Ok, so the reason I wrote that article the other day was because I read a blog that I won’t link to because the pinhead doesn’t deserve the traffic. This idiot blogger basically said that anyone who researches anything occult on the internet or in any publicly available work is a delusional idiot if they think they can attain K&CHGA. For support he bashes Crowley, claiming to know more about Crowley and his spiritual state than Crowley did himself.

He claimed to have access to manuscripts that are a few hundred years old. He claimed that they were from the real A:.A:., which is allegedly a Memphis Misraim Rite. He said they only start teaching real mysteries after the 50th degree. He said available manuscripts don’t have the keys to make them useful. And then he bags anyone, whether it’s rootworkers, Hermeticists, or pagans who’s going out on their own to study, experiment, and implement the occult traditions without going through the Masons and getting inducted into the A.: A.:. He closes claiming to know that the Abramelin rite was really based on secret papers that he implies he’s seen.

It was only later, after posting my post and reading some comments by Morgan Drake Eckstein that I realized I’d just taken out the whole Golden Dawn-Thelemic/OTO tradition as well. Which wasn’t my point at all. I don’t mind taking out the Bozo Brigade led by delusional clowns who treat their tradition like a science fiction TV show or a cartoon, those buffoons suck donkey balls and they make a mockery of magic. Magic is serious business.

But there are a lot of GD folks who see the system as a valid and valued compilation of Hermetic, Alchemical, and Kabbalistic principles that can lead to understanding and advancement on the path of the Great Work. They ignore the obviously fake bullshit of the creation myth, and look at the material that was put together logically and cohesively to see how to make it work. They are mechanics, tinkerers who inherited a project car that needs a lot of love, but could run faster than greased lightning when it’s finished if they ever get the time and funds necessary to finish restoring it.

Mr. Eckstein is one of these, as are Sam Webster of the Open Source Order of the GD, and Nick Farrell. Frater AIT and Frater VL belong to a branch of the GD that’s infected by ludicrous leadership, in my opinion, but they are diligent workers who I respect a great deal. A well known author of instruction on traditional grimoire magic is one of the main leaders of another GD Order, and I have nothing but respect for him. The Soror who blogs as PhoenixAngel also has my respect for her efforts to attain spiritual insight and ability through the GD. Jason Miller is either an active or former member of several GD-based or Thelemic Orders with creation myths that run the gammut of believability, and you all know how much I respect his knowledge, understanding, and insight into the way the universe works.

These folks, and the thousands like them, are not the people I’m taking out. They all have a healthy skepticism in their approach to the systems they are working on. They’re looking for useful truth in systems of attainment, and I support and encourage that in everyone’s path.

And I’m not saying there’s nothing to be found in Orders with hokey origins. I’m a Hermeticist, for Christ’s sake (literally!). I get a lot out of the Corpus Hermeticum, and it’s almost certainly 100% total bullshit in its origin myths. I don’t take them literally, I take them as explanatory models. As an explanatory model, the Secret Chiefs of the Golden Dawn make sense. The myths present a metaphorical spiritual truth. Whether Mathers met or did not meet physical people who were or pretended to be the Secret Chiefs doesn’t matter, there’s something that began as an Idea in the Mind of God that manifested as the Golden Dawn, on purpose, to accomplish specific pieces of God’s plan on Earth, regardless of my opinion on the details.

But the main point I’d like to make on all this is that regardless of the origin, or the paperwork, or the living-dead-revived-zombified status of a tradition, anyone can perform the Great Work and succeed, no matter what anyone says about it. God calls us to the Work, in my interpretation and preferred expression of the process of becoming a magician. He reveals what we need to know when we need to know it. He makes a way for us to reach him and to become what we are meant to be. He does so through whatever spiritual tech or belief system is available, and when you get past all the words and symbols, we all learn to do the same kinds of things in our esoteric pursuits, whether it’s in a shamanic tribe, ATR diaspora, Lodge Hermeticism, Debutante Dilettante, or rogue Hermeticist with an internet connection and a few pages of spirit names and little common sense.

People are free to study, experiment, explore, record, and pass on their results to everyone else. There’s no limit to what you can or cannot learn on your own or in a tradition that goes back a few thousand years. If you want to learn how to do magic, there’s nothing that can stop you. Having secret papers may help you in your path if that’s what you’re called to, but secret papers don’t give you the corner on the market, or invalidate anyone else’s path.

Once upon a time, it was popular among certain groups of mystics to claim that they, and they alone, had all the secret papers that taught the One True Way to do Magic. They made up stories about meeting people who displayed fantastic powers, and used the fraudulent tricks of the Spiritualists that were popular at the same time to pretend to receive letters from invisible ascended masters.

When the various orders and traditions of these magicians inevitably imploded, the public at large jeered and happily went on with their lives. Mystics drawn to the promises of Secret Traditional Spiritual Wisdom were disappointed with yet another dead end, and went on their way looking to older materials for glimpses of the eternal light.

