Rufus Opus

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  • The Magick Book

    Aaron Leitch posted a neat link to an article at the Solomonic yahoo group today. He was excited about the book bindings that are illustrated, and rightly so. They are truly beautiful. Take a look here:

    http://www.maybelogic.org/maybequarterly/06/0609RoyalBookbinding.htm.

    What I found most interesting is in the interview with the creator of these beautiful works of art and magick. Specifically, the book binder is speaking about an earlier project called the Guardian Angel Grimoire, which he created for his partner Margaret:

    The Guardian Angel Grimoire came about as the result of the problems my life partner Margaret was facing. I made the Grimoire as a Xmas present for her, I drew upon the knowledge I had put away 20 years ago and it all seemed to come back as if it never went away. The interior of the book starts with the Enochian Tree of Life, followed by the Major Arcana of the Tarot, followed by the Pre-Raphalite paintings (Morgan LeFay, the seduction of Merlin etc) ending with 14th-19th century magical symbols, with an 8pp section inserted within each illustration to write whatever.

    The strange thing is, everything Margaret has written in the Grimoire has happened in one form or another. She has been offered many, many thousands of pounds for it, but now she will never part with it.

    How cool is that? How many times would you have used a Magick Book to manifest things if all you had to do was write out what you wanted to happen in the pages?

    I’m telling you, I’ve had this in mind for years. Ever since I read Crowley’s interpretation of the elemental weapons of a Magus in the Book of Toth as the implements of a writer. The quill knife, the ink well, the quill and the page. Beautiful representation of the Work of Materialization, in my opinion. In my chaos days, I attempted to create such an item, and failed MISERABLY. The results were pathetic, as usual.

    However, I think this guy Paul has hit upon the method here, and I’ve got a theory to explain it, based on my own experiences with my Altar and the Glyph I go on about from time to time.

    I’m able to manifest things in my sphere of sensation simply by placing a symbolic representation of what I want on my altar in the Table of Practice. The Table of Practice on my altar represents all the forces of creation and the managing intelligences and spirits that control the processes of manifestation. Articulating what I want symbolically is like planting the seed in the aethyrs and letting it grow.

    Paul has done the same thing in his creation of the Guardian Angel Grimoire above. He’s got the structure of existence and all the powers and principalities that manage it represented in the Tree of Life, the pathways of manifestation presented in the Tarot imagery, and specific images that tie his life partner to the grimoire. He’s also got the seals of various entities included with pages for writing at various stages through the work.

    It’s a beautiful piece of craftsmanship on many levels.

    As soon as his partner writes something in the pages, the spirits associated with their seals set to work to manifest whatever is written. Simple, direct, and aestheticlaly pleasing. There’s not much more that one could wish for.

    It reminds me of something Susanne Illes is working on with her Table of Practice. (Check out her blog for some really excellent art work: http://www.bone-singer.blogspot.c

  • The Magick Book

    Aaron Leitch posted a neat link to an article at the Solomonic yahoo group today. He was excited about the book bindings that are illustrated, and rightly so. They are truly beautiful. Take a look here:

    http://www.maybelogic.org/maybequarterly/06/0609RoyalBookbinding.htm.

    What I found most interesting is in the interview with the creator of these beautiful works of art and magick. Specifically, the book binder is speaking about an earlier project called the Guardian Angel Grimoire, which he created for his partner Margaret:

    The Guardian Angel Grimoire came about as the result of the problems my life partner Margaret was facing. I made the Grimoire as a Xmas present for her, I drew upon the knowledge I had put away 20 years ago and it all seemed to come back as if it never went away. The interior of the book starts with the Enochian Tree of Life, followed by the Major Arcana of the Tarot, followed by the Pre-Raphalite paintings (Morgan LeFay, the seduction of Merlin etc) ending with 14th-19th century magical symbols, with an 8pp section inserted within each illustration to write whatever.

    The strange thing is, everything Margaret has written in the Grimoire has happened in one form or another. She has been offered many, many thousands of pounds for it, but now she will never part with it.

