I just looked over at my altar, and it seems that some GENIUS ( … er, no, not the spirit kind, the really sarcastically human kind) needed to light a candle to Bune a month or so ago, and he didn’t have a candle holder. What did he use to put the candle in? His empty chewing tobacco can, of course!
Sometimes I worry about myself.
At least my Camaro is Cthulhu-green.
Well, it’s been a while since I’ve given any updates on my Spirit Pot operation with Bune of the Goetia, so here’s some more recent information.
When I first put the pot together, I was looking to get rich quick. He was the best-looking prospect of the Goetic entities, because his description says “he giveth riches to a man,” and I wanted $7MUSD and change. Things didn’t quite turn out that way.
Instead, after working with Bune for a long time now, I’ve learned how he manifests riches. He’s a Jupiter-Sagittarius spirit, according to Crowley, and that’s the information I used to gather his attributes together. I have had opportunity after opportunity to work my ass off come into my life since I started Working with Bune. Not that that’s stopped me from trying to use him to win the Lottery. When the MegaMillions hit $270 Million, I burned a veritable BONFIRE of purple candles after buying the lotto tickets. I still lost, but last week, after burning the candles, I had 26 hours of overtime…
Ok, so we’ll start with the job I got. It’s about an hour away (a long bow-shot). I’m doing what I’ve been doing for the last seven years, and I’m making $20 more an hour than I did seven years ago. Everyone at work loves me. That’s the Jupiter thing, he bestows graces on people, and one of the ways it manifests is that the people in authority love you. Between now and September, I have 10 hours a week of scheduled overtime. If you’ve worked on projects with a schedule, you know nothing ever comes in under budget and on time. I’ll be making a fortune, and the project is scheduled to last for years, they’ve only got hours assigned through September.
Now, everything at my work isn’t roses. There’s this evil nasty woman whose very name sounds like the kind of person she really is, but I won’t mention it. She’s got the responsibility of managing an artifact that impacts the whole team, but she will only make it useful for her own department. When you try to make the artifact useful by getting her to add the information that you need the tool for, she refuses. She’s the reason I got to make 26 hours of overtime; she made three people create documentation manually that could have been drawn from the artifact automatically in ten minutes.
So I mentioned her to Bune one day, as his properties include putting spirits in their places. This bitch needed to be put in her place. So Wednesday she came out of a meeting nearly in tears because she was adding information I’d been telling her needed to be in the artifact for WEEKS. I was so happy. (Not very enlightened, but hey, I’m WORKING on the Great Work, I ain’t done yet!)
I engraved the seals on the side of the pot too, a while ago, and polished up the lid. I’m stuck with my phone camera for now, so the images you see here aren’t the best, but they’re the best I can do at the moment.
I also made a small talisman for Bune out of Copper (he’s a Duke, and their metal is copper) and Tin (because he’s a Jupiter spirit). This was the first time I made an alloy, and I used a propane torch (from Walmart) and a little steel pan (also from Walmart) and my stove to get the amount of heat I needed to melt the copper. I had to put the materials right up against the edge of the pan to get the heat to reflect off the steel and create a furnace effect hot enough to melt the copper into the already-melted tin. Here’s what it looks like:
After working with Bune, I have come to understand the description of this Spirit in the Goetia a little better, and if you’re interested in a Bune working, here’s how I would describe him (my changes to the traditional Spirit description are in {brackets} below):
Fr. AIT over at Heavens Within Earth recently posted the question, Is Enochian Theurgic? I’m interested in whatever follow-up he may have to post about it.
In the Corpus Hermeticum, when Man came to Earth, seven Governors were made in the image of the seven celestial Intelligences. Eventually they became the Urges in later gnostic interpreatations, but originally they weren’t considered evil by any means.
Sometimes I think the seven Terrestrial Governors and their legions are the Spirits of the Lemegeton’s Goetia. Other times, I think they’re the Seven Winds that make an appearance in the Picatrix.
Right now, I suspect they’re the seven “Angels” on the SDA. I think it would explain the elemental attributes of the Enochian spirits, as well as the whole “I’m the savior of the WORLD” trip that the Enochians seem to pull on people, or at least, that people seem to pull on themselves after Working the EE’s for a while.
