In keeping with the theme from yesterday, I’d like to talk about one of the things I muse about. Why my magic is more successful than other people’s.

I know, it sounds damned conceited. It’s not my fault. Everything I’ve tried to do with magic has had some kind of result. I read on message boards that people have done magic and had “no result,” and either I’m special, or they’re doing something differently. (“Differently” is a nice way for me to say they’re doing it wrong, but I’m really trying to be nice because I pissed people off with the Fuck George Carlin post. Those sensitive little [expletives deleted] mean a lot to me.)

Please note, I’m NOT referencing Jason’s blog or experiences any more in this post. He just got this thought train aimed in the direction it’s going in. I’m not saying my magic is better than Jason’s, and I want to make sure that’s not how this comes across. He’s got a lot more experience and successes under his belt than I do, and I’ve got nothing but respect for him.

Yesterday I touched on one aspect of why I don’t consider a ritual complete until I’ve succeeded, and how that makes for fewer “failures,” per se, but today I’d like to point out something else that can make some folks uncomfortable. But don’t freak out.

One of the things that makes my magic so effective, in my own most humble opinion, is that I am a Christian magician. Most of the Magic I do is based on some form of the Christian Neoplatonic systems that Agrippa recorded in his Three Books of Occult Philosophy. That makes it pretty easy. I also have several assurances from God, the ultimate creator of the physical and spiritual spheres, that I don’t have to worry about making my magic work; he does it for me.

And the thing is, he does it for everyone, every human being made in his image, if that person wants him to. Just get to now God a bit, spend time in his presence. Feel him, know that you are his child, an emanation from him in his own image, created to spend eternity with. Remember your race and your value to God. It’s worth the time spent.

And don’t worry about Christianity or Judaism, or Zen states, just pour your heart out into meeting your Source, your Creator, the Prime Mover, the All-Seeing eye, whatever. Get to know him, and let him guide you. He’ll guide you to your HGA, he’ll guide you to the things you have to do before you die. He’s totally cool to hang out with. He never eats all the Cheetos.

And he won’t let any word fall to the ground without it bearing much fruit. He tells the seeds to bloom, sort of, indirectly, and he makes sure that your words will bear much fruit too.

Oh yeah, He expects you to think before you say stupid shit.

I never cease to be amazed at how many people will bull-headedly argue that their interpretation of some aspect of magick is “right”, quoting from Abramelin, Agrippa, and Robert Fludd as if that made them correct. I’m leaning towards the belief that there’s pretty much no factoid about ceremonial magick that should ever be debated in terms of “Right” and “Wrong”.

Raphael’s location on the Tree of Life is a perfect example.

I got really interested in where Raphael belonged by way of the LBRP. I was reading through a Thelema-based book, and saw that Crowley had once stated that the LBRP puts the mage at the crossroads of Samekh and Pe on the Tree. I thought, great! So I looked at the Tree to see just where exactly that was, since I haven’t memorized the paths at all.

Samekh lies between Yesod and Tiphareth, and Pe lies between Netzach and Hod. To understand it better, I wanted to see which Archangels were in the sephiroth. Raphael was attributed to Tiphareth, so you’re facing Tiphareth when you do the LBRP. Gabriel is in Yesod, so Yesod lies behind you. No problem. Michael is in Hod, and he’s in the south, so that’s over on the right. I got a little confused until I figured out you’re standing head-inwards into the Kircher diagram of the Tree of Life. It was still (sorta) making sense.

Then I get to Netzach. That’s all that’s left, but there’s nothing about Uriel being the Archangel of Netzach. Ok, sez I, Uriel isn’t the Archangel of Netzach, it seems to be some guy named Haniel, or Anael in some people’s texts. What gives? Why don’t we call Haniel instead of Uriel, if Crowley’s right?

My first response was that Crowley must be wrong, no biggy. But if the LBRP isn’t based on the tree of Life, where does it come from? So I researched it until I found that it comes from the Bedtime Sh’ma, a little prayer that Jewish people said before they went to bed at night. The archangels are the four archangels that surround the Throne of God. That’s why it’s Uriel, has nothing to do with the Sephiroth at all.

I was a little disappointed to find out that this banishing ritual I’d been using for years, that had worked wonders at clearing out sacred space, foiling clumsy magickal attacks from the people I pissed off in my bi-polar approach to existence, and banishing a myriad of entities was nothing more than “Now I lay me down to sleep” with some pentagrams thrown in.

But I’d stumbled across something ELSE in my efforts. I ended up going over the attributions of angels to sephiroth going from 777, Bill Heidrick’s Magical Correspondences, on back to Agrippa’s 3 Books of Occult Philosophy and the writings of Robert Fludd, a contemporary of Agrippa. Bill Heidrick pointed out that the attribution of Raphael and Michael flip according to the source, and I figured if I went back far enough, I’d find a definitive answer.

But no one had an authoritative basis for their claim. It was all hearsay. Agrippa recorded in one set of books what was available to ceremonialists of his time, but it was based on hearsay more than practice, and he says at some point, if you find I’m wrong, by all means, go with what you find.

Eventually, I figured I’d just evoke Raphael and ask him. I started with the LBRP, then “drew” his name in Hebrew letters the way you “draw” the pentagrams in the LBRP, and waited for him to show up.

When I told someone how I was doing the ritual, they said I was tainting my results by doing the LBRP first, and I should just do a straight evocation, with no prejudice. For three or four nights I did this, and got really wonderful visions from Raphael explaining where he belongs.

(Hod, by the way. He directs the flow of the energies of Mercury into Malkuth through Yesod.)

So what I learned from all this, besides where Raphael belongs, is that it doesn’t matter who said what, or what logical paths people have put together to get to the conclusion that Entity X “IS” in Sephiroth Y. You can’t trust anything in print to be the bottom line truth, and anything you find out on your own is subject to being only as much of the truth as you really need to know at the moment.