Rufus Opus

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  • The GD Returning to its Hermetic Roots?

    Holy Crap! It’s totally working!

    The Golden Dawn is getting its shit together. It’s returning to its Hermetic roots. Halleluiah!

    Or at least, someone there finally got around to reading the Divine Pymander. ’bout friggin’ time.

  • Getting Started in Hermetics

    Well, when I wrote the Looking Forward… and Preparing for Death posts a couple weeks ago, I thought they kind of sucked. When I reread them, I thought it was like reading squashed roaches. Piles of words smeared across the point that barely communicated much of anything.

    But they’ve generated a lot of email for me. Quite a few people have been asking about how to get started in this path. Sometimes I forget that I keep getting new readers, and that not everyone’s read every post I’ve ever written. So it’s time to point out a few key resources for this stuff I do.

    For starters, read the Neo-Platonic Basics. It’s available for free on my main site. It’s also available for a nominal fee in a complete PDF file if you want to see it as an eBook through my eBooks page. This was a series of posts documenting my early experiences and understandings of the traditional Hermetic Path, and I recently re-read it. I thought I’d have to go through and update everything because I’ve grown as a magician, but it didn’t need a lot of changes. I found myself saying oh, yeah, that’s why this stuff happens. I wondered where I got that from.* This booklet/series of posts provides you with the basic map of the Hermetic Territories.

    From there, I’d get the Modern Angelic Grimoire. It’s basically a rewrite of the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals, attributed to Trithemius, and it’s the best method of conjuring spirits quickly and efficiently I’ve found. It’s completely harmonious with the core Hermetic Texts. You can start conjuring the spirits in one evening, and it whets your appetite, makes you hungry for more.

    From there you can simply go exploring through the heavens and the grimoires. I think the best thing you can do, honestly, is to go out and adventure through the spirit realms. Once you have a basic map, and a basic understanding of the methodology, there’s nothing you can’t learn. Conjure the spirits, and they’ll guide your steps. They initiate, they teach, they guide. They’re much better at it than any human I’ve met. As you go along, you’ll find yourself learning all the correspondences of the planets, methods of attaining a Supernatural Assistant, sub-lunar spirit conjuration, followed up closely with lessons on fixing magic gone awry.

    It won’t kill you, probably, and it’s not very likely to make you any more insane than you already are. Usually. What it does result in is getting initiated and empowered and discovering that while you may not be able to control every aspect of your life, there is no thing of the Firmament or of the Ether, upon the Earth or under the Earth, on dry land or in the water, of Whirling Air, or of rushing Fire, or any Spell or Scourge of God that cannot be influenced through your magic.

    It’s pretty potent stuff. Good times, my friends, gooooood times.

    Now, some people have an adventurous spirit, but they want more detailed, more structured and organized training. I offer that through the “Red Work Series of Courses.” It’s a detailed set of instructions for accomplishing the Hermetic Great Work as laid out in the Corpus Hermeticum, the Emerald Tablet, and woven all through the Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Agrippa. Some people have told me the courses have turned out to be a practical magician’s guide to the Three Books of Occult Philosophy. One of these days, I might even publish something like that in condensed form. The courses, however, go into a great deal of detail, and would be as long as the Three Books. It’s probably never going to be published in entirety, there’s just too much.

    So that’s about it. The best thing you can do is get a basic understanding, and then start filling in the blanks through experimentation, study, and guidance from the spirits. The second best thing is to go through my courses, if you really feel called to doing things the way I’ve been called to it.

    The worst thing you can do is nothing at all, though. Time is just ticking the fuck away. Get busy, do something.

    * I have the shittiest memory on the planet for details. I remember things, I know them, but I forget why they’re true, or where I learned them. I’m trying to get through the Art of Memory, but I’ve been distracted.

  • Magic: The Great Savior! Part 2

    You know all that stuff in the last post I wrote? It’s all true.

    That said, magic is our savior, and not just in the long term. It doesn’t fix everything all at once, once and for all. It’s cumulative and it can take a couple weeks or more to start seeing the effects, but still, if your life is ALL FUCKED UP, then honestly, you really do need to DO SOME MAGIC.

    Contemplation of your source puts things into perspective. Once you’ve got that, turn your gaze to your life and all the shit and start fixing it. Come up with the plan, and put it into action. What powers of the spheres do you need? Get them! Get yourself a spirit from each and put them to work on your behalf! Do it! Do the Magic!

