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The cosmology I use is based on the system used by the Hermetic magicians of the first through third centuries AD as recorded in the Corpus Hermeticum, specifically the Divine Pymander. In this system, the Earth is the manifest physical realm and is at the center of a series of concentric spheres. Within the physical sphere are the four spheres of the elements. Closest to the Earth is the sphere of Earth, followed by Water, Air, and then Fire. These four elemental spheres combine to form the Sphere of Sensation, the physical realm.

Surrounding the Sphere of Sensation are the Celestial Spheres. They consist of the Seven Planetary Spheres, also referred to as Heavens, the Sphere of the Fixed Stars, and the Sphere of the Prime Mover. Agrippa and the Hermetic authors of the Corpus Hermeticum began numbering the spheres at the Sphere of the Moon:

• 1st Sphere – The Moon
• 2nd Sphere – Mercury
• 3rd Sphere – Venus
• 4th Sphere – The Sun
• 5th Sphere – Mars
• 6th Sphere – Jupiter
• 7th Sphere – Saturn
• 8th Sphere – Zodiac, Fixed Stars (includes the Mansions of the Moon)
• 9th Sphere – Sphere of the Prime Mover

Note that this system counts “up” from the Earth rather than “Down” from the Prime Mover. Students of Modern Magick are familiar with the Golden Dawn’s kabbalistic Tree of Life, and tend to count “Down” from Keter, which corresponds to the 9th Sphere of Hermetic cosmology.

I think the difference is that in Hermetics, you start from where you’re at consciously, the physical realm that gets most of our attention, along with all the drama and thrills we go through on a regular basis. As you progress through the spheres, performing the Great Work, you “de-energize” the things in your sensate sphere that keep you from reclaiming your full potential, your rightful heritage as a member of a divine family sourced in the Prime Mover.

The oft-maligned armchair magician, our Sunday-Morning quarterbacks who read the grimoires, or at least the For Dummies versions of whatever system they’re trying to be Subject Matter Experts in at the moment, or even those who spend twenty or thirty years reading about magic without ever stepping into the Ring are the subject of today’s thoughts.

I’ve bashed these losers in passing for years, in part because I was one for many years, and in part because they seem on the surface to know what they’re talking about, and I ended up wasting a lot of time arguing with them about details they didn’t really have a framework to comprehend. I loathed them for many years.

But recent events have caused me to reconsider my stance. You know how to conjure the Ruach of a dead magician to teach you the finer points of something they’ve written? It’s fairly simple, really. You simply take their written materials and use that as a talisman, and you call on them in the names of the Intelligences of the Moon. You go on an astral journey to a meeting ground in the lower heavens, a sitting room beneath your astral temple, or a preserve in an astral national park.

They teach you in dreams, or in inspirations or conclusions reached while reading their books. They help you understand the meaning they were pointing to while writing.

You know how when you as much as look at a seal of a spirit with intent, it starts seeing you back? I’ve noticed it while practicing sketching seals of demons and angels. They’re closely tied to the patterns of squares, lines, circles, crosses, triangles, and all the other geometric shapes that make up their images. You can’t really read about a spirit in detail without it noticing a flicker of a disturbance in the force.

Now think about these armchair magicians… not the really annoying egotistical asshats that only read magic books to be able to proof text their way into looking smart by tearing apart others. Their surface knowledge of a system leaves them woefully inept at attacking people with experience. Ignore these knuckle dragging dweebs.

But the serious student of occult knowledge who reads and studies and discusses the principles of magic, have you ever thought about what’s going on inside their spheres over the years? The Great Work is the art of amassing the ore that contains the Stone, and then treating it through pressure, heat, time, and various chemical purification processes until it is refined and rarified. These armchair magicians are absorbing tons of occult material that sits percolating in their spheres, being affected by the stresses and pressures of life. It makes an egg, and it incubates, waiting the signs and signals that it is time to be hatched and revealed.

