Rufus Opus

Tag: RufusAstraCheck

Tag: RufusAstraCheck

  • Desperately Important

    Mike Rock’s recent blog post is a must-see.

    http://blog.mike-rock.com/2008/10/make-mine-freedom.html

  • The Invisible College

    I mentioned it the other day in passing. It’s not an original idea. It’s a rehash of the “Invisible Hand” that “really” controls world events. The fact is, we (you, me, and magicians in general) have a ton of spiritual resources that are designed to influence world events. While it is true that the Great Work is about rising through the spheres and getting to be more “like god,” or more fully in His image than we were to begin with, it’s also about returning to the state we were created in, back in the Garden of Eden.

    Basically, my belief is that there was one “positive commandment” given in the garden. One “Thou Shalt.” The other was a thou shalt not. The positive commandment is this:

    Tend the Garden

    In my interpretation, that means original Mankind was the steward of the world. With the adoption of the concepts of “Good and Evil”, we lost the ability to do this in the way we are supposed to do it. Through the accomplishment of the Great Work, we regain our standing with the source that emanated us. We return to the original partnership with God. Our realm of responsibility is all of Nature. That includes mankind, the spirits that influence manifestation, and everything we see, hear, feel, sense, touch, taste, defecate upon, and stub our toes on in the middle of the night.

    I envision a group of magi that are practicing the Work in their lives. Not only spiritually, but practically. It already exists. Going forward, I’m going to formally recognize it as “The Invisible College.” I started writing this a few days ago, and originally I was thinking of starting like an email list, or something like that for the practicing magicians in my circles of friends. Sort of a magical network for advice, somewhere to turn for quick references, and such-like other stuff that was private, and wouldn’t end up getting plastered across the internet.

    Then I realized we already do that, in IM’s and off-list emails. It would be pretty redundant. One more email group to wade through.

    So fuck that.

    However, here are some of the notes I’d made in my original post-idea. If you’re not in the “Invisible college” and want to be, here’s the general idea:

    The goal of the Invisible College is to get practical magicians to take over their sphere of influence. Take responsibility for it. Learn its needs, its wants, its desires. See what it is in our communities that are distracting people from performing the Great Work. See what’s going on with the local environment. See what’s being taught in local schools. Get to know the business circuits that light up the local economy. Look at how it integrates with the rest of the world, and take care of it.

    Now, to do this “right”, without your insane nephesh taking over and demanding everything be done for its own personal and private best interests, it is imperative that you get in touch with your personal representative of God. The Logos. You need to hang out with the Logos, learn from it, because it is the mouthpiece of God. You get your own little slice of Logos, the piece that is directly and perfectly suited to you in your current incarnation. We call it the HGA or Genius or Agatha Daimon. Get the equivalent of K&CHGA, and you have all you need to take over the world. Your world. Your part of the universe.

    And the boundaries of your sphere of influence are determined only by the boundaries of your sphere of influence. That means you have full authority over all you perceive. (But you still operate within the limits of being an incarnated human being. No fireballs; at least, I haven’t figured it out yet.)

    Start with what you know. Your family, your friends, your job. Once you’ve got the hang of it, move outward in concentric spheres. Local politics, local charities, local fraternities. Get to know who is in each, what their influence on your domain is. Conjure the egregores and find out what they’re up to, and whether the membership is doing what they’re supposed to do to get the eggregore’s plans fulfilled. Make sure the egregores’ plans are in harmony with your HGA’s plans for the world. If not, bind them, change them, or destroy them. It’s your job to get rid of termites eating the pillars of the temple.

  • Wow, a recession… no s*** Sherlock

    In a couple of places, I’ve seen people complaining a lot about the economy. Magicians even, who should know better.

    Gee, we’ve got bad financial times while Jupiter’s in Capricorn? Wow! Absolutely shocking.

    Gee, it’s affecting homes while Saturn’s in Virgo? Holy cow! That’s amazing!!

    Come on, people, get your heads out of your anal cavities. We’re magicians. The state of the world is not frightening to those in the know, it’s expected. We navigate behind the scenes. You can turn this generally bad time around for your benefit with a little planning and magic.

