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Jason Miller recently committed the blasphemy of suggesting that the Litany against fear has been over-done in most modern cultural references, and as much as I love my brother, I take offense at that particular implication, because my brothers and sisters, this one can never be over-done.

Can you say it with me? From memory?

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”


Why the fuck is this the thing it is? Why is it so important that it gets brought up by every would-be  mystic god-king of their own lives? Why is it so damned important to us?

Well in point of fact, it addresses the most basic issue that stops all of y’all from doing the things that you’re capable of accomplishing if you’d just get over that shit. And I’m saying that because I use it all the frickin’ time, and it has LITERALLY changed the course of my life.

Before every interview for jobs I wasn’t qualified to perform, I said that motherfucker.

Before every date I wasn’t qualified to attend, I said that motherfucker.

Before rituals, before turning in tests for esoteric orders, before going into some scary-looking initiations, I said that motherfucker.

Because fear is the thing that stops everyone. It is the core of every problem every woman and every man upon the Earth faces.

And it’s even worse than I ever thought it was when I was just using this litany thing for mundane tasks. I started meditating a couple years ago. I put my usual all into it, and I became a pro right away. That is, it took a couple of years to see the real fruit that comes from regular meditative practice.

I found the thing in my head that’s always talking. The part that just. won’t. shut. the. fuck. up.

And if you haven’t found that part of yourself, start meditating. It’s key to that whole “know thyself” thing that people pretend isn’t Western Mystery Tradition.

So you know what that little thing is saying most of the time? It usually starts with “What if…”

What if she’s sleeping with someone else? What if they’re going to end your contract? What if your ex is abusing the kids? What if your choices are screwing up your kids lives? What if you screwed up that one kid forever? What if they figure out you’re making this crap up as you go along? What if you’re wrong?

What if you’re wrong? What if you’re wrong? What if you’re totally and completely wrong?

It’s not fear, even. It’s just anxiety. And it’s vital to humanity’s existence. We need fear like we need to breathe. It keeps us alive. It focuses our awareness to the things we need to pay attention to so we don’t fuck our lives up a lot more. We need fear. It is our first warning system. Fear is a tool.

But it triggers too big of a response, as anyone who’s had to go through a panic attack, or lived with people prone to them can testify. Uncontrolled fear is crippling, and it’s rarely in proportion to the crap we have to deal with. We’re still evolving past the animal instincts, and it’s a necessary thing to get over those aspects of what we are.

I like the idea that we’re extensions of a cosmic consciousness, and we’re all nodal consciousnesses plugged into some convenient monkey bodies who managed to contact our immortal spirits through the convenient interface of hallucinogenic fungus, but I don’t talk about that a lot because it’s cray-cray.

So to use fear as the tool it should be, we need things like the Litany. It friggin’ works. It gives you something to do to calm down the monkey mind and let you think. It can get you out of bed in the morning. It can get you through the job interview. It can get you to talk pirate to the lover you want to bed. It can shut down all those “what ifs” the monkey mind throws at us, and gets us to a point where we can take a look at the actual situation without all the exaggerated crap that the triggered fear response tries to make of it.

It puts us in a place where we can take control of a situation in which we are otherwise victims.

Quietly, and with little fanfare, the International Left Hand Path Consortium has removed a controversial speaker from its list of presenters. Augustus Invictus, a Libertarian senatorial candidate from Florida, had been invited to speak at the conference on the subject of magick. When it became public knowledge, it sparked an online debate.

You see, Invictus’ online presence (and some statements made by the former chair of the Libertarian Party in Florida, who resigned over Florida Libertarian’s failure to denounce his candidacy) left many believing that he held fascist and racist ideals. Comparing, for example, his twitter feed and his facebook pages to the Wikipedia description of “fascism,” it looks like he intentionally took all the agreed-upon criteria of “fascism” and set about ensuring he had something present that fulfilled the obligation. His decision to speak at American Front, a white supremicist organization left him looking racist as well, despite having fathered four children with his hispanic wife.

Laurie Pneumatikos, the conference organizer, stood fast by her decision to host him in spite of calls for resistance by Antifa-Atlanta. This organization is a local extension of the anti-fascist group that had allegedly attacked one of Invictus’ supporters and destroyed property they believed belonged to him during a visit to Portland, and who protested his presence in Canada, successfully getting him detained at the border and sent back to the United States.

