The Earth is a prison. You’ve been sentenced here to work out whatever issues you’ve got that kept you from completing your cosmic responsibilities in previous incarnations in higher spheres. You’re descended from the One, and you’re supposed to be on a higher plane doing something that involves maintaining the continued existence of a multi-dimensional, multi-planar universe that is far larger than any portion that has the misfortune of existing in the physical time-space we’re stuck in.

You fucked up, and until you work out whatever it was that you fucked up up there, you’re stuck down here, and killing yourself only puts you further back in line for Ascension.

The only way out is to remember the truth, and to work with extra-terrestrial consciousnesses to work through your karmic debt, attain spiritual awareness, and earn your way back up to your natural state of Oneness with the One who is One and not Two.

Sound familiar? That’s a summary of the Revelations of an Insider. I ended up on that page while perusing old links in my bookmarks Sunday, July 4th. 

What struck me about the long exchange was that everything the dude was saying lines up perfectly with Hermetics, except for the bit about the Earth being a prison planet. Of course he would put it that way, he was talking to a conspiracy theory group, after all. Context demanded it be couched in those terms. That stuff about aliens and the popular conspiracy theories at the time it was written, bloodlines, ruling families, etc. is all bunk, but the core of the spiritual doctrine he’s giving there is totally in harmony with Hermetic doctrine.

It’s neo-platonism all over again. You’re really a manifestation of God, the world distracts you, makes you forget, and you just need to be reminded of that. You conjure spirits from other realms, higher spiritual planes that teach you, remind you, grant you access to your memory of your true self, and then you join with the Powers that Be so you can meet even greater responsibilities in the higher realms.

It’s a common theme in New Age teachings too. That crowd speaks of alien intelligences, and channeled wisdom. We speak of Planetary Intelligences, and entities from the Sphere of the Fixed Stars. The only difference between “Martial” and “Martian” is the last letter, when you look at it. And the experiences of the people who receive initiations (they call them transmissions) from the spirits (they call them alien entities) are pretty similar to the things we get to do when we have been through the proper clarifications and initiations, when we’ve been harmonized with the spheres.

I guess what I’m saying is that the core “truths” of Hermetics keep popping up in different forms for different generations. The end product is that people get in touch with “higher” intelligences, entities with a broader view of existence than we have, and then we receive spiritual training and empowerments as a result. The effects are pretty potent.

REALLY bad idea.

I work in IT, I’ve worked on the kinds of electronics and microcontrollers that are used to control acceleration and braking, and frankly, it’s a buggy, glitchy technological framework. The shit needs to be run by hydraulics and cables, not software and firmware.

You know how Farmville won’t even load right on a laptop with too little memory, and the avatar pops up bald and you can’t see your crops?* You know how Office 2007 is SLOWER than any Office product package ever, and you can’t find any of the commands and functions you spent over a decade learning? You know how the dude at PWN2OWN just found 20 bugs in Safari, IE8, and Adobe in a few minutes using a really basic fuzzing program?

THAT’S the shit we’re trusting to take us from 0-60 in 3.5 seconds, to control the velocity and acceleration of a metric ton of mass while we trust a thin strap and a balloon to save us if it fails.

Electronics, programming, sensors, and the computers they put in cars are dangerously unsafe.

Oh, uh… This is supposed to be a blog about magic… uhm…

You wouldn’t trust Microsoft or an EPROM with managing your initiation into the Sphere of Saturn, would you? Then don’t trust the same technology in cars. It’s dangerous. One memory buffer overflow, and you’re rapidly accelerating with the brakes fully applied and the multi-million dollar industrial complex will do everything in its power to bury the truth and make you look like a liar.

Uhm…

And Toyota is secretly an Illuminati cover for a Bilderberger plot… and… uh, aliens! The technology is based on recovered alien tech from Roswell, and it doesn’t work for humans because… uhm, because… because they were silicon-based lifeforms who communicated directly with the circuit boards and we can’t so … uhm, it doesn’t work for us.

And that’s why we have to recompile the kernel.

There. It’s a magic blog post now.

* My spouse plays it, I used to, but it got to be stupid after a few months. It’s very zen, though. I planted crops, watched them flower and grow, harvested and saved my money up, and sometimes I’d just let the crops wither and die to remind myself of the Circle of Life. Uhm… Ok, the truth is I forgot about the freaking blueberries and strawberries and cotton I planted to make a huge American flag after timing everything to bloom just right, and they died and I had this ugly brown flag, and I was all pissed about it, and then I realized I was WAY too into this fake farm with fake crops and fake stuff.

Joe’s article on WitchVox is getting a bit of stir in the occult bloggy goodness community, eh? Jason, POS, Annael and the Scribbler have weighed in, even if in comments form only so far (see their comments on POS’ post, good info).

I loved the article. Joe’s points were valid and need to be made. Dogmatic enforcement of stupid ass bullshit sucks. I think the idea that people are upset with is that there are no “rules” or “laws” of magic in general, and I don’t think he was saying anything as broad as that. I think he was referring to particular traditions and specific experiences he’s had in the neo-pagan culture, and he’s spot on right about what he has to say in that regard.