    I suggest talking to Tzaphqiel, or some other manifestation of the Intelligence of Saturn, since that’s where this is all coming from (Capricorn holding Jupiter hostage is ruled by Saturn, Saturn’s in Virgo Maleficently influencing things). Throw in Tzadqiel of Jupiter, and Michael of the Sun (he cushions the Saturn landing). Talk to Hanael and Hamaliel, Archangels of Capricorn and Virgo respectively as well.

    “They aren’t going to move where the planets are, what difference would it make?”

    The planets are still where they are, yes, but the planets are indicators of general influences at large. Like the label on the back of a plug you plug into the wall that tells you, “120VAC in, 9VDC out.” They tell you what the natural state of things are, but they don’t tell you how that will manifest in detail within your own life, within your own Sphere of Influence. You can run a clock radio off the plug, if it’s 9VDC, or you can run a flashlight, or whatever … as long as it’s got the right receptacle and runs on 9VDC.

    How the astrological influences manifest depends on a few million variables that are different for most people.Even people born in the same place at the same time will be raised by different parents, influenced by different teachers, or move to different parts of the world where their spheres of influence are shaped and molded uniquely. Twins are different, and it’s hard to get much closer than twins.

    Magicians get to do a lot more consciously than mundane folks with no interest in the occult. We get to say, ok, that’s a 9VDC output there, so I can run it through an oscillator to step it down to 4VDC to get it to light this here LED without burning it out. We get to do a lot that way.

    I don’t care if you’re a magician like Jason Miller with his roots and prajna, or St. Faust with his sigils and whatever, or even Fr. POS with his GD initiate ways and means. Heck, you can even be a Wastewater Consultant wth an epicurean garden and multiple OTO initations like the author of My Gal. It doesn’t matter, you’ve got techniques at your disposal to rewire the output and put it to use the way you want.

    Hop to it. No one’s going to sit around and do it for you.

    However, if you’re new at all this, here’s a talisman for you to print off and color. Silver-grey (the color of Lead, Dark Blues, and Dark Greens would be appropriate, per the Golden Dawn color scheme (colors are from the Assiah Scale becauise this is supposed to affecrt the manifest world).

    Write out how you want things to go for you in your life in the form of a prayer or petition on the back where Money and Home Life are concerned, and consecrate it by running it through incense, praying over it, anointing it with oils or holy water, and repeating the prayer you write on the back for seven days.

    Feel free to post your results in the comments area below (expect results to begin manifesting within 2 weeks, but sometimes earlier, rarely later).

  • More on Kinetic Meditation

    In a previous post, I talked about how important it is to draw the seals of the spirits, and about how as I carved the seals of the different spirits, I would feel their presence in the room or within my sphere of influence.

    I’ve been reading Enochian Vision Magick by Lon Milo DuQuette. I hadn’t read it before writing that post, and he couldn’t have read my post and written about the same idea, but nevertheless, he talks about the same thing in the book regarding the Enochian Angels. He talks about how as you write out the Sigilum Dei Aemyth, you are building it into your sphere. He doesn’t put it that way, but the same idea is reflected throughout the book. He talks about how making the tools of Enochian magic programs the magician, and prepares them to perform the magic. It’s like an initiation into the system.(1)

    But today I’d like to talk about the Magic Circle, specifically the names found in the one from the Lemegeton’s Goetia.(2) It’s possibly the most thorough protective circle I’ve ever seen. Understanding that circle is key to being able to work with the spirits of the Goetia. It builds around the magician a miniature representation of all the forces of all the spheres between here and the throne of God. It places the magician right smack dab in the center of the manifest and unmanifest universe. It represents the path of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes. It is key, in my opinion, to all the other forms of grimoire magic that are available.

    The circle shown to the right is from Crowley-Mathers’ The Goetia. I’ve made it as large as possible, but it’s still hard to make out the details. Plus it’s in Hebrew.

    The names and planetary symbols in the outermost circle are taken from Agrippa’s Scale of the Number Ten. Joe Peterson points this out in his notes on the Magic Circle. Prior to actually making a life-sized circle, I never bothered trying to read this information. I figured I had either read it before in Kraig’s Modern Magic, or it wasn’t that important. I assumed an LBRP would be fine for years. I had no idea what I was doing.

