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?
Good news, everyone, I got it! I mean, I got it. I really got it.
I had an epiphany last night and early this morning. I’ll try not to
wax all mystical and ecstatic on it, but it was beautiful. It made
sense of everything. Literally, everything. Birth, life,m death, struggles, woe, time, death, eternity, bliss, joy, it all wrapped up together around 4:30 a.m. in the following. The glyph is the key, ultimately.
I’m not getting into the boring details at the moment, I’m just going to summarize. I posted this to Ritual Magick, so if you’ve been there, you’ll be wasting your time unless you want to hear me talk more about it. You should be working on this shit. I’ll be coming down with a minor messiah complex for a few days, but I DID do some conjuring in the name of Messiah at daybreak, so hey, what can you expect?
Anyway, the result of my moment is the following layout for the altar:
In the center, you place four sealed vessels that have the spirits
of the Four Kings of the elements bound within, each in their
appropriate quadrant:
Make sure you seal these demons in using something that you can let
them out if you need them later in your existence, but you want them
sealed unless they are actively performing something you’ve told them
to do.
Around these four sealed vessels, you place the following talismen
in their appropriate quadrant:
These talismen should NOT use the seals of the angels as attributed
in other grimoires. These are the four elemental Kings, not the
Archangels of the planetary spheres that share the same names. To
get the appropriate seal, conjure each of the Elemental Kings
separately.
Beside each of the Elemental Kings’ talismen, place the appropriate
elemental weapon. The wand in the East, the Cup in the North, the
Knife in the West, and in the South your own personal seal.
You now have two circles on your altar, the infernal circle in the
center, and the elemental circle around that. These two spheres
*are* the material realm, and at the exact same time they *are* your
personal Sphere as a magician.
Starting in the South, place 7 planetary Talisman in the following
order clockwise, 51.429 degrees apart (give or take a hundredth of a
degree):
These are the seven spheres that surround the magician’s sphere.
These create the table of practice.
That’s the physical manifestation of the Key. The Lamp should be
placed outside this circle to the east. The Divine Darkness that
Dionysius the Areopogate is outside the light.
The altar is now complete.
This is what mine looks like:
As you can see, I’m using the four elemental kings of the Tarot as temporary placeholders for Michael, Uriel, Raphael, and Gabriel.
I found out today that people from both Arab and Jewish cities in Israel are accessing my blog frequently. I can't thank you all enough. The really neat thing is that the Great Work is about transcending the boundaries we see here from an earthly-perspective and seeing the unity underneath, or at least that's one of its effects. If you're an Arab or a Jew, someone in one of those other cities is studying the Great Work, just like you.
Hopefully they don't leave their computer after reading this and pick up a gun and shoot at you, eh? 🙂
I’m in a bit of a quandary. I’ve been Working with this syncretic Judeo-Christian/Neo-Platonic system for a while now, based almost entirely on the the Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Agrippa. I’ve been reading Plato’s Timaeus,
Good news, everyone, I got it! I mean, I got it. I really got it.
I had an epiphany last night and early this morning. I’ll try not to
wax all mystical and ecstatic on it, but it was beautiful. It made
sense of everything. Literally, everything. Birth, life,m death, struggles, woe, time, death, eternity, bliss, joy, it all wrapped up together around 4:30 a.m. in the following. The glyph is the key, ultimately.
I’m not getting into the boring details at the moment, I’m just going to summarize. I posted this to Ritual Magick, so if you’ve been there, you’ll be wasting your time unless you want to hear me talk more about it. You should be working on this shit. I’ll be coming down with a minor messiah complex for a few days, but I DID do some conjuring in the name of Messiah at daybreak, so hey, what can you expect?
Anyway, the result of my moment is the following layout for the altar:
In the center, you place four sealed vessels that have the spirits
of the Four Kings of the elements bound within, each in their
appropriate quadrant:
Make sure you seal these demons in using something that you can let
them out if you need them later in your existence, but you want them
sealed unless they are actively performing something you’ve told them
to do.
Around these four sealed vessels, you place the following talismen
in their appropriate quadrant:
These talismen should NOT use the seals of the angels as attributed
in other grimoires. These are the four elemental Kings, not the
Archangels of the planetary spheres that share the same names. To
get the appropriate seal, conjure each of the Elemental Kings
separately.
Beside each of the Elemental Kings’ talismen, place the appropriate
elemental weapon. The wand in the East, the Cup in the North, the
Knife in the West, and in the South your own personal seal.
You now have two circles on your altar, the infernal circle in the
center, and the elemental circle around that. These two spheres
*are* the material realm, and at the exact same time they *are* your
personal Sphere as a magician.