    How cool is that? How many times would you have used a Magick Book to manifest things if all you had to do was write out what you wanted to happen in the pages?

    I’m telling you, I’ve had this in mind for years. Ever since I read Crowley’s interpretation of the elemental weapons of a Magus in the Book of Toth as the implements of a writer. The quill knife, the ink well, the quill and the page. Beautiful representation of the Work of Materialization, in my opinion. In my chaos days, I attempted to create such an item, and failed MISERABLY. The results were pathetic, as usual.

    However, I think this guy Paul has hit upon the method here, and I’ve got a theory to explain it, based on my own experiences with my Altar and the Glyph I go on about from time to time.

    I’m able to manifest things in my sphere of sensation simply by placing a symbolic representation of what I want on my altar in the Table of Practice. The Table of Practice on my altar represents all the forces of creation and the managing intelligences and spirits that control the processes of manifestation. Articulating what I want symbolically is like planting the seed in the aethyrs and letting it grow.

    Paul has done the same thing in his creation of the Guardian Angel Grimoire above. He’s got the structure of existence and all the powers and principalities that manage it represented in the Tree of Life, the pathways of manifestation presented in the Tarot imagery, and specific images that tie his life partner to the grimoire. He’s also got the seals of various entities included with pages for writing at various stages through the work.

    It’s a beautiful piece of craftsmanship on many levels.

    As soon as his partner writes something in the pages, the spirits associated with their seals set to work to manifest whatever is written. Simple, direct, and aestheticlaly pleasing. There’s not much more that one could wish for.

    It reminds me of something Susanne Illes is working on with her Table of Practice. (Check out her blog for some really excellent art work: http://www.bone-singer.blogspot.com/)

    Well, anyway, it’s something to work on in our spare time. We aren’t all Master Book Binders, but finding journals of blank bound paper is a lot easier than it used to be. Get yourself one, and start putting together your own materializer. You’ll need some representation of the cosmos (like the Ptolemaic System: http://tinyurl.com/ys6ym2). You can draw it yourself or print it up and paste it in, coloring it appropriately.

    Then you’ll need the servants. There’s 72 Shem Angels, a few hundred Ophanim and Enochian angels, or Seven Planetary Intelligences and their legions of Spirits. Plenty of systems to put your servants together from. The Goetia springs to mind. Maybe have a page for each Spirit and a few pages afterwards dedicated to that spirit. If you’re going to do something like that, make sure to include all the other seals and such.

    While we can’t all emboss hand-tanned leather covers with gold gilt lettering for our works, we can all create wooden bindings out of shingles engraved or wood-burned with the appropriate symbols and seals.The key to success is creative ingenuity. I think I’ll put together my own Magick Book of Manifestation this weekend, a little materialization engine that I can just write things in and have them happen.

    I’ll need a lot of pages for whichever spirit I find that makes mountains of gold coins appear at will.

    Keep it simple!

    -R.O.

  • Fourth Pentacle of Jupiter Results

    Well, that certainly didn’t take long. In the first weekend after creating the talisman, I enjoyed a very pleasant inflow of cash, and multiple long-term opportunities for multiple revenue streams.

    While I was hoping for a cash-cow, single-source bonanza of stupid-wealth, I never quite BOUGHT the lotto tickets, which pretty much ensures no winning there, eh?

    Anyway, I’m very happy with the results. Here’s a brief list:

    • Spouse landed a part-time job watching a friend’s son before and after school, adding about $600 a month to our income; there’s a chance another friend of hers is going back to work as well, and will need someone to watch her son too
    • Spouse had biggest weekend to date in Avon Sales after last week’s Work
    • My “Products and Services” have sold more in the last week than they did in the last year

    There were a few other things that happened rather positively in general. Respiratory infections we’d been fighting since October have left the house. It feels like a gentle “Happy Blanket” has descended on our house, for the most part, except for the ongoing low-grade warfare with my spouse. I scored a professional-grade laser printer-copier-scanner-fax for free. A bunch of other stuff that builds up wealth over time is coming into fruition at the same time.