    When I finally made the circle, I began to understand why this thing is so important. As I painstakingly painted each name or office, I went further into a sort of trance-like state. Lon talks about how he gets into a trance state by tapping the letters of the Table of Practice in the Enochian book while chanting the names of the letters aloud. I understand; this is a powerful technique. I wasn’t even chanting the names or offices, I would simply say them aloud to myself while I was painting them so I wouldn’t forget them and have to go back to my notes. (They were all the way across the floor on the other side of the garage, after all.)

    By the time I was finished, I was in a zone unlike any other I had been in before. I ended up screwing up some of the names, and had to re-prime the circle and start over again, and I haven’t finished it yet, but that’s beside the point. The point is, it’s a form of kinetic meditation.

    So let’s go over the names in the circle. As noted by Joe, the names and offices of the circle are taken from Agrippa’s Scale of the Number Ten. The names included are:

    • The Ten Names of God
    • The Ten Names of the Sephiroth
    • The Ten Orders of the Blessed According to the Traditions of Men
    • The Ten Angels Ruling
    • The Ten Spheres of the World

    Only nine of each are listed; the Lemegeton specifies that they begin at Eheyeh and end at Lavanah.

    I don’t use the Tree of Life as my primary working model. I prefer the Ptolemaic geocentric model of concentric spheres centered on the earth. It doesn’t really matter though, because I still have ten spheres to work with that match up to the ten Sephiroth pretty well. When I wrote out my circle, I kept the ten names of God, but eliminated the names of the sephiroth. I wrote the Names of God in Celestial Script, my favorite version of the Hebrew Alephbet.

    The names of the Ten Orders of the Blessed (this refers to the Ranks of the angels in each sphere) that are used in the Crowley-Mathers Goetia are the Hebrew names. I used the names from Dionysius. (These names appear in the same row of the table on Agrippa’s Scale of the Number Ten.) Dionysius helped me understand a lot about the celestial spheres, and how to work with them as a Christian. I believe they are translations of the Hebrew names of angelic ranks or orders, but I don’t know for sure. If you look through the descriptions of the spirits of the Goetia though, you’ll find they are sometimes referred to as being of the order of Powers, or Thrones, for example. These are Dionysius’ terms, not the Hebrew terms. It sort of seems to be more appropriate to stick with the Dionysian terminology, at least to me.

    For the Ten Angels Ruling, I left Metatron and Iophiel as the angelic rulers of the spheres of the Primum Mobile and Fixed Stars, respectively. I haven’t worked with either before, and have mostly kept to thespheres of the planets in my Work. The rest of the angel names were fine, except for Michael and Raphael. I still use the Trithemian attributions, with Michael in the Sun, and Raphael in Mercury.

    Between each sphere, you place a cross, represented here with a + sign. When I was finished, I should have had:

    + AHYH Seraphim Metatron Sphere of the Primum Mobile + YHVH Cherubim Jophiel Sphere of the Fixed Stars + YHVH ALHYM Thrones Tzaphqiel [Planetary Symbol of Saturn] + AL Dominations Tzadqiel [Planetary Symbol of Jupiter] + ALHYM GYBR Powers Kammael [Planetary Symbol of Mars] + ALVH Virtues Michael [Planetary Symbol of the Sun] + YHVH TzBAVTh  Principalities Haniel [Planetary Symbol of Venus] + ALHYM TzBAVTh Archangels Raphael [Planetary Symbol of Mercury] + ShDY Angels Gabriel [Planetary Symbol of the Moon +

    I don’t remember exactly what I had messed up now. I think I had put the Principalities on twice and skipped the Virtues, or something like that. I had also run out of room, and my font size was rapidly shrinking. While it would have remained usable, I wanted it to look better than that, so I let it dry and then had the kids paint it white again.

    Now, based on this exercise and the resulting state of mind (even typing it now, I’ve entered into a different perspective than I normally operate from), I’ve come up with the following exercise. It’s fairly simple, and it results in a harmonizing effect within your sphere of influence.

    You’ll need a compass and a blank piece of paper to do this all yourself. I’ll throw together an image you can print too.

