I saw the video below this morning, and I realized that people must be growing up and moving out into a totally different world than I did in my twenties.

I hitch-hiked across the country in 1994 or 1995, and basically I stayed in shelters, or slept in a one-person tent I’d pitch alongside the highway. When I needed money, I’d ask the shelter management where the day-labor place was and show up there at 4:00 AM, work 10 hours, and get a check for $35 (after taxes and check cashing fees) that night. I did that a couple weeks with a friend, and we made enough money to get a room at a weekly apartment place, where I was able to shower regularly.

We ate ramen, and got nicer clothes at Goodwill. I went to ManPower and they tested my skills with Microsoft Office, and certified me as a “Master” because I knew how to use the right-click button to open a menu and find the things I needed to insert pictures and fonts and things. With that I qualified for better paying positions. I showed up daily, I did my work, and I smiled a lot. I used that technique to get hired full time, and eventually to become a Tech Writer, where I learned a lot of stuff about SharePoint, and now I get over 6 figures a year to do some pretty advanced stuff that I picked up along the way.

But apparently, this path is somehow gone. Millenials can’t find work? I don’t get it. At my current job, we hire people through temporary staffing agencies, and if they do good work and have a pleasant personality, we hire them full time. That’s how it’s been my whole career. How is this not working anymore?

Don’t people expect to have shitty jobs until they’re in their thirties? Don’t people get apartments with their friends until they can afford something better? Isn’t that … normal? What the hell happened?

I secretly suspect people just don’t want to go through the processes that are in place in our society to get a good paying job. I know I’m basically saying, “kids today…” but seriously, is it that hard? Am I missing something here? It’s hard, it’s annoying, it’s boring, and it doesn’t pay well. You have to put up with bullshit and smile the whole time, even when you don’t want to. Is that what people are complaining about?

Someone help me out, things aren’t making sense here.

If this is the attitude people are bringing to the table, they aren’t going to be very happy with how magic works either.

In addition to the Seven Spheres courses, I’m going to be running live lessons on the Black Work. See the following link for more information:

First, if you haven’t signed up yet, here’s where you go to buy the book and sign up for the class:

There are plenty of seats left for this session. You must be signed up by this coming Saturday to take part in this set of classes. If you don’t sign up now, no worries, I’ll be doing this every couple months or so going forward. I’ve lifted the limit to 50 people because so many people end up viewing the recorded versions later.

Courses will begin on Sundays at 2:00 P.M. Central time. I’m going to do these in two-hour increments with a break in between so this doesn’t take two months per session.

The schedule is as follows:

• May 31 – Intro and Overview 
• June 7 – Jupiter & Mars
• June 14 – The Sun & Venus
• June 21 – Mercury & the Moon
• June 28 – Saturn & “On Kingdom Management”

The Intro & Overview will take a while. I go over the basics of the course, the underlying philosophy of the Seven Spheres book, the intent behind the Work described, and the actual conjuration method.

Each session will be recorded and posted to a private YouTube channel for future viewing if you can’t make it.

I’m looking forward to running these things, the last time it was a blast!

I’ve got a few blog posts started that I can’t publish yet, but I’m excited about what’s coming and I don’t feel like waiting. I’ll be making full announcements soon, but here’s the basics:

Courses:

We’re FINALLY going to be starting the LIVE Seven Spheres course and the Black Work courses. I wanted to start them this weekend, but I would have had to make the announcement last week to give everyone time to schedule things properly. This weekend I’ll post the schedule for the live courses, and let everyone know what’s going on.

Talismans:

I’ve been working with Pharos, a fellow Hermetic magician on the Key of Solomon talismans, and we’ve got a small inventory of Mercury and Venus talismans and talismanic artifacts that I can’t wait to announce! These were made during the last really good Mercury and Venus elections for the next year or so, so they’ll have the regular awesome juju of the Key Pentacles with the added juju of the astrological virtues of the electional times!

Special election versions of the Opener of the Ways, Miracle Maker, Key to the Universe, Come to Me, and Graceful Desires talismans are going to be available to a very few lucky folks soon. Pharos is also working on some innovative ways to wear these items inconspicuously that I’m excited about. We’re also working on a set of Solar talismans to be announced.

Super cool stuff coming your way in the talisman department.

Books:

I’m working on my Modern Goetic Grimoire, turning it into a magnum opus of grimoire-based easy-to-use Goetia. It’s going excruciatingly slowly, and I keep getting distracted by all the other cool stuff going on.