Laurie’s reasoning was simple: freedom of speech. Regardless of whether people agreed with him or not, she believed he had the right to say what he thought. Even when presenters Taylor Ellwood and Ken Henson publicly bowed out rather than be identified with him, she stood by her decision. In the face of my continued impassioned rhetorical statements in various media in opposition, she stood by her principles.

It was her Will to create a conference that taught the magical principles of the Left Hand Path, and as far as she was concerned, his political beliefs were separate from her intent to have him at her conference.

Ultimately, his removal from the roster came as a result of his own words. He apparently posted a long invective against me and anyone else who was protesting his presence. He acknowledged he was considered a fascist, and rather than deny it, attacked all who didn’t agree with his politics for being afraid of what he represented, comparing us to swine, and sheep. In his rant he called on his detractors to come to the conference armed, with his post culminating in a challenge to actually kill him.

At this point, Laurie recognized the danger of having this person at her event. His invitation of violence against his person at her conference had legal ramifications that were just too much to accept. His vehement response resulted in her decision to remove him from the list of presenters.

It’s worth pointing out that it had nothing to do with outside pressure from the likes of me or anyone else. She did not cave in to the opposition. She judged him by his own actions, and determined that he was not only a controversial person politically and ideologically, but also a person who seemed intent on bringing harm and violence to himself, and perhaps others.

To my knowledge, there has been no word on whether the speakers who withdrew over his presence will be invited back to speak, or who will replace Invictus at the conference.

While I respect Laurie’s choice to stand by her principles, I am also pleased that he will not be given a podium to address the world with his toxic views.

In his vehement denunciation of those who disagreed with him, he mocked the attempts to shut down the conference over “words.” I would suggest it’s a very poor magician who doesn’t appreciate the power of words to change the world. It was, in the end, his own words that eliminated him from the conference, words spoken in response to words from folks like me. Words are a powerful thing indeed, and should be respected.

Laurie has worked hard to establish the Left Hand Path Consortium as a place where occultists can gather and receive instruction from people who are effective and knowledgeable, where beliefs across the spectrum of the occult are presented equally. I am confident that her decision has only furthered her aims along these lines. This year’s conference quality has been immensely improved by her decision.

To begin, I’d just like to say, Jake Stratton-Kent is always getting me into trouble, and this, as usual, is actually ALL his fault. And that’s one of the reasons I love him so much.

He posted a link to an article on his Facebook page recently with the comment “douchebag” about how a known racist with fascist tendencies is going to be speaking at an international “Left Hand Path” conference.

I recognized the guy, he pulled a huge nutty in 2013, couldn’t handle some initiatory stuff/Enochian Aethyr Scrying he was going through, and declared himself the Second Prophet of Thelema, and the Successor to Aleister Crowley in a massive email to just about everyone he could think might care (they didn’t) with an attached 2-meg PDF file of his “proof” which he claimed was Class A material, as in, on par with the Book of the Law, Liber 65, Liber VII, etc.

Standard implosion that you basically can expect narcissistic megalomaniacs to go through if they get the urge to use Occultism to express their mental illness?

Perhaps.

Harmless nutter who shouldn’t really matter?

Yea, probably.

Except… Wait for it…. Wait for it… A couple of years later, he’s running for the Senate… As a Libertarian… In Florida… To replace Marco Rubio… And he’s so toxic Canada wouldn’t let him in to speak.

CANADA. Wouldn’t let him in. To speak.

You couldn’t make this shit up if you tried.

So apparently, the organizer of the conference saw “controversial occultist running as a libertarian with racist-fascist views” and thought, oh YEAH, that’s what I want to see! And then she got all bent out of shape when people were like, dude, no, don’t give fascists a pulpit, that’s how we got WWII, remember?