    Note that even though the Gematria of the figure could be Jupiter-Taurus, and the ritual itself is Jupiter-Cancer, the actual manifestations so far have been in keeping with Jupiter in Capricorn, slow steady, carefully measured growth.

  • Familiar Spirits vs. Servitors

    I received an interesting comment on the Fetching a Fetch post yesterday:

    What actually are the difference between a servitor and a familiar? I think that a familiar can be, but not necessary a servitor.

    Regarding the differences between a familiar and a servitor, the primary difference is this:

    A familiar is a real spirit either conjured by the magician from the dead or granted to the magician by the spirit’s “boss” in the hierarchy. They may function as a servant, and that’s fine.

    Servitors, on the other hand, are usually just figments of a Chaos Magician’s wishful thinking.

    Servitors are a construct of the Chaos Magick movement. Chaos magicians generally believe in a blend of the energy and psychological models, that everything is made up of energy, and whatever we experience spiritually is the result of our own perceptions and beliefs, and that if it affects reality, there’s probably a rational, scientific explanation that has no need for actual objective spirits to exist. They believe energy is manipulated by belief, and that a servitor can be created entirely from the magician’s own expectations, energy manipulations, and the power of their belief.

    How they can hold this philosophy is completely beyond me. If belief were the sole source of experiential reality, insane people really would be whatever they thought they were. I’ve experienced enough mentally ill people to know that no matter how true their faith in their delusions might be, their delusions are not real. Not one of the Napolean Bonapartes in Belleview lived in Elba. The homeless Viet-nam vet on crutches muttering about how he’s the son of David, the last Sun King, really believes what he’s saying, but that belief doesn’t make him the brother of Solomon, nor does it transport him mystically and magickally to the streets of Jerusalem. Even though he REALLY believes that’s where he lives. (This is a real guy, he lived in Denver when I was a teenager, and tried to convince me I was also a Sun King at a coffee shop one day after some punks had beaten him up and taken his vodka and spare change.)

    That doesn’t mean I don’t believe some servitors are actual spirits. Take Fotamecus, for instance. This time-manipulation servitor allegedly became an egregore after being exposed to the energies of a rock concert (or something like that). As time went by, Fotamecus grew in power and was gunning for Chronos. Magicians across the world experienced Fotamecus.

    However, the primary “creator” of Fotamecus has recently begun to understand that the spirit existed long before he was “inspired” to create the Fotamecus sigil and go through the operations he’s experienced.

    Similarly, studies of the different grimoires indicate that there are nephesh, shades of the dead that can be conjured and used as servants. When a Chaos magician creates a servitor and has results with it, I believe it’s because some wandering shade has inhabited the form of the servitor and is causing the effects. Again, it’s a real spirit; it’s just taking advantage of the thought-form of the magician. This is evidenced by the experiences people who have useful servitors and tulpas have recorded.

    Tulpas are familiar spirits from the Tibetan magickal systems that are allegedly created by the magician. The magician imagines the form of their spirit, and over time practices extensive visualization of the thing, empowering it, treating ti as if it were real, making offerings, and so forth. After a couple of months of consistent effort, the tulpa is as real as any familiar.

    However, after a while, the Tulpa inevitably begins to change. It changes its form and function. The spirit that has inhabited the visualized form of the magician takes over the construct, and it begins to look and act the way its nature demands. It’s not long before the spirit is obviously not what the magician imagined it to be, and the magician is then forced to eradicate the tulpa, a process that can take six months.

    Now I know there are lots of people who think they have created tulpas, and who theorize about them based on the writings of charlatans and frauds, and they write a bunch of untested bullshit that doesn’t work and publish it to the web. Google will provide hundreds of sources that will disagree with me, I promise.