Starting in the South, place 7 planetary Talisman in the following
order clockwise, 51.429 degrees apart (give or take a hundredth of a
degree):
These are the seven spheres that surround the magician’s sphere.
These create the table of practice.
That’s the physical manifestation of the Key. The Lamp should be
placed outside this circle to the east. The Divine Darkness that
Dionysius the Areopogate is outside the light.
The altar is now complete.
This is what mine looks like:
As you can see, I’m using the four elemental kings of the Tarot as temporary placeholders for Michael, Uriel, Raphael, and Gabriel.
Good news, everyone, I got it! I mean, I got it. I really got it.
I had an epiphany last night and early this morning. I’ll try not to
wax all mystical and ecstatic on it, but it was beautiful. It made
sense of everything. Literally, everything. Birth, life,m death, struggles, woe, time, death, eternity, bliss, joy, it all wrapped up together around 4:30 a.m. in the following. The glyph is the key, ultimately.
I’m not getting into the boring details at the moment, I’m just going to summarize. I posted this to Ritual Magick, so if you’ve been there, you’ll be wasting your time unless you want to hear me talk more about it. You should be working on this shit. I’ll be coming down with a minor messiah complex for a few days, but I DID do some conjuring in the name of Messiah at daybreak, so hey, what can you expect?
Anyway, the result of my moment is the following layout for the altar:
In the center, you place four sealed vessels that have the spirits
of the Four Kings of the elements bound within, each in their
appropriate quadrant:
Make sure you seal these demons in using something that you can let
them out if you need them later in your existence, but you want them
sealed unless they are actively performing something you’ve told them
to do.
Around these four sealed vessels, you place the following talismen
in their appropriate quadrant:
These talismen should NOT use the seals of the angels as attributed
in other grimoires. These are the four elemental Kings, not the
Archangels of the planetary spheres that share the same names. To
get the appropriate seal, conjure each of the Elemental Kings
separately.
Beside each of the Elemental Kings’ talismen, place the appropriate
elemental weapon. The wand in the East, the Cup in the North, the
Knife in the West, and in the South your own personal seal.
You now have two circles on your altar, the infernal circle in the
center, and the elemental circle around that. These two spheres
*are* the material realm, and at the exact same time they *are* your
personal Sphere as a magician.
Starting in the South, place 7 planetary Talisman in the following
order clockwise, 51.429 degrees apart (give or take a hundredth of a
degree):
These are the seven spheres that surround the magician’s sphere.
These create the table of practice.
That’s the physical manifestation of the Key. The Lamp should be
placed outside this circle to the east. The Divine Darkness that
Dionysius the Areopogate is outside the light.
The altar is now complete.
This is what mine looks like:
As you can see, I’m using the four elemental kings of the Tarot as temporary placeholders for Michael, Uriel, Raphael, and Gabriel.
Good news, everyone, I got it! I mean, I got it. I really got it.
I had an epiphany last night and early this morning. I’ll try not to
wax all mystical and ecstatic on it, but it was beautiful. It made
sense of everything. Literally, everything. Birth, life,m death, struggles, woe, time, death, eternity, bliss, joy, it all wrapped up together around 4:30 a.m. in the following. The glyph is the key, ultimately.
I’m not getting into the boring details at the moment, I’m just going to summarize. I posted this to Ritual Magick, so if you’ve been there, you’ll be wasting your time unless you want to hear me talk more about it. You should be working on this shit. I’ll be coming down with a minor messiah complex for a few days, but I DID do some conjuring in the name of Messiah at daybreak, so hey, what can you expect?
Anyway, the result of my moment is the following layout for the altar:
In the center, you place four sealed vessels that have the spirits
of the Four Kings of the elements bound within, each in their
appropriate quadrant:
Make sure you seal these demons in using something that you can let
them out if you need them later in your existence, but you want them
sealed unless they are actively performing something you’ve told them
to do.
Around these four sealed vessels, you place the following talismen
in their appropriate quadrant:
These talismen should NOT use the seals of the angels as attributed
in other grimoires. These are the four elemental Kings, not the
Archangels of the planetary spheres that share the same names. To
get the appropriate seal, conjure each of the Elemental Kings
separately.
Beside each of the Elemental Kings’ talismen, place the appropriate
elemental weapon. The wand in the East, the Cup in the North, the
Knife in the West, and in the South your own personal seal.
You now have two circles on your altar, the infernal circle in the
center, and the elemental circle around that. These two spheres
*are* the material realm, and at the exact same time they *are* your
personal Sphere as a magician.
Starting in the South, place 7 planetary Talisman in the following
order clockwise, 51.429 degrees apart (give or take a hundredth of a
degree):
These are the seven spheres that surround the magician’s sphere.
