Rufus Opus

Blog

  • What the HELL is going on here?

    Magicians. We’re all seeking the powers of the universe, changing ourselves into something greater than we started out as, or at least more pure so we can participate with God in the CREATION of the UNIVERSE. Okay, well, maybe just managing and maintaining the manifestation as it occurs, but being consciously aware of the fact during the planning and processing stages of the project at hand.

    But here I am reading John Dee this week, and come to find out, one of the “greater” magicians of recorded history was fumbling in just as much dark as me. He spent all that time with Kelley developing (or receiving, if you will) what amounts to a system of planetary magic. He conjured and cajoled, enticed and entreated God to send him these spirits that revealed a system of magic that he never even used.

    Heading back to Agrippa, the man was a brilliant librarian, researcher, and reporter. But for all his knowledge, he was just like us too. A man who had to keep his public and private beliefs strictly regimented. The only evidence we have that Agrippa actually performed magic is his obvious “insider’s” understanding of the material he recorded. That inference can’t even be made objectively. We have to experience the results of the operations he describes to realize what he is recording between the lines. Based on that experience, we can begin to understand the deeper implications of his writing.

    Leap ahead a couple years to Crowley. A great magician, an eager and prolific promoter of occult philosophy, Crowley stands out in history for his intelligence, wit, and most offensively to some, his self-confidence. Yet read through Soror Achitha’s Vision of the Amalantrah Working, and you see that Crowley in his magickal practice was a sulky, petulant, ignorant man. Not ignorant in terms of knowledge, learning, or experience, but ignorant of what is to come. He worries about money, and worries about plans to go to Cairo. He is revealed to be a whiner to the spirits, much like Dee and Kelley both. He shows a deep concern for his safety and well-being that speaks volumes, at least to me, of his lack of faith that “existence is pure joy.”

    Across history to the present day, magicians are fumbling in the dark, trying to figure out what the HELL is going on, and trying to influence things to work out in their favor. Their private diaries reveal them to be very small and very dependent upon the forces they work with for their mental well-being. Their greatest contributions to their fellow occultists are little more than sign posts and travel commentaries about the realms they visit.

    It’s baffling.

    From my own limited experience in the occult, in conjuring the spirits, in speaking with the intelligences of the spheres, in traversing the heavens that lie between us and God Almighty, I have seen things that make my toes curl in wonder and awe. I have done things that are miraculous in every sense of the word. In my conversations with the spirits of the realms, I’m no whining supplicant, begging for scraps of answers or a pittance to get to Egypt in the spring. I’m not demanding answers about God or the heavens, or secrets of the cosmos. I’m a traveler in the macrocosmic realms, a co-worker with the spirits in the microcosmic realms. There is no thing or state of existence beyond my ability to access and manifest through ritual activities. There are no limits beyond the practical.

    So just what the HELL is going on here? Am I the only magician that uses magic to rise above the problems of mundane existence? By no means is my life, or my skill in the Art of magic perfect and complete. My recent escapades with Bune seem to be unprecedented among my fellow magicians for example, although they have confirmed in one way or another through their own magical works that the source of the problem was related to the way I had approached the idea of being a Hierophant.

    The point is, when I found out what was going on, the first thing I did was fix it. Using magic. That’s my general approach to everything. It works really well. I use Magic to get ideas about what I should be doing in my mundane life. I use it to get ideas about what spiritual activities I should be pursuing. I use it for food, health, safety, and travel. With the knowledge I get reading and meditating, I create and perform rituals that bring about what I want to happen in my life and my world.

    I know I’m not the only one that does this. I talk to many magicians on the internet across the world who are doing the same thing. What I don’t understand is why it’s so relatively rare. The number of magicians in control of their lives is staggeringly low. Most people interested in the occult are interested in the power to control their worlds, but compared to the number of people interested, the number of people doing the Work, doing the magic that transforms their existence is less than half of one percent.

    Magic. It’s what a magician does. It’s not a last resort, it’s a first resort. The lungs breathe, the liver filters, the brain processes. The magician does magic. The magician is in control of their world, not isolated from other influences, but in a position of authority in determining which of the opportunities life will present, and how those opportunities will come about.

    There’s too much slap-dash going on. People slap together a quick one-time rite, and dash off to the next thing, which is usually something they are reacting to. There’s little or no actual proactive planning and implementation of their lives. They’re content to sit back and follow the script they’ve been given for the most part, with a little dabbling here and there.

