They’re gone. 

There’s only one left as of 10:00 AM Eastern.

And it was sold by 10:30.

Scott Stenwick posted some interesting research today about those lead codices that have been making the rounds. He also mentioned that there was one blogger who expressed fear that some dark Christian curse would be unleashed by breaking the seals on the book, bringing about the Eschaton seen in the Apocalypse of St. John, a.k.a. Revelations…

I was shocked, absolutely shocked.

People still believe in Revelations? Like, literally?

I never heard about this stuff before my daughter put it on in the car off her ipod. Good writing stuff. I prefer the stuff that sounds more like autobots with bad gas, but I found this music for free, and it’s good. A bit of reggae and electronica, but I still prefer the stuff with a heavier bass line. But you gotta admit, the album cover is awesome as shit.

So last Full Moon was a Super Moon, and while there’s nothing particularly extra magical about it according to Renaissance astrology, I and the kids made a couple liters of Super Moon Water. We got some water, consecrated it to the Moon with prayers to Mary, called on the Archangel Gabriel of the Moon to bless it, and instill the powers of the Moon into the water, and we left it out in the Moonlight overnight. After the moon set, and before the sun rose, we brought it in and kept it in a dark spot.

What I’m going to use it for, I have no idea. But 2 liters of Super Moon Juice is pretty awesome. Probably going to use it in manifestation rites, since the Moon rules the outermost shape of things and is the last sphere that an Idea goes through before it gets turned over to the Elementals to take on a physical form.

The Curious Curandera has some good ideas for it on her blog post today. Think I’ll take her up on some of those suggestions.

I think Jason recently recommended a Christian book called the Prayer of Jabez. It’s based on an obscure scripture reference in the Bible, and it’s a good example of the kind of result I was talking about in that post. Here’s the scripture:

Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from evil, that it not be to my sorrow! God granted him that which he requested. – 1 Chronicles 4:9-10

See that “enlarge my border” part? That’s what I’m talking about, but in terms of … well, it’s not about time management, necessarily. That’s a side effect, a secondary result of what we’re doing primarily. I know I said it was a result, but it misrepresents what is going on.

Taking this rite as a method of simply increasing a skill you already have, “time management,” is off a bit, and it’s my fault for rushing through that part of the post. That’s still working within the same borders, the same limits. If you look at time management, it’s still sacrificing something to be able to do more with the same limitations. This is about moving the boundaries of your limitations, and the result is what looks like better time management.

It’s about having the capacity to do more. The overwhelming stress comes from having as much or more to do as you possibly can. You’re maxed out. Enlarging the borders doesn’t change the amount of things you have to do, it just lessens the degree of impact. If you’re running at 110% of your capacity, you’re going to blow out the systems. If you upgrade the system, the same amount of work or responsibility goes down from 110% to maybe 85% or 60% of your total capacity.

It’s leveling up. In video games or role playing games, you might start out with a character who has 50 health points. An enemy doing 25 points of damage can hit you twice and you die. You upgrade the character a few times, and your total health points go up to 200. Now the percentage of damage that same enemy can do to you has shrunk from 50% of your total health to 12.5%. It’s doing the same damage, but you can take more.

As Simon Tomasi says, this happens incrementally as people adapt in normal situations. Game functionality is modeled on real life, after all. The Saturn/Venus rite is like finding a health capacity upgrade in a video game that you don’t have to spend any experience points on.

Only you are spending experience points, it’s just magic experience instead of mundane experience. You’re taking advantage of the short cuts we have access to as magicians.

Better were the days when mastery of seas came not from bargains struck with eldritch creatures… but from the sweat of a man’s brow and the strength of his back alone. You all know this to be true! -Hector Barbossa, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

Ever feel that way? I have. Especially after a spirit burned down my house to get me $4k. Totally not worth a year of recovery for a quick four grand.

But better were the days when I made $10 an hour as a bar/grill kitchen manager? Better were the days when I was an Admin Assistant at a non profit making $12 an hour? Fuck no! Barbossa’s off his rocker. Better are the days when I’m making four times that income as a result of my ongoing interactions with the spirits, can I get an AMEN!?

Damn straight I can.*

But that house fire thing wasn’t the first time I fucked up in magic. Not the first time bargains struck with eldritch beings came back to bite me in the ass. And I regret every single one of those rites, in a way. Not in a particularly remorseful way, but more in a damn, I wish that rite had worked out as planned kind of way. 

Ok, now that I think about it for a second or two, I don’t regret all my failed rites, of course. If all my rites worked… well, let’s just say I wouldn’t have made nearly as many friends in California over the last few years. And there’d be werewolves stalking the shores of Nevada. If they had survived the meteor apocalypse. So, I mean, the world’s probably in better shape because I don’t always succeed, even if it is pretty boring to a nineteen year old version of myself.

Who should have been punched in the face at least once.

But I tell you this, my brothers and sisters, I appreciate every rite I’ve done, failed or successful. Those that failed have taught me something, no matter how cliche. Those that have succeeded even more. The power at our disposal is something that would be truly sobering if we stopped and thought about it for a bit. Something we should not scoff at, nor let slip too far from our awareness. 

See, I’m guilty of that, I forget who I am, and my potential all too easily. There’s so much that I could be doing that I’m not. I forget, and I feel bad about it. 

Fortunately, I am a benevolent soul, and I forgive me.

* I think, sometimes, I would make an awesome preacher, except for the foul language. 

In today’s post, Jow talks about something I recently went through as well. I conjured for more income, more business, more more more. Surrender the Booty, says I.