But some people, upon seeing the Temples and the Ordos implode, splinter, and implode again without ever producing any signs of ascended masters from their ranks, couldn’t stand to give up their illusions. “The lies they told, I mean, the Myths they told were really TRUE, it was just that they were lying when they said THEY had the secrets!” they told themselves. “Someone somewhere MUST have the REAL secrets!” And so saying, they bounded off into the darkness holding fast to their beliefs in Secret Lodges of Western Magick with unbroken lineages dating back to Atlantis that held the true keys to the secrets of the ages.

A whole new batch of frauds and fakes, seeing a genre to be tapped, a profit of power, control, and manipulation (and money) to be made at someone else’s expense, leaped at the chance to be the purveyors of the “authentic” secret papers and traditions. They built up new towers of falsehood for these eager-to-be-deceived fools to flock to. They produced manuscripts with older sources, for the archaeology they had at their disposal was much better than the archaeology available to their predecessors, and they found that the modern students were as eager to ignore the obvious fabrications just like they had been in the early 20th century. These truly Black Brothers tapped the will to believe the Masonic Myths, played on the eagerness to belong, to have the TRUE SECRET POWERS, and programmed their students to look down upon and mock those who saw through their lies as a defense mechanism, just like spiritual frauds and fakes have always done.

To this very day, there are those who espouse ludicrous, laughable and obviously made up bullshit as the truth because they really want to believe there’s a lodge somewhere that wasn’t just the Post-Victorian Imperialistic British playing dress up in what they thought Egyptian priests wore for a lark.

If you want to play those reindeer games, by all means feel free to do so. But don’t try to tell me your personal fantasies are really the really real truth. There are no secret documents that weren’t developed in the last century, there is no secret Order of initiates from Atlantis, there is no hidden group of ascending masters who will be able to teach you anything you can’t find on the internet for free (www.esotericarchives.com, www.hermetic.com) or figure out on your own if you try hard and ask the right spirits for help.

Fuck the idiots and their stupid fairy tales who try to tell you different. Conjure the spirits and get to Work on your own.

I can’t believe I forgot to link to a purchase point in the review. You should buy your own copy:

Rouge edition ($24.95):
http://www.amazon.com/Crossed-Keys-Softcover-Michael-Cecchetelli/dp/095672034X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1312487835&sr=8-1

Hardcover (only 1 new available for $75! damn! Selling out fast!):
http://www.amazon.com/Crossed-Chimeric-Binding-Dragon-Enchiridion/dp/B005E8187C/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1312487835&sr=8-2

Ok, since Conjureman Ali and Gordon posted their reviews, I figured I’d better get my ass in gear and post mine as well.

Judging the Cover

I think I got a better edition than Gordon did. Mine’s covered in cloth, with the crossed keys imprinted on the cover in gold. You can see where the gold has rubbed off on my copy, but that was my own fault. I was looking at how they had printed the gold on the fabric, and I ran my thumb across it, flaking off the ink or paint. If you get the cool version, don’t rub it!

See the little yellow ribbon poking out the bottom? That’s right, it has a bookmark. Very cool. Mine is set to page 83 at the moment, where as Gordon noted, Michael mentions me.* The book is printed on good thick paper, using a heavy ink. Scarlet Imprint makes quality books, that’s for damned sure. I’ll need to read through it a lot to get it broken in.

Which won’t be a problem, I assure you.

The Review

The introduction puts the reader in the perspective of the author, which I enjoy a great deal. I get more out of a book when I can identify with the author. Set and setting of the work reveal a lot about the nature of the Genius of the work, giving insight into the purpose behind the manifestation of an Idea.

Alright, so as you may know, Crossed Keys is two grimoires, the Black Dragon and the Enchiridion of Pope Leo III. These are the two Keys referenced in the title, and they are crossed because they are on the surface oppositional approaches to magical influence, one demonic, the other holy by Christian theology. They represent two ways of getting the same kinds of things that magicians are usually after, health and health maintenance, sex, and wealth, not necessarily in that order. And divine wisdom in various forms, but mostly to get stuff, to stay safe, and to feel secure in an unsafe world in spite of the many and brutal forms of death and suffering we face daily.

The Black Dragon

The Black Dragon is clearly laid out in this edition. You have everything you need to be able to establish a quick and ready access to the Demonic Kings of Hell.  Mr. Cecchetelli presents the information clearly and concisely. I love the anecdotes he provides, it’s the best thing magician-authors can do for their readers to get a comprehension of the magic they’re talking about. It makes the magic real, and sets the expectations of the readers so they know whether the results they’re getting are typical or if they’re failing. He doesn’t exaggerate the results, and his experiences with the spirits is consistent with my own. I’m left knowing, as a magician who’s worked with demons and angels, that Mr. Cecchetelli’s experiences are real.

And, well, risky. It’s demon magic. There’s a risk. Be careful. This magic is intended for those who are magically mature, experienced, cautious, and wise. Don’t do demon magic when you’re scared, stressed, freaked out, or angry as hell. Don’t do demon magic without giving proper constraints. Don’t conjure up deadly entities without a circle of protection and the prescribed talismans that keep you safe, and you should be fine.