    I’m not advocating any “Left Hand Path” philosophy here, but I do want to point out that YOU are not a passive part of existence. You have choices to make that affect many others. If you choose not to choose, you still have made a choice, to quote Rush. You’re an active part of existence, and magic gives you the keys to the Kingdom. You’ve got at your beck and call the very spirits that make up the world. Why on earth would you not choose to use them?

    Why didn’t Dee use the Angelic system of magic he received? Why didn’t Agrippa put his skills in the occult arts to use to keep from having to recant his writings? Why didn’t Crowley just manifest the cash to go to Cairo if he was that worried about it?

    Was it a lack of faith in their magic? Was it that they, like so many magicians today, believed that magic is interesting and neat, but when the rubber meets the road, you have to deal with life from the mundane? I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense to me.

    I understand that things won’t always work out the way you expect, and that’s fine, but one thing I’ve learned in this Great Work is that I am in control of what I experience in life. There is nothing beyond my ability to research, conjure, and influence. Sometimes the influence will be on my own expectations, changing what I want as I learn why things are the way they are. But there’s nothing my Daimon and I can’t handle, manipulate, and shape into what ought to be.

    So let’s all kick it up a notch or two. No whining, no fear. Let honest curiosity and righteous indignation fuel our endeavors. If money is a problem, conjure cash and multiple streams of income. If health is a problem, conjure healing and aid. If something is broken, fix it. If you don’t know how to fix it, find out how to fix it. You’re one meditation away from the brightest intelligences in the universe, literally.

    And trust the things you’re studying and learning in the occult. It really is real. And there’s nothing to be afraid of. You’ll be just fine.

  • Meditation on a Spark

    I was thinking about rising through the Spheres of the Planets tonight, and the image of a spark came to mind.

    You know, bonfires, they shoot out sparks. The sparks rise up high into heavens before they burn out. A little tiny ash floats back down to the earth. Every bit of it that could burn is consumed.

    So we’ve got seven planetary heavens, right? And under the lowest, the Lunar sphere, hanging off the lowest edge of heaven is the Elemental sphere of Fire, the highest and purest form of matter. Below that is Air, and below that Water. At the bottom is good old solid Earth, the most material of material realms.

    And here’s this spark. It’s sunshine and minerals from the earth consumed in the release of all that energy it absorbed while it was alive. As it goes through its final transformation, it shoots up through the aethers aiming for heaven, using the heat of its own combustion to get higher, and leaving behind a husk of itself to drift back down to earth, empty of all the power and effort that went into creating it in the first place.

    So, neat stuff. I don’t like ham handed mataphors, but I do seem to have a habit of using them myself.

  • The Hermit’s Lantern

    If you haven’t yet, check out Fr. SEA’s blog, The Hermit’s Lantern. It’s one of my favorites. He and I go way back, and we’ve been working together now for years. We started out in a mentor-student relationship, and have since become good friends. His endurance and survival of my early attempts at helping someone through the early phases of the Great Work are to be admired. He’s a good writer, too.

    His latest experiments in home alchemy have been fascinating, and the results are incredible. I’m honored to have played a role in his early development, and I’m really glad we’re friends. He’s the epitome of what I wanted when I started writing this blog, someone who has done the same work I have to discuss results and progress with, but at the same time he’s got his own interests and take on things that gives me a different perspective on my own experiences that provides useful meaning.

  • Meditation on a Spark

    I was thinking about rising through the Spheres of the Planets tonight, and the image of a spark came to mind.

    You know, bonfires, they shoot out sparks. The sparks rise up high into heavens before they burn out. A little tiny ash floats back down to the earth. Every bit of it that could burn is consumed.

    So we’ve got seven planetary heavens, right? And under the lowest, the Lunar sphere, hanging off the lowest edge of heaven is the Elemental sphere of Fire, the highest and purest form of matter. Below that is Air, and below that Water. At the bottom is good old solid Earth, the most material of material realms.

    And here’s this spark. It’s sunshine and minerals from the earth consumed in the release of all that energy it absorbed while it was alive. As it goes through its final transformation, it shoots up through the aethers aiming for heaven, using the heat of its own combustion to get higher, and leaving behind a husk of itself to drift back down to earth, empty of all the power and effort that went into creating it in the first place.

    So, neat stuff. I don’t like ham handed mataphors, but I do seem to have a habit of using them myself.

  • Meditation on a Spark

    I was thinking about rising through the Spheres of the Planets tonight, and the image of a spark came to mind.

    You know, bonfires, they shoot out sparks. The sparks rise up high into heavens before they burn out. A little tiny ash floats back down to the earth. Every bit of it that could burn is consumed.