    And you never know, sometimes you just might get an instant result that really does fix everything that’s bugging the shit out of you. You’re guaranteed not to get anything if you don’t do something.

  • Magic: The Great Savior!

    Or: Hermetic Soteriology

    In the past week, I’ve had no less than five people approach me with the same basic complaint: My life is worse than ever, can you fix it!?!?!? I don’t know what’s going on in the world astrologically or what, but it’s going around big time.
    Most of these people are suffering the consequences of their actions, or worse, their lack of planned action. It happens to me more often than I like to admit, so I’m not judging them any harsher than I judge myself when I tell you truly: that shit is just plain old fashioned stupid. “Everything I’ve done has a consequence, and I don’t like the consequence, make it all go away!” I’ve said that. In those words.
    And the basic assumption is that there’s nothing in life that’s so bad that magic can’t fix it immediately and relieve them from suffering instantaneously. That’s “magic as my salvation.”
    Bad news folks, magic doesn’t work that way. That’s why I wrote yesterday’s post about timing and planning your magic because what we’re experiencing now is the result of what we did (or didn’t do) a couple weeks ago. Or a month ago. Or five years ago. Or twenty. We basically reap what we sow. 
    Soteriology is a fancy word for “salvation of the soul.” Christians are the most famous for their Salvation beliefs because they start conversations with perfect strangers using the phrase, “Are you saved?” One famous Christian Bible teacher used to get so pissed about that. He got fed up one day and asked the person, “Saved from what?” The response was Hell, but he had to point out to the kid, no, not hell, God. Specifically the wrath of God. The wrath of God earned by your disobedience. I liked him, he was honest. Dead now. Good guy though, he grokked the Bible. Course, he read it. That helps.
    Hermetics teaches salvation of the soul too. For us, it’s most clearly detailed in Iamblichus’ On the Mysteries. It pops up in the Divine Pymander too. Our salvation is a process of doing magic to gain initiation and insight so we can return to our rightful place as emanations of the First Father.* We aren’t saved from an eternal torment in a literal flaming hell, but we are saved from a series of unfortunate events caused by our own ignorant action (or inaction) that makes our lives into a subjective hell. We can have a better life.
    Not a perfect life. There’s too much here that we experience that comes from actions made in ignorance, our own ignorance or others’ ignorance. The law of unintended consequence sucks big time.
    But we can have a better life by making the right choices that lead to our desired results, and by preparing to deal with the inevitable influx of shit that comes from the actions of others in our lives. We learn to make the right choices through the wisdom gained from our initiatory work. We learn what practical strategy to put into place with our thaumateurgical rites. We live a balanced life, sometimes focusing our attention Above, other times Below, following the reflected light of the Moon as she waxes and wanes.
    True salvation from all our troubles isn’t going to come until we return to our native lands, the place our spirits came from before we descended and became flesh. We get there when we learn who we are, where we came from, and the path back. We get there when we’ve learned to make this world and our daily experiences as good as possible through proactive magic and compassionate aid. We get there when we understand the image we are made in, and take on the responsibilities that come with being a child of God, made in his image.
    And the best way to do that, in my experience, is to hang out with the First Father. Pymander talks about how he sends the evil daimon to torment the impious until they turn back to seeking him, seeking to become what they are supposed to be. If your life is bothering you to the point of rage, depression, and anxiety, it’s because you’ve stopped seeking God. You’ve stopped trying to get home. 
    When you’re seeking God and trying to get Above, you get perspective on the temporary nature of this world and all its troubles. The same problems that drive you insane with suffering might be there when you’re seeking God, but you can see from the higher point in the spheres what led to the problems, and also that they are temporary, already fading away into the unmanifest realm.
    That doesn’t mean that in a crisis, you shouldn’t bother with magic. Magic is the tool we use to get to salvation, to reduce the suffering of our daily lives, and to learn to become what we were meant to be. Magic is good. Crisis is a great motivator. But aim it UP. 
    Aim for perspective in times of crisis, and see what shakes out. When you’ve got a good perspective on your life from an eternal point of view, you’ll see the things you have to do to get out of the situation you’re in. You’ll see your options, see the consequences of quick and easy fixes, and see the consequences of making small changes that have less impact and make things better over longer periods of time. You’ll be able to come up with better strategies, plan better magic, and gain the peace and calm to get through the shit storm.
    So this Father’s Day, don’t forget your First Father. He may be trying to get your attention. Give him a call, eh?
    * That’s really the point of Christianity too, but it got bogged down in politics and social rulership. Peter says in the new testament, “Work out your salvation in fear and trembling,” and it’s caused all kinds of hell in theological circles as they try to figure out how to fit “works” into “salvation” when in other places it’s pretty clear that salvation is a function of grace, a gift received, not earned. They don’t get that there’s spiritual practices that come with the gift that let us have a better life by working towards the end state.

