Rufus Opus

Tag: RufusAstraCheck

Tag: RufusAstraCheck

  • The Modern Goetic Grimoire: Questions and Answers

    Ahhhh, Saturday, day of rest…

    Right.

    Someone wrote me an email asking for more info on the Modern Goetic Grimoire. They asked very intelligent and insightful questions, just the kind of thing I’d want to know before buying a grimoire:

    I would like to know if it is actually a formula of evoking the demons and working with them, but much simpler and direct than the traditional Goetia method.

    First, it’s not only a book on conjuring Daimons. It addresses that, yes, and in detail, but “Goetia” is a class of magic that includes much more than conjuring only the 72 spirits of the Lem’s Goetia. Traditionally, Goetia included necromancy, working with the genius loci, and a lot of what we would consider Theurgy today.

    That said, the answer is a resounding Yes. The sections that address conjuring the daimons present a simple and direct formula for working with the 72 spirits of the Lemegeton’s Goetia. Older versions of the grimoire, like Weier’s Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, also present a “much simpler and direct” formula for working with them than that which is found in the Lemegeton’s Goetia. My approach is somewhere in between Weier and the Lemegeton, but it is a lot closer to the spirit of Weier’s apprach.

    Like the Modern Angelic Grimoire, you can, I believe, begin conjuring the daimons using only the materials found in the Modern Goetic Grimoire. But if you follow the advice I give in the book, you won’t be rushing into anything as quickly as you do with the Angelic Grimoire.

    Also if they are willing to serve: I guess there’s no binding in your grimoire, so can I make sure they will want to fulfill my instructions.

    Yes, they are willing to serve; but you are correct, there is no “binding” in my grimoire. The Spirits are already “bound” to you out of a relationship which you have forgotten, but they have not. They honor old friendships and alliances. (Like the Elves did in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movie The Two Towers by showing up to fight and die at Helm’s Deep. Totally not in the book, but a neat touch.)

    As for “make sure they will want to fulfill my instructions,” I’ve found they are always eager to fulfill my instructions. That doesn’t mean that you always get what you want. Even when you get exactly what you ask for, there are times that you get nothing that you wanted. It’s called the Monkey’s Paw effect, and I address it in the book.

    Before performing any Goetic Magic, I think it’s very important that the magician is properly prepared. I outline a system of initiations I went through before going into Goetia, a series of changes to my personal sphere of influence to which I attribute my own success. At the same time, there’s a “paradigm” shift that has to occur in the mind of the magician.

    The Spirits of the Lemegeton’s Goetia are not opposed to us and the rest of the universe. They are completely in harmony with the Will of the Mind from which they manifest. Their role in the universe, however, is to cause insatiable desires in the hearts of “impious men.” Impious means you have not only forgotten your Divine Race and Eternal Value, but also have no active relationship with the Monad and the Intelligences he emanated to manifest his Universe. Going into Goetia thinking they are your enemies, or that they intend you harm out of some kind of intrinsic malice is a mistake. Goetic Magic is a lot like the cave that Yoda sends Luke into in the Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back. You find what you take with you.

    Like any style of magic, there is no guarantee of success. Even those who follow the Lemegeton’s instructions in the Goetia (conjuring by curses and threats, and torturing by fire) suffer failures. More often, I suspect, than those who use the “spirit friendly” approach I advocate in my book. If you go into it expecting them to be unwilling slaves, you’ll see everything they do from that perspective, and you’ll misinterpret a lot of what happens. I made that mistake early in my Goetic Magic attempts, and I suffered the consequences. I’d rather keep other people from doing the same kind of stupid things I did.

    One of the most important lessons of any magical practice is that, “Sometimes the magic works. Sometimes, it doesn’t.” If you think the spirits are unwilling slaves, you’ll blame your failures on their rebellious nature, rather than finding out why the magic failed and finding a way to make it succeed.

    And finally, [I’d like to know] if there’s any risk of attack/trouble with this method.

    I have never had a demon attack me, the way I suspect you mean. However, there is always an element of risk associated with any magical act, no matter how benign. A friend used chaos magic to lose fifteen pounds. She lost the fifteen pounds, exactly. The fat went right into her bloodstream and clogged her liver, causing her pain and suffering that lasted years.