I’m also putting together a “Working with the Key of Solomon Pentacles” booklet that will go with the talismans, including ways to tap their power casually, as well as a formal conjuration expanded from the description on the talismans page.

On Tour:

I’m working on speaking engagements across the country. I’ll be at SOMA’s shindig in Austin, Texas, Omnimancer’s Crucible in Jersey, and at Azul Nox in Pennsylvania, Seven Gates in Kentucky, and Sword and Serpent in Dayton. Dates are still to be announced on a lot of these things, but it sure looks like a lot of fun. Hopefully I can get Moloch to speak with me in Ohio. That would be awesome. I’m also putting together some events for Minneapolis, so local folks, stay tuned!

Hangouts/Podcasts:

I’ve got another Whiskey Discussion in the works with Master Slee, and I’m going to try to get some Hawk and Jackal folks together to talk about some of the magic put together by Ebony Anpu back in the day.

When I was a kid, my mom enrolled me and my sister in a summer local Bible Olympics thing in Oklahoma. All summer we would travel and answer Bible trivia questions against other teams from other churches in the local counties. My sister and I kicked their fucking asses every time. Pathetic nominal hose beasts that they were.

One of the things they had was a scripture memorization contest. We had to memorize verses, and recite them to someone in our church. Whoever memorized the most got a Bible with their name embossed on the cover.

And you better fucking believe I walked away with a Bible with my name on it.

The other first-place-level prize was a board game based on CS Lewis’ Voyage of the Dawn Treader. My older sister won that. We tied for first, and she already had her own Bible, which she had taken to school to show her teacher why we weren’t actually descended from fish because we share some eye parts. We swept the contests, mostly because my mom was like UBER BIBLE BITCH.

In all the best ways.

She taught us how to memorize things in a great way. She bought a roll of butcher block paper, and wrote out the verses we were memorizing in multi-colored magic marker, and hung it on the walls of our dining room, kitchen, and living room. We spent time each night memorizing and reciting, memorizing and reciting, with the sole goal being the utter humiliation of the local backwater nominal Christian teens of Hennessey and Crescent Counties at 11 and 13.

To this day my mom feels bad about how harsh we skunked those illiterate bastards. LOL!

So these days, I’m in the A.’.A.’., and part of the curriculum incudes memorizing vast swaths of the Thelemic Holy Books. Doing so is a LIFECHANGING event, and everyone should totally do it, because they that seal up the book into their blood are the chosen of Adonai, and the Thought of Adonai becomes a Word and a Deed; and they abide in the Land that the far-off travellers call Naught.

The last one I didn’t mention in the post before, but let’s be real. “FUCK FUCK FUCK, GOD DAMN IT, as FUCKING Ra that gathereth his FUCKING clouds about Him at eventide into a molten sea of FUCKING Joy” might have resounded through the house a time or three.

I am working on putting together the class schedules for the next Seven Spheres and the Black Work sessions. Sorry it’s been delayed, I had some stuff come up that required my attntion the last couple of weeks and I lost track of some things. I’ll be getting that scheduled here shortly.

From www.Esotericarchives.com

This Saturday, come to Leaping Laughter Lodge to see Joseph Peterson, Scott Stenwick, and yours truly speaking on our favorite aspects of Solomonic Magic. Joseph will be speaking on the History of Goetia, Scott will be speaking on his latest explorations of Enochian Magic, and I’ll be presenting on the practical application of grimoire magic in your daily life.

I believe Joseph and Scott will be bringing copies of their latest books to sign and sell, and I know I will.

The event will be eld at Leaping Laughter Lodge, 3107 California Street NE, Minneapolis MN 55418. It begins at 1:00 p.m. central with Scott Stenwick’s presentation on Enochian Magic. I’ll be following his talk around 2:30, and for the grand finale, Joseph will begin around 4:00. We’re each planning on speaking an hour or so, with time left over for questions and answers.

So, chances are good thast you’re aware I’ve been referring to Joseph Peterson’s web site, www.Esotericarchives.com for years. Everything I teach is based on the materials he offers for free. I found Art of Drawing Spritis into Crystals there, and that’s become the foundational conjruation approach I use for everything. He’s got the Lemegeton, the Greater Key, every grimore you could ask for, and notes on the various manuscripts they are based on. He’s got copies of Iamblichus, writings of Dionysius the Areopagite, and nearly everything Agrippa ever wrote or was attributed to him. It is the very best place on the web to go for actual solomonic scholarship, and Joseph Peterson is the foremost authority on Solomonic magic I know.