So did you hear me? I WARNED you. Demon magic is dangerous. Ok?

Good.

That said, this grimoire is fucking awesome. The Conjuration of the Book that it starts out with is great. There’s a place for the Mark of the Spirit of the book. I can see it there, waiting for me to record it in the physical realm, waiting for me to conjure the spirit and go exploring the realms with it. Man. Tempting, I tell you, tempting as all hell. I’d like to see Scarlet Imprint publish this with another hundred or so blank lined papers to use in recording the images, names, seals, and characteristics of the other spirits you’ll meet if you use this. The Black Dragon Spiritus Libri edition, bound in black leather embossed with the seals…

Heh.

The Enchiridion of Pope Leo III

As you may expect, I spent a lot more time going over this part of Crossed Keys in more detail than I did with the Black Dragon. Christian Hermetic Magician attending a Catholic Church, what? Yeah. That’s me. This grimoire was made for me.

The Psalm magic is awesome. The Orison magic is awesome. The spirit names are fascinating, and I have their seals, and you can bet I’m going to be conjuring them. There’s a handy quick and easy conjuration rite outlined too. I’ll be including some Trithemian methods in my approach, but I’ll go over it in detail as I go along. I’m really interested in a lot of the applications of the rites.

This grimoire has three sections, Psalm magic up front, the Orisons with a quick reference guide for what to use them for, and then a more detailed section on applications of the Orisons. Comprehensive instructions, and really good insights. It’s just the kind of thing that I need to have on hand to get me thinking of new ways to do things. I’m loving it a lot. It’s the kind of magic you need to know if you’re going to be a magician. You should go through each of the Orisons some time and evaluate the purpose of each one. Ask yourself if you have a method of accomplishing the same goals, and if you don’t, ask why not. I found out a lot in a few short hours that confirmed some of my practices, and encouraged me to pursue additional ones.

Conclusion

Altogether, Crossed Keys is definitely one of the best books I’ve read in a long, long time. I highly recommend it to everyone. There’s something for all kinds of conjure magicians to be found. I wish all the grimoires were as easy to understand and came with the kinds of anecdotes he provides.

* Can I tell you how really good it feels to be mentioned like that? I mean, really really good. It’s an honor, as they say, a weird sense of humbleness and pride at the same time. I may brag about it in the future.

Patrick Dunn, author of Postmodern Magic and Magic, Power, Language, Symbol: A Magicians’s Exploration of Linguistics has recently announced that his first book of poetry, titled Second Person is available for pre-order. I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Dunn and his work, so I asked if I could get a sample for review.

I was looking forward to reading the poem he sent for a lot of reasons. He’s a savant. I won’t go into details, because he keeps his life private, but the man’s a genius. He’s a neoplatonist, and he knows what that means. He’s a practicing magician, he’s done magic and it’s made his life better. He’s got a postmodern philosophy, which I didn’t understand before I met him and still barely grasp, but I appreciate his take on things. It meshes well with my own.

In his announcement about the availability of Second Person, Mr. Dunn says the work “concerns the mystical connection we have with our
world as a “thou” rather than an “it.” It’s about not only the
relationship between self and other, but between Self and Other.”

In the work I’ve seen so far, this theme is presented subtly, nothing ostentatious or in your face, but implied, rather like the cover of the book. He’s not heavy handed in his observations, but still the meaning comes through. 

The poem he sent was a scene out of many of our lives, the occultist contacted by the friend or acquaintance for a tarot card reading. I heard Mr. Dunn’s voice as he spoke about the scene, as I heard his internal monologue as he related to his querent, and I heard her requests and understood what it was she was looking for. At the same time, I saw the part of Mr. Dunn who was also asking the same question as the querent as it pertained to his own life, expressing that universal need to know how we ended up where we did, what purpose it served, and why we aren’t satisfied. I saw that he was reading himself as well as her in his observation, and in that moment saw that I was also being read.

I don’t know how he did it. There’s nothing in the poem that says, this is what this means and what it is all about. But there’s a sense of knowing and being known that he captures well. He blends the line between observer and observed in many levels, not so much breaking the fourth wall as eliminating its relevance. I’m looking forward to reading the rest when my copy arrives.

To pre-order your copy, you click this link and scroll down to his book.

Update:

Mr. Dunn said I could post the poem he sent too, so here it is:

0=0

Secrets; Lost Knowledge; A Female Querent

Heather, your hair
was too black, your lips
too ready
to say that liquid word,
your body too young.

Books couldn't tell
you what the boys wanted
to hear, wanted to do.  And you
wanted the boys.

Wanted them to see
something rare in you, something
like an orchid unfolding in the steam.

Now you peck out messages to me, asking
if I have a tarot pack to read
where you went wrong, marrying
a good boy, having a fat baby.

How did you end up
here, unhappy still, with a good husband, a nice life?

This card is the Priestess.  It means everything
will be okay.  I promise.  Somehow, okay.