    Check into the experiences of people like Alexandra David-Neel, who spent some fourteen years in Tibet and actually created a tulpa. Compare their experiences and records with the theories and claims of the popular servitor/tulpa movement, and you’ll quickly recognize the difference in tone. Truth strikes a chord that BS just can’t. She and others who actually perform the ritual creation of a tulpa record the same end: the spirit changes, revealing its true (and usually disturbing, vampiric) form and the magician is forced to banish it from their lives.

    Before anyone gets too upset, I’ll close with the caveat that your mileage may vary.

  • If you’re happy with the LBRP…

    …then chances are pretty good this blog will, at times, offend you. I do not like it, Sam I am, I do not like lame rites in a can.

    That said, have you ever said something in the heat of a moment that you later realize was perhaps a little more vehement and exaggerated than you really feel? In response to Jason’s first comment on my previous post, I said:

    As for the LBRP, it’s a bullshit ritual, completely overblown, overanalyzed, and remains a shit stain on the underwear of the occult left by incontinent old men who pulled the teeth from the Hermetic Tradition trying to make it reflect the fairy tales of the Theosophists and their own made up “history” of their Masonic roots.

    If occultists spent as much time reading chapters of Agrippa as they do analyzing that stupid fucking ritual, we’d probably have reached global Enlightenment by now.

    Now, I really do believe that statement sometimes, but it’s totally hyperbolic and should be put in context, because there is one instance that I can think of where the above statement is completely false, intolerable, and should never have been uttered. So let me explain.

    If you are in a Golden Dawn Order, if you are planning on going through all the initiations and achieving the Great Work following the path laid out within the Golden Dawn, the LBRP is a fantastic, and truly necessary ritual to perform daily. It creates in your sphere contact points, like a circuit, that are activated at various stages of your initiation. It prepares you for specific revelations and empowerments that you will achieve at later grades. From the first time you stumble through it, through the mid-career point when you realize you’ve been saying it wrong for the last two years, to the last gasping “within me shines the six-rayed Star” before you die, you are performing a ritual that is the keystone to an entire transformative process that can only be properly completed in the framework that originated the rite.

    Do you know why you’re supposed to start a “Banishing pentagram of the Earth” by your left hip, trace up to your forehead, then go to the right hip, then the left shoulder, right shoulder, and end at the left hip? Or why the Qabalistic Cross puts the “vigiburah” at the right shoulder and the “vigedulah” at the left? It’s because you’re building the Tree of Life into your sphere, tracing a path along the Tree of Life, a graphic designed by Athanasius Kircher to reflect his understanding of Christian Kabbala and the Sefer Yetzirah.

    In the Golden Dawn, the rituals performed create a spiritual, astral form of the Tree of Life in your own sphere. The left hip is the starting place of the Earth banishing Pentagram because that is where one of the spheres falls within your sphere. It’s Hod, or Netzach, depending on whether you believe you’re standing facing an image of the Tree of Life, or standing inside the image looking out.

    Do you know which sphere the banishing pentagram of Earth is supposed to start in? The source of the powers you’re activating? The right side is the Pillar of Severity, the left is the Pillar of Mercy, and the Middle Pillar runs along the spine, but continues into the Earth and extends to a point well past Kether. It’s really a Circle, but that’s … a Mystery! Anyway, the banishing Pentagram of Earth begins in Netzach, which is really interesting when you learn what the Golden Dawn meant by the “natural magic” that is sourced in the Sphere of Netzach.*

    If you didn’t know, then really you don’t know what you’re doing, or why you’re doing it. And that’s ok, for a Novitiate within an Order. They aren’t supposed to know everything.

    I don’t know how much of the original Golden Dawn’s structure and instruction survive today. I hope that people who knew the original founders managed to get a complete rundown of what’s supposed to happen at each Grade Initiation. I know Regardie never made it past the 4th degree, and whatever he wrote was incomplete. All those people basing their Golden Dawn Orders on the published materials of Regardie are working from half, or less than half of the full understanding of the Order. Folks who have access to the Inner Order’s original curriculum and overall goal are better situated to form a complete system of initiation as envisioned by the original Golden Dawn founders. Whether or not their system actually does what they intended it to do is another topic.