    You want to draw 11 concentric circles, each a half-inch wider than the previous.

    You’ll be writing out the names of God, the Orders of Angelic hosts, the Rulers of the Angelic hosts, and the symbol of the sphere in each circle, once from the center moving outward, and again moving downward.

    In addition, as you write out the names of the Angelic Rulers, for a little added umph, you can include the sigils of each angel of the Planetary Spheres.

    In the next image, I’ve got the names of God, the Orders of Angels, the sigils of the Planetary Angels where available from the Magical Calendar (reproduced in PowerPoint to avoid copyright issues), the Angels’ names, and the Planetary symbols for each sphere.

    In the center sphere, write out your name or Magical Motto. As you write it out, vibrate the name in a low chanting voice. In the circle above, write out the God Name for the Sphere of the Moon, vibrating the name as you write it and picturing the letters in your mind’s eye at the same time. Write out the Order of Angelic host next, and again, vibrate the name. It feels a little silly vibrating “Angels,” or at least it does to me. If you prefer the Hebrew names of the orders, they’re in Agrippa’s Second Book of Occult Philosophy, Chapter 13. Next draw the seal of the Angel of the Sphere and his (her, its) name, again vibrating the name as you do. Finally draw in the symbol of the planet, or Sphere of the Zodiac/Prime Mover while vibrating “The sphere of [insert appropriate planet/sphere here].”

    Do this going up from your name through each Sphere. When you get to the top, go back down, this time drawing a cross at the front of each list of the sphere’s attributes as you vibrate all the names again. When you get back to the center, you should be feeling something pretty groovy.

    There are a host of other ways to do this. This particular exercise harmonizes your sphere, and prepares you to work with the grimoires of the Lemegeton in general, and specifically the Goetia. I’m interested in how others experience this, if anyone tries it. Feel free to leave comments about your experiences below, or email them to me directly if you want them kept private.

    (1) I think we’re working within the same current on this kind of thing, he and I. I’m sure he’s much further along than I am, as well he should be after practicing as long as he has. While it’s neat to find the ideas I’m having and the foundation of my own magical practices reflected in his work, you know, like a confirmation that I’m doing something right, it’s also frustrating. Eventually I’d like to be a published occult author, but the way things are going, it’ll look like I’m parroting his work. I’m totally not. I swear I didn’t read about this before, it’s based on my experiences. So is his stuff. I guess that magicians that do similar work have similar results, reach similar conclusions about how the seals and circles work within the magician. Shocking, I know.

    (2) I’d like to take a minute to thank Joe Peterson for putting all these old manuscripts on his site. They have helped me incredibly over the past two years, and whatever blessing I have to give I give to him in thanks.

  • Haniel: Archangel of Venus

    Last Friday, I performed a conjuration of Haniel.

    It went fairly well, and I went through the usual process; I asked if it liked the Spirit Box thing I made, and it said it did. I asked if there was anything I needed to be aware of within my own Sphere of Venus that needed to be addressed, and it pointed out a couple of things. I asked a few specific favors for myself and my friends, and it indicated it would be able to address them. As usual, I asked for any money that it could send my way through its sphere of influence, and it agreed to. I asked to be taken on a tour of the sphere of Venus in a vision, and it complied.

    When I asked if there was anything in my own Sphere of influence related to Venus that I needed to address, I saw in the crystal a bunch of little points of light appear. It was like watching a night sky; first you know there are stars there, and you can see the brightest, but then you become aware of even more stars that were there the whole time, and as I watched, they twinkled. I knew as they appeared that each point of light represented a friend of mine, and as I went to each point of light in the crystal, I asked for favors for friends. Healing of a wounded heart here and there, creativity and passion for their art there, and purity and cleansing in other places.

    When I asked for money, it was sort of an afterthought, towards the end of the session. The next day my spouse sold a wedding dress (we have managed to accumulate three altogether over the years) for $100. I thought that was pretty neat.