0=0

Someone on FaceBook posted that they were writing some black magickal fiction short story, and it reminded me of Frabato the Magician, by Franz Bardon. An excellent story, though it reads like a Simon Iff story. I don’t know why that minimalistic story telling style became so popular, but it’s effective enough.

I was reading through it and came across the phrase, “the beings of nature are especially fond of the people who likewise feel close to nature.” It immediately got me thinking of my youth, when I would go into the mountains of Colorado and hike trails and make friends with the local genii loci, without knowing that’s what they were called.

I’ve always felt connected to nature. From the time I was a child, making mud soup in a five gallon bucket in my backyard, nature has spoken to me, called to me. I wandered in rural fields and sparse forests all my life, hiked trails and climbed granite walls, and more recently frolicked with the undines of the sea as they crashed against the shore. I had friends whose physical bodies were trees, colonies of insects, and streams that passed through counties and states I’d never visited. As I observed nature’s processes, I’d hear a running narrative that sounded like a documentary, explaining what was going on and what it meant, how it all worked together in the ecosystem.

I never did anything to conjure these spirits, they were just sort of always there, at the periphery of my awareness. They still are. On the way home the other day, I was feeling stressed out and preoccupied with work on my commute home. I was at one of the last intersections before I reached my house, on a busy road lined with lots of trees to cut the traffic noise down for the residents with homes close to the road. I glanced up at the leaves on the trees, and a face formed, a great big laughing face. The spirits of the trees were getting my attention, sharing the joy they felt as the sun fell down on them and they swayed in their stationary dance in the wind.

I don’t know how many other people have that kind of connection to nature. I like to feel special, so I pretend there aren’t that many, but I suspect everyone has moments when they feel intimately connected to our spiritual brothers and sisters who incarnate in forms other than human. Our distant cousins who are as much a manifestation of the breath of God as we humans are.

Still, as Bardon says, I think the spirits of nature are especially fond of me, and people like me who take time to participate in that feeling of closeness to them. They are beautiful, and they seem to think we are too.

This evening I’m heading up to one of the highest waterfalls in our state. It’s cut a stream through the granite hills (I’ve lived in Colorado, so I can’t call them mountains) and there’s a pool beneath the falls that is just deep enough to swim in. The falling water creates a cloud of negative ions that make people feel better. Crashing waves create the negative ions too, and you get a similar feeling of subdued awe and relaxed one-ness with the Earth on the beach. The falls are on a national park, and it’s frequently filled with gatherings of teens, but the presence of the spirits of nature there are so thick, and the negative ions so calming that they behave themselves, carrying on conversations in hushed tones, playing diving games (there’s a spot just deep enough to accommodate divers) and just having good old fashioned fun, without the cussing, fussing, and general angst they have everywhere else. While I’m there, I’ll store up the negative ions in my bloodstream, and create a snapshot in my memory that I can return to in times of stress.

Before I leave, I’ll collect some of the physical water, and make an offering to the spirits of place. I’ll take the time to recognize and commune with them, as they have with me so many times before.

In a comment on Discussions on Y So Srs?, Girasol makes an interesting point about the hot and coolness of the magic that gets balanced in his experience in Palo. The magician does a lot of cooling Work leading up to the conjuration, then he does the hot magic, balancing out the heat ahead of time.

This is so very much in keeping with the grimoire instructions in the Key of Solomon that it isn’t even funny. All that abstinence, the baths, the chanting of Psalms… It’s got a really cooling effect on a person. You’re not doing anything passionate leading up to the rite, except maybe some ecstatic mysticism that might get a little hot once in a while, but still in a cool way.

It got me thinking about my magic. I do a lot of cool magic. I do a little hot magic once in a while. When I do the Gates rites, it can be sort of in between, and influenced heavily by the heat or coolness of the planet I’m working with.

Agrippa gives the qualities of each of the planets in his lists of attributes. I wondered why that was necessary, before, but it makes sense. I tend to stay on the cool side of things in my practices, and it’s been more intuitive, a quiet understanding of what needed to be done to achieve specific goals of … uhm, stability in my life after a prolonged period of doing rather more hot magic in comparison.

You know how people talk about putting cayenne pepper in their spirit pot to heat up the spirit and make it more active? I’ve talked about it. I did it a few times with Bune. It seemed to give him the fuel to get things to happen more quickly and actively in my life. I put in a dash before my house burned down and I got that money I wanted from him, in fact.

That’s called a coincidence.

No really.

Ok, whatever, think what you want.*

Anyway, think about how hot your life is before you start adding heat and hot magic to it. Maybe you can think strategically about fighting fire with fire, put out a financial crisis with some active new customer production magic or something like that, but in general, hot magic provides the Alchemical Heat of the Great Work in addition to everything else you’re going through. Heat purifies by melting the good stuff so it flows together and burning away everything else that’s of lesser grade.

Sound pleasant to go through when you’re already stressed about something in your life? Cause that’s what’s likely to happen.