    But for every risk, there is a mitigation. I work in Project Management, and for any project you set yourself to accomplish, there are certain risks that have to be identified and planned for. Nothing ever works exactly as we expect it to. Risk Management is the art of forecasting potential events, doing what you can to lower the chances of the risks appearing, and planning what to do in case the risk does manifest.

    With the 72 Spirits of the Lemegeton’s Goetia, the biggest risk you face is the manifestation of their negative attributes in your life.Vepar is a good example. Say you want to protect a Naval shipment for your cousin in Iraq. You conjure Vepar, and the shipment arrives safely. Later you learn that the crew also suffered a rare skin disease that caused really bad acne-like sores that lasted three days. Causing putrefying sores is one of Vepar’s other abilities.

    To mitigate this risk, you would have specifically told Vepar to cause any sores to appear on the crew of their enemies, not on the crew of your allies, or simply told him that you didn’t want any sores to manifest at all. It’s the kind of thing you don’t think of when you’re conjuring a spirit, looking only at the good things they do.

    In the Modern Goetic Grimoire, I cover a series of initiations that will mitigate most of the risks that come with Goetic Magic. That doesn’t mean that your magic will be fool-proof, or that you will never have any problems. When I teach Necromancy, for example I also teach what to do if a shade follows you home from the graveyard. It’s a risk. There is a solution.

    Other spirits cause other kinds of trouble in your life. Dealing with the spirits of the Lemegeton’s Goetia is always risky, no matter what method you use. The system I present has a lot more in it that will protect you from the more dangerous effects of working with these spirits than you will find in any of the traditional grimoires. I believe the traditional grimoires were not supposed to be stand-alone systems of magic. They are note books, quick reference guides for magicians who are also performing the appropriate and required Theurgical magic that is discussed at length in Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy.

    It was assumed and not written, I believe, that the magician who would pick up the Lemegeton would already have performed the rites outlined in The Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals, for example, or would understand that the Magic Circle was a representation of what it was that keeps a magician safe. I teach that in detail in the Modern Goetic Grimoire.

    By nature, the spirits of the Lemegeton’s Goetia are designed to cause trouble, but only in the lives of impious Men. If you follow the techniques I provide, you will not be “impious,” you will have established relationships with the spirits that will protect you from the kinds of things I think you’re worried about. You will also have the skills to deal with any troubles that do arise.

    When you conjure the spirits of the Lemegeton’s Goetia, you are performing what I think is “Left Hand Path” magic. You are working with spirits who have a close affinity to your passions and desires. If you are at the mercy of your desires, ruled by your lust and greed and appetite, you will most likely cause more trouble in your life by evoking the spirits designed to inflame these passions. If you have mastered your passions and use them to aid you in accomplishing your Will, you will be as safe among them as you are alone.

  • At Last, the Modern Goetic Grimoire is Available

    Well, due to the fact that I am EMPLOYED now (thanks Bune!), I’ve worked non-stop to get the book finished and available. I had hoped to publish it through a legit publisher of real life paper books, but I don’t think I’ll be having much time to get that project moving any time soon. So, for those happy with an eBook emailed to you, it is available now to the right of this post on the blog, or on my Products and Services page.

    One of these days, I’ll combine it with the Angelic Grimoire and submit it to a publisher for real. I’ll post more about it after I’ve slept some. I’m beat.

    Enjoy!

  • Some Changes

    As I am almost ready to make the Goetic Grimoire into an eBook available for your purchase, I’ve decided to make some changes to the blog. You may notice no more Google ads. Much as I was LOVING the nearly $2.75 per month they generated since the blog’s inception, I’m done with that. I usually enjoyed the ads they picked from my post contents, but frankly, it wasn’t worth it. So no more ads for stuff like that.

    I still want to make some money off the site, so I’ve added an eBooks area over to the right, beneath the list of people following the blog. You can currently purchase the Modern Angelic Grimoire there, and soon the Modern Goetic Grimoire. If I get around to publishing them both together as a complete set on paper and everything, you’ll be able to order things from there.

    Also, if any of my readers have services, products, or even just something sitting around they’d like to sell, I’ll consider posting your ad on the right, above, or below the posts. Sort of like Craigslist, a simple text and/or hyperlink ad, or a single jpeg/gif ad. Nothing extravagant. Low weekly rates. 🙂

  • Powerful People

    This article on Quintal’s blog is great insight into what it is that makes a man or woman powerful. I don’t necessarily agree with what everything the author says 100%, but it’s aim is undeniably what you always wanted in life.