    When I asked for a tour of the Venusian realm, I was taken to a park in my imagination. The park is a local Christian gathering place. The lad that owned the farm left it to a bunch of caretakers with the stipulation that the grounds be used for Christian activities. There’s a little pond they keep stocked with fish, there’s a Christian private school on the premises, and in the summer they have a huge Christian day camp that meets there. Weather permitting, every Friday night they show family-friendly movies on a big screen they set up by the pond, and they have a huge pool. They also have acres of corn fields and these beautiful rolling hills. It’s a nice spot. Not what I’d think of as Venusian, of course.

    But Haniel appeared beside me, and showed me around. I usually see the archangels as androgynous faces in the crystal. This was different. She was definitely a she, and she showed me around the area. As she did, I saw life abundant. I saw nature in her beauty. Everything was charged and pulsating, flowing through the plants and animals and all the elements like green lightning. Everything was charged, crisp and clear. She smiled at me, and asked if I understood. In that moment, I did.

  • Haniel: Archangel of Venus

    Last Friday, I performed a conjuration of Haniel.

    It went fairly well, and I went through the usual process; I asked if it liked the Spirit Box thing I made, and it said it did. I asked if there was anything I needed to be aware of within my own Sphere of Venus that needed to be addressed, and it pointed out a couple of things. I asked a few specific favors for myself and my friends, and it indicated it would be able to address them. As usual, I asked for any money that it could send my way through its sphere of influence, and it agreed to. I asked to be taken on a tour of the sphere of Venus in a vision, and it complied.

    When I asked if there was anything in my own Sphere of influence related to Venus that I needed to address, I saw in the crystal a bunch of little points of light appear. It was like watching a night sky; first you know there are stars there, and you can see the brightest, but then you become aware of even more stars that were there the whole time, and as I watched, they twinkled. I knew as they appeared that each point of light represented a friend of mine, and as I went to each point of light in the crystal, I asked for favors for friends. Healing of a wounded heart here and there, creativity and passion for their art there, and purity and cleansing in other places.

    When I asked for money, it was sort of an afterthought, towards the end of the session. The next day my spouse sold a wedding dress (we have managed to accumulate three altogether over the years) for $100. I thought that was pretty neat.

    When I asked for a tour of the Venusian realm, I was taken to a park in my imagination. The park is a local Christian gathering place. The lad that owned the farm left it to a bunch of caretakers with the stipulation that the grounds be used for Christian activities. There’s a little pond they keep stocked with fish, there’s a Christian private school on the premises, and in the summer they have a huge Christian day camp that meets there. Weather permitting, every Friday night they show family-friendly movies on a big screen they set up by the pond, and they have a huge pool. They also have acres of corn fields and these beautiful rolling hills. It’s a nice spot. Not what I’d think of as Venusian, of course.

    But Haniel appeared beside me, and showed me around. I usually see the archangels as androgynous faces in the crystal. This was different. She was definitely a she, and she showed me around the area. As she did, I saw life abundant. I saw nature in her beauty. Everything was charged and pulsating, flowing through the plants and animals and all the elements like green lightning. Everything was charged, crisp and clear. She smiled at me, and asked if I understood. In that moment, I did.

  • Failures and Successes

    Well, yesterday I learned that I can’t always do things perfectly the first time I try them. I know, I should know by now, but still, I tend to think everything I do should work the first time, just because I’m me. Fr. POS assures me that’s too much to ask.

    Specifically, I tried to make a Pentagonal Figure of Solomon. I carved a beautiful one out of beeswax, no easy task I assure you. I measured the angles of the star, had each at a nearly-perfect 72 degrees, had all the names in and the symbols, and the Tetragrammaton… It was nice, it was really really nice.

    I poured plaster over it to make a mold for the silver. That sort of worked, well enough, but there were some bubbles because I poured it too thick too fast, and just did it … wrong. But when the plaster had dried, I put it in the oven for a couple of hours upside down over a pie pan to catch the wax, which melted out. The mold was close enough to let me get a decent seal and then have a little clean up to do with the dremel tool.

    I melted the silver, and poured it into the mold. I don’t have a smelter, so I used a MAP gas torch to melt it. It wasn’t a good, even melt, and I ended up oxidizing a lot of the silver (it turns to powder). Then when I tried to pour it into the mold, it solidified on the way, so I got lumps of silver drops in the mold. It sucked royally.The places where the silver actually landed on the mold didn’t even get a decent impression of the symbols. It really sucked.

