Rufus Opus

Tag: RufusAstraCheck

Tag: RufusAstraCheck

  • Tonight’s Work

    First, before I forget, the Geomantic Tumblers have been right on so far. They said my daughter would get a B, and she got a B+ on that math test.

    Ok, back to tonight’s Work. I just spent a long time making something really … primitive. But I likes it.

    In the hour of Mercury, on the day of Mercury, I conjured Raphael, Archangel of Mercury to help me with this work. I was trying to make a simple round talisman to the Archangel to use with my Box, but then I got an inspiration. I looked over and saw the huge plaster brick I’d made for the Pentagonal Seal of Solomon, the project that had failed miserably, and thought about how easy it would be to carve using a grinding bit on my dremel tool.

    So I carved out a rough figure of the symbol of Mercury, and melted up some pewter, some silver, and a dash of more tin. The mixture of metals, per Aaron Leitch, makes it a mercurial metal when it solidifies. The pewter came from my daughter, who had broken a cheaply soldered fairy’s wings right off. I tried to fix it, but I failed, and she said I could have it. I told her what I wanted to do with it, and she said “Cool.” That works for me. I just realized it was an Arial spirit that it had been molded into, and Mercury is associated with the element of Air. “Cool.”

    I melted the metals, and poured them into the rough mold, cleaned up the edges as best as I could, and engraved it with the name Raphael, RPAL in Celestial Script, the Archangel seal of Mercury from the Magical Calendar, and the Sigil of the Planet Mercury, also from the Magical Calendar. Some parts are prettier than others.

    Now, I’ve said before that “ugly works.” It’s a good thing. This isn’t fine art, by any means. It shows two things about me. One, I’m an amateur metallurgist. Two, I don’t let that stop me; my passion for communing with the spirits far outweighs any worries I have about how I look while doing so. It’s the communion that counts.

    Now I wanted to test it out on my Box, but it’s now the hour of the Moon. No time, no time. It took far longer than anticipated. The next Mercury hour isn’t until 4:08 AM my time, and man, that’s frickin’ early. Or late. I don’t think I’ll be using it this week, unless … Well, I’ll check Trithemius and see what he says.

  • Advice to Aspiring Magicians

    When asked for advice from an aspiring artist, H. R. Giger’s agent wrote an excellent reply. It can be found under the last entry, scroll down towards the bottom.

    Aspirants to the Great Work would do well to interpret this and apply it to their own lives. Myself especially. 🙂

    http://www.hrgiger.com/faq.htm

  • Dealing with the Guf – Reclaiming Moments of Horror

    The Guf is the lowest form of soul in some kabbalistic cosmologies. It consists of the actual body we wrap ourselves in. The word “guf” is the source of the English word “goofy,” so you can get an idea of how this soul is viewed in the cosmology of things.

    I was talking to a friend today about the horrifyingly embarrassing moments that crop up in my mind as I’m falling asleep, eliciting an audible groan or whimper. I was relieved to know that I’m not the only one that experiences these things, but that doesn’t really help get rid of the horror that still comes when I remember these kinds of events.

    The best example I have is when I went down to the end of a shooting range to hang a paper target, and the drill sergeant guy yelled “CEASE FIRE!!!!” at the top of his considerable lungs to get everyone else (who were still shooting) to take a break so I didn’t get killed. Everyone looked over at me, and I’m standing there like an idiot where about thirty people were shooting. Not a happy moment.

    What gets me is that this happened almost a decade ago, and to this day, I groan out loud remembering it. I’ve tried to “reclaim” that part of my brain to get rid of this response. Kraig has a retroactive magick section (I think) in his Modern Magick book, and I tried that. I tried going back and reliving the moment in my mind, trying to replace it with a different memory. I’ve tried rationalizing that I’d never been to a shooting range before, I was at the far end of the shooting range, and everyone else was at the other side, where I had assumed they wouldn’t shoot me… but nothing’s worked. It’s always in that light hypnogoguic state between waking and sleeping that I remember standing there in the crisp autumn wind with a crowd made up of fathers and sons and war vets looking at me like I was Forrest, Forrest Gump.