  • A Couple of Weeks

    Ok, so the general rule I have for seeing magical results is that it takes a couple weeks. Average. Once in a while you get same day confirmations in manifestations that read like a row in a correspondence table. Like you do a Jupiter rite on a Thursday morning, and you get a call that afternoon in the Jupiter Hour from someone who found your resume on the internet and wants to bring you in for an interview, and the first available date they have is next Thursday. (Example based on a true story.) Or you do a Moon rite and you go to the mall and someone sprays you with Opium cologne. Something happens that is just obviously related to the magic you just did.

    But that’s not the result of your magic, not all the result. I mean, it fucking better not be. What good is a spritz of cologne or landing an interview if the real goal of the magic fails? Those mini manifestations are nice faith boosters and make for fun FaceBook updates, but they aren’t the goal. They’re the side effect. When I do Jupiter magic, I want:

    1. HEALTH
    2. WEALTH
    3. EXPANSION
    I don’t want to get splashed by a blue luxury car with orange license plates. It’s not the same thing.
    (And fuck that, Mr. Universe, it’s not funny.)
    So yeah, I enjoy symbolism manifesting itself as a confirmation of my magical activities, but what I really want out of it is the actual intent of the rite. So that cool rite I did that left me on fire the other day is going to start manifesting materially in my life in a couple of weeks. 
    What am I manifesting now?
    I’m manifesting the magic I did a couple of weeks ago. Sometimes stuff from a month ago, sometimes stuff from last week, but generally, stuff I did a couple of weeks ago is taking center stage in my life today.
    My problem is I’ll do some magic for a couple of weeks, and then it starts to manifest, and I get all into the process of making it happen and enjoying the fruits of my labors, and I’m not doing anything to get any more magic going. So then the stuff I’m doing on purpose to make my life better hits its climax and starts to fade, and since I haven’t planted any seeds to make more stuff come into being, the universe just takes whatever’s lying around and brings about those consequences. And if I haven’t been proactive, I end up being reactive.
    So the struggle is to keep doing something to make improvements I want to be experiencing in a couple of weeks. That doesn’t mean do magic every day to change the world, although that wouldn’t be all bad. It’s just not very realistic.
    It does mean having a plan that has long term goals and things to do every week to keep the process going. The gates series provides a framework for that, a five-week process that is aimed at making your life better, and keeps you thinking about what you’re doing. It’s been good for me. 
    Most magic I do lasts for about a full lunar cycle. It slowly creeps into being, it climaxes, and then it starts fading off to stage right. Sometimes it comes back, sometimes it’s gone forever, but most of the time I’m focusing on everything else that’s come up. Having an overarching set of goals with weekly checkpoints that actually do something to keep me moving forward has been great. I get to see the cumulative effects as I keep moving forward. It’s generating new experiences, birthing new perspectives, and keeping me focused on accomplishments AND plans instead of just the fun stuff that I already did the work for. 
    I’ve managed to avoid the two-week droughts of cool manifestations too. When I’d get all distracted and do nothing, I’d do magic one week, nothing for a couple weeks, and then as the bright shiny whatever-it-was I’d conjured passed away, I’d start getting upset that everything good was getting crowded out by all the shit I hadn’t done anything about for the last three weeks.So I’d do magic, and it was another couple of weeks before it started to manifest. So there’s about five weeks wasted. If I’m only working on manifesting my kingdom the way I want it to manifest once every five weeks, that’s about ten rituals to improve my life per year instead of fifty-two. I could be making solid progress towards my goals five times faster by breaking the cycle, by recognizing the two-week manifestation delay, and incorporating that timing into my magical planning and execution.
    Heh, just realized I’m manifesting the Mercury rite I did last Wednesday right now in this very post. The Idea is coming down, taking on form, and it’s getting put into action too (I updated my to-do list this morning, and already finished four of my ten things for today). Planning, organizing, getting the lines of communication between my desires and my actions cleared out so the activities can support my goals instead of undermining them… Yeah, it’s all working. It’s working nicely.