    So we’ve got seven planetary heavens, right? And under the lowest, the Lunar sphere, hanging off the lowest edge of heaven is the Elemental sphere of Fire, the highest and purest form of matter. Below that is Air, and below that Water. At the bottom is good old solid Earth, the most material of material realms.

    And here’s this spark. It’s sunshine and minerals from the earth consumed in the release of all that energy it absorbed while it was alive. As it goes through its final transformation, it shoots up through the aethers aiming for heaven, using the heat of its own combustion to get higher, and leaving behind a husk of itself to drift back down to earth, empty of all the power and effort that went into creating it in the first place.

    So, neat stuff. I don’t like ham handed mataphors, but I do seem to have a habit of using them myself.

  • Bela Bartok: Tapping into the Power of the Early 20th Century

    This morning, on my way to stinking work, I had the good fortune to hear a story on NPR about Bela Bartok. He was a Modernist composer who wrote some lovely dark-themed music based on the cultures of Eastern Europe, and it totally reflects the post-industrial Modernist influence of the late early 20th century.

    Who cares? Magicians care. We have to. So many of our modern occult influences condensed in the Modernist period. Crowley, Mathers, Fortune, and even the Chronicler Regardie were products of the illuminated age brought about by the wealth of the industrial revolution and the excesses of colonialism. The culture of their time influenced their writings, and to understand their legacy, we need to be able to tap into the gestalt of their period. It provides a frame of reference from which we can understand why they said things the way they did.

    Bela Bartok captures in his music the dark side of the struggles of the post industrial age. Society had changed, and people were glorifying things that they took for granted twenty years earlier. People were adapting to the automated production of basic goods and services, they were adopting the most efficient methods to achieve their goals. Increased wealth and leisure created a culture of opulence for many, but at the same time revealed in stark contrast the darkness of the soul. Man’s eternal struggle with himself entered a new stage of understanding.

    The industrial revolution hit the realm of the occult, and a new system of initiation emerged. The Golden Dawn took your average Anglo and fed them the pablum of the esoteric in the early degrees, progressively building up the framework of the system until the finished product could be taken off the assembly line and put into the Inner Order. Like the rest of society, the members of the occult had to adapt to the industrialization of their processes. The writings of Crowley take on a new meaning when you can see behind his words both the glorification of traditional craftsmanship and the child-like wonder of the shiny new method to produce attainment. His cynicism becomes warm and friendly when placed in the context of his day.

    To get a feeling for what I’m talking about, try listening to some of Bartok’s music. NPR has some available here:

    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14416746

    While you’re listening to this music, read some of the poetry that reflects the Modernist literary current. The Wasteland by T. S. Eliot is incredibly good to read while listening to Bartok, in my humble opinion. It can be found online here:

    http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html

    After you’ve read The Wasteland while listening to the profound music of Bela Bartok, go back and re-read Crowley’s Notes section on Liber Samekh. It explains a great deal of what was going on in the background that influenced the publication of this work.

    http://www.hermetic.com/crowley/libers/lib800.html

  • Pallas Renatus’ GtFO Potion

    “Heh. Heh-heh. Bwahahaha!”

    That was the sound coming from my cube this morning here at work as I read this post by Pallas Renatus. It wasn’t just that it was funny, it was seeing myself in it. “Oh yeah,” I thought as I read along, “yep, that too. Uh-huh. Heh, yeah.” I especially loved the part where he boiled the tobacco, and nonchalantly offered alternative methods of extracting the tobacco essence later to avoid the smell, without mentioning the gagging, retching, and dry heaves that come from smelling boiling chewing tobacco.

    I can’t post comments from work because they blocked blogger because SOMEONE here was posting a lot and they caught on. Can’t imagine who that was, but someone in Florida who logs in remotely ALSO complained about blogger being blocked, so it’s not just me. So to Pallas, I say, be careful. This psychotic Irish-Native American Asatru friend of mine once told me I could kill someone with the refined and extracted amount of pure nicotine from a single cigarette. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but you know, don’t drink the tobacco-camphor-ammonia tea you made, even if it does smell sooooo good.

    But man, another thing reading through his post reminded me of was how messy I let things get in my life. While my office doesn’t give me a viral infection and it’s not infested with spiders (ok, not very many spiders), it could use some tidying. See, I’m a busy man, so I spend large chunks of time working on the things I have backed up, and I put off the little things for when I have more time, like filing paperwork, dusting, vacuuming, cleaning the incense ash off the desk, and throwing out the hundreds of stubs from the stick incense I use in every rite. My wife says if I spent the two to five minutes it takes to clean up after my projects, I wouldn’t have to take two hours on a Saturday to clean everything up at once, and she could be right. So there’s physical stuff to clean up.