I was just talking about this to a friend and student from the course earlier this week, and lo and behold Fr. AIT posts his corroborative hunches. I’m sure it’s all a coincidence.
In my limited experiences with them, I felt like they were terrestrial spirits, akin to the Goetia spirits I’ve worked with previously. I think it’s odd that they express the kind of jealousy over the Goetia that they showed Kelley. It reminds me of stories of the Ghede and the Loa and other packs of spirits.
Sorry about the hiatus. It’s been a long couple of weeks. Don’t conjure Jupiter spirits for wealth and prosperity if you don’t want to work your tail off.
On with the Joys of Making Talismen!
Note: A friend suggested that the plural of talisman is talisma. Dictionary.com says it’s Talismans. I prefer Talismen, because it makes me think of them as little “men,” entities in their own right. However, I make fun of people who would rather be wrong because they like it better, and hypocrisy has been rearing its ugly head in my sphere too much recently. I’ll leave the title for consistency’s sake, but going forward, it’s “Talismans.”
A Talisman is a symbol or seal inscribed or drawn on an item in order to attract the forces represented by that symbol. In Solomonic work, you can draw a seal of a spirit on paper surrounded by the appropriate names of God or what have you, and that is a talisman. Solomon’s Ring is a talisman. My Spirit Pot is a talisman. Franz Bardon’s Fluid Condensers are talismans. Your consecrated elemental weapons can be considered talismans. A talisman is any physical representation of a spiritual force or being that draws the powers of that force or being into the manifest realm.
My favorite talisman story is Joseph Smith’s (thanks, Scott!). He carried a tin Jupiter Talisman drawn from Agrippa’s planetary tables with him wherever he went. I think there’s a record of it on his person when he was arrested on the way to Utah with his Mormons, and he was wearing it when he died.
Talismans are used for a number of things. Agrippa has the planetary tables that can be inscribed on their appropriate metals, and these will bring healing, joy, love, martial prowess, or whatever planetary energy you’re interested in drawing down at the moment. The astrological weather is important to consider when inscribing these things though. A planetary talisman is a long-term snapshot of the qualities of the rays of that planet when it was created. I have a Mars talisman I created while Mars was in Sagittarius and nicely aspected by other planets.
In the previous post, I talked a little about how we work with the planets using their Intelligences and Spirits. A key way to get these guys’ attention is by calling them by name while holding their planetary talisman in your hand. The Talisman is already drawing the forces conducive to the spirit’s manifestation, and when you conjure it by name or seal, it’s easier for that spirit to appear. That’s great for specific Workings, but there’s a more sublime purpose behind creating talismans in your pursuit of the Great Work.
If you’ve read my book, A Modern Angelic Grimoire, you know about the Table of Practice. The Table of Practice I discuss in that book is based on the one from Trithemius’ Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals. A magician conjuring a spirit places their skrying media (a crystal ball or bowl of water, for example) in the center of the Table. The Table has the seven planets’ symbols and the names of the angels that rule them around the outside edge, the names of the four angelic elemental Kings, and a Triangle with symbols in the corners:
From a friend in Australia, I learned of a more elaborate Table of Practice described in the Ars Paulina. She created a beautiful Table of Practice, painting the seals of each planet on wood, then coating it with a few coats of polyurethane. It’s incredible.
I had been making various talismans for specific Workings, a couple of lead talismans to bind some wandering spirits for my mother-in-law, and a Michael talisman for some other exorcism rituals, and it “occurred” to me to create a talisman for each of the planets that could be easily transported, a portable Table of Practice and seven specific talismans of each planet for specialized planetary work. I did so, and as I completed each of the talismans, the beams of that sphere would be focused directly into my own sphere. When I had finished the seventh talisman, I had a complete microcosm of the planetary spheres. Shortly after this, I received an epiphany, which will be discussed in more detail when we get to Section 3.0. For now, know that putting the talismans together in their appropriate places on your altar space creates a harmonizing and stabilizing effect in your sphere, and serves as a long-term ritual that continues to adjust and attune your sphere as you go on about your business.