I mean, guys, everything I got into in Hermetics is at Joseph’s site, and I’m secretly giddy with fanboy joy that I finally get to meet him and present with him in public. So honored!

Snacks will be available, and of course wine for those over 21. We’re asking for a minimum $10 donation, unless you’re a dues current lodge member. I personally argued that we should be charging $45, at LEAST to get in, but I was outvoted.

So, $10 “suggested donation” it is, and I will not tell you what I think about you if that’s all you’d pay for something this awesome.

For more information check out the following links:

On Facebook
On Google Calendar

TL/DR: I’m going to be doing live broadcasts for each of the Course Lessons, sign up at the link at the bottom of the page!

I tend to assume that anyone who purchases my books does so because they know me and have been reading my blog for years, and they think I’m awesome as a result of watching all the shit I’ve been through as I learned how to use Hermetic Magic to make my life amazing. I’ve been blogging here for … shit, going on nine years now. I started soon after attaining K&CHGA and right around the time I got to working through Agrippa and started using the Trithemian approach*  to conjuring spirits.

As a result of this assumption, I expect people who buy Seven Spheres to have a really thorough understanding of the Hermetic Cosmology, who they are, why they’re here, what they are supposed to be doing with their existences, and the proper application of the Great Work to their lives. I went through all that shit in great detail as I went through the process of getting here today, and I just assume if you’re doing what I’m doing, you’ve been through what I’ve been through.

But the thing is, you haven’t. Most of you, anyway. A whole bunch of people have bought my book and have none of the background education, framework, and experience to actually perform the work effectively, and that concerns me.

I laid out the basic process of what you should do to integrate the forces you can contact with Seven Spheres in the last post, but really, that’s not likely going to be enough to get you the fullness of the potential experiences off the bat. You really need to understand the Hermetic Theology and Soteriology that forms the core of the book to use it effectively. 

Don’t get me wrong, though. Using the book will lead you to this understanding, but it will take you there via the bumpy and sometimes rough road of gnosis, the school of hard knocks. There’s nothing wrong with that, for sure, I went through it and came out great, and eventually you’ll reach the appropriate conclusions you’ll need to reach in your path. That’s just how the magic thing works.

But I spent a long time, about two years, coming up with a shortcut for people so they wouldn’t have to go through and make a bunch of mistakes getting to the point where I’m at now. Or at least, not the same mistakes I made. I put together a series of courses that teach the principles of Hermetic Magic that I learned and use in my Work. These are the Red Work Series of Courses.

The Red Work Series of Courses

This series of courses are based on my understanding of the phases of the Alchemical transformational processes of the Great Work. The alchemists took some fundamentally flawed base material, subjected it to a series of refinements, or chemical processes, and when completed had a purified final form. Think of refining gold from ore. You get the ore-containing stone, you put it through a series of heat-based or chemical based processes in a particular order, and when complete you have extracted the pure gold. 

A similar series of processes was postulated for the spiritual refinement of human beings. The process became known as the Great Work. You start with a human being as the prime material, you go through various stages of the Work, and you come out refined and purified, able to reach your true potential, and able to project healing and longevity into the world around you. 

The phases of the Great Work began with the Black Work, in which you cooked the Prime Material, or let it decompose, and it turned black. The base impurities of the substance rose to the surface, and the basic materials that had been combined in an impure whole are broken down into their component parts. The next phase is the White Work, where the substances are heated further, or otherwise treated until the impurities in the mix are consumed and turned to pure ash, turning them from black to white, or the chemical equivalent. 

In some systems, the Green Work (or Peacock phase) followed, a series of processes you performed on the remaining material to further refine the component parts and begin to properly reintegrate them into the final whole. As the material passed through the Green Work, it turned various hues of blue and green and gold, like the colors of a peacock’s feather. Then the materia went into the Red Work, the phase at which the materia recombined into a single, pure and holy object, the Philosopher’s Stone. This last phase consisted of a great deal of applied heat over time. The Final stage of the Work is the Projection phase, in which the Stone is ground up into powder, which is used as a medicine to heal the world.

