So this morning I found myself going over the RO Behavioral Balance Sheet for 2015, making lists of the best and worst things I did last year to see how I’ve been doing on the overall “expression of my Word” thing in this Great Work business.

It was mostly good. I’m way behind on a lot of things I said I’d do, but the wrap-up is in sight. I’m happy, successful, and people are happy with me in general (unless they’re waiting for a Seven Spheres Conjure Kit, some of those people are pissed, but they should be ready by end of January, I promise).

But one thing stood out in my mind in the “fucked it up” column. One memory. The worst thing I did last year. The thing that as I’m falling asleep five years from now my brain will pull out and be all, remember when you did THIS? HA HA, YOU SUCK.

The worst thing I did last year was this:

Someone posted a pic of what looked like an altar designed to conjure, with absolutely no exaggeration, the Primordial Archetype of the True Hipster God (you probably haven’t heard of him).

The table it was on was like one of those spools that construction teams use to wrap fiber optic or copper cable that you see on construction sites. Like a huge wooden spool made out of terribly cheap plywood, obviously found on the side of the road. I can’t remember all the details of what was on it, but I remember a large can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, some cheap looking tea lite candle or other kind of candle, some really vintage looking stuff that had a shabby “found-item” look to it all, and it was like really scarcely decorated.

I took a screen shot of it and posted it to Facebook with a hilarious tag about conjuring the Hipster God, of course. It was brilliant, and witty, and funny, and barely mocked anyone who isn’t already self-deprecating.

After getting a lot of likes, because likes are important, and my friends posting some really funny stuff about what the Hipster God was all about, I get a PM from the dude who posted the pic. It turns out they were honoring a friend who had committed suicide. The stuff on the altar as stuff the guy had liked in life. Things that defined who he was.

And I turned it into a joke. Centered entirely around the kind of guy he was.

Before he killed himself.

For fuck’s sake.

I felt like TOTAL SHIT. Deleted the post, apologized profusely, and basically tried to make things not shitty for that guy and his friends. I was an ASS.

I’ll do some Work on healing that memory and get on with my life over time. This isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever done, but it’s pretty shitty. I’ll move on and do other terrible things this year, and one of them will stick out, and it will haunt me, and like most people on the planet, my first urge is to keep it to myself.

So why make it public now?

I don’t entirely understand how it all works, but for some reason people listen to me when I talk. More people will read this post than belong to the OTO and A.:A.: combined in the entire world.

And a lot of you are like me. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this.

You fuck up a lot, but you don’t mention it, you keep it to yourself. You punish yourself for being a total asshat that one time, and that other time. You think the things you do were awful, and there’s a part of your brain that will punish you all year for some shit you did.

And no one else is talking about how shitty they are as a person. We post the good stuff most of the time, and we roll our eyes at the people posting their shitty stuff. We keep our own shit to ourselves.

Everyone is doing that all the time.

So there’s no honest, true standard of behavior we can use to figure out how we’re doing, compared to other people. So you flipped off that asshat in traffic and later felt bad because you were PMSing or hungry or horny or something. You made fun of the fat people at the gym, who are actually there to do something about getting healthy. You did that one thing that no one else knows about, and it haunts you and you feel stupid, dumb, ugly, insensitive, awkward, whatever.

And I got to thinking this morning that always posting how awesome things are is bullshit. Sure, I completed the Great Work, created the Philosopher’s Stone, spoke my Word of the Magus and everything.

But I also made fun of a memorial to a suicide victim.

I wanted you all to know that other people, people you listen to and respect, are fuck-ups who did terrible things they feel guilty about. I want you to feel better about that one thing you did that you think is so awful. I want you to know that the worst thing you did last year probably wasn’t as bad as you think it was, really, and you should cut yourself some slack.

Unless it was worse than what I did, you sick fuck.

If it was, don’t do that again, for sure, eh?

But don’t beat yourself up. You’ll do far, far worse things before you die, probably. Let that one terrible thing go, and look in the other column, the awesome things you did last year. I got a bunch of people to do magic to make their lives better financially and emotionally and intellectually. I inspired some crusty curmudgeons to see their religion as alive and hopeful and active instead of as a backdrop to their personal dramas with their lodge mates.

You did awesome shit too.

You’re awesome.

Move along.

Happy Holidays, all!

I spent Thanksgiving with none other than Frater Barrabbas and his lovely wife, and the shared members of our local OTO lodge. In a word:

AMAZING.

Great food, amazing cocktails and wine, the FEAST of the Ishim! It was fucking awesome. We celebrated the hell out of the harvest.

Guys, do magic. It makes your life so much better.

Nope.

Hey all, I know I said I’d start sending these out in September, but I ended up working 80-hour weeks at my day job, and only just got all the materials in.

They should start going out in the next two weeks. They will go out to the people who have been waiting the longest first.

So, at least one person keeps asking me how much I’d charge to put together a complete set of tools for the Seven Spheres book, so I figured I’d throw together a whole kit.

It will be $175 for the tools alone, or $225 for the book plus the complete kit.