Strategize. Strategitate. Achieve strategizm. Think. Think about balance. Perfect balance is perfect stagnation, in my opinion, but if you go too far away from it, you’d better hang on for dear life, cause things are going to get rocky. I try to stay as close to balance as possible, without getting things too stagnant.

Cool magic leads you inwards and upwards. Contemplation about your place in the cosmos, ascending through the spheres, spending time in Mercury, and dipping your toes in Saturn once in a while are good ways to keep cool. Magitate. Keep calm, and re-lax. Aim for balance.

* You’re probably right.

Ok, so comments on Y so Srs? have provided good feedback that I think should get more traffic than they’ll see if they stay in the comments section. I’ve pulled together the highlights to give the audience members who only read the posts a chance to see that there’s more going on than just what gets posted. And to give advice from others in case my ignorance is more dangerous than I think.

First, I might be totally wrong in all this. One indicator is that someone said I was “in line with Bertiaux’s ideas.”

Twitch.

But besides that, I’ve been thinking about my approach to danger, too. I’ve been through some traumatic stuff as part of my explorations and experimentations, and I’m a bit jaded. Maybe, just maybe, the shit I had to deal with would have been avoided if I’d received proper instruction. Maybe the danger I see as a normal risk of magic isn’t really normal.

But I have kind of a mad scientist aesthetic to my Work. Sometimes the whole lab blows up when Igor flips the switch. It’s sort of where we’re at in this process of revitalizing the Western traditions. As Aaron Letich says in the comments:

Western occultism is currently undergoing a new kind of renaissance.
We’ve come down off our “my mysticism is holier than thine” attitude and
are finally saying “Ok, we’ve wasted centuries, so let’s start doing
this right!”

Are we going to make mistakes? You bet! Some of us
will burn our houses down. Some of us will have our heads eaten by the
spirits we try to keep. And you know what? That’s just how you ATR
folks learned to do it thousands of years ago (and still do today!) –
trial and error. Eventually you got it right and developed a
sophisticated tradition with full community support.

And there’s a lot that I don’t know, too. Conjureman Ali points out the following fascinating stuff that I really wish I understood better:

I must disagree with your speculation on the nfumbe of the
Palero. The spirit that is placed within the Prenda goes through a
nigromantic process that produces a powerful spirit that is akin to a
non-blood ancestor, imbued with the power of the Rada and becomes a
powerful force of magic and guidance. It is more similar to a HGA then
the resltess dead.

So with that useful feedback, I’m going to go back and do some more research. Based on what I know about the HGA and the Supernatural Assistant of the grimoires and the Greek Magical Papyri, I have a better understanding, but I’m sure there’s more to it that I’m missing.

And getting back to the subject of danger, Jason’s comments about how there’s danger, and then there’s danger helped me understand what he was getting at:

Dispelling the dead who have been sent in a curse IS a fairly easy task.
Dispelling the dead who have been sent in a curse where graveyard dirt
has been planted on the victims person and home, and items from that
victims person and home have been planted in said grave is more
complicated. (BTW definitely don’t do that. Unless you really don’t like
someone.)

Dispelling the dead who have been bound and chained
into a pot and a persons life, in a mini universe overseen by a Nzambi,
and given a full on superhero like transformation, not to mention their
own familiar spirits (there is for instance almost always a dogs bones
in the Nganga for hunting down targets) is a REALLY BIG DEAL.

Furthermore
in some ways the victim of such a spirit would be LUCKY to have their
house burn down. That is a huge wake up call. Most of the time it is
slow and insidious and takes the health and persona in a long and
twisted fasion that is obvious to everyone BUT the person they are doing
it to.

So playing with the dead can be more dangerous than your average magic, and you should be careful.

And finally, there’s Dhr. Balthazar’s comment from this morning:

Well, it’s not that all the dead themselves are necessarily outright
dangerous by their very nature, R.O. Nonetheless, the way in which you
work with them can get very dangerous. Our discussion was about putting
together muerto pots, and as I have been saying, this is something that
requires for special care to be taken.

Generally speaking, the dead are a specialised area.

Which
is why in the diaspora and in Africa you often tend to find a class of
specialists who work with them alone, or in separated sub-system, even
though there are other spirits or deities whom are the focus of the
religion, such as the Orisa.

In Cuba you might say these are the
paleros and more broadly the muerteros/espiritistas. Whilst the Santeros
take care of the Orisa. Although, most santeros are also muerteros out
of necessity because of what happened in the Diaspora during slavery.
However, in addition there are other entirely separate priesthoods for
the Egungun (ancestral dead) and the deified force of death, Iku,
specifically. One of my godparents is an initiate in this kind of
priesthood, for instance.

Similarly, in South Africa you have
Nyanga and Sangoma – the Sangoma specialises in the ancestor spirits,
while the Nyanga on the other hand is a general magical worker with a
focus on herbal magic and medicine.

