Rufus Opus

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  • Red Work Course 2: Hermetic Merkavah

    The Acquiring the Supernatural Assistant Course is coming along nicely, and I’m very happy with the results many of the members are seeing. And so far there hasn’t been much of the shit storm I was concerned about. Of course, this is still pretty preliminary, but I’ve found that the majority of the students have been called to the course at a time in their life where this kind of ritual would be most effective. Many have already been through the Dark Night of the Soul, faced their Gethsemene, and are ready to receive the Solar Helper.

    But it’s time to start taking orders for the next course in the series, Hermetic Merkavah. Where Course 1 takes the student through the Alchemical Black Phase of the Work and the White Phase, the Hermetic Merkavah Course begins the Green.

    In this course, we’ll be focusing on both the macrocosmic initiations and the physical manifestations associated with each of the Archangels of the Planets and their legions of Spirits.

    We will be using the Modern Angelic Grimoire as the primary text book, and we will progress upwards through the spheres based on Ptolemy’s model of the cosmos. I’m thinking we’ll spend about two weeks on each planet, receiving the initiations into the sphere, receiving attunements and instruction in accessing the powers of the spheres in our daily lives, and actually getting stuff from each planet in our physical lives.

    The course will include anecdotal insights I’ve gained about creating talismans, and I’ll detail the steps I take to create the planetary talismans in the appropriate metals, or their equivalents. Heat, beat, repeat, and engrave sums it up nicely, but I’ll go into more detail in the course.

    Looks like it will be a 17-week course, altogether. The Lesson Plan is as follows:

    Lesson 1: Hermetic Merkavah – The path of the Hermetic Magician’s ascent through the spheres is described in the Emerald Tablet of Hermes, and detailed in the Corpus Hermeticum. The system I’m calling Hermetic Merkavah utilizes a relatively simple system of conjuration, initiation, and contemplation to accomplish the Hermetic Great Work. This lesson provides a detailed overview of the Great Work within the Hermetic discipline, and the functional tools necessary to accomplish it using the techniques of the Modern Angelic Grimoire.

    Lessons 2-8: The Planetary Spheres – One lesson for each of the seven spheres of the planets. These will include a conjuration ritual for each Archangel of the Planet, a sample oration, and tips and tricks on receiving initiations into the spheres. These lessons will include personal experiences with the entities, the skill sets I’ve seen improved by working with the specific entities, and suggestions of manifest things to ask for from these spirits. Each lesson will have an initiatory piece and a practical piece.

    Lesson 9: On the 8th and the 9th Spheres – This lesson addresses the Sphere of the Zodiac, and the Sphere of the Prime Mover.

    Making Planetary Talismans – An eBook summarizing my experiences in creating talismans in the appropriate planetary metals or other materials. Most of my techniques are crude and primitive, but there will be no sculpey. If you want to use plastic clay, go ahead, the spirits don’t care, but lately I’ve come to hate the stuff.

    The Course launch date is tentatively set for December 15, 2009, depending on the response I get. Being the holiday season, I know there’s a lot going on for many of us, and starting a course when most sane institutions of learning are going on vacation or break is maybe a little bit unrealistic. It will start no later than January 1, 2010. I can’t think of a better way to kick off the new year.

    I will create a Yahoo Group for this course as well, but it will be mainly for questions and answers, and a forum to discuss our results.

    This course will provide all the initiations I advocate in the Modern Goetic Grimoire. I expect to launch the Modern Goetic Grimoire course in January, if not sooner as well. If you have already received initiation into the spheres represented in the Magic Circle, you’re already ready to begin the Goetic Work. However, taking this course will provide you with practical experience that will aid you immensely in Working with the more materialistic aspects of the spirits of Goety. Working with the Angels gave me the skills and talents that I needed to efectively Work the “demons” of the Lemegeton’s Goetia, and provided instruction and guidance in contacting and working with spirits of the dead and spirits of location.

    Due to the amount of work involved, the duration of the course, and the overall potential for results received, the course will be $65 for each student. Graduates of this course will receive a discount on Course 3: Goety. None of the courses are prerequisites for the next, because I simply don’t know what you’ve been through in your path and can’t say that you haven’t attained the initiations to be successful in the next course. However, I can use monetary incentives to guide you to the initiations I’ve been through that I credit with my success.