    Assuming some order out there has all the original plans for the initiatory process (or has guessed right about what they filled in the blanks with) and what has to happen to the sphere of the magician at each Grade in order to integrate the powers and lessons of that Grade, the LBRP can be an invaluable tool in the magician’s kit, one that is necessary for everything else to stick and manifest.

    But if you’re not in the Golden Dawn, most of what it does is useless to you. You’re building a spiritual model of a tree of life into your sphere that may or may not line up with the forces you’re going to end up Working with in the course of your path. You’re creating a resonance that will mesh harmoniously with the more advanced Work of the GD structure, but may cause discord when you try to do something outside that very specialized field of occult practice.

    When I see non-GD folks recommend the LBRP, I cringe. Most of it is based on traditional enough sources that it won’t likely interfere with your Work, but enough of it is specialized that it’s a waste of time, time that could be spent building the kinds of things into your sphere that will cause harmony and power to manifest over the course of your Work.

    And that’s what I plan to focus on going forward. I’ve noticed lately that a lot of my posts tend to be me bitchin’ about this, or complaining about that. When I started this blog, it was a lot more about doing magic, and the neat stuff I was learning. The thing is, I’ve learned the pieces of a system that seems to do amazing things, and to find out how effective the system is takes Work. Now that I know the pieces and stages for each phase of the Work, I need to Work them to prove that I’ve properly understood what I’ve read and heard from the spirits.

    So I’ll be writing about things that I do that form the system I use. Hopefully it will help people who are interested in finding a system to put the grimoire pieces into that accomplishes the Great Work. Instead of just pointing out what’s “wrong” with other people’s interpretations or techniques, I’d much rather focus on laying out what works.

    Which doesn’t mean I’ll stop bitching. A man’s got to be what he is, after all, and sometimes this man’s a bitch.

    * Fuckin, fuckin’, and more fuckin’, in case you were curious.

  • Familiar Spirits vs. Servitors

    I received an interesting comment on the Fetching a Fetch post yesterday:

    What actually are the difference between a servitor and a familiar? I think that a familiar can be, but not necessary a servitor.

    Regarding the differences between a familiar and a servitor, the primary difference is this:

    A familiar is a real spirit either conjured by the magician from the dead or granted to the magician by the spirit’s “boss” in the hierarchy. They may function as a servant, and that’s fine.

    Servitors, on the other hand, are usually just figments of a Chaos Magician’s wishful thinking.

    Servitors are a construct of the Chaos Magick movement. Chaos magicians generally believe in a blend of the energy and psychological models, that everything is made up of energy, and whatever we experience spiritually is the result of our own perceptions and beliefs, and that if it affects reality, there’s probably a rational, scientific explanation that has no need for actual objective spirits to exist. They believe energy is manipulated by belief, and that a servitor can be created entirely from the magician’s own expectations, energy manipulations, and the power of their belief.

    How they can hold this philosophy is completely beyond me. If belief were the sole source of experiential reality, insane people really would be whatever they thought they were. I’ve experienced enough mentally ill people to know that no matter how true their faith in their delusions might be, their delusions are not real. Not one of the Napolean Bonapartes in Belleview lived in Elba. The homeless Viet-nam vet on crutches muttering about how he’s the son of David, the last Sun King, really believes what he’s saying, but that belief doesn’t make him the brother of Solomon, nor does it transport him mystically and magickally to the streets of Jerusalem. Even though he REALLY believes that’s where he lives. (This is a real guy, he lived in Denver when I was a teenager, and tried to convince me I was also a Sun King at a coffee shop one day after some punks had beaten him up and taken his vodka and spare change.)

    That doesn’t mean I don’t believe some servitors are actual spirits. Take Fotamecus, for instance. This time-manipulation servitor allegedly became an egregore after being exposed to the energies of a rock concert (or something like that). As time went by, Fotamecus grew in power and was gunning for Chronos. Magicians across the world experienced Fotamecus.