The complete kit will include:

• 1 Ebony Wand, 3/4″ X 12″ to Trithemian specs
• 1 Table of Practice, with the Kings of the quarters (Paimon, Amaymon, Egyn, Oriens)
• 1 quartz crystal scrying point, consecrated. This will be 2-4″ high, 2-3″ wide. I don’t control the growth of crystals, so there’s no conformity. If I went with quartz crystal balls, I wouldn’t buy this kit, it would cost too much. I like using my quartz point anyway.
• 7 1″ circular silver talismans for the seven archangels, the same ones I use. They’re all in sterling silver, which receives the rays of all the planets nicely. I’d do the 7 traditional metals, but I’m not working in lead or tin these days. I’ve gotten enough lead poisoning, and silver works great.
• 1 brass incense holder
• 1 pack of stick incense, nag champa, my current favorite for all spirits. 

Shipping is not included, it will likely be around $5-15 in the US, $25-50 overseas. I haven’t checked.

I’m only making 7 sets of these things, and they will not likely be shipped until early September. Please order using the button below. As long as you can place an order, they are not sold out.

I’m entering a new phase of my Work, these days, and I’m pretty excited about it. I want to pursue some things Sef and Chris Bradford and a few other Gents had discussed back in the day under a whole new skin.

When I started “Head for the Red,” it was entirely about my pursuit of the accomplishment of the Great Work. I researched the practices of magicians throughout the aeons, found a really convenient way to contact the spirits, conjured them, and performed the Work. I “created the philosophers stone” about three years ago, and have been working on figuring out the best ways to grind it and project it into the world as the universal panacea.

In addition, as many of you know, I joined the A∴A∴ and the OTO a couple of years ago, and it’s shifted the focus of a lot of my Work. I’m still
conjuring from the grimoires regularly, and maintaining my relationships with the spirits, but I’ve also found a framework for the things revealed to me in the 8th Sphere.

I realized a lot of things when I hit the 8th, and I want to pursue those things more hard core in my public life than I have been here lately. There’s an aspect of the Work that applies to every man, woman, and child upon the face of the Earth that doesn’t have any press right now, and it needs it. Badly.

The Seven Spheres are just the beginning. There’s more, baby, so much more.

And the A∴A∴ and OTO stuff is also pretty cool, but I haven’t felt nearly as comfortable about posting my experiences in the Thelemic systems here because so many of my readers are not in that particular current, and I don’t want to come off like I’m proselytizing Thelema or anything. We got together over a lot of bitterness based on my experiences with the Golden Dawn, and I respect that a sizable base of my readers aren’t interested in lodgy-type things.

So going forward, I’m going to be splitting my interests between this and a couple other blogs. Over time, I’ll see where I end up, but right now I’m going to keep maintaining this site, posting about awesome magical things in the traditional Hermetic current, and things of that nature.

I’m also going to be taking my 8th Sphere revelations to the Work of Kings blog. That’s where I’ll be getting into the Applied Hermetics stuff we had talked about years ago. It’s about fucking time.

Aaaaaand, I’ve got a lot of stuff to talk about that is primarily of interest to folks in the OTO and the A∴A∴, which will take place on my Horns of Cerastes blog. I’ll ventilize, I’ll advertise, I’ll theorize, and I’ll proselytize.

Oh yea, I’m also getting a new web site. Because it’s just that time again.

Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a wild ride.

Every once in a while, it becomes super popular in various groups of occultists to argue about Aleister Crowley. In the OTO and A.’.A.’. groups I interact with, the debates usually boil down to ways people make it ok to be a Thelemite even though he was a bastard who got some things terribly wrong overall.

Outside his cultus, people argue about how important he is to modern occultism. Jake Stratton-Kent and I were talking about it the other day on FaceBook. He doesn’t think Crowley was the greatest magician ever, and I agree. Not the greatest ever, but certainly the most influential of the last 1500-2000 years, within the modern western mystery tradition.

I personally believe that less than 1% of English-speaking modern occultists are untouched by Crowley. Every system of magic in the English-speaking West finds its way back to To Mega Therion at some point. Even systems that think Crowley is shit still go to pains to differentiate themselves, and thereby define themselves using Crowley’s teachings and methodologies. So even when people hate Crowley, he’s still influencing their practice and their minds.

But that said…

Who gives a fuck? There’s nothing Crowley wrote or taught or learned or changed or presented that is necessary to accomplish “the Great Work.” People did it for years before he came along, and people will keep doing it long after he’s gone the way of Buddha, Moses, Christ, and Mohammad.

In the mean time, if you read his stuff and it resonates with you, enjoy it. If it doesn’t, do something else. There’s nothing any Order he created, changed, influenced or destroyed on the planet that has anything in its teachings that you must receive from that group to accomplish the Great Work. The Golden Dawn, OTO, and A.’.A.’. are not the only way to the Philosopher’s Stone, and for a lot of people, they will hinder your progress more than help.

So many times when I see people bashing Crowley, it’s to make themselves look smarter or more important in comparison. I can count on one hand the number of magicians I’ve met who criticize Crowley who have actually read his works and understood the intent of his practices. Jake Stratton-Kent and Jason Miller pop immediately to mind. Most other critics make their statements based on ignorance, lack of comprehension, and lack of study.