What I am saying is that in
many of these traditions the dead are their own kettle of fish entirely.
They are worked separately and in an entirely different way. They tend
to have their own set of rules and taboos even though they are almost
always considered the corner stone or foundation of the ATR systems. In
certain sense you are basically working with the principal of death
which, you know, is kinda a big deal if you think about it a bit.

And he’s right. I don’t specialize in the dead. To me, necromancy is a part of the overall Hermetic Great Work, but not the entirety of the thing. In my practice, knowing how to commune with the dead is enough for my creative work with them, and knowing how to help them out the door when they’ve overstayed their welcome is the rest of it.

If you want to work the Dead through a spirit pot, you can experiment and take the risks involved, or hold off until you have someone you know and trust who can teach you and be there to clean up any messes you might make of things.

Ok, so Dhr. Balthazar’s still concerned, and Jason thinks I’m underestimating the danger, and I’ve just got to know, why so serious about working with the dead in a spirit pot?

I mean, come on, a demon I had in a spirit pot burned my fucking house down. It’s more dangerous than that?

We are talking about the spirits of the dead, right? Dead people.

In my experience with the dead, there are two types, the Powerful Dead who made it to a certain point in their spiritual attainment who became demigods, sort of like the Saints and the Heroes of Greece, and the far more common restless spirits, the shades of the dead, the nepheshim.

The Powerful Dead

Saints and Heroes make for the best kind of necromancy, imho. My main goal as a Hermeticist in this incarnation is to become one of them, in a way. The Hermetic texts teach that we go up through the heavens and become Powers, the same kinds of Powers we work with when we conjure angels and Intelligences and Spirits and such.

In Voodoo, you learn to work with the Ghede, who I think are like the Heroic Dead, powerful, useful, helpful, and dangerous in the same kind of ways that the demons of the Goetia and Theurgia Goetia and the Planetary Spirits are powerful, useful, helpful, and dangerous. Jake Stratton Kent has talked before about how the spirits contacted in real old fashioned Greek Goetia were the powerful dead, like the tribes of the Ghede, who got promoted. I don’t pretend to understand all that, but from what I do know, I know enough to stay away.

I wouldn’t work with them through a spirit pot. They’re saints and powers and demigods. Candles and altars make more sense to me than a spirit pot. A spirit pot is a more personal thing.

The Not-So-Powerful Dead

And then there’s the Nepheshim, the far more readily available and contactable type of dead spirit that you’ll most likely end up with in your spirit pot if you try to work the dead through the spirit pot instructions I gave.

I speculate that in Palo, you get a spirit the way Agrippa talks about it in Book 3, chapter 42. He talks about collecting bits of the body of the recently dead and using that to get those who died violent deaths or criminals or those who are yearning for a proper burial to do mean things for you. These are the nepheshim, the mortal parts of the soul that are supposed to fade away and turn to dust in sheol, but don’t because they find another food source. They can live for a while after the body dies, up to a year according to some Hebrew and Greek sources, but usually they fade after six weeks if no one’s feeding them.

And these spirits do mean things for people because they’re angry, confused, scared, and all emotional about shit. They just lost their bodies in a painful or disturbing way, and on top of that, they lost their minds. Because their minds are the Ruachim parts of the human soul, not the nepheshim. The Ruachim have wandered on to the Akashic Records or are “asleep in christ” or something like that. They have no need for the body or the nephesh anymore, so the nephesh is all, “I’m abandoned, my body is dead, and I’m scared! and Angry!” Moody bitches, man, moody bitches.

Necromancers trap these spirits and send them at targets, and they’d go be all moody around their targets. Agrippa says they can “kindle unlawful lusts, cause dreams, diseases, hatred and such like passions.” That’s about what I’ve seen people in the Hispanic communities use the dead for, pretty much. They can get pretty powerful if they’re fed right and taken care of, exercised and built up. They can be developed. But it takes a while, special training, and you really need to know what you’re doing. Because they’re toxic.

I’ve seen these spirits banished with as little as the sign of the cross and a Hail Mary. Some needed more careful exorcisms. One time I went to the Divine Darkness to eliminate a tribe that had been sent against someone. None of them that I’ve met can stand up to some Saturn forces lined up against them personally. I learned from Bune how to make them appear before me and give me their name, and once I’ve got that, I can engrave it in lead with some symbols of Saturn and bury it, hold a formal funeral, and the spirit’s gone.

They’re annoying, frustrating, and emotional, and they can cause the kind of damage in your life that you can cause when you act in frustration, anger, fear, or horror. They’re really good at causing mental illnesses.

So yeah, putting one in a spirit pot if you don’t know the risks can be dangerous. You’ve got to shield yourself from that shit, because you might think you’ve got the whole spirit of the person, but really you’ve just got the nephesh, the emotional survivalist who is more panic button fight/flight syndrome all the time than anything else.

