul: Looking better than ever

    I’ve recently joined a new yahoo group called EllenLlloyd. This group is dedicated to the Ancient Astronaut Theory, that the earth has been visited and continues to be visited by beings of an (or many) advanced civilizations who have either influenced or are directly responsible for the advancement of human civilization.

    I generally try to stay away from our Alien-conscious, UFOlogist cousines. I believe I have a better understanding of the phenomenon they report interacting with than they do. I’m sure they believe the same about occultists in general. However, I am not willing to reject their theories altogether. There are some amazing overlaps of our particular fields.

    For instance, today Ellen posted an article she recently wrote about the Everlasting Lights found in ancient tombs and reported above the temples of the ancients. Her article is good, and I recommend reading it if you have a few minutes to spare.

    A few months ago I was researching the Portae Lucis, the Portal of Light ritual. The goal of this ritual is to raise the tincture of the sphere of your soul by making contact with Binah-Saturn. It’s very similar in effect to the Abramelin Ritual for making contact with your Holy Guardian Angel, and also similar in effect to Crowley’s Liber Samekh. The goal of the ritual is to establish and empower a higher connection to the Divine source, sort of. I had first read about this ritual in an interview with Jean Dubuis by Mark Stavish at the Alchemy Website.

    In seeking more alchemical lore on the building of Houses of Light and Portals of Light, I found a treatise called The Everburning Lights of Trithemius. As most people who know me are aware, I am extremely fond of Johannes Trithemius. He was an abbot of a monastery who taught Agrippa, wrote some of the foundational texts on communicating with spirits, and wrote the original tale that became known as Faustus. Having read parts of the Steganographia and having practiced from the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals, I thought this treatise would be about the angels or spirits, and that it would be an allegorical reference to these entities as the “Everburning Lights.” Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a recipe for creating physical lights that one of his students had recorded.

    So today, when I read Ellen’s article, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the overlap between our fields of study. I personally believe that the “Ancient Astronauts” and the “Angels” or “Spirits” of the occultists are the same entities. For proof we have Crowley’s Alamantrah working that resulted in LAM making his appearance, and the subsequent UFO phenomenon that occurred after Crowley established contact with that dimension’s beings.

    By the way, that’s one of the many reasons I don’t combine alcohol, hashish, cocaine, ether and ritual magick. You just don’t know what you’re going to end up doing. But Crowley was a pawn his whole life, god bless him.

    Jack Parsons, father of the Space Age, did what he could to create a “Moon Child” or a Nephilim in his Babalon working. Plato was the first to say that every man and every woman is a star. Well, every man anyway, and that if you’re not a rational man, you get reborn as a woman… That’s not my fault. Read Timaeus sometime. Good stuff.

    Additional evidence is found in this Everburning Lights phenomenon. Where did Trithemius learn how to create these lights? We know from the other writings he is famous for that he was experienced in contacting the entities that travel between planes that we do not normally physically experience. His methods (or at least methods attributed to him) for contacting the angelic spirits work. I’ve spoken with Michael, Tzadkiel, and Haniel using the practices discussed in the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals (by the way, you need to include the sigils from the Magical Calendar and the method of creating Talismen from Agrippa’s Book 4 of Occult Philosophy). The spirits of the Goetia and the Arbatel are useful for a lot of mundane things, but I find it extremely interesting that their primary functions are not to provide physical results, but to provide information.

    I believe Trithemius learned to make the lights from the Spirits. Those who believe in the Ancient Astronaut Theory believe the Everburning Lights are evidence that aliens have visited the planet and given us extra-terrestrial knowledge. What better term exists for the information we receive as magicians from interviewing the spirits than “extra-terrestrial?”

    This doesn’t mean I believe the spirits “really are” aliens, or that there are no interstellar or inter-dimensional civilizations that influence humanity. Looking at the occult cosmologies of the ancient pagans, gnostics, and occultists around the world, I find it hard to believe that any magician would discard the theories of the Ancient Astronaut crowd completely. Our cosmologies are remarkably similar. Invisible entities bringing knowledge to mankind for our betterment, or for their own purposes. Think about it, what’s the difference between the theories of Niburu and the Annunaki compared to the deliverance of the Qabalah to Abraham by Ratziel?