A friend of mine thinks he’s not much of a magician because he’s studied more than he’s practiced. Yet his insight and understanding exceed my own in many ways. Practical work is necessary to attain initiations into the spheres, you’ve got to conjure the spirits to Work with them consciously and attain the full benefit of their influence, but there is still Work being done in the spheres of the Armchair Initiates that is valuable and worthwhile in ways they won’t appreciate until later.

The animosity towards armchair initiates in general leaves them feeling embarrassed, ashamed, I think, and less confident in their results than they should be. I think it’s about time for scholars of the occult to be given a little slack, and a lot more encouragement than they’ve gotten in the past.

Gordon’s post on publishing better than Crowley is pretty wicked stuff.

I’d like to add a trick for would-be occult authors. If you haven’t noticed yet, a blog is a book nursery. Ideas are spawned, developed, organized and published, in nice chapter-length sequences. They give you a place to hone your craft, and help people at the same time. Writing a post at a time is less daunting than a whole entire book, and after a year or so of steady blogging about whatever you’re magically dealing with, you’ll have a manuscript’s worth of material ready to go on a cohesive topic or three.

All it takes is editing at that point, sewing it all together into a pretty little poppet, and you’re good to go.

Jhonn, and then Jack posted about this guy they know who both agree has some kind of spiritual parasite on him. Both expressed a mingled compassion and disgust, and I can fully understand that. I didn’t watch the videos because I’m trying not to pollute my brain with any more bull shit.

But running into people with parasites is pretty common in the occult world. Working with spirits tends to give you spirit sight, the ability to see when people are being influenced by spirits. Once you’ve started seeing them in your Work, you’ll see them everywhere if you pay attention.

While doing my Goety Work, I ran into a lot of Nepheshim, the parts of the human soul that are supposed to die with the body, but often find ways to linger through offerings made to ancestors, finding geomagnetic or geoelectrical sources of food, or by attaching themselves to the living and triggering the amygdala (panic attacks, depression, and multiple forms of anxiety disorders) to release the emotive food they live on. These spirits are the most common entities I’ve seen, and while they are individually rather weak as a rule (with some exceptions), gathering up a legion or so isn’t that difficult, and they’re the original “Will Work For Food” spirits. With enough of these guys aimed and working for you in creative ways, there’s potentially no limit to what you could get to happen.*

But for most who end up running into schools of them on the astral, you become host to a spiritual parasite. Regular banishings and visualizations of golden or white light helps, even the stuff you read in Fortune’s Psychic Self Defense or whatever it was are effective against these guys.

But sometimes, as in the case Jack and Jhonn’s acquaintance, people can pick up things that are … bigger, stronger, worser. Some are like beefier versions of a Nephesh, something that’s been around a while and has learned not only to feed and survive, but to thrive on people. Other times people can pick up a spirit of place with ill intent. Not all the Genius Loci are friendly. Heracles had to fight several Genii Loci in his Tasks, for example.

And of course, there are demons who will demonize humans given a chance.

I like the term “Larvae” to refer to these entities. Gordon posted a neat ritual from ancient Rome that was performed yearly and involved scattering black beans around the house while performing an oration. I suspect the beans absorbed the spirits, and were then planted. This returned any spirits that were haunting people to the cycle of reincarnation that Plato and Hermeticists loosely followed. They believed that those who did not attain their potential in the form of a man were demoted to the form of a woman**, and then to an animal, and then to a vegetable, and finally to a mineral state of being.

Jason’s first book on Protection and Reversal Magic offered a lot of useful techniques for getting rid of these kinds of things, but when they’re attached to one’s self personally, it can be difficult to accept you’ve got one. Or a Legion in some people’s cases. They can be pretty convincing that they’re innocuous, and even helpful entities. They can offer techniques that really work, and they can appear as many things.

How can you tell if you’re being possessed, obsessed, or demonized? How do you know if an entity, or paradigm shift is really what it appears to be, and not the product of something looking for a free lunch, or up to some plot that requires you doing a certain thing at a certain time?