    However, the primary “creator” of Fotamecus has recently begun to understand that the spirit existed long before he was “inspired” to create the Fotamecus sigil and go through the operations he’s experienced.

    Similarly, studies of the different grimoires indicate that there are nephesh, shades of the dead that can be conjured and used as servants. When a Chaos magician creates a servitor and has results with it, I believe it’s because some wandering shade has inhabited the form of the servitor and is causing the effects. Again, it’s a real spirit; it’s just taking advantage of the thought-form of the magician. This is evidenced by the experiences people who have useful servitors and tulpas have recorded.

    Tulpas are familiar spirits from the Tibetan magickal systems that are allegedly created by the magician. The magician imagines the form of their spirit, and over time practices extensive visualization of the thing, empowering it, treating ti as if it were real, making offerings, and so forth. After a couple of months of consistent effort, the tulpa is as real as any familiar.

    However, after a while, the Tulpa inevitably begins to change. It changes its form and function. The spirit that has inhabited the visualized form of the magician takes over the construct, and it begins to look and act the way its nature demands. It’s not long before the spirit is obviously not what the magician imagined it to be, and the magician is then forced to eradicate the tulpa, a process that can take six months.

    Now I know there are lots of people who think they have created tulpas, and who theorize about them based on the writings of charlatans and frauds, and they write a bunch of untested bullshit that doesn’t work and publish it to the web. Google will provide hundreds of sources that will disagree with me, I promise.

    Check into the experiences of people like Alexandra David-Neel, who spent some fourteen years in Tibet and actually created a tulpa. Compare their experiences and records with the theories and claims of the popular servitor/tulpa movement, and you’ll quickly recognize the difference in tone. Truth strikes a chord that BS just can’t. She and others who actually perform the ritual creation of a tulpa record the same end: the spirit changes, revealing its true (and usually disturbing, vampiric) form and the magician is forced to banish it from their lives.

    Before anyone gets too upset, I’ll close with the caveat that your mileage may vary.

  • Familiar Spirits vs. Servitors

    I received an interesting comment on the Fetching a Fetch post yesterday:

    What actually are the difference between a servitor and a familiar? I think that a familiar can be, but not necessary a servitor.

    Regarding the differences between a familiar and a servitor, the primary difference is this:

    A familiar is a real spirit either conjured by the magician from the dead or granted to the magician by the spirit’s “boss” in the hierarchy. They may function as a servant, and that’s fine.

    Servitors, on the other hand, are usually just figments of a Chaos Magician’s wishful thinking.

    Servitors are a construct of the Chaos Magick movement. Chaos magicians generally believe in a blend of the energy and psychological models, that everything is made up of energy, and whatever we experience spiritually is the result of our own perceptions and beliefs, and that if it affects reality, there’s probably a rational, scientific explanation that has no need for actual objective spirits to exist. They believe energy is manipulated by belief, and that a servitor can be created entirely from the magician’s own expectations, energy manipulations, and the power of their belief.

    How they can hold this philosophy is completely beyond me. If belief were the sole source of experiential reality, insane people really would be whatever they thought they were. I’ve experienced enough mentally ill people to know that no matter how true their faith in their delusions might be, their delusions are not real. Not one of the Napolean Bonapartes in Belleview lived in Elba. The homeless Viet-nam vet on crutches muttering about how he’s the son of David, the last Sun King, really believes what he’s saying, but that belief doesn’t make him the brother of Solomon, nor does it transport him mystically and magickally to the streets of Jerusalem. Even though he REALLY believes that’s where he lives. (This is a real guy, he lived in Denver when I was a teenager, and tried to convince me I was also a Sun King at a coffee shop one day after some punks had beaten him up and taken his vodka and spare change.)

    That doesn’t mean I don’t believe some servitors are actual spirits. Take Fotamecus, for instance. This time-manipulation servitor allegedly became an egregore after being exposed to the energies of a rock concert (or something like that). As time went by, Fotamecus grew in power and was gunning for Chronos. Magicians across the world experienced Fotamecus.