  • 1.5 – While we’re here: The Great Work in Action

    Ok, so we’ve established what the Great Work “is” within the neo-platonic context in the previous installment of the NP Basics series. This post is about how it all unfolds in the life of your average Magician practicing the Great Work using the NP system.

    1.5.1 – The HGA, Your Emissary from God

    Ok, so there’s a boat-load of talk about the HGA, what it is, and what it does on various message boards and web pages across the Internet. There’s lots of talk in modern published magical books, too. Most of what you read is speculation, because people with opinions and writing talents haven’t attained K&CHGA (Knowledge and Conversation with the Holy Guardian angel), but they don’t bother to let that stop them from saying their piece.

    Now, the phrase itself comes from the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. It was popularized by Crowley, predominantly, in the modern Western Mystery Tradition. The author of the Sacred Magic wrote the book to his second son because he could not pass on the mysteries of the QBL to him. The QBL had to go to the first-born son. He wanted his second son to have a mystical heritage as well, so he gave him the mysteries of the Sacred Magic. He states that the Sacred Magic can be derived from the QBL, but the QBL cannot be derived from the Sacred Magic.

    In the NP magical system, we’ve seen that the basic premise is that of emanation. God unfolded itself throughout existence in hierarchical stages, each getting closer to the realm of Matter. The QBL is another manifestation of this type of philosophy. I’ve argued that the NP emanationist philosophy is the source of the QBL, that the Jews adopted the concepts and dressed them up in their own cultural symbols. There’s evidence that can be found to support this view, or the view that the NP system was derived from the QBL, or that they developed from at the same time concurrently, in the same environment, drawing from the same sources. While various interpretations of the evidence can support different views, I personally believe the NP system is the source of the QBL, or at least the primary influence. There’s just an awful lot of “coincidental” domination of the Jews by Greek influence at every major growth-point of the QBL.

    So that’s how the HGA, a symbol from a QBList, ties into the NP system I’m presenting. I’ve staid away from the QBL in this series of posts so far, but practically speaking, the HGA is the best-known representative from God in the modern Western Mystery Traditions. There’s an Agathadaimon in more traditional Hellenistic writings that may correspond to the HGA, but I worked with my HGA before even knowing about the Agathadaimon, so anything I would say about that entity would be tainted speculation. I’ve got to stick with what I know.

    The first thing you should do as a practicing magician using the NP system is make contact with your HGA. This entity is assigned to you at birth, and is responsible for all the spiritual initiations, authority, and Gnosis you achieve in life. It is your personal emissary from the Good, the One, the Source, God itself. Through K&CHGA, you get the attunement of your sphere to the point where you can work with the spirits from your position of authority as a representative of God in the material realm. It’s “like” a new age spirit guide, in some ways, but the new age spirit guide model doesn’t present the meat of the entity’s interaction with you the way the HGA model does. Spirit guides in the New Age take on forms of animals and such, indicating they are “lower” in the neo-platonic hierarchical system than the angels. However, that being said, my HGA revealed it had taken on the form of a spirit guide earlier in my magickal practices to get me to the point where I could attain K&CHGA.

    To attain K&CHGA, I used the ritual Liber Samekh as presented in Lon Milo DuQuette’s The Magick of Aleister Crowley. Some people say it isn’t the same thing at all, but they’re honestly mistaken. The evidence to prove this is found in the Abramelin rite itself. You have to perform Samekh successfully to find the proof, but it’s there.

    After making contact with the HGA, your sphere is changed. You go through a Solar “initiation,” to put it in Golden Dawn terminology. The result is the beginning of the experiential knowledge of your Race and Value as expressed by Plotinus. From this knowledge-based-on-experience, the authority to “command” the spirits is attained.

    1.5.2 – Working with the Spirits

    After attaining K&CHGA, the magician is ready (and strongly urged by the HGA) to begin working with the spirits. Spirit conjuration is the primary methodology of any magician’s performance of the Great Work. I believe that every magickal act, whether ritual or contemplative, involves interacting with spirits in some way or another.

