So, checking some blog stats, I found the number one search term that brings visitors to my site is this:

TROLOLOLOLOL!

Ok, you piratin’ bitches, hope you landed here this time, so I can set you straight:

ALL CURSES ARE LIFTED. 

There is no curse on anyone anywhere on the planet as a result of pirating my work, in any way, shape or form. You’re forgiven.* I lifted the curse a year or more ago after adjusting my business perspective on the whole piracy thing. I still disapprove, but it generates buzz about my work, and that leads to more sales, so, whatever.

Point is, there is no curse on you if you pirated my stuff, ok? If your life sucks, it’s not because you
pirated my work, specifically, it’s just because life sucks. So use
that shit you pirated to make it a better place. 

* You want to pay for your crimes? Send me an email and I’ll send you a $50 invoice to
absolve your conscience. Money’s not required to lift the curse, but I love money, and if it makes you feel better to send me some, by all means, do so! And I’ll even send you an official “No worries!” email absolving you of any subsequent pangs of guilt.

Hey y’all, a couple years ago I found a site that was scraping my feed into their own blog and using it to draw traffic to their ad site. Motherfuckers. So I cut the feed back to just the first few lines, and you had to come to the blog to read it.

Wil Wheaton recently posted on G+ that he doesn’t read feeds that do that. I was all, “but someone scraped my blog wah,” and then I started thinking about it.

Originally I was mad because someone was drawing clicks to their ads when I had my own ads on my blog, not fair!

But then I quit putting ads up here. Fuck adwords, they don’t pay shit. I make a lot more on eBooks and talismans and stuff than I ever would on ads. And ads make a blog look cheap. Chintzy. So I pulled them and put up ads for my own stuff.

And honestly, if anyone scrapes the blog feed, it’s still free advertising for me, so fuck it.

I’ve had a fundamental attitude shift about piracy and word-theft in the digital age. Most of the people who steal and pirate aren’t going to buy my books, even if they couldn’t get them for free somewhere. But if the magic they use works, they’re going to talk about me on forums and to their friends, and then the next book I release will sell more copies. It builds up business revenue over time.

So while I do not condone pirating my shit, and I will submit requests to remove any of my digital content from any sites making it available that I find out about, I’m not seriously hating on anyone who pirates from me these days. I’ve lifted all the curses I put on those who might upload my work to file sharing sites, though if you see my Modern Goetic Grimoire floating around, it’s dangerous stuff on its own, regardless of any curses. I might just make that available again, I’ve been having deep thoughts about all that shit lately. I blame Jake.

It’s funny how many people come to my site using the search terms “restitution for piracy” though. Heh.

All curses are lifted and you’re forgiven, you dirty pirates, but next time I release an eBook, you’d better buy a copy.

If anyone gets this post in a feed, let me know if the whole thing’s coming through now instead of the summary. I think I fixed it, but I may need to go into feedburner and change some occult setting I’ve forgotten about.

I have a couple of different perspectives on life that I get wound up in at different times.

From the life perspective of the human being going through the processes of existence, I tend to take things very personally. My family, my job, my magic, my books, my students, my health, my impact on the world around me, and its impact on me. I am motivated, inspired, wounded, offended, angered and amused by the things that I experience. I react to it as if it were real, because it matters to me.

But I also recognize that these things, the things I do and feel and experience and know and learn and conjure and all that, they all are meaningful only within the context of my life, and they aren’t nearly as meaningful to you. Some things we experience in the world are equally meaningful for both of us, but most of what happens to you doesn’t mean anything to me, and vice versa. So I try to remember that at a social level, the things that are meaningful to me are not necessarily going to be meaningful to you.

Furthermore, I’ve stood at the apex of the hierarchy of spiritual beings and looked out at the universe as it unfolds. I’ve climbed Jacob’s Ladder with the other Angels, and seen that the things I worry most about personally are not that important in the grand scheme of things, even though they are part of it all. At a universal level, the cramp I get in my shoulders when I slouch as I type is not a world-ending event.

And speaking of the end of the world, I’ve also seen that. It all ends. Sooner or later. Personally, it ends with death. Socially, it ends with the collapse of civilization. Universally it ends when everything collapses back in on itself or expands to the point that it no longer interacts, or if it’s all just random shit popping up with no plan, it could all just collapse back into the probability soup that spawned it at any second. The conditions that allow life on the Earth are cosmically temporary and will pass, and there’s always a possibility that a singularity might just come into being in my cube and suck the Earth and Sun and Milky way into an event horizon at any second anyway. If the Earth is still around in 4 billion years, life and the conditions to maintain it will be long gone.