These create the table of practice.
That’s the physical manifestation of the Key. The Lamp should be
placed outside this circle to the east. The Divine Darkness that
Dionysius the Areopogate is outside the light.
The altar is now complete.
This is what mine looks like:
As you can see, I’m using the four elemental kings of the Tarot as temporary placeholders for Michael, Uriel, Raphael, and Gabriel.
I’ve begun the somewhat painstaking process of writing out the events that lead to the creation of my spirit pot, the details of making it, and the results. Maybe it’ll turn into an actual published manuscript. Time will tell.
Greetings!
In the course of my rituals, I’ve created several talismen and lamens for use with the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals. Below you will find the Lamen of Kammael, and an image of my “Table of Practice” I use with the rit. I just put the crystal in the center and read the evocations while wearing the lamen.
As you can see, I wrote the names of God around the outer edges in the “Celestial Script” from Agrippa, but the text of the “grimoire” lists them in the Latin script. I just liked how it looked.
A magnificent phrase, eh? I’ve been through so many online debates and discussions about what the Great Work “means” that it isn’t even funny anymore. There are those who say it is “attaining unity with the Divine.” Others say it is becoming the best that you can. Others believe that every person has their own Great Work to do, that it represents the climactic culmination of all their efforts in life.
In tracking back the phrase in the esoteric community, I ended up back with the Alchemists. I’m sure it goes back further, but I’ll be damned if I can find it quickly enough to suit my purposes. If anyone has any input, let me know. 🙂
Briefly (there’s never enough space), the alchemists saw the Great Work as the accomplishment of a spiritual transformation. It was also seen as the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone, a stone with the ability to turn base materials into finer materials, like lead into gold. One couldn’t create the Philosopher’s Stone (in my opinion) without being spiritually “advanced.” The process of creating the Stone resulted in perfection of the person, and the perfection of the person resulted in the ability to create the Philosopher’s Stone. There’s a marriage here of physical and spiritual elements that I think cannot be stressed enough.
In the NP context, the goal of man is to return to the Source of all that is. The Philosophers saw this as a process of training the mind to think like a God without becoming falsely proud. Plotinus speaks of the process as “reclaiming” our race and value. I love that concept.
It isn’t becoming a God. (You’re already a manifestation of “the good,” “the One,”, the “Primum Mobile.) It’s a process of remembering where you came from. The reason we forget is detailed in the Enneads of Plotinus, and they’re an interesting read. Here’s an excerpt that pertains:
It must be noted, however, that the process of reclaiming your race and value did not result in anything spectacularly fabulous. No lightning from the fingertips, or flaming balls of fire. What it did result in was a change in the person you are. It changed the way you acted and interacted with everything else. You remember you’re here, and what your purpose in life is, and you’re suddenly happy. You see things as a whole complete process, and the painfulness of the moments of sadness are gone, and the moments of joy are magnified. It was a philosophical change, a change of Mind that brought satiety, the sense of being completely fulfilled. And if you weren’t feeling that way, you had forgotten, and needed to remember where you were from again.
So Plotinus said there’s two ways to remember your race and value. You honor the things of the higher realms, and dishonor the things of the lower realm. I’ve turned this into contemplative method of getting rid of the horrors of embarrassing moments that haunt you through your life. I broke it into steps at this link.
Asceticism blossomed under this philosophy. Lots of Gnostics took up the mantra of “all things material are evil and to be avoided at all costs.” This view influenced a lot of the early Christians too. Paul, for instance, expresses a lot of ascetic notions in his writings in the New Testament.
Iamblichus, meanwhile, took things down a different route. He was a “wee bit” more into the Hellenised Egyptian mythology. As a result of his initiations into the Egyptian mystery cults, he participated in the Theurgic rituals of his day. I’m intensely jealous. In the Theurgia, his reply to a letter written by Porphyry criticising Theurgy, he explains how working with the spirits of the higher realms results in getting you closer to God. He also talks about our role in this realm of matter.
Each level of emanation from the higher realms, each entity that inhabits the realms between the material and the Source of Everything has a purpose. We are also manifestations, and our greatest goal as magicians is to remember that we are emanations of God, and that we are here to do something specific. The Work is a process of learning what that purpose is, and how we’re supposed to accomplish that purpose while we’re here. We work with the spirits to learn, and to be raised higher and closer to God, but at the same time, we guide them in their ministrations here in the realm of matter, because that’s where we fit into the hierarchy of things. We’re the part of God that came to matter (Nature) out of love for matter to care for the matter and minister to it through the actions of the spirits on the higher levels. The trick is to remember what we’re here for, and then to learn to do it the right way.