Now, as an occultist who’s been invited to speak at this conference in the past, [Edit: Apparently, they are denying ever inviting me to speak at the conference, AND SENDING THE POST TO THEIR LAWYERS FOR REVIEW, but I remember being invited to speak in Indianapolis, I was looking forward to it because my friends would be there, but then I couldn’t make it because of kid visits and other issues and had to decline, but I can’t find any proof that I was invited at this point, so it might never have happened, or I just didn’t think I’d need to keep that kind of thing, so … whatever] I was like, oh my gosh, no way. I checked the other speakers attending and was like, guys, do you know what’s going on? In retrospect, I should have not tagged them publicly in a post on FB that gets broadcast to a couple thousand people who are in our shared circles of magician friends, that may have been a dick move, but it was sincerely about, “Hey, you know what is going to happen if you go to this with him, right?”

Because I happen to know the value of our reputations in the occult community. Basically, that’s all we’ve got. I spent years building up the “RO Brand,” and when I was making a decent income off my magical studies and practices, that reputation is all I had to make my sales. It was my brand’s integrity that got me invited to speak, publishing contracts, book sales, and a decent supplementary income on the side.

Even more importantly though, I’m all about making Hermetics available to people to change their lives for the better, mostly because I want to live in a better world. The people I want to reach care a lot about things like racism, fascism, and not being part of a plot to establish a megalomaniac’s dictatorship over the American people.

No one is going to listen to me if I get associated with racist fascist douchebag.

But it’s not just personal loss that matters. When we attend these events, we are giving an implicit blessing to other people who show up to speak at the event. When Fr. Lux ad Mundi of Thelesis lodge invited me to speak on angel magic the first time, he was saying to his lodge members that Rufus Opus knows his shit and can teach us things we need to know. He was putting himself on the line, saying my presentation had value to the community. Had I shown up and made a spectacle, it would have reflected poorly on him.

Likewise, Arthur Moyer put his reputation on the line for Crucible by inviting me to attend, and Jason Miller’s support of my work had a lot to do with that. They were both condoning and supporting whatever I had to say, one by inviting me, and the other by speaking with me.

But when you go to one of these things and there’s one person who is, for example, publishing things about neo-masculinity and “men’s rights,” and another whose senatorial campaign twitter feed is 90% racist posts, and the other 10% is a furthering of his goals to become the next Mussolini, it starts to look less like an occult conference and more like a gathering of douchebags.

And your name is on the list, right up there with them.

Fortunately for me, I had some friends let me know that I was on a list of people to speak at a conference with a known stalker who had a history of domestic violence and abuse towards women. He’d been expelled from at least one Order, if I remember right, and the first thing I did was tell the conference organizer that I wasn’t going to speak with him at any event. You lay down with dogs, you get up with fleas, after all. This organizer was like, oh crap, yea, didn’t know that, he’s off the list. And it was done.

And that’s the way it should be. Conference organizers have the responsibility to know and understand that they are representing the brands of everyone attending the show. they need to do the vetting of their guests, know what they represent, and understand how that will impact the reputations of everyone else at the event. They need to have some standards about what it is they will accept, and let people know what that is.

When you find out that someone on your guest list has been, for example, barred from entering Canada because they are fascist trouble makers, you need to let the other conference speakers know what they’re getting into. You need to make updates to your event, and send emails to the speakers as the speaker list changes, letting us know how our topic will fit in overall, and giving us the opportunity to decide if we really want to associate our Work with the intent of your thing.

And if your intent is to give people with racist and fascist agendas a podium to speak to people who are paying to hear this person speak, you need to make sure that’s clear in your description of the event in the first place. Not just for the speakers, but for the attendees as well.

So, since I’m planning on putting together some conferences in the future, my “lessons learned” from this situation is:

1. Define up front the intent, theme, and standards of the event.
2. Invite only those speakers who will aid and abet the accomplishment of the intent of the event.
3. Research the histories of the speakers to ensure they won’t smear the reputation of my events, or the other speakers presenting at my event. Controversial speakers aren’t to be avoided, per se, but they need to be noted as such so other speakers can make informed decisions about their attendance.
4. Send out the list of speakers with the results of that research to the other speakers, with updates as the list changes. 