I think my ceremonial magician friends, whether they are practicing ceremonies of the East or the West, missed the frame of reference. Joe’s a Wiccan, and he’s writing an article about Wiccan magic on a primarily Wiccan forum. Audience and Purpose, Audience and Purpose. Who is he talking to, and what’s the point he’s trying to get across?

There are systems designed and taught by people who have never had a magical experience of their own in their lives, egocentric cults, and whole movements influenced by undisciplined new agers who pick up the ramblings of wandering nepheshim and attribute the voices to aliens from the stars. Then there are the real cazies. And they get all jumbled together in the neo-pagan community, and that sucks large, sweaty donkey balls. Joe’s dedicated to his religious pursuits in a way that most ceremonial magicians should envy, and his article is important to his community. Rock on Joe.

Anyway, I thought the Kangaroo Magic example he gave was awesome. I’d have turned it into a rant about the posers that make up bullshit and pass it off as legit. Specifically, I’d warn against folks who pass themselves off as experienced magicians telling you something that’s plausible that’s only loosely based on something real. What I took away from Joe’s example was that you’ve got to examine the sources, check the facts, and don’t believe a good story just because it sounds good. Kangaroo Magic. Heh.

Joe’s right, by the way: real witches didn’t use colored wax across history. If you look at the Wise Women of Russian folk magic, for example, you discover they used blessed white candles from their local Orthodox church. They didn’t have colored candles for specific rites, they used what they had and trusted in the spirits (angels, saints, names of God, allies, morphed forms of ancient pantheons, whatever) they worked with to consecrate the stuff according to the purpose. At the same time, there are other real witches that used specifically colored candles to represent specific forces based on revelations they received. But he’s not talking about them.

I’d like to emphasize one thing that Joe doesn’t mention, and I don’t know where he stands on the issue at all. Magical praxis is developed by magicians as a result of their experiences with the spirits. Shamans gather info from their spirit allies, codify it and pass it on. Goets gathered info from the daimons they conjured, and passed it on. The GD gathered info under the influence of their Secret Chiefs, or the GD Egregore, and passed it on.

The magical systems that work are never just made up bullshit. They are always a revelation received from magicians’ initiations, or observations of similitudes that came as they experimented with the Spirits. Shit that’s just made up is about worthless. You can put together a magical system from any kind of fictional symbol set, but your results will be mediocre at best, or “fuck your shit up,” as Jason puts it, at worst.

But if you put together a system based on your work with Raw Deity and its Manifestations (and how they relate to you), then you will have accomplished the Great Work.

Ok, making fun of the bugfuck crazy is not only a privilege among the Ceremonial Magician crowd, it is a Sacred Duty. NO ONE is exempt from the condescending mockery, not even ourselves in our youth! I make fun of my delusion that I was the Black Dragon come to destroy the Wheel of Time and return the manifest realm to a Mythic Age frequently.

That said, I have a soft spot in my heart for the Astral Warriors. How do we know, really, that they AREN’T the thin red line that keeps the rest of reality from collapsing, imploding, or from being overrun by highly evolved reptoids living in the center of the hollow Earth? Maybe if that dude hadn’t gone around dropping Orgone Energy devices in the Vortices at sea in the Bermuda Triangle, in the Pacific near where Pacifica fell in steam and fire, and at the dreaded Montauk AFB, the Greys and their Evil Masters would be eating the fluid released from the decomposition chambers which hold the decaying remains of my very own children.

We may never know.

Every once in a while, I run into Astral Warriors who just don’t deserve to be mocked. They may be clinically insane by society’s standards, but they’re damned sincere. I’m not talking about the folks living a fantasy novel existence because it’s really cool to be a vampire this week, a fairy next week, or an otherkin. I’m talking about the people who experience really Weird Shit that’s just totally unbelievable, and talk about it in the same ways they talk about their tires going flat on their cars. On those occasions, I try to extend to them the benefit of the doubt.

One astral warrior friend of mine is waigng a war against a being she claims has found a means to draw “energy” from those who pray in the name of Jesus. Of 8 infected clients, 6 have been cured, and the other two are still exhibiting symptoms of obsession, if not outright possession. She gets mocked for this, and you can tell it hurts her feelings, but she knows her shit and puts up with the mockery because she gets results and the people she helps are happy.

Giving the benefit of the doubt doesn’t hurt, so I offered my advice about how I would deal with it, and she was gracious and explained that she might go ahead with my suggestions, but that she already has plans in place.

Out of curiosity, I went ahead and checked on this entity and her Astral Warfare. I asked Raphael and Michael about it. I wanted to know whether she was mad and counseling the mad with madness that was effective because they were mad, or if it was something serious. I got a picture of the entity she’s fighting, and saw that her efforts were effective, and that she is one person dealing with things that are part of a plan that doesn’t involve me and my friends at all, but that she isn’t working alone. I got the sense that what she’s doing is creating a path back to God for people who have forgotten that God is there, or never knew they didn’t know in the first place. By having a spiritual battle for their minds, souls, and actions in the material world, they are experiencing the fact that they are spirits in a physical world. What that triggers in their souls is an awakening to a hunger or thirst that they didn’t know they had, and that can only be fulfilled by God (however he reveals himself to them).