    Lessons learned: I need more heat, a crucible, and a centrifuge. I need to do the stupid lost-wax thing the right way. And I need to not think I can do everything perfect the first time.

    Today, things went much better. I made a talisman for Haniel out of copper. In the hour of Venus, on the Day of Venus, I cut a copper tube, opened it up, and hit it with the MAP torch until it had begun to melt. I like to melt it a bit so that it’s actually solidifying in the appropriate planetary hour, and freezing the “energies” of the moment into the metals.

    I put a patina on it using the MAP torch and a quenching process, and then sanded the back of it using a dremel tool flap-sander bit. that was so it would rest on the electrodes of my Conjure Box and make a solid circuit.

    I engraved it with the Venus seal from the Magical Calendar (I figure Haniel and Anael are different spellings from different sources, but the same general spirit). I also wrote “his” name in Celestial Script on the seal. I conjured him using the Box and had a good experience. I’ll post about that next.

  • Mediocribus Magis

    From the Arbatel of Magick, Third Septenary, Seventeenth Aphorism:

    Mediocribus Magis, mittunt de suis Spiritibus, qui in determinatis tantûm quibusdam negotiis illis obtemperent.

    “To the Mediocre Magicians, they send their spirits to obey them in carrying out specific tasks.” (My translation.)

    Mediocribus can mean ordinary, normal, or average. I like “Mediocre,” because it demonstrates something about magic that I tend to forget. For all the fun I have conjuring spirits and having them get me stuff and influence my world, that’s just normal. For Magicians. It’s to be expected.

  • Failures and Successes

    Well, yesterday I learned that I can’t always do things perfectly the first time I try them. I know, I should know by now, but still, I tend to think everything I do should work the first time, just because I’m me. Fr. POS assures me that’s too much to ask.

    Specifically, I tried to make a Pentagonal Figure of Solomon. I carved a beautiful one out of beeswax, no easy task I assure you. I measured the angles of the star, had each at a nearly-perfect 72 degrees, had all the names in and the symbols, and the Tetragrammaton… It was nice, it was really really nice.

    I poured plaster over it to make a mold for the silver. That sort of worked, well enough, but there were some bubbles because I poured it too thick too fast, and just did it … wrong. But when the plaster had dried, I put it in the oven for a couple of hours upside down over a pie pan to catch the wax, which melted out. The mold was close enough to let me get a decent seal and then have a little clean up to do with the dremel tool.

    I melted the silver, and poured it into the mold. I don’t have a smelter, so I used a MAP gas torch to melt it. It wasn’t a good, even melt, and I ended up oxidizing a lot of the silver (it turns to powder). Then when I tried to pour it into the mold, it solidified on the way, so I got lumps of silver drops in the mold. It sucked royally.The places where the silver actually landed on the mold didn’t even get a decent impression of the symbols. It really sucked.

    Lessons learned: I need more heat, a crucible, and a centrifuge. I need to do the stupid lost-wax thing the right way. And I need to not think I can do everything perfect the first time.

    Today, things went much better. I made a talisman for Haniel out of copper. In the hour of Venus, on the Day of Venus, I cut a copper tube, opened it up, and hit it with the MAP torch until it had begun to melt. I like to melt it a bit so that it’s actually solidifying in the appropriate planetary hour, and freezing the “energies” of the moment into the metals.

    I put a patina on it using the MAP torch and a quenching process, and then sanded the back of it using a dremel tool flap-sander bit. that was so it would rest on the electrodes of my Conjure Box and make a solid circuit.

    I engraved it with the Venus seal from the Magical Calendar (I figure Haniel and Anael are different spellings from different sources, but the same general spirit). I also wrote “his” name in Celestial Script on the seal. I conjured him using the Box and had a good experience. I’ll post about that next.

  • A Correction

    In the Bune Radio post, I attributed the inspirational idea to Fr. POS. In reality, it wasn’t him at all, it was his Gal. I’ll go back and edit it, but I figured a public apology and correction was in order. She doesn’t get nearly enough credit for her Work.