    I started with the ten Archangels of the Sephiroth, because I was coming out of a primarily-QBListic background. After Working with the spirits for a little while, I realized that the Archangels of the seven classical planets were sufficient for my initial stages of the Work. Through them, I learned an incredible amount of knowledge. Their influence on my sphere changed the way I am able to see the world. Nothing spectacular (no auras, second-sight, remote viewing, psychic flashes per se), but totally and completely life-changing. The procedures for working with the spirits of the planets can be found in the Modern Angelic Grimore I wrote. It’s remarkably easy.

    In addition to the spirits of the planets, the spirits of the elements are also worked with in performing the Great Work. These spirits rule over the physical manifestations of the rays of the higher spheres. A fire elemental might be put in charge of manifesting a Jupiter ray into someone’s life, resulting in an unexpected and tumultuous promotion at work. For mundane operations, I’m learning these are the best spirits to work with in the overall hierarchy of spirits.

    The spirits of various grimoires are also worked with in the Great Work. The spirits of the Goetia in the Lemegetton, for example, can be considered to be “earth-bound” spirits, that is, residing closer to the material realms than to the heavenly realms. These entities have been documented and worked with by many magicians, and the methods of contacting them are recorded and pretty clear. Their attributes are documented, and once contacted, their abilities and limitations can be discovered simply by asking the spirit itself.

    1.5.3 – The Goal of the Great Work in the NP System

    You’ve no doubt noticed that the Work consists of both the spirits of the higher realms and the spirits of the lower realms. If the Great Work were all about transcending the material realm, there would be no reason to work with the lower spirits. The fact is, however, that we aren’t born in the flesh to transcend it. We are here to learn our role, and then to exercise our authority to meet our obligations.

    Humanity is the nexus point between the material realm and the spiritual realm. We are the stewards of the manifest realms. In the NP system, we stand at the gateway between the realms, seeking union with the divine in order to fulfill our assigned tasks while we appear to be separated from God, and directing the forces that manifest as reality according to the Will of God. We learn this Will by going up through the hierarchies and learning our place in existence, and then we implement the plans through the direction of the spirits. The higher up you go, the more responsibility you get, and the more Work in the physical realm you’ll have to accomplish.

    The Goal of the great Work is not to leave the flesh and material realms behind. We do that when we die anyway. The Goal is to find your place in the scheme of things, your reason for being, and in finding that, you gain the ability and authority to accomplish it. The accomplishment of the purpose is the practical manifestation of the Great Work.

  • Trapped!

    For two days, I was chained in a basement room about ten feet by ten feet square, fearing for my life should I venture out. My home had been invaded by miniature alien creatures from our own planet: other people’s kids.

    We had a sleep over. 5 kids under the age of 8, plus two thirteen-year-olds who stayed in my eldest’s room unless they were skating. I’ve stood in the stinking clouds of hell’s minions, and I’d rather face demons than other people’s kids.

    If you have kids that are brats, keep them at home. My youngest daughter was a brat for a year or so, and we didn’t let her go anywhere until she demonstrated she could play unsupervised without being a little … selfish human. You know if your kid is an evil selfish monster. If they are, keep them home, for pity’s sake.

    When I look at the kids I know, my own and others’, I can’t help but wonder how in the living fuck magicians ever used them as scrying assistants. They won’t even sit still for five minutes, let alone act right for the durtion of a ceremony. “Gabriel is showing me a cup with silver water in it. He’s pouring it into a golden stream… I gotta pee!!!”

    Ibeh-geh. Screw that. My inner child can handle it.

  • On the Paths

    Jason recently posted about the Left and Right Hand Paths of mysticism and magic. From the comments, I can tell there’s a lot of different understandings of what the LHP and RHP are all about. Jason’s post explains that he’s addressing the role of passions of the mind in your practice. Those of the LHP, sez he, attempt to use the passions in moderation, following Paracelsus’ famous axiom that it is the dose that determines the poison. Those of the RHP, he says, attempt to avoid the passions altogether.

    Fr. Resurgere sees Thelema as LHP, and Christianity as RHP. Apuleius sees LHP as anything not socially acceptable, and RHP as anything socially acceptable. K. Sequoia has an understanding of LHP/RHP closer along the lines to my own, judging by her Feri blog: the LHP is Service-to-Self-oriented, on the surface, while the RHP is Service-to-Others-oriented, again, only on the surface. (Any mis-categorizations can be clarified in the comments, and I apologize in advance. Nothing summed up ever quite communicates the whole.)