  • On Fire

    So last night I was doing my Jupiter rite, and I used the new ebony and gold leafed wand from Trithemius’ Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals. Can I just say I love that tool? Cause I do. It’s really nice.

    I broke out the Jupiter Gate document, and I went through it step by step. I usually take advantage of my established relationships with the archangels to skip a lot of the intro stuff and get right to having the spirit present, but I took the time to do it all proper because I wanted to use the wand. As soon as I picked it up, I felt a flow of power through my whole body. I had used it on Wednesday too, for the Mercury Gate, and when I did that one I felt an instant drop of power through the top of my head and out through the wand. It was cool and clear though, and quick flowing, down, in and out, right on through with little tingles up in my brain, in a good way.

    When I did the Jupiter rite, it was much greater. The power drop hit the center of my being and radiated outward in all directions across all space and time, and I was totally ON. It hit as soon as I started the consecration of the crystal. It continued as I conjured the creature of fire, and by the time I started the conjuration of Tzadkiel, I had a significant buzz going. Then Tzadkiel appeared and it was like a switch was flipped, and the power within was harmonized to the sphere of Jupiter, and Tzadkiel was present. I kept it simple, read through the Orphic Hymn, and then spent a really brief amount of time in the meditation/contemplation part, focusing on the sigils I had prepared. Then I closed out the rite, and realized I was hot.

    I mean, physically hot. Heat, upon heat, upon heat. Like I had just run a block.* I was sweating and breathing heavy. I was radiating heat from my core. It felt like I was on fire inside. I checked my sphere, and it was “ruddy.” One of the descriptions of Jupiter includes his ruddy complexion, and it felt like I had that glow. I always thought he was described as a corpulent, bearded, jolly, late-40s Santa looking guy because he was rich and drunk. Red cheeks and nose from the alcohol consumption, you know? But it wasn’t like that, it was more like the red glow of really hot embers.

    I directed the heat along some channels that I learned about in the Eighth sphere work I did, towards the manifestation of more and greater expansion. It dissipated slowly, and I slept like a brick from the time I shut my eyes until the alarm went off this morning. If I dreamed, the visions were lost between snooze alarms.

    Now, I regularly catch a buzz from my magical work. One of the reasons I really enjoy doing magical work for people, especially the Hermetic Diagnosis, is because it affords me an opportunity to get a little bit high. You might think that proactively influencing the manifestation of your sphere on a regular basis would take a lot of magic, but really, it doesn’t. There’s basically finances, home maintenance and defense, and research, and those things don’t take long to address. And there’s not as much buzz to a research conjuration, you know?

    I think there’s something to the wand itself, honestly. I don’t know if it’s the inscriptions, or the material, or if the guy who made it did anything to it while he was putting it together. I know he’s done a lot of magical tool creation for the grimoires, and I’m thinking the potency of the results may be the result of his attention to detail and use of crafting tools that have been used for other magical projects. I’ve sent him a request for more information about how he put it together, and I’ll share what I can when I get a response. I don’t know if he considers what he does proprietary or anything.

    * Yeah, I’m out of shape.

  • Wuh-oof.

    So I just did the Mercury Gate rite, cause it’s Wednesday, and it doesn’t take long.

    Just sayin’, Mercury Rocks.

    And Monster: I nominate Green Monster as the official drink of Mercury.

  • 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.

  • Wand from the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals

    A friend and fellow magician has two make that ONE ebony wands available. He will engrave them and gold-leaf the letters to make it according to the specs in Trithemius’ Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals if you want him to for an extra charge, or you can (attempt to) do it yourself. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll pass on your interest to him.

    He made me one, and it’s truly awesome. It’s cut to the exact length of my forearm from the elbow to my fingertips. It’s exactly the image from the Modern Angelic Grimoire. I’m in the process of consecrating it now. It’s heavy! Feels like a metal rod more than wood. Very cool stuff here.