    Students currently in the Supernatural Assistant Course should abstain from this round of the Hermetic Merkavah Course, as you should be conjuring the SA nightly right about now, and not worrying much about any other spirit than Michael or your Genius. And of course, the students of the Supernatural Assistant Course receive a discount on the Hermetic Merkavah Course. It’ll be here when you’re finished with your current Work.

  • After due consideration, it is with a heavy heart…

    After due consideration, it is with a heavy heart that we must come to the inevitable conclusion. While they have provided a level of amusement, and potentially furthered some few of our overall goals, we must weigh their meager contributions against the fundamental discord brought by their practices.

    When they first appeared on the scene with their “chaos magick,” they presented themselves as an enemy of the conformist traditional approaches to the occult that most of us represent. Over the years they tried to gain respectability, and have come to be almost accepted, or at least tolerated as co-representatives of the Great Work by most of us. However, the inherent cognitive dissonance demanded by their approach to occult manipulation of events has always left them weakened in actual practice. Their internal schisms have left them splintered. Their comparatively weak results have left many of their own adherents disillusioned. The Ice Magic wars and the split between RAW/Timothy Leary Immortalists and the IOT/Peter Carroll Pact over the “immortality pill” has left them without even a cohesive front. There isn’t even a single figurehead bearing their standard.

    These so-called “Justified Ancients of Mumu” were brought into the fold in hopes that they would reach the conclusion that their approach is juvenile and ineffective. I believe that those who will learn from their mistakes have, and the remaining adherents have already attained the degree of wisdom and insight that they are capable of attaining. It is time for those who have moved beyond the limits of belief system shuffling and have found the true power of magic in their personal Work to join the traditionalists among us and leave behind forever their affiliation with these miscreants.

    I accept the “Information Model” as a valid representation of “Truth,” and hereby move that adherents to that approach be exempt from the disaffiliation.

    For the rest of them, there is little hope of transcendence. Their crippled spheres of influence are too small to be of much use to us overall. In recent months, I’ve personally spent as much time breaking false programming resulting from their influence as I have furthering the transcendent enlightenment of humankind. I find that more and more students have come to me using the vocabulary of egregore and servitor, and have even found their viral memes retroactively manifesting in traditional tomes. John Greer, who has done us all a great service in translating the Picatrix with Christopher Warnock, recently demonstrated the degree of infection they have brought by weaving their philosophical tenets into his dissemination of the Alternate View we have crafted. His reference to “Hagbard’s Law” will, unfortunately, lead more people to read the diseased harmonic tome they used to infiltrate our culture. Another crop of magicians will inevitably be infected by their crude and ignorant approach to the forces of chaos and order, resulting in more loud-mouthed inexperienced chaoates muddying the streams and causing more distraction.

    It is a dangerous weakening of the potent forces we represent in this plane.

    Continued sanction of their practices by traditionalists will result in a repeat of the 1990s. Do any of us want to face that mindset at this stage of our Work? We know the 30-year cycle is repeating, as it always does, and the 1980s have about run their course. We can’t afford to have that degree of potential Workers distracted by the infectious madness of Discordia. While it is inevitable that the repetitious cycle will result in some renewed interest, we must make a concentrated effort to limit this madness.

    While they claim to not want to upset the apple cart, and while they pretend not to want to cause any harm, they are clear in their actions that if one doesn’t like what they’re going to do, one had better watch out because they are coming through. We are left with but one option.

    It’s time to kick out the JAMs.

  • Political Post

    You were warned, it totally says “Political Post” right up there.

    Why would an anti-war president, one whose personal convictions lead him to want to end the war entirely, today, send more troops to Afghanistan in a near mirror-image of the surge policy used by his predecessor, who everyone hated?

    Because he’s GOT TO.

    Conjure up Michael and the Prince of Persia, if you don’t believe me. They’ll tell you.

    Is Obama an idiot, or a highly intelligent man? Based on what I know about him, he’s not an idiot. If he’s reaching the same conclusions Bush reached about fighting wars over there, then there’s probably a reason for it.

    That said, I still think he should start bringing the troops back home now. Doesn’t anyone else remember the role Afghanistan played in bringing down the USSR? It’s a death trap, a money pit. Fuck that shit.

    [Edit: Ok, so he was for the war in Afghanistan. I hope he wants out now.]