    My own comment was made in passing, and Jason mentions the point I was making in passing in his post:

    … you do personally kind of have to pick one approach or the other for yourself, at least until you can transcend the whole shibang and deal with causality as such …

    When you get into any path, you’ll soon find yourself doing both LHP and RHP Work. Thelemites help little old ladies carry in their groceries, and the Blake OTO lodge in my area has a Toys for Tots thing they do throughout the year. Many fervent Christians and Pagans are some of the most materialistic and selfish people you’ll ever meet. Hell, I’m a Christian who conjures demons and quotes Crowley as often as the Bible, and I can rarely get through a post without swearing.

    But like Jason says, eventually you transcend LHP and RHP. Let these two asses be set to grind corn. It’s such a waste of time worrying about it. Worry more about why you still need a label to describe yourself than picking one, sez I. There’s nothing more selfish than a RHP person; they’re doing it for themselves, yo. There’s nothing more giving than a LHP person; you just don’t want what they’re giving most days. 😉

    I like the idea that it’s about passions more than the target of your actions. Even in that paradigm of the dichotomy (dichotomies got pradigms!), there’s still going to be times when the RHP person uses ecstatic mystical exercises to attain, and there will be times when the LHP person subdues their passion to gain control over it. We’re all ambidextrous in practice, and creating terms and conditions to apply to these terms is … well, it’s not turd polishing, but it’s still pretty useless.

    Fuck the LHP/RHP bullshit. Do magic, for yourself and others, and have fun. YOU are but an EYE; what eye none knoweth.* Skip witches, hop toads, take your pleasure! For the play of the Universe is the pleasure of YOU.

    * Yeah, I said it, and yes, yes it is unsuited for your Grade. Because you’ve got EYES. And you’re READING THIS. But I don’t care anymore. I’m sayin’ it because I got to.

  • Holy Goetia! (and a brief Chaos Magic Bash, and the Secret to Magical Power in General)

    Argh!

    I spent the last two days drawing ut all 72 spirits’ seals from the Lemegeton’s Goetia by hand for my Goetic Grimoire. I’m finally finished scanning them all into the computer (I drew them on 3 sheets of paper, and then broke them into 73 image files, 2 fer Bune). Now I get to modernize their descriptions, and add my own commentary on the ones I’ve Worked.

    I recently said on a message board that you can “literally sketch their seals on a piece of paper and have them start manifesting in your life.” I meant, of course, if you sketch it with the intent to conjure them. There’s no underestimating the power of intent. Agrippa even mentions that it is the intention of the magician that determines what spirit we receive.

    He was speaking in the context of Spirits who are different entities, but share the same name. There’s a minor debate among traditionalist magicians about whether there are more than one spirit with the same name, or one spirit that can be in multiple places at once. I haven’t had any problems with that part of magic in general, so I don’t really give a shit which is true.

    But a fellow magician recently mentioned that he believes the seals of the Goetia function the same as the sigils of chaos magicians. My hackles rose, of course, and I quick fired off a response basically saying that the difference is seals of spirits are revealed, sigils of chaos magicians are created by the mage, and you get weak results from Chaos Sigils as a result because most magicians haven’t done the work to get the power to have the right to dictate reality by drawing the sigils. My standard line of shit, I suppose.

    But I’ve been thinking about it a lot today. Having just drawn out 73 seals, and feeling the awareness of the Spirits of the Lem’s Goetia turn towards me en masse, I know there’s inherent power in the Seals that just isn’t there in Chaos Magic sigils, no matter how much spooge the average adolescent mage pumps into them. At the same time, I know people who can draw the Seals and have nothing whatsoever happen at all, even though they are totally intentionally trying to get in touch with the spirits.

    And furthermore, I know some folks who are chaos magicians who swear they get the same results from their Chaos tech that I get from the traditional seals. I don’t doubt them at all. I think they get the same mediocre results from both because (and here it comes, the big reveal) the amount of power you have access to in Spirit Conjure magic is directly proportional to the amount of power you have as a magician.