The Table of Practice, by its very existence, eliminates the necessity of the pentagram and hexagram rituals of the Golden Dawn. It takes longer to make, but the investment of time and effort takes place early on, and the return on the investment is awesome. You end up with the permanent effects of the pentagram and hexagram rituals in your sacred space.
When you make a talisman, you are interacting directly with the spirit that rules the forces you’re “trapping” in the object. The result is a change in your own sphere in relation to the forces you’re working with. You get a little wiser, a little more knowledgeable. At the same time, as you’re engraving the metals, or smelting the alloys, or sanding the nearly-finished product, you receive guidance, instruction, and are led to insights about the nature of the entity or forces you’re working with. It’s a very contemplative and meditative exercise that requires long periods of trance-state brain activity. Making a talisman results in taking a step in the Great Work.
Making talismans is fun, too. I use a dremel tool, fiberglass resin, the metals of the planets (Lead, Tin, Iron, Gold, Copper, Mercury, and Silver), wood, and other appropriate materials. I’ve learned a bit about metallurgy, wood carving, embossing, and how not to use a propane torch in your kitchen. There are risks associated with heavy metals, like lead and mercury, and risks associated with natural things, like the toxicity of Yew, and proper precautions must be made. This should never keep you from making the talismans though.
Taking the proper precautions is part of the experience, and teaches you aspects of the planets the metals represent as well. Saturn inappropriately concentrated in your sphere will have the spiritual equivalent of the effect of inappropriate amounts of lead in your body. Integrating the Moon into your sphere has a similar effect to drinking silver nitrate, and combining the lunar energies with solar energies inappropriately will block the ability to absorb and process the solar powers, the same way silver nitrate blocks the ability of the body to process sunlight into Vitamin D when you go into the sunlight after taking too much silver.
The process I follow when I make a talisman consists of identifying an opportune time astrologically, when the planets associated with the talisman are well aspected. Then in the right hour, I’ll conjure the appropriate spirit, and then perform the Work required to make the talisman. While I’m working, the spirit communes with me, and that interaction is wonderful. Then when it is finished, I’ve got a physical representation of the powers I want to work with. Then I can use it at the right time.
When I do a solar rite, I’ll use my solar talisman. Right now, for instance, I’ve got a stand with a picture on it over the top of an orgone generator that’s resting on my talisman of the Sun. The Talisman’s forces are being focused up through the orgone generator, enhanced by the properties of the generator, and then “beamed” into the picture. It’s an entire ritual performed without requiring the conjuration of any spirits, or the drawing of any circles, or the waving of any elemental weapons.
That’s the beauty of talismans, but at the same time, you don’t want to make a talisman for every magickal act. There are occasions where you don’t need a permanent or even long-term representation of a spiritual force. It’s tempting to make a talisman for every spirit you want to work with, but ultimately you’ll end up with a few hundred talismans and nowhere to put them. As your ritual space becomes more and more cluttered, your life will get more and more cluttered. Use good judgment in determining what you really want the talisman for, and remember it’s a long-term investment.
I’ve got this spirit pot with Bune in it, for instance, and I. will. for. the. rest. of. my. life.
Unless I decommission it.
When you’re ready to move on to the next step, you can decommission the old talismans you’ve got hanging around. When creating them, you poured a lot of time and effort into identifying the seals and symbols required, gathering the elements, and putting them together. Some indications that it’s time to decommission the talisman are that it has accomplished its desired outcome, or you’ve discovered the properties of the forces you worked into the talisman aren’t in harmony with your intent. The spirit of the talisman might be directing you to decommission it, or you might be prompted by your HGA to eliminate this force from your sphere. When these things happen, you need to break the talisman down to its component parts and thank the spirit of the talisman for its work. For metal talismans you’ve engraved, melt the metals again to restore them to their “blank” state. Wood materials you can burn and scatter the ashes somewhere where they will be sent to the ends of the world, like a convenient river or a stiff breeze. Paper talismans should be burned as well.
Note: Mercury and lead cannot be dumped in nature. You’ve got to extract Mercury and store it properly in glass or iron. Lead you can melt under a filtered ventilation system, and reuse later.