Again speculation here, but I think Paleros and those trained to work with the muerte learn how to make the nepheshim calm and at rest while they’re in their spirit pot, and then all upset when they send them to work mischief. I think they empower them and make them stronger too. Exercise them. Build them up. They also know how to keep any of the mental illness or occasional shifting keys and falling iron pans from disrupting their lives too much. One guy I knew cyber-socially mentioned that he just lived with it, called that kind of stuff the dangers of working with the dead. I wouldn’t put up with it, personally. My own nephesh causes enough shit in my life, I don’t need any other nepheshim buggin’ me.

Now these aren’t the ancestor spirits. These are wandering ghosts who haven’t been properly shriven, who need to be put to rest, and who can be used for nefarious purposes if that’s your schtick. Personally, I can do all the shit they do without using them. Ask my wife if I can cause mental illness, she’ll tell you straight up I’m a pro.

But the ancestors are a different subject altogether. Most people I’ve seen talking about wanting to work with their ancestor spirits are talking about their dead relatives. Grandpas and grandmas, family legends who were teh awesome. They’re looking for … well, money, most of the time, but they don’t say so, but also protection and guidance. Generally they want a house god, someone who keeps the peace, aids in prosperity, and protects the family from other wandering ghosts and anyone in the flesh with evil intentions.

So in the spirit pot post, I forgot to mention that “spirit pots” are a tool that comes from the ATRs, living traditions that have a lot in common with the system I use. There’s a harmonic between the grimoires of the Renaissance and the living ATRs today. Some ATRs use the same grimoires I use, in fact. Some use grimoires that I don’t use, but were around when the grimoires I use were around, like the St. Cyprian text. I believe it could be argued that the ATRs incorporated the grimoire traditions of the Renaissance, at least in part, and I think there have been periods of time between now and the 15th century where the only place grimoire magic has been performed has been in the ATRs, and maybe some small Dutch communities scattered across the Appalachians.

So, you know, respect to the ATRs.

The Hermetic practices I use are the syncretic result of the beliefs of Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, and Israel bumping elbows in the first few centuries AD. My personal practices are the condensation of the Hermetic beliefs as they manifested in the 15th century. I draw from manuscripts and papyri that have as much or more missing as they have present. Getting the grimoires into a working tradition takes ingenuity, insight, and intuition. Fortunately, it’s guided by the spirits we work with, and they show us how to breathe life into some things that are only mentioned in passing in different places.

Vessels used to house spirits are mentioned in a few places in my studies of grimoire practices and the Greek Magical Papyri. The story of Aladdin’s Lamp comes from the Persian magical tradition, which has stories of spirits living in not only lamps, but the rings and amulets more familiar to grimoire readers today. The Lemegeton has the famous Brass Vessel to trap the spirits, which shows up in Shaharazad’s tale of the man who found the demons Solomon bound in a brass vessel washed up on the shore. The demiotic texts make use of a vessel for divination that you draw the gods into with various suffumigations. Mystics and magicians of medieval times were said to have so many oracular brass heads that people didn’t even think there was any magic related.

There’s not a lot of info on how the vessels were used, but for rings and amulets of similar functionality, appropriate herbs and stones were gathered and consecrated at propitious times, and put together using the same methods I described in the “spirit pot” post. But there’s something that should be noted about these vessels I’m talking about in my Hermetic practices:

They aren’t Spirit Pots of any ATR. They are not nganga from the Palo tradition. They aren’t ancestor spirit pots. They are vessels used to communicate with spirits that function as high end talismans. My instructions are an adaptation in harmony with the spirit conjure work I do in my Hermetic practices. They are not instructions for performing authentic ATR practices, and using them doesn’t make you a hoodoun, voudoun, santero, or palero in any way, shape or form.

What I’ve done is taken bits and pieces of different aspects of my Work, Aaron Leitch’s inspirational notion that the brass vessel of the Lemegeton and the Nganga of Palo were related, and I’ve put together something that works nicely in my practices. My Hermetic practices. And it works really well, for a reason.

Early on in my work with my Holy Guardian Angel, I had the good fortune of being guided to the Dehn translation of the Book of Abramelin. I read this book at a key point in my magical metamorphosis. I had been reading Pow Wow, or Long Lost Friend, and I’d gotten my hands on a receipt book from a hoodoo worker. I’d been doing Angel magic using the Trithemius method for a good minute too, and conjuring the spirits of the Lemegeton’s Goetia. I was doing a whole lot of conjure work, and actually doing the things the spirits led me to do to work with them. I was talking to Paleros, Santeria initiates, folks who were at least claiming to be initiates into Hatian voodoo, Curanderismos, Jake Stratton-Kent with his translation of the GV and during the time he put together Geosophia, and a couple people into things I don’t talk about, and we were comparing notes about what we learned and the kinds of things the spirits have us do.

Then I read the Dehn translation, which included things the Mathers’ manuscript had lacked, and it read just like the receipt book and Pow Wow, and it was exactly the kind of thing I was doing under the tutelage of the spirits. I mean, exactly the same kind of techniques. It was like everything came together all at once. The key manuscript for gaining Knowledge and Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel was a receipt book used by a conjure magician who would have been right at home with my circle of practicing practical magicians.