  • “Raising Energy”

    In the Neo-Platonic tradition, in the grimoires that comprise it, in the writings of Hermes Trismegistus that frame it, and in the writings of Agrippa that provide the most comprehensive resource of the modern occult, there are mentions of demons, maleficent spirits that cause trouble. I would personally rather believe that all spirits are basically neutral, and they don’t have any ill will in and of themselves towards humanity. Unfortunately, the Neo-Platonic writings (and my experience) fail to support this belief.

    Going back thousands of years, mankind has known that there are spirits that are out to make life miserable for humans. It’s in the Bible, the Hesiod, and in the African Traditional Religions. From the steppes of Siberia to the Amazon rain forest, shamans deal with evil spirits every day. Modern cultures have lots of rational ways to explain away the existence of demons, from anti-Christian rhetoric that says the Church is to blame for misrepresenting gods of other cultures (which is true, to a degree), to psychological models that say they’re all in our heads (which is also true, from the perspective implied by the notariqon ARARITA). Regardless of the veracity of these explanations, the pragmatic truth is that if you are doing magick regularly, you will run into spirits that will behave as if they are Demons.

    2.6.1 The Role of Demons

    Fortunately, we have the benefit of thousands of years of occult research on our side. We know from sources like the Bible and the Divine Pymander that the evil spirits are under the authority of God. If you’re into paganism, you’ll find in the story of Pandora’s box that evil spirits contained in a divine spirit pot were sent to plague mankind by Zeus after Prometheus gave us fire. They’re serving god. In the Divine Pymander, Pymander tells Hermes that the Evil Daimon is sent to the impious to drive man further away from the Logos by filling the senses with desire for more sensations than can ever be appeased. In the Bible, evil spirits are sent to set up kings to fall, to reveal the glory of God.

    They are sent by God into the world to wreak havoc in the lives of those who are ignorant of God. Their primary victims are those who have grown ignorant of their Race and Value in God and instead of seeking their Source, people who seek satisfaction in the things of the material world. Demons serve as tempters, bringers of illness, and they serve to create situations that result in spiritual advancement. They perform evil acts, but they do them to draw people closer to God.

    2.6.2 How Demonic Influence Manifests

    In your life, you’re going through all kinds stress that I can’t begin to know about. Job insecurity, financial woes, emotional problems, and sickness plague us all. Most of the people reading this blog have it pretty good compared to poorest of the poor on the planet, but that doesn’t make the problems we face any easier to bear in the moment.

    I don’t believe every bad thing that happens is the result of a demon, but they do happen to be present every time bad things happen. I’m sure it’s a coincidence, really. They could just be attracted to bad things… sure… that could be it…

    Alright, I really do think all bad things that happen are the result of demonic activity. I’m a Christian, for Christ’s sake. “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against powers, principalities, and wickedness in high places.” It’s the simple truth.

    They set the stage for pain and suffering, they sit at the edges of our sphere whispering thoughts that sound a lot like our own, speaking fear and doubt and anger and anguish and despair into our minds. They entice our senses with lights and shining things. They use the people at work like pawns to challenge us, to bring us to the brink of catastrophe. They influence kings, presidents, princes, senators, congressmen and women, people in power across the lands of the earth to create a realm that will drive those with an understanding of their race and value closer and closer to the Logos within.

    Pretty nasty, really. And as annoying as hell.

    2.6.3 How to Deal with the Bastards

    Demons are under God’s authority. God’s within. We deal with spirits in every ritual. We have the names of the demonic princes from Agrippa’s Book 2, chapter 7. We know how to make talismans and spirit pots. They can only do what they’re allowed to, and God sets the boundaries.

    The fastest way to lessen the effects of the evil spirits is to put the Demonic Kings in spirit pots and bind them with melted lead sealed with the Names of the four Elemental Kings. I’ve got a makeshift version of this on my altar at the moment. It hasn’t completely eliminated bad things from happening, but it sure has cut down on the extremes of my emotional reactions to bad things when they come. That in itself robs the demons of their powers over us and our lives.

  • Happy Thanksgiving!

    I am thankful for a lot of things, but at the top of the list where the blog is concerned are my readers and the personal friends I’ve made through this medium and other online forums. You guys are a constant source of inspiration in my life. Thanks for everything.

    I sit in the basement office with no windows, often not even aware of whether it’s day or night, especially since daylight savings time changed. It’s usually while the kids are asleep or are playing with friends, and I’m relatively free of interruptions. I sit in here reading magical tomes, reading blogs and emails, doing magic, and writing out my thoughts and experiences as I go along performing the Great Work.