    My friend suggested that we can’t forget this kind of thing for a reason, that it serves some purpose. I can see how it can aid survival to never forget how stupid it is to steal a dinosaur’s egg while you think the thing is sleeping, but this was just embarrassing. Socially embarrassing. Sure, we’re pack animals, and it’s required to not do something stupid in public to not get ostracized… but that’s stretching it a bit.

    So on a seemingly unrelated tangent, I was reading through Plotinus’ Fifth Ennead. Not too far in, it says:

    “A double discipline must be applied if human beings in this pass are to be reclaimed, and brought back to their origins, lifted once more towards the Supreme and One and First.”

    “Reclaimed” jumped out at me. I had literally just been talking about reclaiming, so looking for an answer to this question, I read on…

    “There is the method, which we amply exhibit elsewhere, declaring the dishonour of the objects which the Soul holds here in honour; the second teaches or recalls to the soul its race and worth; this latter is the leading truth, and, clearly brought out, is the evidence of the other.”

    So there are two disciplines required to accomplish the returning to the Source, God, which sums up Plotinus’ idea of what I think of as the Great Work. The discipline of stating the dishonour of things the Soul holds dear here, and the remembrance of the race and worth of the Soul.

    Respect of others is what my Guf-Soul holds dear, so dear that an embarrassing moment haunts me for years, permanently ingrained in my neural paths. Dishonouring the “need for respect from others,” (hmmm, pride, perhaps?) isn’t too difficult. I recognize that the opinions of those rednecks at that moment aren’t really that important.

    Teaching the Soul its race and worth though… How does this apply in the context of a mortifying memory? The Soul in the Guf at that moment was of God and was God. The value of that Soul is inestimable. How can teaching the Soul its race and value make the horror of that moment go away?

    I don’t have an answer, but I do know that I was particularly Guf-ey that day. I’ll be holding these two things together in my mind as I remember what happened, and see what comes of it. Educating the Guf as to its value and source may indeed be the key to getting rid of that disgusting horror.

  • Dealing with the Guf – Reclaiming Moments of Horror

    The Guf is the lowest form of soul in some kabbalistic cosmologies. It consists of the actual body we wrap ourselves in. The word “guf” is the source of the English word “goofy,” so you can get an idea of how this soul is viewed in the cosmology of things.

    I was talking to a friend today about the horrifyingly embarrassing moments that crop up in my mind as I’m falling asleep, eliciting an audible groan or whimper. I was relieved to know that I’m not the only one that experiences these things, but that doesn’t really help get rid of the horror that still comes when I remember these kinds of events.

    The best example I have is when I went down to the end of a shooting range to hang a paper target, and the drill sergeant guy yelled “CEASE FIRE!!!!” at the top of his considerable lungs to get everyone else (who were still shooting) to take a break so I didn’t get killed. Everyone looked over at me, and I’m standing there like an idiot where about thirty people were shooting. Not a happy moment.

    What gets me is that this happened almost a decade ago, and to this day, I groan out loud remembering it. I’ve tried to “reclaim” that part of my brain to get rid of this response. Kraig has a retroactive magick section (I think) in his Modern Magick book, and I tried that. I tried going back and reliving the moment in my mind, trying to replace it with a different memory. I’ve tried rationalizing that I’d never been to a shooting range before, I was at the far end of the shooting range, and everyone else was at the other side, where I had assumed they wouldn’t shoot me… but nothing’s worked. It’s always in that light hypnogoguic state between waking and sleeping that I remember standing there in the crisp autumn wind with a crowd made up of fathers and sons and war vets looking at me like I was Forrest, Forrest Gump.

    My friend suggested that we can’t forget this kind of thing for a reason, that it serves some purpose. I can see how it can aid survival to never forget how stupid it is to steal a dinosaur’s egg while you think the thing is sleeping, but this was just embarrassing. Socially embarrassing. Sure, we’re pack animals, and it’s required to not do something stupid in public to not get ostracized… but that’s stretching it a bit.