    The chief difference is that we as magicians continue to interact with these entities, while those of the Ancient Astronaut crowd seem to think that the aliens will be returning in some distant future. Then again, I’m not that familiar with the Sitchin followers and whether they believe the Ancient Astronauts are still working with particular individuals.

  • Everyone’s Tired of Bune…

    I mentioned that I was engraving a quartz crystal with Bune’s sigil to a friend, and he was like, “Bune, again!?” He suggested that I might need to be careful about obsessing over one particular spirit, and mentioned that the Goetic spirits have a reputation for getting magicians obsessed.

    I mentioned to my spouse what I was doing, and she said something like, “Bune Bune Bune, all you work with is Bune.”

    I guess that’s the image I have because I write so much about him. I’ve been in a relationship with this spirit for almost two years, and I’m very happy with his work in my life. He’s the only spirit of the Goetia that I have a long-term relationship with, via the Spirit Pot. So I talk to him a lot, and I talk to you about him a lot.

    However, he is not the only spirit I work with. I’m working on Belial’s seal, as well as the other 8 Kings of the Goetia. I’ve worked 18 of the 72 Spirits altogether from that particular grimoire, but mostly it’s been one-time rites, or simple conversations. I’m also working with the Archangels of the seven heavens on my spiritual alchemy. They get a lot more face time with me than Bune or any other Goetic spirits. I have a personal relationship with God. We hang out and have fun together.

    Then there’s my HGA, with whom I’ve been exploring the Seven Heavens, and working with to understand his role in a magician’s life better. He’s not only a Guru to bring you to the edge of the alleged Abyss between the Supernal Triad of the Tree of Life. He’s also a familiar spirit that has authority over the Sub-Lunar spirits. He can directly bring riches, love, peace, joy, happiness, prosperity, and everything else material you need to perform the Great Work in comfort and style. He can help you perform what Psychics call “Remote Viewing,” and he can help heal people who are ill. Dude’s pretty cool.

    So as you can see, I do a lot more Work with other spirits than Bune. I talk about Bune the most because he’s usually the one I turn to for money, and the fact is, money is always needed for something when you’re raising three kids. Even when my income covers bills, mortgage, and consumables, there’s college funds, trust funds, and our own retirement funds that need cash to grow. And the Lab needs equipment.

    Which brings me to the crystal I engraved with Bune’s seal. After the Crystal Skull experience, I decided to stick with just a Bune Legionairre in the stone, totally focused on bringing the owner of the stone riches. It’s not finished yet. So far, I’ve got the crystal roughly shaped the way I want it, and the sigil in the stone.

    There are two Seals for Bune in the Lemegeton’s Goetia. It says in the grimoire that the first (top over on the left) is not as effective as the second (bottom over on the left), but I believe this is only a reference to its effectiveness in contacting the spirit the first time. After that, the first Seal is as effective for marking things as “Belonging to Bune” as the second. The first seal is also much easier to carve into things, like wood, metal, or stone. The second is easier to draw than to engrave or carve. Since the crystal is so brittle, I picked the first seal to engrave in the stone. It’s got more straight lines, and less detail to try to capture.

    Like I said, it’s not finished yet. I need to sand it again to get a better polish on it. I need to flatten the base a bit. I tried to make an ink to darken the engraved seal so it stood out more when you look at the stone. I made the ink by grinding up some venus herbs, then roasting the ground herbs on a metal sheet over a candle flame. As it blackened, I stirred it, reground it, and roasted it again until all the herb mass was charred. Then I mixed it with olive oil, and tried to put it into the engraved seal, and it sort of worked. It’s not really an ink though. More of an oily mass of ground charred herbs. Imagine that.