And the universe did, bless her heart. Like Jow, I was busier than a one legged man in an ass-kicking contest. It didn’t take me long to get overwhelmed to the point of inaction. You know, when you have so much to do you can’t do anything. That’s where the Do One Thing post I wrote last week came from.

Crap, the Druid just posted something similar. He’s got too many patients to care for at the level of care he wants to give. Is it going around? I feel worse for him than I do for me. I got bummed because I just had too much stuff to do. He’s bummed cause he can’t provide the quality of life he feels his patients deserve. Maybe this can help him too. Hope so.

Anyway, we get overwhelmed when we try to cram too much stuff into the space we have available. You can’t grow more corn than you can fit in your field. If you play Farmville, you’ve probably reached the point where you’ve got more stuff on your farm than you have squares to put it in. You start sacrificing your productive land to fit in all the animals or planes or balloons or golden gnomes or topiary gardens or Japanese barns or whatever. (I don’t play it, my spouse does. I quit years ago. It got silly.)

We do the same things with our lives. We live at a certain level of responsibility, and we get used to having X hours of work, and X hours of everything else. We cram more and more into the schedule, and pretty soon we’re sacrificing in the give and take, blossom and decay of our efforts. It drives us nuts for a while until we adapt.

How do we adapt? We sacrifice. We get rid of something to make room for the stuff we want to keep. We get rid of the shit we don’t need anymore, eliminate the things that are taking up space or time that don’t give us a big enough return on our investment of time or effort. Non-productive time in front of a monitor is the first thing that goes for me. Video games, episodes of Torchwood and Doctor Who, even time spent reading other people’s blogs. At work, the administrative tasks that I can catch up later get sacrificed so I can work on putting out whatever project fire has my boss calling me into her office. Sacrifice is the instinctive reaction.

It can be good. You prune a tree, and you get a lot more fruit. The resources that went to maintaining all those extra branches and leaves get channeled into bigger, juicier, more abundant fruit. Good stuff.

Pruning, cutting back on things, sacrifice… It’s Saturn and Mars. Saturn because the things we’re sacrificing are coming to an end, but Mars because we’re cutting things out. When we sacrifice things like this, we’re working within a closed system. There’s only so much space available, only so much time, only so many productive hours in a day that we can work. There’s only so much our minds can handle at once. Limits. Boundaries. Closed circles. Saturn.

But there’s another option.

You ever meet those people who have twice as much to be responsible for than you do, but they’re sitting there all relaxed enjoying a cold beer on a weekend because they just finished mowing their perfectly manicured lawn and they aren’t all behind on everything trying to catch up? I always used to assume they were just rich enough not to have debt eating their pea brains the way I do. Or they hired other people to take care of their kids or something. But that’s not it.

See, people can handle more shit than we think we can. We think we’re in a closed circle with limited resources, but we aren’t. The human brain can handle a lot more shit than we give it credit for. We think we’re in a closed loop with limited resources within the defined boundaries we’re already aware of, but the truth is those boundaries are flexible.

In Farmville, you go up a level, and you can expand your farm. Presto, more squares to use for stuff. You don’t have to get rid of all that shit you thought you’d have to get rid of. In real life, farmers buy more land when they’ve maxed out the profitability of what they’ve already got.

But the things we’re talking about here are mostly time constraints, and there’s no way to expand the day, right? Well yeah. But we’re magicians! We have access to the sphere of Saturn, where boundaries are set. We have access to Chronos himself! TIME constraints? Fuck time constraints. I didn’t go through these initiations to get ass-fucked by time constraints.

Now, when we’re talking about cutting back and sacrificing, it’s Saturn and Mars, right? Well, when we talk about expanding our limits so we can create more, do more, grow more, have more, we’re talking about Saturn and Venus. Primarily. There’s plenty of room for the Moon too, and you’d time it to occur during a waxing Moon. Which is, you know, NOW. But a Saturn/Venus rite is what is called for.

Me, I just conjured up Cassiel and Anael. I used those seals from the Magical Calendar, and the Modern Angelic Grimoire, and my conjure box, and I called up Cassiel first, and then Anael, and when they were present and accounted for, I explained the situation. “I got too much to do, and not enough time or attention or brain power to get it done. I need the boundaries of my sphere expanded, upgraded, I need my resources to deal with everything grown. I need to be able to take care of things in the time I have available, and the bandwidth left over to enjoy my life. Grant me the expanded sphere of influence, the wisdom to manage my time wisely without sacrificing the things I need to keep. Generate more space, and let it be fruitful.”

The result was better time management skills, though I didn’t notice it at first. Things were getting done that were slipping through the cracks before. I was able to sleep soundly, at a decent hour, without my brain running a million miles an hour going over all the things I didn’t quite have time for. I’ve been able to blog more consistently. Above all else, I’ve been able to think more clearly.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying sacrificing things is a bad thing. We’re all little hoarders of bullshit, and we accumulate habits and patterns that need to be shaken up. We need to prune from time to time, and we need to “sacrifice” things that aren’t helping. We need to be Martial with ourselves once in a while. It’s a damned good thing to do.

But when the quality of your work is getting sacrificed, when you’re falling behind on the things you really have to get done no matter what and the make-up time just never gets there, and people are counting on you, it’s time to consider that you need to expand your sphere, upgrade your farm, get a little more room. There’s an adjustment phase, and like all magic that affects your sphere directly, it’s not always comfortable. But the benefits are worth it.