You can drive yourself crazy worrying about it, and even if you didn’t have an infestation of spiritual Larvae eating your essence, the anxiety generated by worrying about whether your HGA is secretly SATAN can attract a pool of ’em in no time.

If you’re worried about it, the first thing to recognize is that you have a problem. Either there is a Larva, and that’s the problem, or you just think there’s a Larva, and that’s the problem. Either one can cause mischief in your life. Fortunately, the solution for both is the same: Exorcise. If you do have an infestation, a good Exorcism will clean you right out. If you don’t, it won’t hurt. Incorporating some form of Exorcise in your regularly scheduled Work is useful.

The Stele of Jeu, that is, the Headless Rite makes for a formidable Exorcism. I generally stick to the Betz version, with a few modifications based on my experiences. I substitute the name of my HGA where appropriate, and “Agathosdaimon” for “Good Messenger of God.” I also change “deliver him, NN, from the daimon that restrains him” to “deliver me, [my name/Hermetic Title] from any daimon that restrains me”. It takes very few minutes, and can be worked in at any time. I prefer Sunday nights or Wednesdays, or both as necessary.

One of the more important things to realize as a magician, however, is that you always have a spiritual ally fighting off these things on your behalf. It comes with being born, and wears the names Agathosdaimon, Genius, and Holy Guardian Angel. Its name is hidden in your Natal Chart, and regardless of the level of conscious communion with this entity you have attained, it is still working on your behalf all the time. It’s not proof against stupidity. We can conjure up a dark passenger through ignorance or just corrupt intentions, and that can limit the effectiveness of our Spiritual Ally in protecting us.

Learning to trust this spirit is essential, and if after performing an exorcism with its assistance you find yourself losing a spirit or source of peace and power in your magical Work, don’t panic. Learn to accept it, don’t conjure it back into your life, no matter how beneficial it may appear. The HGA will explain why it removed entities if you ask it. It will show you in vivid detail the tendrils of disgusting ooze the thing had immersed in your sphere.

Performing regular exorcism and trusting the results will build up your relationship with the HGA, and will  open more avenues to reclaiming your divine race and value than it will close. Trusting your HGA also provides a level of peace in your approach that itself becomes a natural barrier to attracting Larva.

* Of course, that’s necromancy, and tends to leave the magician who works with these fellows infested if they slip and forget to cleanse their spheres well after working with them. If you get into necromancy, and then find yourself all nihilistic, depressed, or anxious, you’ve got a problem you need to address. You’ve picked up a Larva. My Work with Bune granted me a degree of native exorcist, and directing them away with a statement carried enough weight to keep me clean, mostly, but regular Exorcism involving something like the powers of the Agathosdaimon or Michael the Archangel is a best practice mages do well to adopt.

** I disagree with the idea that being a woman is less than being a man, for the record. I think that’s a cultural oppression thing that reflects the politics of the time rather than the spiritual truth. It’s actually a step up from older beliefs, though. Before Plato’s Republic talked about Soul Mates, theologists and spiritual cosmologists doubted women had souls at all.

Dude, are you nuckin’ futs? There are things that are no one’s god damned business, things that are not going to be discussed.

But there is no bottom to the rabbit hole you’re going down. Tunnels of Set indeed.

It’s annoying to have to use it, and I prefer the Google buttons, but for those who use PayPal, I’ve set up some buttons for my eBooks on the right.

Ahhh, things are shaping up nicely at the hearth. I only have half my stuff in boxes, and I’m down to only two rooms left needing to be furnished. Of course, one of those rooms is the new office-study, which means I’m still limited to writing in my son’s room, which has the only desk in the house and is currently decorated in “How to train your dragon” stuff (Toothless is not a good inspiration for writing occult materials), or on a laptop. Feh, and feh, respectively.

But nevertheless, I see things coming together and giving me both the time and space to do some serious revisions to the NeoPlatonic Basics, Modern Angelic Grimoire, and Modern Goetic Grimoire in the next few weeks. I also will be able to revise and refocus on the Red Work Courses, which should be starting again in a month. I’ll be posting a link to register for the series of courses as soon as next week to give folks time to determine whether they think this is the right path for them.