Now I know that’s actually a lot more work than it looks like. I’m on a staff of people working on an event right now, and honestly, putting together a conference is hard. Venues, contract negotiations, budget, speaker proposals, travel reimbursement, registration coordination, web site development, online social media promotions, and managing the inevitable crazed haters who will try to use your event to further their interests is a lot of work. Adding on researching your presenters to see if they are nut jobs and letting other presenters know about potential impacts to their reputations is just adding a lot more work.

But it’s necessary, and fair to the presenters.

I’ve been getting this question a lot lately, so I’ll address it publicly.

I don’t sell them anymore.

I joined the A.’.A.’. a couple of years ago, and as I went through the actual Work involved and earned the degree of Neophyte, I came to realize that I was charging money for A.’.A.’. teachings, or rather, things that you learn in the A.’.A.’. as you do the Work.

But the things in my courses and ebooks are incomplete, and lack a context that adds to the overall experience of the Work, it turns out. I didn’t have a problem charging for that information when it was my hard-won knowledge that I deduced by conjuring spirits and performing the Great Work. I sweat it out in hard labor, and figured my experiences were worth money, and if you wanted to do it yourself, go to esotericarchives.com like I did and figure it out.

But as I progressed through the Work of the Student, Probationer, and Neophyte, I’ve come to appreciate that I was doing it the hard way before, and the “pioneer” approach left a lot to be desired. Having the things I was teaching others in intense outpourings presented to me moderately in the context of actual spiritual practices changed my opinion.

And the A.’.A.’. stuff is free. Charging for an incomplete system that doesn’t give you as much as a free system in Applied Hermetics felt … skeevy.

Also, there’s a thing about Rosicrucianism being about healing the sick, and that gratis that applies.

So, if you can get your hands on copies of my old stuff on the interwebs for free, go for it, but know it’s not as good as the A.’.A.’. stuff you can get for free. The A.’.A.’. stuff is harder, in some ways, but it’s a lot more complete.

It’s not for everyone, of course, and there are built in spiritual ordeals that every Student, Probationer, and Neophyte must face (probably the rest too, but I can’t speak to that yet) and overcome. But it presents things in a way that make sense, and lead you from understanding to understanding, while giving you practical methods of integrating the forces you’re tapping into along the way.

If you think you can handle it, the A.’.A.’. group I affiliate with can be found at www.onestarinsight.org. There are others, but imo, this is the group that makes the most sense.

So this morning I found myself going over the RO Behavioral Balance Sheet for 2015, making lists of the best and worst things I did last year to see how I’ve been doing on the overall “expression of my Word” thing in this Great Work business.

It was mostly good. I’m way behind on a lot of things I said I’d do, but the wrap-up is in sight. I’m happy, successful, and people are happy with me in general (unless they’re waiting for a Seven Spheres Conjure Kit, some of those people are pissed, but they should be ready by end of January, I promise).

But one thing stood out in my mind in the “fucked it up” column. One memory. The worst thing I did last year. The thing that as I’m falling asleep five years from now my brain will pull out and be all, remember when you did THIS? HA HA, YOU SUCK.

The worst thing I did last year was this:

Someone posted a pic of what looked like an altar designed to conjure, with absolutely no exaggeration, the Primordial Archetype of the True Hipster God (you probably haven’t heard of him).

The table it was on was like one of those spools that construction teams use to wrap fiber optic or copper cable that you see on construction sites. Like a huge wooden spool made out of terribly cheap plywood, obviously found on the side of the road. I can’t remember all the details of what was on it, but I remember a large can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, some cheap looking tea lite candle or other kind of candle, some really vintage looking stuff that had a shabby “found-item” look to it all, and it was like really scarcely decorated.

I took a screen shot of it and posted it to Facebook with a hilarious tag about conjuring the Hipster God, of course. It was brilliant, and witty, and funny, and barely mocked anyone who isn’t already self-deprecating.

After getting a lot of likes, because likes are important, and my friends posting some really funny stuff about what the Hipster God was all about, I get a PM from the dude who posted the pic. It turns out they were honoring a friend who had committed suicide. The stuff on the altar as stuff the guy had liked in life. Things that defined who he was.

And I turned it into a joke. Centered entirely around the kind of guy he was.

Before he killed himself.

For fuck’s sake.

I felt like TOTAL SHIT. Deleted the post, apologized profusely, and basically tried to make things not shitty for that guy and his friends. I was an ASS.