So, knowing that it doesn’t really matter in the long run, I’ve got this perspective on life that allows me to take it less than seriously. And the things I take seriously, I don’t take all that seriously. I hold opinions because I like to, not because they are particularly right or wrong. I know I see things from a very selfish perspective most of the time, and knowing that mitigates my attachment to them. I value opinions primarily based on the entertainment content.

Let’s take the issue of piracy as an example, because it’s been on my mind lately. I care a great deal about people stealing from me. I don’t like it.

That said, I know it’s going to happen. I found out this weekend someone is printing and binding copies of my stuff and selling it from a van at Pagan Pride events in Massachusetts, and probably elsewhere as well. In addition, someone posted the Modern Goetic Grimoire on yet another file sharing site. The file sharing site removed the content at my request, kudos to them for that. I’ve contacted the pagan pride organizers and sent out some specific entities to address the other problem as well.

But dude, free advertising! I don’t know how many of the recent additions to my followers came from that file sharing site, nor do I particularly care. I just like that over the weekend, my followers grew. When I do come out with my next books, I’ll make a couple more sales. Jason’s outlook on piracy has greatly impacted my own, and while I don’t like it much, I adapt and integrate the inevitable theft of my work into my business model.

And it gives me a chance to hone some skills hunting down and extracting just retribution from those who steal from me. Being a Christian Magician, I rarely get a chance to curse people as much as I’d like to, so I appreciate this kind of opportunity. And the issue of piracy gives me something to rant about in public, and ranting is therapeutic. It’s like weeding a garden, you get to kill plants but you don’t have to feel bad about it. It’s a win-win.

But really, in the long run, I don’t really give a shit about piracy. It happens, life goes on. Why would I sacrifice a moment of fun over something as ephemeral as a few lost sales? If it’s not fun, or interesting, I don’t think it’s really worth my time.

And for the record, I don’t do death curses over pirated works. That would be rather extreme. Branding the aura with “Do not trust this thief” is sufficient. They won’t get jobs, they won’t get laid, they won’t get anything in life that requires trust, or anything that requires them to obey the rules of society. People will just know they can’t trust the person.

And the demons will eat their souls.

Jack wrote something about piracy that ought to get a bit of press. While I don’t like piracy, I do happen to agree with his more salient practical points, and to borrow a bit of his wisdom, I’d like to make a public address to ye olde internet pirates:

Dear pirates: 


Please stop giving out what you have to everyone. The boys making these books need to buy food. So at least wait for a year. During that year, be sure just to give copies to your friends… Who should at least review the book, or bring attention to it somehow. 


Thanks,


The Authors


PS: The curse on ye uploaders of my stuff to ye torrents or other file sharing tech are still very much in effect. Though some think a death curse is warranted, I do not. I just curse you with suffering more than usual until you pull my work from the torrent and pay me $50 in restitution. 

Right on Scarlet Imprint!

Regular readers here know my stance on piracy of published materials. Fuck you, pirates. I will personally hang you as a warning to other would be pirates. You’re not captain jack sparrow, you’re a pasty-fleshed dweeb with enough money for a computer and a scanner, and as the Scarlet Imprint post says, you can fucking afford to pay for the books. You’re just a dick. And not the cool Black Brother kind of dick, you’re the steals-from-the-poor dick.

Thanks to Jack for pointing me to that post. Neat to see other magicians pointing out how stupid it is to steal from a magician. And yes, Jack, I would love to read an article exploring the “intrinsic links” between capitalism and piracy.

I still don’t know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets
Every time I thought I’d got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me… 

-David Bowie, Changes

So I’ve been playing more with the Eighth Sphere magic I’ve been learning from the spirits lately. It’s pretty amazing stuff. It really is about intent, and I’m finding parallels to the Energy model that are so … very … well, yeah, a bit annoying, bur mostly damned useful, honestly. I tense a muscle in the back of my hand, and this power just flows out, palpable to others. I was working on a household project that had me out in the sun on a really hot day, and I thought of Raphael in the West, Prince of the Air Elemental direction, twisted my head a bit, sort of, and a cool breeze came drifting in, followed by a really nice, cooling shower that only lasted long enough to be pleasant. I’m experiencing the Chain of Manifestation directly, and finding that everything I’m going through was right there in Agrippa the whole time.

See, manifestation is a lot like the scales of a fish, or overlapping chain mail. You move one piece, and all the ones nearby are moved. Muscle control combined with symbol and intent releases a flow of power that has an instant effect on the environment around you. Everything, every link or scale has an intelligence, an awareness that can be spoken to, if you only know its language.