    So on a seemingly unrelated tangent, I was reading through Plotinus’ Fifth Ennead. Not too far in, it says:

    “A double discipline must be applied if human beings in this pass are to be reclaimed, and brought back to their origins, lifted once more towards the Supreme and One and First.”

    “Reclaimed” jumped out at me. I had literally just been talking about reclaiming, so looking for an answer to this question, I read on…

    “There is the method, which we amply exhibit elsewhere, declaring the dishonour of the objects which the Soul holds here in honour; the second teaches or recalls to the soul its race and worth; this latter is the leading truth, and, clearly brought out, is the evidence of the other.”

    So there are two disciplines required to accomplish the returning to the Source, God, which sums up Plotinus’ idea of what I think of as the Great Work. The discipline of stating the dishonour of things the Soul holds dear here, and the remembrance of the race and worth of the Soul.

    Respect of others is what my Guf-Soul holds dear, so dear that an embarrassing moment haunts me for years, permanently ingrained in my neural paths. Dishonouring the “need for respect from others,” (hmmm, pride, perhaps?) isn’t too difficult. I recognize that the opinions of those rednecks at that moment aren’t really that important.

    Teaching the Soul its race and worth though… How does this apply in the context of a mortifying memory? The Soul in the Guf at that moment was of God and was God. The value of that Soul is inestimable. How can teaching the Soul its race and value make the horror of that moment go away?

    I don’t have an answer, but I do know that I was particularly Guf-ey that day. I’ll be holding these two things together in my mind as I remember what happened, and see what comes of it. Educating the Guf as to its value and source may indeed be the key to getting rid of that disgusting horror.

  • Dealing with the Guf – Reclaiming Moments of Horror

    The Guf is the lowest form of soul in some kabbalistic cosmologies. It consists of the actual body we wrap ourselves in. The word “guf” is the source of the English word “goofy,” so you can get an idea of how this soul is viewed in the cosmology of things.

    I was talking to a friend today about the horrifyingly embarrassing moments that crop up in my mind as I’m falling asleep, eliciting an audible groan or whimper. I was relieved to know that I’m not the only one that experiences these things, but that doesn’t really help get rid of the horror that still comes when I remember these kinds of events.

    The best example I have is when I went down to the end of a shooting range to hang a paper target, and the drill sergeant guy yelled “CEASE FIRE!!!!” at the top of his considerable lungs to get everyone else (who were still shooting) to take a break so I didn’t get killed. Everyone looked over at me, and I’m standing there like an idiot where about thirty people were shooting. Not a happy moment.

    What gets me is that this happened almost a decade ago, and to this day, I groan out loud remembering it. I’ve tried to “reclaim” that part of my brain to get rid of this response. Kraig has a retroactive magick section (I think) in his Modern Magick book, and I tried that. I tried going back and reliving the moment in my mind, trying to replace it with a different memory. I’ve tried rationalizing that I’d never been to a shooting range before, I was at the far end of the shooting range, and everyone else was at the other side, where I had assumed they wouldn’t shoot me… but nothing’s worked. It’s always in that light hypnogoguic state between waking and sleeping that I remember standing there in the crisp autumn wind with a crowd made up of fathers and sons and war vets looking at me like I was Forrest, Forrest Gump.

    My friend suggested that we can’t forget this kind of thing for a reason, that it serves some purpose. I can see how it can aid survival to never forget how stupid it is to steal a dinosaur’s egg while you think the thing is sleeping, but this was just embarrassing. Socially embarrassing. Sure, we’re pack animals, and it’s required to not do something stupid in public to not get ostracized… but that’s stretching it a bit.

    So on a seemingly unrelated tangent, I was reading through Plotinus’ Fifth Ennead. Not too far in, it says:

    “A double discipline must be applied if human beings in this pass are to be reclaimed, and brought back to their origins, lifted once more towards the Supreme and One and First.”

    “Reclaimed” jumped out at me. I had literally just been talking about reclaiming, so looking for an answer to this question, I read on…

    “There is the method, which we amply exhibit elsewhere, declaring the dishonour of the objects which the Soul holds here in honour; the second teaches or recalls to the soul its race and worth; this latter is the leading truth, and, clearly brought out, is the evidence of the other.”