    Initiated magicians who have received empowerment and authority from their relationships with the spirits, specifically the 7 Governors of the Planetary Spheres, have more power to fuel their intent than magicians who don’t have any initiation, experience, or empowerment.

    And there’s the Source of the power of the rituals. The spirits of the grimoires are spirits that have power to make things happen spiritually by their Will and their Status in the overall hierarchies. They were made to work with magicians in accomplishing our Wills. Human beings, on the other hand, simply aren’t in the same class as the spirits. We have the ability to create new things because we’re made in the image of God, but we aren’t the Spirits. We’re the Magicians. There’s a difference. We’re the fulcrum between the manifest and unmanifest, but they’re the ones that oversee the transition between the two. We give form to their powers in Magic.

    So, I’m thinking the degree of initiation of a magician, the degree of empowerment we have is what determines the degree of our results in our magical activities. A magician can craft a sigil to represent their desired outcome, but to make it manifest, they need to be able to direct the Powers and Principalities (and Thrones, Dominions, etc.). Without the empowerment, it’s an un-intent-ed sketch, and nothing more.

    But man, by the time I was done drawing out those seals, I could feel their eyes on me. I explained what I’m up to, and they understood I wasn’t specifically, intentionally conjuring them. They went back to their business, and I went back to mine. I understand why there aren’t a lot of these things on the market. Writing this thing has taken a great deal of awareness and control.

  • Goetia Errors

    Perhaps the most famous of Goetic grimoires is the Lesser Key of Solomon, or the Lemegeton’s Goetia. It’s everywhere you look when it comes to conjuring demons, and most of my readers know I’m o exception. I use the spirits of the Lem’s Goetia frequently, and with great success.

    In a recent post to the Grimorium Verum yahoo group, a magician expressed her frustration with the grimoire, and questioned the spirit-friendly approach many modern traditionalists are adopting in their approach to these spirits. She had performed a conjuration of the same spirit three times and failed to get her desired results each time. She was questioning whether the spirits of this grimoire just sit around and do nothing if they aren’t constrained by all the curses and threats of the Lem’s Goetia, and any success that happened was mere coincidence.

    This is pretty typical, in my experience. Magicians see that Bune bestows riches on a man, and do a Bune rite to win the lottery. They lose and torture the spirit’s seal. I’m totally guilty of that myself, in my early operations. Never mind that I totally screwed up the rite, or that I was completely inexperienced in working with the spirit at all.

    In my Modern Goetic Grimoire, I attempt to dispel some of the bullshit that surrounds this grimoire. Most of it is in the minds of the magician. Expectations run high, and the spirits “fail” a lot when you expect them to deliver something beyond their abilities. That’s why over the years I have tried to tell people frequently that you need to conjure different spirits if you don’t get the results you seek, or conjure them in a different way. Above all else, ask them why they aren’t doing what you want, ask them to show you how to use them to accomplish your end result. Simply telling a spirit to make you rich isn’t going to make you rich, unfortunately. Jason Miller addresses the relativity of the concept of “rich” in his Sorecerer’s Secrets, and I think his insight is invaluable.

    The chief failure of Goetic magic lies not in the system or the spirits of the system, but in the magicians themselves. They think that following the steps blindly will result in huge payoffs. They are only in it for what they want, not for what the system is designed to provide. Bad news, greed heads and lust-maddened sex fiends, the primary purpose of the Lesser Key is to provide you with knowledge. It’s a pantheon of professors, highly skilled in providing you with the information obtained traditionally in a liberal arts degree from an institution of learning. They can do things on the side, like make people fall in love or get you rich, but the way they do it is seldom lines up with our expectations.

    The first impulse is to question the system or the efficacy of the spirits. Some even question the efficacy of magic itself. To me this is like a person who builds a doghouse for the first time questioning the efficacy of their hammer if it turns out to look like shit. Magic is an art like many others, and requires dedication and experience to understand how to use it effectively. Conjuring the spirits is relatively easy, but understanding them and how they work takes time.

    So if you’re a new conjuring magician and you’ve tried to win the lotto and failed, or tried to sleep with the boss’s daughter and failed, don’t blame the spirits. It’s your inexperience primarily that’s causing the failures. Learn from the spirits, their primary role is to provide an education. Use them for this first, and the side benefits will roll in like the tides.