I’ll do some Work on healing that memory and get on with my life over time. This isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever done, but it’s pretty shitty. I’ll move on and do other terrible things this year, and one of them will stick out, and it will haunt me, and like most people on the planet, my first urge is to keep it to myself.

So why make it public now?

I don’t entirely understand how it all works, but for some reason people listen to me when I talk. More people will read this post than belong to the OTO and A.:A.: combined in the entire world.

And a lot of you are like me. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this.

You fuck up a lot, but you don’t mention it, you keep it to yourself. You punish yourself for being a total asshat that one time, and that other time. You think the things you do were awful, and there’s a part of your brain that will punish you all year for some shit you did.

And no one else is talking about how shitty they are as a person. We post the good stuff most of the time, and we roll our eyes at the people posting their shitty stuff. We keep our own shit to ourselves.

Everyone is doing that all the time.

So there’s no honest, true standard of behavior we can use to figure out how we’re doing, compared to other people. So you flipped off that asshat in traffic and later felt bad because you were PMSing or hungry or horny or something. You made fun of the fat people at the gym, who are actually there to do something about getting healthy. You did that one thing that no one else knows about, and it haunts you and you feel stupid, dumb, ugly, insensitive, awkward, whatever.

And I got to thinking this morning that always posting how awesome things are is bullshit. Sure, I completed the Great Work, created the Philosopher’s Stone, spoke my Word of the Magus and everything.

But I also made fun of a memorial to a suicide victim.

I wanted you all to know that other people, people you listen to and respect, are fuck-ups who did terrible things they feel guilty about. I want you to feel better about that one thing you did that you think is so awful. I want you to know that the worst thing you did last year probably wasn’t as bad as you think it was, really, and you should cut yourself some slack.

Unless it was worse than what I did, you sick fuck.

If it was, don’t do that again, for sure, eh?

But don’t beat yourself up. You’ll do far, far worse things before you die, probably. Let that one terrible thing go, and look in the other column, the awesome things you did last year. I got a bunch of people to do magic to make their lives better financially and emotionally and intellectually. I inspired some crusty curmudgeons to see their religion as alive and hopeful and active instead of as a backdrop to their personal dramas with their lodge mates.

You did awesome shit too.

You’re awesome.

Move along.

Happy Holidays, all!

I spent Thanksgiving with none other than Frater Barrabbas and his lovely wife, and the shared members of our local OTO lodge. In a word:

AMAZING.

Great food, amazing cocktails and wine, the FEAST of the Ishim! It was fucking awesome. We celebrated the hell out of the harvest.

Guys, do magic. It makes your life so much better.

Nope.

Hey all, I know I said I’d start sending these out in September, but I ended up working 80-hour weeks at my day job, and only just got all the materials in.

They should start going out in the next two weeks. They will go out to the people who have been waiting the longest first.

So, at least one person keeps asking me how much I’d charge to put together a complete set of tools for the Seven Spheres book, so I figured I’d throw together a whole kit.

It will be $175 for the tools alone, or $225 for the book plus the complete kit.

The complete kit will include:

• 1 Ebony Wand, 3/4″ X 12″ to Trithemian specs
• 1 Table of Practice, with the Kings of the quarters (Paimon, Amaymon, Egyn, Oriens)
• 1 quartz crystal scrying point, consecrated. This will be 2-4″ high, 2-3″ wide. I don’t control the growth of crystals, so there’s no conformity. If I went with quartz crystal balls, I wouldn’t buy this kit, it would cost too much. I like using my quartz point anyway.
• 7 1″ circular silver talismans for the seven archangels, the same ones I use. They’re all in sterling silver, which receives the rays of all the planets nicely. I’d do the 7 traditional metals, but I’m not working in lead or tin these days. I’ve gotten enough lead poisoning, and silver works great.
• 1 brass incense holder
• 1 pack of stick incense, nag champa, my current favorite for all spirits. 

Shipping is not included, it will likely be around $5-15 in the US, $25-50 overseas. I haven’t checked.

I’m only making 7 sets of these things, and they will not likely be shipped until early September. Please order using the button below. As long as you can place an order, they are not sold out.