The revised courses will still include some Goety stuff for two reasons. One, I already have a shitload of experience and material based on that subject. Two, the material is practically useful. I’ve been down on Goety lately, but the fact remains that it is a powerful system that provides tangible results quickly. It’s like speeding while driving, it’s not the smart or legal or proper thing to do, and it comes with risk to life, limb, and legal fines and potential jail time, but there are times that you do it anyway. And until you’ve mastered some of the more useful results of learning to Hymn in Silence with the Powers of the Eighth Sphere, it provides an avenue of manifestation that has little competition in the occult realm. Expect lots of caveats to come along with that section of the material.

I’ll be beefing up the “Hermetic Merkavah” material, because I’m learning that the things I did in these seven spheres over the last few years really laid some major groundwork for the experiences I’m having now in the Eighth Sphere. I knew the Work in the planetary spheres was important for Goety and for Theurgy, but I didn’t realize how much of a base framework was being put together while I was going through it. I’m seeing now that the last few years of Planetary Magic Work, rising through the spheres, gaining attunements and initiations was like putting together a spiritual circuit board that’s a lot like a motherboard* in a  PC. I’ve got connections for various devices, a versatile processor socket, multiple connections to various storage devices and operating systems, and plenty of RAM and lots of bandwidth on the bus. For my non-geek friends, you can click the link, or see the footnote for a more condensed understanding.

Doing the Planetary Work feels more like the job part of the Great Work while I’m doing it. It’s like a Review-Revise-Repeat process, or the maintenance stuff that doesn’t seem that important until you haven’t done it for a week. It’s not boring, but there’s so much of it that it gets to be routine. You start seeing Raphael every week of the month, and you end up getting to know him like an office co-worker you see in a weekly staff meeting.

But that steady practice is what keeps the process flowing smoothly, it’s the regularly scheduled tasks that end up making a quality end product. Very important stuff. Once you’ve got the results of this work firmly in place, or have the product promoted to the Production Environment so to speak, you get to start using it, and it’s pertty incredible what you can do with it. I suspected before, but now I know. Or Gno.

In a comment, someone asked me to write up a post on the new techniques I’m picking up. The Eighth Sphere stuff is still too new to me to start teaching, but as I gain experience and understanding, I’ll be adding it to the Red Work series of courses. It will explain how to go through that particular Gate, or pierce that particular veil, as well as some of the techniques I’ve been picking up that make the process easier. I’d start posting about it in detail now, but it’s still way too raw.

And besides, I don’t know what might happen to you if I start giving out the secrets I’ve worked so hard for without providing the framework to turn the current into work. With a fully developed motherboard, hard drive, input/output devices, a processor and stable operating system, plus the necessary RAM to run the programs and the devices to enjoy the full experience, you don’t have everything you need to make a computer. You wouldn’t expect to access the internet by sticking your fingers into a power socket directly, right? It doesn’t work. You need a human interface device between you and the power source for it to work, and that’s what the Planetary Work provides.

But this is all still to come over the next few weeks and months. My current goals are to start offering the Supernatural Assistant and Hermetic Merkavah courses again next month. I’ll start taking registrations next week, or maybe as soon as the weekend if I can get a writing desk and chair. Future courses will include the Eighth Sphere: Hymns of Silence.

I’m also going to rewrite my Modern Goetic Grimoire and turn it into a Goety Mini-Course. I’ll probably pull it from the blog’s available titles, and only make it available to those who have completed the Supernatural Assistant, and maybe the Planetary Magic courses.