This put ceremonial magic itself into a whole new light. I was able to read Agrippa and see it as a living, breathing system recorded by a savant who wandered Europe gathering hermetic lore. I saw the tables of correspondences of herbs and planets as the detailed ingredients list for putting together sunthemata, talismans that brought together the harmony of Sacred Geometry, the Intelligence of the Spirits by Name and Seal, and the things of the plant, animal, and mineral realms that all corresponded to the Idea that was manifesting as the Intelligence, the Spirit, the physical materials, and the situations I wished to influence.

I saw it all in a big harmonious flash, realizing that the folk magic of Russian Orthodox and Crowley’s primary goal for magicians were different faces of the same magical practices. I saw a single magical tradition that spanned from thousands of years BC to the present day, a tradition that includes the ATRs practiced in South and Central America as much as it includes the Renaissance Karcists, the 1st century Hermeticists, and the Ancient Greek Goes. We do the same things, gathering flowers, lighting candles, chanting, meditating, praying, orating, exorcising, and making talismans of various types to act as physical manifestations for the spiritual powers we work with to create our world.

Our traditions have always enriched one another.

Some folks are sensitive about it. The way the different traditions have nourished each other has almost always been through the conquering and subjugation of one people-group and their culture by another people-group and their culture. The conquering culture comes in and redistributes the conquered culture’s property in ways that are most beneficial to the conquering culture. The oppressed culture gets screwed. Over time, the cultures blend with varying degrees of homogeneity, and become something different than either culture was before one conquered the other. The conquered resent the conquerors. Some oppressed people feel like anyone from the conquering culture who expresses interest in their beliefs is pillaging the intellectual property the same way the conquerors pillaged the personal property.

Think about your magician friends though. I was talking to Jason Miller the other day, and he told me about a meditational technique he uses and showed me how to do it. I used it just last night in my Thursday rites. Aaron Leitch’s wife is an initiate of an ATR, and it was through his exposure to her practices and discussions with her that he made the link between his Solomonic experiences and her ATR experiences. I talk to Fr. AIT about Hoodoo and Alchemy, and we exchange techniques and tools through our blogs and personal exchanges.

Magicians of the conquering and conquered cultures did the same throughout history. The Egyptians and the Greeks had a lot of conversations about philosophy and magic, and they worked well together. The politics didn’t interfere, the magicians made use of their circumstances to exchange information and technology.

Usually it’s done in a respectful way, sometimes not so much, and there’s always a group of people from each culture who think the result of the syncretism is shit and only their original pure system was worthwhile, and never mind that their original pure system is the result of the last time they conquered someone or were conquered themselves.

I try to be respectful of the traditions of others, because everyone doesn’t see it as a single system that spans all space and time, with different dialects in place in different times and places. But there are more practical reasons for being respectful too.

You can’t always just drag and drop, copy-paste shit from different systems together and get a harmonious end result. I called the vessels “spirit pots” and probably shouldn’t have, because that implies they “are the same thing” as the spirit pots used in ATRs, and they really aren’t. The creation of spirit pots in ATRs is a specialized process, and there are rules that need to be followed, traditions that deserve to be treated respectfully. Taking my instructions and applying them to your Ancestor spirits in an ATR kind of way could be dangerous, I don’t know. I doubt it’s any more dangerous than Balthazar warned in his post, but I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong before, once or twice.

And look, seriously, listening to me and doing what I talk about can hurt you, because for all I’ve done and accomplished and experienced, I’m not perfect, omniscient, or omnipotent. Totally fallible here.You’re getting information about doing magic that changes the world from a blog on the internet. From a guy who thinks he’s right about everything, even though he’s got years of failures, explosions, and all kinds of scars covering his hands from playing with fire and metals provign that sometimes he fucks up. And I’m sure I’ve got some raised toxic metal levels in my blood from all the talismans I make in my garage.

I don’t tell you to do anything I don’t do or haven’t done, so you can at least rest assured that anything you suffer from my instructions, I’m suffering too. I’m sure that will help make you feel better when your world is falling apart.

Now Balthazar accused me of dumbing down the spirit pot thing for Western consumption. I was hurt by that, as it wasn’t my intent, and I thought he knew me better than that. But I can see where he’s coming from, I didn’t say all this stuff in the original post, he doesn’t understand how it all came together for me. And maybe even knowing how it all came together won’t matter to him because he’s worried that I’m going to screw someone’s life up by giving them advice that doesn’t work in his experience, or he thinks I’m ripping off the ATRs or something.

My whole approach to this process is to present the Great Work in an approachable way, taking it from the realm of the impossible dream/interesting theory to the living reality. Some folks would see that as “dumbing it down for mass consumption,” and that’s their right to see it that way.

A reminder though, my intent in writing this blog is to get you to personally do magic and interact with spirits because the results will be you personally taking strides along the path of the Great Work. The sooner we all get it done, the sooner we can stop incarnating and suffering, or so I hope. If getting you to do magic is dumbing it down for mass consumption, so be it. I’m guilty as sin.