I based the courses on each of these phases. The Black Work is the most intensive, and provides the most comprehensive information necessary to understand the Work we do. It’s based almost entirely on Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy, and my own experiences. By the end of this course, you will understand more about the neo-platonism of the Hermetic Cosmology than you ever thought you’d need to understand. You’ll have a solid foundation to do the Work of any of the grimoires, and a full comprehension of how you relate to the universe at large, the spirits we conjure, and ultimately your own divine nature.

After that comes the White Work course. This course is based on my studies of the Holy Guardian Angel, and the forms it took within the belief systems of the Zoroastrians, the Greek Magical Papyri, and into the Rennaissance grimoires. I explore what it is, what it means, and the various methods of contacting this spirit. I also provide a series of preparations and rituals designed to facilitate contacting this spirit. Attaining Knowledge and Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel or its equivalent is not a necessary thing in most of the traditions of the West, at least officially, as such. It is implicit in all the systems though, and it never hurts to have a Solar Spirit at your back ready to help you conjure, feed, and direct the forces the spirits and intelligences represent.

The Green Work course has been temporarily discontinued, because I never finished it properly. The Seven Spheres book accomplishes the same thing, especially when combined with the Seven Spheres course.

I never decided whether I should write a Red Work course or not. If you do the Work of the Black, White, and Green Work, I believe you cannot help but finish the Red Work. Also, I feel like I’m always in this phase in some aspect of my life, and I don’t know whether I can really write a course on it. I think it varies from person to person, and within each lifetime it varies for each individual. The Red Work I do today is different than the Red Work I did five years ago, two years ago, or last month.

And Projection… well, that’s going to look however you want it to look. It is the creation of your world.

Standard Correspondence Course

If you want to take the standard courses, you can order the courses at the regular prices at this link below. These come with all the lessons in PDF, and a membership to the yahoo group where you can discuss the lessons with other course members. Here’s the link:

Link to Order the Standard Correspondence Courses for the Black and White Work

Live Lessons for the Black Work Course

I had so much fun doing the Seven Spheres courses live, that I’ve decided to go ahead and do a live broadcast for each of the Black Work course lessons, and eventually for each of the White Work lessons too. For right now, I’m only taking orders for the live Black Work lessons. With this order, you’ll be getting all the standard correspondence course materials, plus an hour long discussion of the topics in detail once a week.

That’s SEVEN HOURS OF MY LIFE, PEOPLE! 

Jesus, wait a minute. Let me think about this.

Ok, yeah, I’m sure. But it’s going to cost you extra, for sure. I know you saw that coming. 

If you’d like to participate, it’s $200 for the Black Work, that’s an extra $75, which isn’t too bad, in my opinion for that much of my time. I’ll be doing these on the weekends, and if you miss the class, I’ll be recording them and posting them to a private channel on youtube, which you’ll get access to super-secretly. you’ll be able to go back and watch them if you miss them, or re-watch them if you fell asleep, went to the bathroom, or got shit-faced drunk and forgot about it. I’m limiting the number of people who can join to 50, but don’t worry, that’s a relatively large number and I doubt I’ll get that many people to join.

If you CAN order, it means class is NOT FULL. If you try to order and you get a “Sold Out” page, then you’ll have to wait until next time I run this.

I’ll be putting out an announcement this weekend for the next live Seven Spheres course, and when I’m about a month or so into those I’ll announce a live White Work course, so keep your eyes peeled.

* As far as I know, I am the first modern magician to make extensive use of this technique, and I am completely comfortable saying that the reason The Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals has gained a huge amount of popularity in the last few years is because I told everyone I knew how cool it was. It’s a simple method of conjuration, and to make it even easier, I wrote up a neat little tech spec manual that put its simple practices into modern language (The Modern Angelic Grimoire). This method is sort of authentic and traditional, even though my version technically isn’t either of those things according to grimoire purists, but everyone who uses the technique finds it super-effective.

Wow, what a terrible idea a public “Seven Spheres in Seven Days” group turned out to be. There were people who wanted to do the rites in a week without ever having done them in the suggested order of the book. There were people confused about why we were ping-ponging around the spheres, and what the point was.

I suspect I must have misrepresented the process, the plan, or the effects. Or I misunderstood people.