    However, the primary “creator” of Fotamecus has recently begun to understand that the spirit existed long before he was “inspired” to create the Fotamecus sigil and go through the operations he’s experienced.

    Similarly, studies of the different grimoires indicate that there are nephesh, shades of the dead that can be conjured and used as servants. When a Chaos magician creates a servitor and has results with it, I believe it’s because some wandering shade has inhabited the form of the servitor and is causing the effects. Again, it’s a real spirit; it’s just taking advantage of the thought-form of the magician. This is evidenced by the experiences people who have useful servitors and tulpas have recorded.

    Tulpas are familiar spirits from the Tibetan magickal systems that are allegedly created by the magician. The magician imagines the form of their spirit, and over time practices extensive visualization of the thing, empowering it, treating ti as if it were real, making offerings, and so forth. After a couple of months of consistent effort, the tulpa is as real as any familiar.

    However, after a while, the Tulpa inevitably begins to change. It changes its form and function. The spirit that has inhabited the visualized form of the magician takes over the construct, and it begins to look and act the way its nature demands. It’s not long before the spirit is obviously not what the magician imagined it to be, and the magician is then forced to eradicate the tulpa, a process that can take six months.

    Now I know there are lots of people who think they have created tulpas, and who theorize about them based on the writings of charlatans and frauds, and they write a bunch of untested bullshit that doesn’t work and publish it to the web. Google will provide hundreds of sources that will disagree with me, I promise.

    Check into the experiences of people like Alexandra David-Neel, who spent some fourteen years in Tibet and actually created a tulpa. Compare their experiences and records with the theories and claims of the popular servitor/tulpa movement, and you’ll quickly recognize the difference in tone. Truth strikes a chord that BS just can’t. She and others who actually perform the ritual creation of a tulpa record the same end: the spirit changes, revealing its true (and usually disturbing, vampiric) form and the magician is forced to banish it from their lives.

    Before anyone gets too upset, I’ll close with the caveat that your mileage may vary.

  • Fetching a Fetch

    Lately I’ve become enamored of the idea of having a “Fetch. A Fetch is another name for a familiar spirit, the kind usually given by the demons of the Abramelin rituals, or conjured from a graveyard at night in some other grimoires, like the Sefer ha Razim.

    From Wikipedia:

    In early modern English witchcraft or Superstition, a familiar spirit, commonly called familiar (from Middle English familiar, related to family) or imp is a spirit who obeys a witch, conjurer, or other users of the supernatural, and serves and helps that person. Although they may not be as intelligent as their masters, they are often as intelligent as the average human. Familiars often perform domestic duties and help in farming, but also aid the person in bewitching people. If they look like ordinary animals, they can be used to spy on their masters’ enemies. These spirits are also said to be able to inspire artists and writers (compare with muses). The familiars of some practicers of black magic also defined the characteristics of their owners. Some reclusive wizards rely on familiars as their closest friends. In demonology, it is said that many demons have the ability to grant to a conjurer a familiar to aid them.

    (More at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familiar)

    I’ve loved the idea of having a fetch ever since I read a story by Lovecraft that involved the main witch character having a white cat-like thing as a fetch. Unfortunately, I’ve never had any reason to have one. Most of the things they are used for in stories and legends I can do for myself. I don’t farm, hexing people is generally bad form, in my opinion, and I’ve already got Bune to help with inspiration for my writing. Burning a tea lite candle is enough to get me motivated for a project, it seems.

    In spite of not having any reason for having one, I’ve got a method I’m itching to try out from the Sefer ha Razim. It involves heading to a graveyard at night, reciting the names of the angels, and performing the appropriate oration. Pretty simple stuff, and there’s as pillar of smoke involved.

    But I just can’t justify it. Doing magick for its own sake isn’t worth it to me. I’ve found that there are all kinds of unexpected side effects for every ritual, and without a pressing need, there’s no point in linking myself to the dead that I can think of. Rather disappointing, I must say.