    So there are two disciplines required to accomplish the returning to the Source, God, which sums up Plotinus’ idea of what I think of as the Great Work. The discipline of stating the dishonour of things the Soul holds dear here, and the remembrance of the race and worth of the Soul.

    Respect of others is what my Guf-Soul holds dear, so dear that an embarrassing moment haunts me for years, permanently ingrained in my neural paths. Dishonouring the “need for respect from others,” (hmmm, pride, perhaps?) isn’t too difficult. I recognize that the opinions of those rednecks at that moment aren’t really that important.

    Teaching the Soul its race and worth though… How does this apply in the context of a mortifying memory? The Soul in the Guf at that moment was of God and was God. The value of that Soul is inestimable. How can teaching the Soul its race and value make the horror of that moment go away?

    I don’t have an answer, but I do know that I was particularly Guf-ey that day. I’ll be holding these two things together in my mind as I remember what happened, and see what comes of it. Educating the Guf as to its value and source may indeed be the key to getting rid of that disgusting horror.

  • Dealing with the Guf – Reclaiming Moments of Horror

    The Guf is the lowest form of soul in some kabbalistic cosmologies. It consists of the actual body we wrap ourselves in. The word “guf” is the source of the English word “goofy,” so you can get an idea of how this soul is viewed in the cosmology of things.

    I was talking to a friend today about the horrifyingly embarrassing moments that crop up in my mind as I’m falling asleep, eliciting an audible groan or whimper. I was relieved to know that I’m not the only one that experiences these things, but that doesn’t really help get rid of the horror that still comes when I remember these kinds of events.

    The best example I have is when I went down to the end of a shooting range to hang a paper target, and the drill sergeant guy yelled “CEASE FIRE!!!!” at the top of his considerable lungs to get everyone else (who were still shooting) to take a break so I didn’t get killed. Everyone looked over at me, and I’m standing there like an idiot where about thirty people were shooting. Not a happy moment.

    What gets me is that this happened almost a decade ago, and to this day, I groan out loud remembering it. I’ve tried to “reclaim” that part of my brain to get rid of this response. Kraig has a retroactive magick section (I think) in his Modern Magick book, and I tried that. I tried going back and reliving the moment in my mind, trying to replace it with a different memory. I’ve tried rationalizing that I’d never been to a shooting range before, I was at the far end of the shooting range, and everyone else was at the other side, where I had assumed they wouldn’t shoot me… but nothing’s worked. It’s always in that light hypnogoguic state between waking and sleeping that I remember standing there in the crisp autumn wind with a crowd made up of fathers and sons and war vets looking at me like I was Forrest, Forrest Gump.

    My friend suggested that we can’t forget this kind of thing for a reason, that it serves some purpose. I can see how it can aid survival to never forget how stupid it is to steal a dinosaur’s egg while you think the thing is sleeping, but this was just embarrassing. Socially embarrassing. Sure, we’re pack animals, and it’s required to not do something stupid in public to not get ostracized… but that’s stretching it a bit.

    So on a seemingly unrelated tangent, I was reading through Plotinus’ Fifth Ennead. Not too far in, it says:

    “A double discipline must be applied if human beings in this pass are to be reclaimed, and brought back to their origins, lifted once more towards the Supreme and One and First.”

    “Reclaimed” jumped out at me. I had literally just been talking about reclaiming, so looking for an answer to this question, I read on…

    “There is the method, which we amply exhibit elsewhere, declaring the dishonour of the objects which the Soul holds here in honour; the second teaches or recalls to the soul its race and worth; this latter is the leading truth, and, clearly brought out, is the evidence of the other.”

    So there are two disciplines required to accomplish the returning to the Source, God, which sums up Plotinus’ idea of what I think of as the Great Work. The discipline of stating the dishonour of things the Soul holds dear here, and the remembrance of the race and worth of the Soul.

    Respect of others is what my Guf-Soul holds dear, so dear that an embarrassing moment haunts me for years, permanently ingrained in my neural paths. Dishonouring the “need for respect from others,” (hmmm, pride, perhaps?) isn’t too difficult. I recognize that the opinions of those rednecks at that moment aren’t really that important.