    The guy making these is a traditional grimoirist. He has made everything in the Lemegeton’s Goetia to spec, and has reported some very interesting results. His experience and craftsmanship are excellent. There’s not enough light to take a decent picture, so I’m uploading one of his.

    Update: The last one’s gone, but he may take special orders. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll pass it on.

  • About those Talismans from the Gates Series

    Ok, home now, time to finish the post from earlier.

    In each of the Gates, I give instructions on creating a talisman for the planet. They are each made from the herbs and minerals associated with the planets. They’re placed in a cloth bag, like a mojo bag, and the seals of the Intelligences and the Spirits are inscribed on the outside. When we consecrate them, we call on the spirits by name.

    We create talismans of the planetary Intelligences and spirits to create a material link between them and us in our Kingdoms. This provides a focal point for the powers they represent to manifest in our lives more powerfully.

    Although they are talismans of the planetary forces, they should not be confused with astrological talismans. They are talismans of the Intelligences and the Spirits of the planets, whose names are derived from the planetary tables provided in Agrippa’s Second Book of Occult Philosophy, chapter 22.

    Donald Tyson provides an in depth discussion of these spirits and their seals in his translation of the Three Books of Occult Philosophy, and it’s thorough and complete, and kind of over my head. It’s all about the maths. The spirit names are derived from the summation of the numbers each letter represents in a way that results in the total value of each name having a numerical correlation to the planet itself.

    “Study your math, kids, it’s the language of the universe” and shit. I appreciate that, even though I don’t really understand the technical details that go on behind the scenes. I couldn’t tell you the numbers associated with each planet if my kids’ lives depended on it.

    The talismans are the receptacles of the forces that are ruled over by the Intelligences and manifest through the actions of the Spirits of the planets. In On the Mysteries, Iamblichus calls these talismans “Sunthemata.”  If I remember right, Iamblichus discusses three levels of Sunthemata, the Material, the Intermediate, and the Noetic. Material sunthemata are the phsical talismans that represent the planets. Intermediate sunthemata are the rites that tap into the powers of the gods, and the use of their Names. Noetic sunthemata were considered the highest form in Iamblichus opinion, and were concerned with the mathematics of the soul.

    Now, these talismans in the Gates series are obviously Material sunthemata, because they are material objects, right? But during the consecration rite, we call upon the Intelligences and the Spirits through their Names, which makes them also Intermediate Sunthemata. We inscribe the Seals of the Intelligences of the spirits as well, which are based on the numeric values of their names from the Tables of the Planets, making them Noetic sunthemata as well.

    Iamblichus warns against idolatry, making the material objects the focus of our interactions with the spiritual powers instead of the spirits and powers themselves. The purpose of all sunthemata is Theurgy, or as he lays it out, purification, (catharsis), liberation (apolusis), and salvation (soteria) of the soul. Basically the Hermetic Great Work I laid out before.

    Now the focus of the Gates rites is our physical Kingdom here Below, and on becoming the Kings we’re supposed to be. This may seem like a rather thaumateurgical focus, being all material oriented. However, as I mentioned in recent posts, the process of becoming the Kings of our Kingdoms results in us ruling by Divine Right in harmony with the planetary spheres. The point of the exercise is to understand and integrate the forces of the planets as they manifest here below so we can work skillfully with them when we pass beyond and finally break free from the process of reincarnation. Passing through each of the Gates results in a degree of the Catharsis, Apolusis, and Soteria of the soul.

    And the Talismans aid in that process. The presence of the divine powers we’re dealing with cleans us out and bring us into harmony with the spheres. In the Thomas Taylor translation of Iamblichus’ Theurgia (Section IV, Chapter II), we read:

    In all theurgical operations the priest sustains a twofold character; one, indeed, as man, and which preserves the order possessed by our nature in the universe; but the other, which is corroborated by divine signs, and through these is conjoined to more excellent natures, and is elevated to their order by an elegant circumduction…

    In other words, when the spirits are near you, you are transformed and raised to a higher level of being. The talismans provide a material link to the spiritual realm, the powers we are calling on by name and by number to accomplish our transformation. They provide a means for us to interact with these powers to accomplish our aims.
    So those talismans aren’t just bags of herbs and rocks with scribbles on them, they are a means to keep the powers we are working with flowing through our kingdoms and making the changes we need to accomplish the Work. Pretty neat stuff.