Tin and copper and any other planetary metal can be pretty easily melted using a propane torch and some creative research on Google.
If you can’t melt your talisman, like if it’s iron that you’ve engraved, you can file down the images, and then sand them down until the iron is blank. Drop the lump in some salt for a while too, or anoint it with Holy water. Try to keep the materials you’ve put into your talismans, if possible. You’ll have another use for them eventually.
Just a reminder, it’s not too late to sign up for Course 1 of the Red Work series, Acquiring a Supernatural Assistant. You can sign up through November 15th, and you won’t miss too much to be able to catch up.
For anyone disturbed by yesterday’s post and thinking I’m some kind of doom and gloom mad prophet, good news! I’m totally not.
I was trying to express frustration with the role of suffering in existence. I’m not happy with it, and I wanted to know what the alternative was. Why the hell can’t we just not suffer? I asked God, and he said it’s just part of the whole thing, and you can’t exist without it.
Sometimes I think it would be better for everyone not to exist than for the people who get hurt the most to have to suffer as badly as they do. I am he who hates that evil should be done on the face of the Earth, and all that.
But the question I get stuck with
Supposedly i can post from my cell phone now. Like twitter. This would be a test.
As I was meditating one day, the Spirit descended upon me and took me up into the heavens, whether in body, or in a dream, I do not know.
In the Workshop, I saw my Brother overseeing a manifestation of Plague. It was time for the new pandemic to be rolled out, under the supervision of the appropriate spirits of Saturn and Venus.
“It’s going to kill millions of people,” I said, and my Brother looked up at me.
“Yes, it is.”
“But why? Why like this? That’s going to hurt, and leave families without children, children without parents, and it’s going to hurt the poor worse than the rich. It’s not fair to any of them.”
Gently, he sighed, and got that look he gets when he’s going to tell me something I won’t like, agree with, or understand.
“They have to die.”
He just looked at me. His face is always so compassionate. He knows what it means to be human, mostly cut off from our birth-right, yet still conscious enough to be aware of the disconnect. He knows I don’t see the beginning and the end the way he does.
“Like this?” I asked.
“Yes. Exactly like this. It has to happen.”
“Why? You’re God, or close enough for it not to matter any more. You can let them live and find their deaths of old age. What could happen if you just had mercy and spared us from this stupid plague?”
“This,” he said, and took me over to a corner of the workshop that seemed dustier than the rest. He sat me on a stool and sat across from me. “Close your eyes.”
He’s totally done this before. It’s a vision trip, where he shows me shit that I can’t understand in words.So I know what to expect; he’s going to show me a future with too many people, or something to justify the horrors this disease will cause.
Instead, all I see is nothing. Deep nothing. Nothing without even anything to compare it to, no way to know it is nothing. Nothing. No eyes to see, no me to look through eyes, even if they were there, nothing for my brain to process, no brain to process with. Nothing. Empty.
“See?”
“I didn’t see anything,” I said.
“Right.” My blank stare spoke volumes.
“Look,” he said. “Remember the sign on the Boot Hill Saloon?”
(The Boot Hill Saloon is a bar in Daytona across the street from the old Boot Hill cemetery, where outlaws and the destitute were buried.)
“You’re better off here than across the street?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s the big mystical secret? It’s this or nothing?” There was a brief pause, and I heard laughter in the distance. “Nothing’s a hell of a lot better than unleashing this disease and suffering!”
He returned my gaze without flinching for a long moment, and when he had my full attention again, he simply said one word.
“Really?”
So Cthulhu was reading the comments on my blog today, and he saw Wind’s comment “it makes me wonder… you attained your HGA some time ago and you’re just figuring out that you want to serve mankind now? Maybe the path ain’t what I thought it was.”
“Mlaroeognhchth!”
“Yeah,” I said, “I get that all the time.”
“Granachlethtulku?”
“Nah, I’ll just write a blog post.”
“Ng yalthkaz ruek.”
“Heh, yeah, I know, right? But I’ll just put it in English my way. It’s not so messy.”