Actually, I’m being super generous. Most people talking smack about Crowley base their opinions on what they heard about him rather than what they know about his life, times, and work. Because they’re lazy and would rather feel good about themselves for thinking poorly of an icon of magick than actually do anything necessary to begin to become one themselves.

Folks, the Great Work is not a competition. You are not a better magician because you can point out what other magicians have done wrong. You are a good magician when you accomplish the Great Work, whatever that means to you.

Crowley can be useful in that pursuit for some people some of the time in accomplishing some things. There can be value in understanding what Crowley got wrong, but if that’s all you see when you look at his Work, you’re missing out on everything he got right…

And I’d suggest your time would be better spent pursuing something else.

As mentioned, the Pharos Mercury talismans are available! It’s your chance to get something that will counter those nasty Mercury Retrograde effects that plague us three times a year.

Getting the pics of these talismans was difficult, I suspect in part due to their mercurial nature, and the Rx didn’t help. They are beautiful in real life.

Pharos is also going to be creating the silken cloth wrap suggested by the Key of Solomon for each person that buys one, but the silk won’t be ready to ship until after July 1. You’ll get the talismans first, though, along with a “Working with the Key of Solomon Talismans” guide I’m writing, an expanded version of the methods of operation I posted with the Venus talismans.

We have six talismans available. All were made on good elections, and finding a good election for the planetary hour and planetary day that line up with the instructions from the Key of Solomon isn’t easy. We won’t be able to make things with additional astrological graces like this until next year, for the Mercury talismans.

Four of them are on 2″ silver disks, and were created when Mercury was direct, and dignified by sign and term (Pharos says they score a +7 for the election, if I understand right).

Two of them are on disks measuring 1 7/8″ across, and were made when Mercury was direct, and dignified by sign and face (Pharos says they score a +6 for this election, again, assuming I understand right).

Please don’t ask me what that means. Pharos is the brains when it comes to the astrological values. All I know for sure is that these talismans have the regular value of being made in the appropriate hour of the appropriate day by the Key of Solomon, plus the added virtue of being made at beneficial election times. What this means is that they will be more effective in your use of them for Mercurial manifestations.

We have the following available (note, if you get a “sold out” page when you try to buy them, someone beat you to it):

The “Miracle Maker”

This is the Second Pentacle of Mercury, which will “serve to bring to effect and to grant things which are contrary unto the order of Nature; and which are not contained under any other head.” We have one on a 1 7/8″ disc with a +6 election that costs $325. We have another on a 2″ disc with a +7 election that costs $375.

I really wanted to keep one of these for myself, but I can make them myself, and the main reason I sell these things is so that people who aren’t comfortable making them themselves can benefit from the results, so … sigh. The things I do for you people.

The “Key to the Universe”

This is the Fourth Pentacle of Mercury, which is “proper to acquire the understanding and knowledge of all things created, and to seek out and penetrate into hidden things; and to command those spirits which are called Allatori to perform embassies.” We have only one, on a 2″ silver disc with a +7 election.

This talisman is extremely potent without the election, and is something every magician should have in their repertoire in my humble opinion. I mean, come on, you get to know ALL THINGS CREATED. Why we don’t sell more of these at the regular price is beyond me. The spirits of this pentacle are adept at revealing information sources, providing insights, and making the kinds of connections that lead to the AHA! moments that make this magic stuff so fun and useful. This talisman is priced at $525.

The “Opener of Ways”

This is the Fifth Pentacle of Mercury, which “serveth to open doors in whatever way they may be closed, and nothing it may encounter can resist it.” This talisman seems to be used by a lot of my clients to “open” relationship opportunities with people who are, for whatever reason, unwilling to start a new relationship with the client. It’s also incredibly useful with cases in probate, for some reason. Any situation that’s stuck falls before its influence, in my experience.

We have three of these available, one on a 1 7/8″ silver disc with a +6 election that costs $325. We have another two on a 2″ disc with a +7 election that costs $375.

Recap and Purchasing

Each talisman includes the silk cloth recommended by the Key of Solomon, which will be available after July 1, and the “Working with the Key of Solomon Pentacles” guide I’m writing. Talismans will be shipped separately from the silk cloths due to the delay in getting them produced.

Please select the talisman of your choice from the drop-down below, and again, if you try to buy it and it’s already sold, you’ll be taken to a “sold out” page, and you’ll have to re-evaluate your selections.

A reminder, if you’re interested in joining the upcoming Seven Spheres live courses, purchase them here by Friday:

If you’re interested in signing up for the Black Work course, use this button to buy the course AND the live lessons:

And if you’re already a member, check your email for the “Black Work Live Only” purchase link to get signed up for the live lessons.

I’ll be doing the courses live using gotomeeting, and will be sending out an email to people who have purchased the courses with a link to join the broadcast on Saturday morning.

All classes will be recorded and transfered to a private Youtube channel. I’ll send out the links to the recorded sessions as the courses are converted in case you miss them.