    I also do a lot of magic. I would say on a slow week, I’ll go maybe 18 hours straight without doing something that involves conjuring a spirit into my crystal ball for something. I like to think the steady traffic tends to keep things pretty clear. I also recently did the Mercury Gate rite, and that’s cleaned out a lot of crap that was stagnating. But regular cleansings of my house are on my list of things to do that I rarely get around to doing.

    And another thing, I think that because I do magic of a certain variety, it takes care of everything spiritually that my family needs. The truth is, there are psychic cobwebs that build up around the house that my regular angel magic just doesn’t affect, at least, not without making a specific request. The thing about angels is that they aren’t nannies. They’re co-workers, highly advanced, further up the ladder than you co-workers, with more experience and more power. You wouldn’t invite the CEO and all the Vice Presidents of a Universal Corporation over and expect them to pick up a feather duster and put on an apron and go around cleaning your house for you after the business meeting is over, would you? Naw, didn’t think so.

    I’ve noticed some patterns of behavior that are being expressed in my family that indicate it’s time to clean out the psychic air. In the Home Pwnership post, I talked about how when people live too close together, their shit gets on each others’ nerves. The same is true in a family, though it’s strongly mitigated by the love we have for each other. Still, when you hear the bickerings of the kids and the mutterings of the spouse (and yourself) begin to consistently contain the phrase “always*” in a negative context, it’s a good indication that it’s time to do some psychic cleaning in the home space in addition to checking behavior patterns, and maybe reminding people that we all have personal responsibility to make our collective experiences positive by taking ownership of our own messes.

    So it’s time to break out the aspergillum and sprinkle copious amounts of Holy Water about the house. I don’t think I’m in need of the full PRGTFO potion he created, but a good psychic cleansing is definitely in order.

    And yeah, getting down on the old hands and knees and scrub the base boards too.

    * As in, “You always break my stuff,” or “I’m always the one who has to clean up the bathroom,” or “You always say you’ll get to it Saturday.” Patterns of behavior that need to be addressed in multiple levels.

  • 3.0 – The Glyph

    Long ago, and far away, I began this series on the Neo-Platonic system. It began because I wanted to share the background that had lead up to the satori experience I had while studying Agrippa’s table on the Scale of the Number 4 (Book 2, Chapter 7 ). Everything I had been studying all came together in that moment, and the result was a compelling urge to map out what I was seeing on paper. Working into the wee hours of the morning with a compass and some folded paper to serve as a straight edge (the kids had broken my ruler), I ended up with a Glyph. This Glyph embodies the Great Work of the Magician, the realms of the spirits we work with in the material realm, the spirits of the seven planetary realms, and the role of the magician balanced in between the Above and the Below.

    Pretty neat, in my opinion. Not long after receiving it, I posted the information everywhere I could. I thought that just looking at the Glyph would bring instant Illumination to everyone who saw it. When people looked at it and said, yeah, ok, neat, and went on with their lives and Work, I thought they just didn’t have the background to see the awesome impact this Glyph can have on Ceremonial Magicians. Taking what it represents, taking the keys that are summarized in its concentric circles and the perspective of the layout, and putting it into practical use results in complete and total control of all things material and spiritual, from an enlightened and beneficent place of authority in the cosmos.

    So I labored on the different sections of this work with the goal of bringing everyone this power, illumination, and understanding of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

    Since the time that I got this Glyph, I’ve been using it to great effect in my Work. It really does do everything I thought it would do. But I’ve realized that it’s not going to be for everyone.

    Understanding now that this is a personal revelation, I’ve been putting off wrapping up the series. I intended it to be a climactic culmination that brought everything else together and sparked a mass enlightenment experience that spread like wildfire through my audience that has grown to a global scale. I no longer expect that to happen, but nevertheless, I hope this serves to at least inspire some of you on to your own Glyphs, your own empowerment, and your own harmony.

  • Bela Bartok: Tapping into the Power of the Early 20th Century

    This morning, on my way to stinking work, I had the good fortune to hear a story on NPR about Bela Bartok. He was a Modernist composer who wrote some lovely dark-themed music based on the cultures of Eastern Europe, and it totally reflects the post-industrial Modernist influence of the late early 20th century.

    Who cares? Magicians care. We have to. So many of our modern occult influences condensed in the Modernist period. Crowley, Mathers, Fortune, and even the Chronicler Regardie were products of the illuminated age brought about by the wealt

  • The Genius and Evil Daimon Spreadsheets…

    Quite a few people share Anuksunamun’s sentiments about wanting to see the spreadsheet, the fruit of many months of research and study. So I’ve made it available, but I’m charging for it.