  • On Tyche, Goddess of Fortune

    Tyche is a lovely lass, oft maligned by the unfortunate, yet turned to by the masses in times of trial. She is, in person, nice enough, yet pensive. There’s something in her face that speaks of both a willingness to help and an inability to do so in all cases. She is a power under authority, and is as much a servant of the Fates as the rest of us are. She can be a mitigating force in all endeavors, bringing opportunities to escape doom, and yet she cannot tell you what those opportunities are. She has been accused of being fickle, but usually by those who think they deserve more than they get out of life.

    I recently printed out a picture of the Lady Fortune carrying the babe Pluto and her cornucopia, with her Orphic Hymn on the side. I burned some Frankincense, as indicated by the hymn, and read the hymn aloud to her, seeking her aid in acquiring a paying position, something more reliable and better able to meet the expenses I’ve gathered over the years than the periodic windfalls I’ve been getting the last couple of months. She is sitting above my altar now, and within a week of petitioning her, two employers contacted me and scheduled interviews. Considering that in the last month and a half I’ve only had two interviews, I consider it fortunate to have these opportunities arise.

    Yet in my line of work, this is the time of year that work picks up. The government’s fiscal year begins in October, so between the last weeks of September and November, there are usually a large number of contracts awarded and support teams hired. In this economy, there are thousands of people available to companies with college degrees and specialized experience in particular fields, and the Human Resource departments of most corporations have their pick of the best at hand. Since I’ve never managed to complete college, my resume usually ends up at the bottom of a pile of potential candidates, despite ten years of experience in my field. It’s annoying, I promise.

    So there are constraints that Tyche works within, as there are for all spirits that we turn to in magic to accomplish our will. They all work within the bounds of Natural Law, leaving coincidence and synchronicity as their calling cards. Two interviews within a week of the conjuration is the kind of coincidence I’ve learned to interpret as a successful result.

    It’s interesting to me that I turned to Tyche for this operation. I’ve worked with Bune and the Archangels of the Planets primarily for the last few years for acquiring income and cash windfalls. I’ve been very successful with these spirits, and even in this dry spell I’ve managed to get everything I needed in spite of very ugly circumstances with their help.

    It was Iamblichus who sent me to the gods. Kathy McDonald left an encouraging comment on my Iamblichus post from last week indicating her disagreement with my interpretation of the gods as the Intelligences of the planets. This drew my attention to the fact that I don’t work with deities much. As a Christian, I give more weight to the Monad than any other deity, and I’ve never really been that interested in the personalities of the Names of God as they manifest within the different spheres beyond tapping into their vibration to aid in conjuring their relative spirits. I know the Monad, what interest have I in “lesser” manifestations of its glory?

    Yet this pride is a weakness. I realize now that the Monad manifested as these deities on purpose. Tyche is the goddess of Fortune, as well as the Fortune of God. Likewise, Zeus is the god of Lightning, and the Lightning of God, Aries the god of War and the War of God. To truly know God, I need to know not only the details surrounding the chain of manifestation through the spheres, I need to know his personality a he expresses it through the gods and goddesses of the spheres.

    I could go through the Sephiroth of the Hebrews, and get to know him through the Names of God revealed in each of the spheres, and I may do that at some point. It’s more appealing in some ways to stick to the Judeo aspect of my Judeo-Christian heritage. Growing up, it was engrained in me that the gods of the pagans were demons, after all, and demons are servants of Satan, fallen beings of darkness and evil, right? I mean, that’s what the evangelicals taught me.

    But in my Work, I’ve learned to read. Literacy has ever been the enemy of those who would rule by exploiting ignorance. The Greek text of Paul that was included in the Bible that says the gods of pagans are demons doesn’t say they are demons at all. It says they are Daimons. Messengers. Spirits. It is the weak faith of the immature Christians that Paul says makes him refuse to eat meat offered to pagan gods, not any intrinsic uncleanliness within the meat itself. He often says in his epistles that he would not have his brethren in Christ be ignorant, yet the doctrine of pagan gods as demons is entirely based on ignorance. Like all spirits, they are manifestations of divinity accomplishing their assigned tasks on behalf of their assigned sphere of influence, including their people. Tyche is as much a god of my own as she is of any pagan.