Tentatively it will look something like:

Red Work Course Series
The Black Work

Acquiring the Supernatural Assistant

Topics covered include:

• Neo-Platonic Basics
• Trithemian Conjuration Technique
• Solar Attunement & Genius/Evil Daimon Names
• Attaining the Supernatural Assistant
• Working with the Assistant

Goety Mini-Course Part 1 (Optional)

Topics covered include:

• Elemental Magic
• Genii Loci
• Necromancy
• Demonology

Planetary Magic 

Topics covered include:

• Intelligences, Initiation, and Integration
• Spirits, Legions, and Manifestation 
• The Things We Leave Behind

The Red Work

Topics covered include:

• Entering the Eighth Sphere
• Hearing the Hymns of Silence
• Becoming a Hermetic Power
• Eighth Sphere Magic Techniques

At least, that’s what I’m thinking today. Expect it to get more developed over time.

* The motherboard’s main job is to hold the computer’s microprocessor chip and let everything else connect to it. Everything that runs the computer or enhances its performance is either part of the motherboard or plugs into it via a slot or port.

I have 6 frickin’ unfinished blog posts that I’ve started over the last week that were inspired by some deep insight, fellow bloggers, or magical Work. Every time I started one, something’s come up, so I’m just publishing this fucking post to get something published that I started this week before it’s over.

Oh, and I did some magic before going to sleep last night that was awesome. Jack’s Self Love and Desire post has more than the usual bits of Hermetic/Great Work Gold sprinkled throughout. The Work I did last night was 8th sphere stuff, mildly, mostly to keep my toes in a current that started flowing a month ago. Under the section he titled “Traps,” specifically the “I Can’t Do That” bullet, he mentions shooting fireballs and walking through walls. While the fireballs out of the fingertips may be beyond the grasp of those that Hymneth in Silence to the Father, I do know that guru thing that I’ve seen on video of the old guru or yogi who can channel prana or chi or whatever through his fingertips, touch someone, and throw them against the wall as a result… You know what I’m talking about? That thing. Anyway, I know that’s possible.

There’s this thing you do with this muscle in your wrist, I think, and this power just flows, but you have to be in just the right frame of mind, objectively observing while having a mild intent that also is without expectation. And you have to smile.

You know all those hokey hand gestures you see magicians doing in fiction? Turns out there’s something to all that. As I learn more, I will pass on what I can, but it’s like Hermetic Mudras. The power is activated using minute muscle control and mental awareness. And an attunement from one of the spirits, I think, or at least direct training.

I haven’t tossed anyone across the room yet, but I can feel it flowing and pooling in my palm when I get the mind and body properly harmonized and aimed right.

I think fireballs may not be beyond the realm of possibility, eventually, and walking through walls? That’s actually Ancient Christian Tech. Heven’t figured it out yet, but it’s on my list.

It’s fun. I may have gotten over a lot of my money-fixation, but still. This is a worthy presentation of at least one aspect of my being.

Ok, everyone else is doing it…

But I just can’t stand it. The rules are too stringent.  I get about halfway through and realize there’s no way it can really work on 10 books alone. Ten web sites would work better for me, I think, Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Alchemy Website, Hermetic.com and Peterson’s Esoteric Archives are the very bestest resources for mages seeking power and Hermetic success.

But I’ll take a stab at it. All the cool bloggers are doing it.

If the goal were to create a traditional Hermetic magician empowered to fully attain the heights described in the Corpus Hermeticum and to consciously realize and implement the process defined in the Emerald Tablet, I think the following books would be useful.

1. The Bible. I think to understand the things that subtly, culturally have impacted the magical traditions in the West over the last 5000 years, you’ve got to read this. And you have to read it from cover to cover, and without anyone telling you what it means. If someone tries to tell you what the Bible means (that’s called Hermeneutics, which is a fun word to say), one of two things is guaranteed to be true: they are wrong, or you won’t get it because you haven’t figured it out on your own yet. Note: If you read Chronicles, you can skip the Kings, or vice versa, but really reading Leviticus is the only way to grok Paul’s epistles for serious.