    Teaching the Soul its race and worth though… How does this apply in the context of a mortifying memory? The Soul in the Guf at that moment was of God and was God. The value of that Soul is inestimable. How can teaching the Soul its race and value make the horror of that moment go away?

    I don’t have an answer, but I do know that I was particularly Guf-ey that day. I’ll be holding these two things together in my mind as I remember what happened, and see what comes of it. Educating the Guf as to its value and source may indeed be the key to getting rid of that disgusting horror.

  • Using the Spirit Pot

    I’m experimenting with different ways to use my spirit pot. From what I can find on the internet about spirit pots in hoodoo and the spirit cauldron in Palo, offerings to the spirit are made by placing the offering in the general vicinity of the pot. So far my offerings have consisted of lit candles.

    The reason I chose Bune, as I said in an earlier post, was because one of his powers is to bring riches unto a man. (From the Crowley-Mathers edition of the Goetia.) I am a Taurus, and while I have learned to be content in all things, whether poor or rich, I still prefer riches and oppulence to being consistently overdrawn in my bank accounts.

    One of the things I learned early in my magickal career is to always be very specific in what you want when doing magick, and even then, don’t expect the outcome to be exactly what you intended. At best it will be exactly what you asked for.

    With this in mind, I sat down one afternoon and figured out exactly how much money I would need to have the lifestyle I desire. I want a nice-sized house in a good area, to pay for the vehicles our family requires, and enough residual income to make around $100,000 a year. I also specifically want this money all at once, not just an opportunity to make the money over 16 years of labor. Knowing that I would be paying axes on a lump sum, I added that to the initial amount, and came up with a figure of $7,142,857.14.

    Last night I created a talisman that included the exact dollar amount, my intent, and the names of God used in evoking Goetic entities, crowned with ADNI MLK, because the intent is to have this manifest in the realm of Assiah. I placed this talisman in the spirit pot and lit three candles around the pot, and anointed the pot itself with the Oil of Abramelin. Anointing things with oil and waters seem to be a big deal in hoodoo, and the Oil of Abramelin is a very potent thinner of the veils.

    Rest assured, I will post the results. Any suggestions from more advanced users of the spirit pot are welcome. Comment below.

  • A Call for Ethiopian Magicians

    I’ve recently started monitoring my blog stats, and there are hits coming in from all over the world, but not one from Africa. My favorite country in Africa is Ethiopia, and I’d damned well better start seeing some traffic from Addis. Ethiopians from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church would make ideal Neo-Platonic magicians, their history has perfectly attuned them for it. Plus they have a sense of humor that is sadly lacking in the modern Western Mystery Tradition.

    With that in mind, I’m writing this blog post as a magickal act. 🙂

    Agrippa places Ethiopia under the influence of Saturn. Therefore:

    Thou Spirits of I conjure thee, in the name of Jehovah Elohim, by the Powers of the Thrones, to send forth in overwhelming flame thy Angels, Intelligences, and Spirits to bring to this blog my brothers from Addis.

    Tzaphkiel, I conjure thee by Jehovah Elohim. My simple request is more Ethiopians, please.

    Thou Spirits of Saturn, by thy Table I conjure thee:

    By thy Seal I conjure thee:

    Thou Intelligence of Saturn Agiel, I conjure thee by thy Seal:

    that thou wouldst direct thy Legions and Guide the Forces of the Spirit Zazel to break down every barrier to the Magi of Ethiopia that would stand against their participation with me through this blog.

    Thou Spirit Zazel, I conjure thee by thy Seal:

    that thou wouldst destroy any plan, plot or action of any man or force of nature within this realm that would stop the Magi of Ethiopia from joining me through this Blog.

    Jehovah Elohim, by the powers of thy host, let this Work bear the fruit Thou intend.

    Amen.

  • Research in the Occult

    Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted here. Apologies to my adoring fans. 😉

    Recent conversations on occult lists have got me thinking about research in the occult. It is extremely important to know where the material you’re using in your practices came from, and how it integrates into your system of performing magick, but at the same time, the fact is that much of the material available is limited.