    The stone’s got a spirit in it though, a spirit working for me. Last week, I got $750 in incorrect bank fees returned to me, stretching back to May of the previous year. Job offers abound. If enough people want inexpensive plaster seals of the Goetic Spirits, I might be able to pay for an unplanned vacation. Life, as they say, is good.

  • Ron Paul: Looking better than ever


    What more do I really need to say?

    We can’t, in good conscience vote for either a phoney Democrat or a looney Republican, can we? I mean, really? They’re both puppets on the same noodly tentacled being.

    Come on, let’s shake it all up for once and say, goddammit, if you’re just going to give us fucking crazy assholes to pick from, I’m picking the one neither one of you want to see win

    I think Ron Paul’s new slogan should be “Ron Paul: Looking Better than Ever.”

  • Belial’s Gold Leaf Seal

    I’m working on a new method for making the golden seals for the Kings of the Goetia. New for me, anyway. I don’t know, maybe other magicians have been doing this for years. As far as I know, it’s all my creation though, so I’m taking credit for it.

    I carved Belial’s seal into an ordinary two-inch wooden disk, the kind you get from a craft store. I used the smallest little round carving ball dremel attachment I could find in my box. It may even have been intended for this.

    Oh, diamond grinding bits are great for quartz, not wood.

    So after carving the seal, I mushed it into Sculpey, some plasticene clay you can buy. You bake it at 275 (F) for fifteen minutes, and it turns to this weird harder-plastic that doesn’t bend or mush anymore. I pulled the wooden disk out, and had a nice little mold.

    I baked the mold for about an hour. I should have put it on a baking pan, but being the lazy magi that I am, I threw it on a piece of parchment paper (the baking kind) laying on the oven rack. Then I took it out and let it cool. Then I mixed up some plaster, and poured it in the mold, and let it set for a while.

    Sculpey has to be sealed with something water proof to make it water proof. Like paint or something. I didn’t do this, so all the water in the plaster just seeped out through the bottom of the Sculpey mold. I think it helped. I was able to pop out the plaster seal in an hour or so. One thing I noticed was that while baking, the Sculpey was still slightly malleable. Because this is the largest piece of Sculpey I’ve ever baked, it sort of drooped while it was baking, slightly misshaping the mold. So there’s a slight warp to the seal.

    I let it sit over night, and then I cleaned it up with a sanding bit for the dremel, drilled a hole in the top, and proceeded to attempt to leaf the damn thing in gold.

    With varying degrees of success. I bought this foil leafing kit that has a bottle of glue (they call it “size” but I swear it’s glue), a roll of foil, and some other stuff that doesn’t come into play right now. You put down the glue, wait for it to dry “clear” and then put the foil over it. You peel back the foil, and this plastic tape stuff comes away, and the foil is supposed to stick to the glue. Plaster, as you may know is white. It’s not easy to tell when a white glue has dried “clear” on white plaster. As you can see, it sort of almost worked.

    Also, the gold leaf is supposed to get into all the carved out cracks, right? But the foil stuck to the flat bits. So I used the handy 18 kt gold leafing pen. It turned out alright. Not great, but alright. I like the shininess of the leaf foil over the paint pen, but the paint pen has some real gold in it, while the leaf foil doesn’t.

    I really need to get a doggone working digital camera. I’ve been using my cell phone camera for this stuff, and it just doesn’t provide the clarity I want. It’s on my list of things to buy, as soon as the kids have all their back to school stuff, and things have quieted down on the home front.

    So, I will be trying again. There are some inherent caveats in this. It’s not all gold, for one thing, and that makes me less than happy. It’s plaster. It weighs hardly anything, and I’m afraid it’s going to break if I drop it, or chip, or something. It’s convenient for a one or two-time use, I suspect, but for a long-term relationship with this spirit, I’d probably suggest something a little more durable. Even gold-leafing the wooden disk would probably make for a sturdier talisman…

    Duh! I should have done that instead. Huh.

    Oh well. If I wanted to mass produce these things, I have the means, at least. Anyone want to buy some gold-painted plaster seals for the Kings of the Goetia?