  • Fetching a Fetch

    Lately I’ve become enamored of the idea of having a “Fetch. A Fetch is another name for a familiar spirit, the kind usually given by the demons of the Abramelin rituals, or conjured from a graveyard at night in some other grimoires, like the Sefer ha Razim.

    From Wikipedia:

    In early modern English witchcraft or Superstition, a familiar spirit, commonly called familiar (from Middle English familiar, related to family) or imp is a spirit who obeys a witch, conjurer, or other users of the supernatural, and serves and helps that person. Although they may not be as intelligent as their masters, they are often as intelligent as the average human. Familiars often perform domestic duties and help in farming, but also aid the person in bewitching people. If they look like ordinary animals, they can be used to spy on their masters’ enemies. These spirits are also said to be able to inspire artists and writers (compare with muses). The familiars of some practicers of black magic also defined the characteristics of their owners. Some reclusive wizards rely on familiars as their closest friends. In demonology, it is said that many demons have the ability to grant to a conjurer a familiar to aid them.

    (More at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familiar)

    I’ve loved the idea of having a fetch ever since I read a story by Lovecraft that involved the main witch character having a white cat-like thing as a fetch. Unfortunately, I’ve never had any reason to have one. Most of the things they are used for in stories and legends I can do for myself. I don’t farm, hexing people is generally bad form, in my opinion, and I’ve already got Bune to help with inspiration for my writing. Burning a tea lite candle is enough to get me motivated for a project, it seems.

    In spite of not having any reason for having one, I’ve got a method I’m itching to try out from the Sefer ha Razim. It involves heading to a graveyard at night, reciting the names of the angels, and performing the appropriate oration. Pretty simple stuff, and there’s as pillar of smoke involved.

    But I just can’t justify it. Doing magick for its own sake isn’t worth it to me. I’ve found that there are all kinds of unexpected side effects for every ritual, and without a pressing need, there’s no point in linking myself to the dead that I can think of. Rather disappointing, I must say.

  • Fetching a Fetch

    Lately I’ve become enamored of the idea of having a “Fetch. A Fetch is another name for a familiar spirit, the kind usually given by the demons of the Abramelin rituals, or conjured from a graveyard at night in some other grimoires, like the Sefer ha Razim.

    From Wikipedia:

    In early modern English witchcraft or Superstition, a familiar spirit, commonly called familiar (from Middle English familiar, related to family) or imp is a spirit who obeys a witch, conjurer, or other users of the supernatural, and serves and helps that person. Although they may not be as intelligent as their masters, they are often as intelligent as the average human. Familiars often perform domestic duties and help in farming, but also aid the person in bewitching people. If they look like ordinary animals, they can be used to spy on their masters’ enemies. These spirits are also said to be able to inspire artists and writers (compare with muses). The familiars of some practicers of black magic also defined the characteristics of their owners. Some reclusive wizards rely on familiars as their closest friends. In demonology, it is said that many demons have the ability to grant to a conjurer a familiar to aid them.

    (More at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familiar)

    I’ve loved the idea of having a fetch ever since I read a story by Lovecraft that involved the main witch character having a white cat-like thing as a fetch. Unfortunately, I’ve never had any reason to have one. Most of the things they are used for in stories and legends I can do for myself. I don’t farm, hexing people is generally bad form, in my opinion, and I’ve already got Bune to help with inspiration for my writing. Burning a tea lite candle is enough to get me motivated for a project, it seems.

    In spite of not having any reason for having one, I’ve got a method I’m itching to try out from the Sefer ha Razim. It involves heading to a graveyard at night, reciting the names of the angels, and performing the appropriate oration. Pretty simple stuff, and there’s as pillar of smoke involved.

    But I just can’t justify it. Doing magick for its own sake isn’t worth it to me. I’ve found that there are all kinds of unexpected side effects for every ritual, and without a pressing need, there’s no point in linking myself to the dead that I can think of. Rather disappointing, I must say.