2. Prometheus Rising. I hate RAW. He fucked me in my brain for years. He’ll fuck you too. With his dead dick. And it will help make you a better person. Reading this after reading the Bible will be good for you. This is the only RAW book I would read, if I were you. Everything else he wrote is just this stuff repeated over and over again. If you don’t read this one, the Illuminatus! trilogy should be explored, but that’s too many books for this list. RAW is a lot like Crowley. Everything he wrote was a joke, a prank, and it just happened to be true

3. Plato’s Republic. So much of Hermetics began here. Seeing the influence of Plato, who wrote while the Bible was being written a few hundred miles away is important, and plus it’s the only way to really understand soul mates, and the goals of the Hermeticists that came later. Magic isn’t only about transforming the self, it is also about the State, culture, and the humanities. It puts things into perspective.

4. Plato’s Timaeus – You can’t be a priest-king of Atlantis (or queen) until you’ve read the original account of it sinking into the waves in context. Also, the Creation Myth is important to understand, it explains Crowley. Crowley read this shit, and if you haven’t, you’re missing all the best punchlines in his published works.

5. Iamblichus, On the Mysteries. Oh shit. Or maybe Plotinus’ Enneads. One or the other, but probably Iamblichus even though he’s not exactly accurate in my understanding. He was writing as the Hellenized Egyptian Priest-Magician on the practices that were based on Hermetics while the stuff later attributed to Hermes Trismagistus were being written. So important to read and understand.

6. The Divine Pymander, attributed to Hermes Trismagistus. Without this, you will never be a Hermetic Magician, no matter how much you paid for your GD initiations.

7. Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Gordon got to post Liber ABA as one book, so this counts too because Tyson’s version is in one book volume, right? After reading the Bible and the Republic, Timaeus, the Enneads/On the Mysteries, and the Divine Pymander, you’ll have the raw data that is necessary to grok the praxis of Agrippa.

8. The Arbatel. Perhaps the perfect Grimoire.

9. Postmodern Magic: Holds the keys to unlocking the Arbatel, really. And everything else. It was a toss up between this and Magic, Power, Language, Symbol: A Magician’s Exploration of Linguistics.

10. Sorcerer’s Secrets: Perhaps the best presentation of applied magic I’ve ever read. It’s the book I would have written given the chance.

Although these books lay the foundation of information that have helped me a great deal, by themselves they are not sufficient to accomplish the stated goal. There needs to be a system of practice that allows the magician to conjure the spirits listed in the tables of Agrippa, for example, like the one provided in the Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, or the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals.

Using this system, the magician needs to be conjuring the spirits and learning from them, receiving empowerments, intitiations, and direct instruction. That’s the most important thing of all.

At the same time, they need to be in contact with other magicians who have gone through this before. I wouldn’t be anywhere near where I am without the input and friendship of Patrick Dunn, Frater Servitor Lucem, Jason Miller, the Deputy Lodge Master of the local OTO camp, those I have attempted to teach (Chris and Victor and the Sianys, and all the members of the SA Course), and the people like Dee, Susanne, Theo, Suzanne, Gordon, Logan, the good Witchdoctor Joe, Lavanah, Kathy MacDonald, Aaron Leitch, Jake Stratton-Kent, Chris Warnock, and god, the list goes on. All my blogging friends who I agree with and disagree with, Kenaz, Jhonn and Jow and Jack, Miss Sugar and VVF and Spiderella and Justin and … shit. Fr. AIT, Balthazar and Barabas, uh… and anyone else I haven’t mentioned who has helped me that deserves a mention but I can’t recall. And all the members of the yahoo groups who have helped me and argued with me over the years, they all contributed so much.

They’ve provided insight, or feedback, or mentorship, or simply a different point of view that made me think about things differently. Having friends and cohorts in different systems shows me more of the overall … thing … that we’re doing and the methods we use, the shared goals and the different approaches. I’ve seen that we’re all a part of a Cosmic Hierarchy, a Celestial Hierarchy that extends to the spirits, but is also embodied in the flesh. God speaks through my friends and fellow bloggers in ways that balance and ground the input from the spirits I cavort with.

Books are good, and necessary inputs to the foundations of what we do and what we are, but they are a third of the picture. Spirits and Other Magicians are equally important aspects that must be included if your’e going to get anywhere worth getting.