    Yet I’m not alone; I have a plurality, a social network of magicians also performing the Work a few keystrokes away. I understand about us being a family unit, brothers and sisters spread throughout every continent on the planet, except Antarctica. No one practices magic in Antarctica. It’s too freakin’ cold. Seriously.

    So, it’s to readers, writers, and to all my brothers and sisters of the Work that I offer my thanks. May your days be as fulfilled as you make mine.

  • What you should do about it…

    Martialis asked what we should do about the Christian extremists like the ones praying death on Obama…

    Magic. We should do magic.

    Gaap to release the spirits they’ve bound to their missions, Michael to enlighten them with the true message of Christ and to defend their victims, Cassiel to bind the bastards, Sammael to strengthen the warriors on the front line and to bring swift and just victory, Raphael to heal and to confuse their minds, to disrupt their communication network, and to bring a permanent Merc. Retro effect into their lives so they’re too busy trying to figure out why nothing works right to pray, Anael to keep their prayers from reaching fruition, Gabriel to enshroud them in harmless fantasies.

    Conjure Purson to reveal any local hotspots of prayer warriors, conjure Paimon, Aimon, Oriens, and Egyn to confound their lives, call upon their daimons to drive them into the true presence of God where they will see their actions for what they really are.

    Ideally you’ll be healing them so they not only stop what they’re doing, but begin to help instead. Ideally you’ll be in a position to love them completely and take responsibility for aiding in their enlightenment.

    But it’s better to do something than nothing, so just do something.

  • Thanks, Ron!

    There are 100 people following the blog now. Woohoo! That’s only counting the people with Google accounts.

    Whether you “follow” or not, may your holidays be blessed with peace, enlightenment, and joy. And no stupid relatives making inappropriate conversation at the dinner table.

    Oh, and may Bune bring you many riches, plus some left over! I’ll light a candle this weekend for you.

    Thanks!

  • Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

    Today’s blog title comes from the Roman poet Juvenal, who, bemoaning an unfaithful wife, said:

    audio quid ueteres olim moneatis amici,
    “pone seram, cohibe.” sed quis custodiet ipsos—
    custodes?     cauta est et ab illis incipit uxor.
      
    I hear always the admonishment of my friends:
    “Bolt her in, constrain her!” But who will guard
    the guardians?     The wife plans ahead and begins with them!

    Wikipedia has an interesting entry on the phrase. You should totally read it when you get a chance. It presents the more common translation in English, “Who watches the watchmen?”

    The magical implications of this question are multifaceted, multi-layered, and as deep as any question we can ask ourselves. While reading Heart Drops of Dharmakaya, I was impressed with the Dzogchen practice of observation during meditation. I’m no Dzogchen adept, I’m a bumbler who read a book about some aspects of it while researching something else entirely, so don’t think I’m trying to teach something about a system I don’t understand. This is just what I took away from it.

    Instead of meditating, you watch yourself without judgment. You observe your thoughts, and where they are coming “from.” Fear, hunger, desire, what is the source of the thought? What triggered the thought? Is it coming from your own head, or is it a whispering spirit?

    You observe, you don’t try to influence or control the mind. You see what you’re thinking, and simply practice awareness.

    Then, after you’ve done that for a while, you turn your attention to the observer. Who is it that observes? What is it that is watching?

    Remember the words of Perdurabo in the Book of Lies (Falsely Called So):

    But FRATER PERDURABO is nothing but AN
    EYE; what eye none knoweth.

  • Palin’s Power

    Have I mentioned my fundy background? I just learned on a pagan site that I’m part of the “3rd Wave of the Holy Spirit“, loosely. See, I attained K&CHGA after being born again while immersed in the outpouring of the Spirit that was popping up here and there around the country in 2003.

    So Jason mentions Palin today on FB, and I ended up at the Wild Hunt blog through Joe’s blog, and there’s another article on Palin, this one pointing out her affiliation with a group of Christians who used “imprecatory prayer” to allegedly give a witch cancer and drive her out of Alaska.

    Now, on the one hand, I personally write Palin off out of hand. She’s a gimmick, and she’s distracting America from the next real Republican candidate. And that shit about her receiving the mantle of the presidency that’s been prophesied over her… who really believes any of that shit? Like Christians have any access to divination, or the power to set destiny through concentrated prayer…

    Right. Which brings us back to the Wiccan who went bline in her left eye, was diagnosed with cancer, and fled Alaske while this coven of Christian busybodies “prayed against the spirit of witchcraft in Alaska.”