This is one of the reasons I started writing the blog and eventually got around to starting the Supernatural Assistant course. The fact is, the path isn’t what a lot of people think it is. The HGA isn’t instant enlightenment. It isn’t a path to becoming compassionate and wise and everything you think a spiritual guru or enlightened Master is supposed to be. It’s nothing like the point of Eastern Mysticism at all.
The HGA is primarily a spiritual assistant. It’s got the powers of a lot of the entities from the Lemegeton, entities largely considered “demonic.” It also has the power to bring you entities often considered Demonic. It’s also a straight and direct line of communion with your Source. It’s also a powerful motivator and Teacher, a Guide that can direct you to spiritual wisdom and the whole guru thing. It can help you attain compassion and service to others, if that’s your purpose in life.
But it’s not a given. Just because you can talk to your HGA doesn’t mean you will. Just because you can have it make troops appear to frighten off your King’s enemies doesn’t mean you’ll ever be in a position to need that.
The primary goal of the HGA is to help you do more magic. More magic causes spiritual transformations that may lead to compassion, or it may lead to wisdom, or it may lead to wealth, or something like that. But there’s no guarantee, and above all, it’s not a process that happens over night.
I started out an asshole who literally hated people. Misanthropist barely describes the hate I felt for “other people.” After years of doing magic with my HGA, I have changed. I generally get mildly annoyed by people now, and even then I recognize that whatever’s annoying me is only temporary, and does not mean I need to write off that person entirely because one area of their life is annoying to me. I’ve learned that I don’t need to curse people, because their lives are usually pretty shitty, and that’s why they’re acting so annoying. I’ve learned I don’t have to be a dick, all the time.
I’m not a perfectly compassionate, lay-down-my-life-for-a-friend kind of guy. I still want to do things for me, regardless of the impact it has on others. I have a hard time getting out of bed and doing a load of dishes or laundry when my wife’s sick. I’d rather play video games than mow the lawn. I’d rather have a ton of money than have to earn it. I still see people do stupid things and think, “God! How flippin’ STUPID!” and feel better about myself because I’m so not-STUPID.
I’m petty and mean, sometimes. There are days when I regret ever writing this blog, ever trying to help people, ever starting the path of the Great Work. There are days that I hate the responsibility that comes with it, and frankly, there are days when I ignore the responsibility that comes with it.
But I’ve progressed a great deal, in my own estimation, from where I used to be. I hear it from others as well, that I’ve shown growth in understanding aspects of the path I’m on that they thought I’d never achieve.
The bottom line is that the HGA doesn’t make you perfect, it makes it easier to approach perfection. But that’s not it’s primary function at all. It’s primarily there to aid you in performing magic, magic that is intended to create the world. There are things that need to be created on the planet that aren’t going to be fun for everyone that participate, things that will hurt, maim, and kill. Conjure a daimon to help your brother in a battle in Afghanistan, and you’re helping to kill Taliban-believing humans. For what? To protect your brother? What makes your brother special compared to the Taliban?
But that’s what the spirits are there for. We’re supposed to be concerned about this level of “petty” human interaction. Why would God create a spirit that causes pustules and death if there weren’t a time that pustules and death were necessary?
We don’t take on a flesh suit and manifest as human beings so that we can transcend being human, or so that we can attain an understanding that makes us more than human. We do it to be fully human. We aren’t supposed to be perfect. If we were supposed to be perfectly good and do only the “right” thing all the time, we wouldn’t have bothered being human in the first place.
Yeah, I found out I like helping people. The interesting part to me was that I enjoy it. I mean, I’m really fulfilled by doing it. I’ve helped people before, but in general I usually resent having to help people. I would rather help myself. I’ve never felt so happy about it, I’ve just sort of felt it was a necessary burden, an obligation to pass things on that I didn’t have a lot of choice in. I’ve always looked at the Hierophant thing as a burden, not a joy. I’ve said before, “I do it because I gots to, Mister!” It’s true, too, I do have to.
What’s surprising to me is that I’m enjoying it too. I’m actually having fun.
I realized something about myself today. I’m totally happy helping people. I mean, I’m actually fulfilled by this shit. I like teaching, I like it a lot. I like writing books that help people do magic. I like giving people access to the power to change the world. It makes me feel happy. It makes me feel good.
Helping people is fun; who knew?