There’s a reason I tell people to take it easy, spread it out over five to seven weeks. The book is designed to introduce you to the powers of creation used by God to create and maintain all of existence. You go through the spheres, you get initiated, you integrate the forces, and you learn to implement them. When I say it’s initiatory, I mean, the power gets pumped into your sphere, and you get tuned up in relation to that power. It cleanses you, shakes out the issues you have with that sphere manifesting in your life, cleans you up and prepares you to take on a little more power next time.

Over time, you learn to integrate the forces and expand your kingdom. You become a skilled manager of your life. You understand your intents, desires, and the consequences of your choices. You learn that you are a god, and you can direct the forces of creation, and harvest the results.

It behooves the practitioner to do this systematically, gently, and to integrate the forces a little at a time.

So why would someone do the Seven Spheres in Seven Days? What’s the point of releasing all the powers of all the planets into your sphere all at once?

To me, that’s like asking why you get drunk. You get drunk to get drunk. It’s fun, you have a good time, you get experiences and stories to share with your friends, you hit that point where you get all honest and understand something about yourself that you’ll probably forget in the morning, but so what? It’s fun!

And then you clean up the mess you made.

Doing the Seven Spheres in Seven Days is like that. It’s an ecstatic rite, or an ecstatic event. It creates the circumstances necessary to develop a gnostic experience of your personal deity-ness. You basically set the stage to see your entire life transform over the space of a month or so, in ways that will continue to unfold for years. You will see that you are indeed a God, and if you ever need a good reminder of what that means, you can do it again.

It’s awesome!

And dangerous. Power flows like water. The reason conjuring the Intelligences and deities of the spheres creates change is because like water, it pools into the lowest places. If there are blockages, it builds up behind the blockages until it can wash them away. When the blockages finally go, it’s like the breaking of the levies, there will be a flood for a while, and then the pure stream can flow through.

Going through the spheres at a reasonable pace, following the order I prescribe in the book is good for you. It’s safer. It’s more gentle. It’s focused primarily on turning you into the king of your world. It places you on the throne and takes you through the steps necessary to learn how to rule, the forces at your disposal, and the things you need to fix to get what you want. If you even know what that is. The book recommends taking  an inventory of your life, and getting to know your strengths and weaknesses, and doing the magic as you go along and take stock of what’s going on in your life. It’s a process.

The private Seven Spheres in Seven Days group I put together for those who took the class with me was fine. They were ready for it. They had been immersed in my prattlings. I was able to program them from the get-go with the basic framework necessary to handle the ecstatic result.

The public group had people with no clue champing at the bit to jump in, regardless of whether they understood what was going on or not. It quickly became clear to me that I had created something terribly dangerous, something I wanted no part of whatsoever.

So I eliminated the public group. I’m still going through the Seven Spheres in Seven days with my class. They can handle it, and we’re having fun.

If you’re interested in the ecstatic experience, for god’s sake (your sake), please don’t just jump right into it. Here’s what I suggest:

1) Read the Book. If you haven’t yet, buy it here and then read through it, cover to cover.
2) Do the recommended exercises. I highly suggest taking the Course that comes with it. I’ll be announcing that as available in a couple days, but even if you don’t, definitely take stock of your Kingdom as you go. Know Thyself.
3) Do the Rites. Perform each rites over 5-6 weeks, from Jupiter to the Moon, and then figure out if you want to do Saturn.
4) Wait a couple weeks to let the forces percolate and integrate in your sphere.
5) See how things look.

At that point, you’ll be able to decide if you should do the Seven Spheres in Seven Days. When I do them, it’s a lot like Charlie Sheen finding a spare couple kilos of cocaine in his couch he’d TOTALLY FORGOTTEN ABOUT. I have a good time. I love magic. I love the transformation. I love the power. It’s AWESOME.

But, but, but…

I’ve been doing this shit for years. I completed the Great Work. My shit’s solid, yo. It was forged in the fires, and it’s been made pure. I can handle it, I know what to expect, and I’ve learned how to deal with it. There were people in that group who I just couldn’t even begin to imagine unleashing that stuff on themselves.

I couldn’t be a part of it. It’d be like dousing kids in lighter fluid and then giving them those razor scooters that sparked.

Hey everyone, I meant to get this out a lot sooner, but I totally forgot, what with my life barrelling by at 110 mph every day. I wanted to get this out in front of y’all asap. Tonight at 8:00 PM Central at the Lodge. If you don’t know where it is, send me an email at:

And I’ll send you the address. Or you an look up the event at the Leaping Laughter Facebook page.