    Am I the only person who has seen the power of Charismatic Christian Magic? Come on! There’s more healing going on in the name of Christ than you can shake a stick at. Prayed for rye grew taller than not-prayed for rye. Prayer affects bacteria. Whatever model of magic you adhere to, the results are the proof.

    I know these people. I know what they’re capable of, and what their ambitions are. In many ways I agree with the Ideal they strive for. I don’t trust them an inch to be able to accomplish their goals when faced with the temptations that come with power.

    Palin’s Power base is an effective team of experienced “prayer warriors” who are not above praying down fire and brimstone, locusts and plague, and cancer and blindness. There are even teams of these people working on killing Obama. It’s easy to sit in liberal educated armchairs and laugh at the imaginary threat of the ignorant Christian True Believers, writing them off as “nut-jobs” and staying hidden, safe, watching Oprah alone in your little apartment when Palin’s at the local Barnes and Noble signing her book.

    But don’t get so wrapped up in your comfy blanket of smug dismissal that you can’t get unglued long enough to trace out a circle and mutter a few eldritch phrases from musty old tomes you’ve tracked down on the Internet. Rest assured there are ladies on arthritic knees sequestered amongst their pleather shoes in their closets, calling on God to empower Palin and anoint her in the mantle of the Presidency. Whether it’s God or whatever spirits they’ve got at their beck and call, bet your ass that something is doing everything in its power to make sure Palin gets elected.

    What are you going to do about it?

    Here’s a clue for would be spiritual warriors: expect a lot of the spirits around her to be Nepheshim, the hungry ghosts of the dead. These and similar spirits are the most abundant resources that respond to prolonged prayer. Check the Greater Key for sample Solomonic rites that require nine days of careful prayer to gather the spirits local. These are the kinds of spirits you’ll be facing.

    Bring a brass pot, or the equivalent. No point in letting the little buggers go to waste.

    (Picturing a Hermetic Exorcism of Palin at a book signing; dude in robes reciting the Headless rite over her. As amusing as it may be, he’d have an interesting discussion waiting for him with the Secret service after pulling that stunt. The Black and Tans wear shiny black shoes.)

  • Tis the Season

    The Flu Season. And there’s H1N1 mania sweeping the nation on top of that!

    So here’s a little “get rid of the ick” technique that works really well for me.

    Close your eyes, and listen to your heart beat. Visualize it pumping blood all over the body. Follow its paths in your mind’s eye, seeing the blood flowing to the different regions of your physical shell. Now turn your awareness to areas of illness or pain. Look at it with your mind’s eye, seeing the elemental building blocks that make up the frame. Earth and Fire, Water and Air, blended together in a myriad of proportions at the elemental (like atomic) level. Now see the ones that represent the illness turning black. To me they look like little cubes spinning in space in close proximity. The ones that are the illness turn black, and the one that aren’t turn red and white.

    Picture the black ones leaving your body. Move them along with the power of your Will. Keep them moving until they’re all out, fading away into the background of existence, returning to their raw forms. A little heat applied to the stubborn ones, carefully so you don’t hurt the good stuff, seems to work well in loosening up sinus infections.

    And take vitamin C.

    Some of you may recognize the technique as the result of my Work with EHNB a while ago. I was suffering in silence through a sinus infection last week when Frater POS (His motto is not “Piece of Shit,” in case you were wondering) said it’s too bad I don’t know any magicians who could heal me. (He was home from work because his back was out again, and I magnanimously let that slide. The sinners mocked Jesus with “Healer, Heal thyself” too, after all.)

    At the time I said I didn’t do magic for sickness because a full ritual takes 2 weeks to manifest, and it doesn’t seem worth it to deal with a three day cold. Mostly because I was embarrassed that I hadn’t thought of it myself. Then he reminded me that we get to do some things instantly as magicians, and graciously changed the subject.

    Of course later on I was thinking about it, and I remembered the Enochian technique that had worked so well last year. I fished it out of the memory banks and put it to use. The next morning I was significantly better.

    So, since I had to have a reminder to jog the old memory banks that magicians can heal themselves (after all, I’m not Jesus*), I figured I’d pass it on. Healers, heal yourselves.

    * Really. Neither Lon, nor Jesus Christ.