So is it hokum? No, not at all. Are the planes in danger of being overrun by aliens or creatures from universes overlapping ours invisibly, taking power from people by sucking their “energy?” Yes, but no more than ever before, and chances are it will not affect you.

But if it does, let me know and I’ll send you to someone who can help.

I’ve recently joined a new yahoo group called EllenLlloyd. This group is dedicated to the Ancient Astronaut Theory, that the earth has been visited and continues to be visited by beings of an (or many) advanced civilizations who have either influenced or are directly responsible for the advancement of human civilization.

I generally try to stay away from our Alien-conscious, UFOlogist cousines. I believe I have a better understanding of the phenomenon they report interacting with than they do. I’m sure they believe the same about occultists in general. However, I am not willing to reject their theories altogether. There are some amazing overlaps of our particular fields.

For instance, today Ellen posted an article she recently wrote about the Everlasting Lights found in ancient tombs and reported above the temples of the ancients. Her article is good, and I recommend reading it if you have a few minutes to spare.

A few months ago I was researching the Portae Lucis, the Portal of Light ritual. The goal of this ritual is to raise the tincture of the sphere of your soul by making contact with Binah-Saturn. It’s very similar in effect to the Abramelin Ritual for making contact with your Holy Guardian Angel, and also similar in effect to Crowley’s Liber Samekh. The goal of the ritual is to establish and empower a higher connection to the Divine source, sort of. I had first read about this ritual in an interview with Jean Dubuis by Mark Stavish at the Alchemy Website.

In seeking more alchemical lore on the building of Houses of Light and Portals of Light, I found a treatise called The Everburning Lights of Trithemius. As most people who know me are aware, I am extremely fond of Johannes Trithemius. He was an abbot of a monastery who taught Agrippa, wrote some of the foundational texts on communicating with spirits, and wrote the original tale that became known as Faustus. Having read parts of the Steganographia and having practiced from the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals, I thought this treatise would be about the angels or spirits, and that it would be an allegorical reference to these entities as the “Everburning Lights.” Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a recipe for creating physical lights that one of his students had recorded.

So today, when I read Ellen’s article, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the overlap between our fields of study. I personally believe that the “Ancient Astronauts” and the “Angels” or “Spirits” of the occultists are the same entities. For proof we have Crowley’s Alamantrah working that resulted in LAM making his appearance, and the subsequent UFO phenomenon that occurred after Crowley established contact with that dimension’s beings.

By the way, that’s one of the many reasons I don’t combine alcohol, hashish, cocaine, ether and ritual magick. You just don’t know what you’re going to end up doing. But Crowley was a pawn his whole life, god bless him.

Jack Parsons, father of the Space Age, did what he could to create a “Moon Child” or a Nephilim in his Babalon working. Plato was the first to say that every man and every woman is a star. Well, every man anyway, and that if you’re not a rational man, you get reborn as a woman… That’s not my fault. Read Timaeus sometime. Good stuff.

Additional evidence is found in this Everburning Lights phenomenon. Where did Trithemius learn how to create these lights? We know from the other writings he is famous for that he was experienced in contacting the entities that travel between planes that we do not normally physically experience. His methods (or at least methods attributed to him) for contacting the angelic spirits work. I’ve spoken with Michael, Tzadkiel, and Haniel using the practices discussed in the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals (by the way, you need to include the sigils from the Magical Calendar and the method of creating Talismen from Agrippa’s Book 4 of Occult Philosophy). The spirits of the Goetia and the Arbatel are useful for a lot of mundane things, but I find it extremely interesting that their primary functions are not to provide physical results, but to provide information.

I believe Trithemius learned to make the lights from the Spirits. Those who believe in the Ancient Astronaut Theory believe the Everburning Lights are evidence that aliens have visited the planet and given us extra-terrestrial knowledge. What better term exists for the information we receive as magicians from interviewing the spirits than “extra-terrestrial?”

This doesn’t mean I believe the spirits “really are” aliens, or that there are no interstellar or inter-dimensional civilizations that influence humanity. Looking at the occult cosmologies of the ancient pagans, gnostics, and occultists around the world, I find it hard to believe that any magician would discard the theories of the Ancient Astronaut crowd completely. Our cosmologies are remarkably similar. Invisible entities bringing knowledge to mankind for our betterment, or for their own purposes. Think about it, what’s the difference between the theories of Niburu and the Annunaki compared to the deliverance of the Qabalah to Abraham by Ratziel?

The chief difference is that we as magicians continue to interact with these entities, while those of the Ancient Astronaut crowd seem to think that the aliens will be returning in some distant future. Then again, I’m not that familiar with the Sitchin followers and whether they believe the Ancient Astronauts are still working with particular individuals.