    I’ve seen people argue incessantly about recent Egyptian archaeological evidence impacting Golden Dawn rituals. I’ve seen people make various claims about the Goetia because of the similarity of the names of the spirits to ancient gods from other cultures. I’ve seen the Hermetic QBL totally gutted by some people’s research into the traditional Kabbalah in the context of Hasidism.

    Research is a valuable tool, but at a certain point in our research we must apply the knife. Take the Goetia, for example. The names in the list include Ashtoreth, and lots of people say its a demonized version of Ishtar-Isis. The argument is that the system of Goetic magic can’t be trusted because it casts entities from a particular culture in a role that they didn’t have originally. The Goetic “Ashtoreth” is a perversion of Isis, so if you summon Isis using the Goetia, you’ll piss her off and have an angry spirit to deal with.

    However valid this idea might sound, in practice Ashtoreth is a friendly entity. It must be understood that when the Goetia was compiled, it drew from all kinds of resources and cast the spirits into the context in which they are presented in the text. At that point, they ceased being the entities of the previous system they were adapted from, and became new manifestations of the properties they embody. Ashtoreth may or may not have been Isis to some people at some point in history, but Ashtoreth summoned through the rites of the Goetia is not Isis. It’s Ashtoreth.

    Applying the model of the four worlds of hermetic QBL, Atziluth, Briah, Yetzirah, and Assiah, the Goetia is an Assiahtic (material) representation of the Yetziratic (symbolic) interpretation of the Briahtic (conceptual) spirits that revealed themselves from the Assiatic (archetypal) realm to the compiler(s) of the Goetia.

    Modern research can track back the sources of the system presented in the Goetia up to the limit of the Briahtic stage. We can see the forms that were used to symbolize the spirits in the Yetziratic stage, and we can make a scientific wild-ass guess about where these symbols came from, but we cannot know what was going on in the Briahtic or Atziluthic stages of its creation.

    Knowing where our realm of knowledge ends and conjecture begins gives us a guide for where to apply the knife. When your practice begins to trespass into realms of speculation, you must cut off the absolute authority of your knowledge and return to the realm of theory, and approach your conclusions the way a scientist approaches experimentation.

  • The Sun Comes Up, It’s Tiw’s Day Mourning

    If your’e not a Cowboy Junkies fan, the blog title might not be as entertaining as it was for me.

    This morning was picture day at school. Lots of hubbub, not a lot of time for Work around daybreak. I don’t know why, but I’m attracted to Martial work in general lately. I’ve been barely resisting the urge to curse people on principle. There’s a … I don’t know, a violence about things in my life, not like a destructive violence, but a strong urge to wage war for the things I think are right. Politics, work, my Great Work, I just want to DO stuff, there’s a pressing urgency to DO stuff.

    Like the Box, and the Bune Radio. I want to create, empower, direct, and dominate my world. Not yours, mine.

    The song I stole the title for today’s post is about a woman going through that emotional stage of missing her ex-lover, but at the same time, enjoying the new-found freedom she had forgotten about. I was mostly looking for a song that had Tuesday in the title. (Tuesday comes from Tiw’s Day, the Norse God of War, which of course was Martial in nature. You prolly knew that.) There’s also a connection to Fall, leaves falling, the season changing, and although I’m going to miss Summer, I’m finding things about this season that I’d forgotten about, and that I like.

    Like Tiw’s Day. It’s Tiw’s Day, Mars Day, and I’m ready for some action. Mars plays an important role with Saturn in the Goetia, and I had a strange apocalyptic dream the other night that I’m beginning to suspect was a Goetic spirit trying to get my attention. The build-up of whatever’s trying to get my attention is getting so thick I can feel it in the air around me. It’s almost like a frustration, but it’s like a palm’s width outside of my body.

    So tonight, the Sun’s coming up and it’s going to be a Tiw’s Day Mourning. For something, or someone. Might be some part of my self that has to die, or be subjugated to my “True Will;” it might be something else. I’m definitely going to be Working some Goetic spirits, regardless. Maybe Tap into some forces and see what’s been going on and what’s to come.

    Muahahahaaa.