And it’s really weird for me because I’m used to being able to put things into words. But in the Eighth Sphere, you learn to sing hymns of silence in preparation for the Ninth. It’s a matter of directing your intent in worshipful observation, in celebration of the process of manifestation. You tune your observation-with-intent to harmonize with the manifestation current, and you find yourself as the conductor as well as a player in the orchestra. And see, there’s no limit to what can be accomplished. You name a thing, and it responds, and then it returns to where it used to be.

You know all the things the spirits of the Lemegeton’s Goetia are capable of accomplishing? You can accomplish them too, without the negative consequences. You want riches? You’ve got a Midas Touch in your right hand’s ring finger. Everything you touch with intent will turn to gold. You only need to speak with the right spirit at the right time to release this ability.

You want to curse someone? Flip them off with intent. Sex on your mind? Tense that Mound of Venus with intent, and see what happens.

This isn’t the kind of thing I can put into words, at least not yet. I’ve got to experiment more, and pay attention to what’s going on when I figure something new out. I’m at a point where I can think about a desired effect, clear my mind, and just feel how to make it happen. There’s a mind-body connection (also discussed in Agrippa) that is directly plugged straight into the Source outlet. And when we do it ourselves, there’s no demons with a “fuck you filter” in place by nature to suck it all away.

This isn’t, for the record, me adopting the Energy Model and abandoning the Spirit Model. I can see now how it all fits together, like the scales of a fish, overlapping and rubbing hard against one another in unison. Here, Agrippa says it better:

Hence saith Aristotle in the sixth book of his Mysticall Philosophy, that when any one by binding or bewitching doth call upon the Sun or other stars, praying them to be helpfull to the work desired, the Sun and other Stars do not heare his words, but are moved after a certain manner by a certain conjunction, and mutuall series, whereby the parts of the world are mutually subordinate the one to the other, and have a mutuall consent, by reason of their great union: As in mans body one member is moved by perceiving the motion of another, and in a harp one string is moved at the motion of another. So when any one moves any part of the world; other parts are moved by the perceiving the motion of that. The knowledge therefore of the dependency of things following one the other, is the foundation of all wonderfull operation, which is necessarily required to the exercising the power of attracting superior vertues. – Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book 2, chapter 60

That whole chapter is pretty deep. Note the final sentence:

In the first place therefore we must implore assistance from the first author, and praying not only with mouth but a Religious gesture and supplicant soul, also abundantly, uncessantly, and sincerely…

 See? Pretty cool, eh? Religious Gesture? It’s right there.

Now the reason I’m even talking about this cool stuff that I can’t put into words yet is because I want to give you some insight into my recent decision to take the Goetic Grimoire off the list of things I sell. I overestimated the value of those spirits, and underestimated their negative effects. At this point, I wouldn’t teach my son to conjure demons, you know? I can’t in good conscience keep telling people that the demons aren’t that bad when really, they aren’t that great. Especially when there’s a much better way that doesn’t nearly kill you just to get what you want to manifest.

Kill you? That’s a bit extreme, right?

I haven’t mentioned it publicly before, but without getting into too much detail, I almost died a couple weeks ago. Spent Memorial Day and a couple more in the hospital. My heart muscles and the surrounding tissue were literally dying, and the necrotic biomatter of my decaying heart was killing me. My heart’s inflamed to this day, and not in prayer. In virus.

So look, I’ve got really good reasons to think twice before calling up the spirits of the Lemegeton’s Goetia. Conjuring them really isn’t worth it. That’s coming from a guy who has conjured damned close to half the spirits of the Lemegeton over the last few years, and developed close and personal friendships with some of them. I’ve reaped rewards from them, and I’m still telling you: they aren’t worth the price.

Especially when everything you need to get everything you want them for is sitting literally in the palm of your hand. I wouldn’t have seen it, not clearly, not without receiving the initiation I’ve been through, without learning that they just aren’t necessary to accomplish the Hermetic goal. That, combined with some rather forceful revelations about the nature of the Lem’s Goetia spirits has led to a lot of soul searching and evaluation of my role in the lives of others. I don’t want to play any part in getting anyone else into as much trouble as I’ve gotten myself into over the last couple of years.

So the Goetic Grimoire is no longer for sale. To those who purchased it, I advise extreme caution. My methods might have gotten me hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I haven’t got a penny to show for it. What I do have to show for it is a lot of stress, and physical scars.

And my heart was physically rotting in my chest.

At some point, even a Taurus has to see that maybe, just maybe evil spirits are bad to conjure, you know?

But still… NO REFUNDS. And the curse on uploading it to torrents still stands, pirate bitches.