When asked for advice from an aspiring artist, H. R. Giger’s agent wrote an excellent reply. It can be found under the last entry, scroll down towards the bottom.
Aspirants to the Great Work would do well to interpret this and apply it to their own lives. Mysel
“A project is a finite endeavor (having specific start and completion dates) undertaken to create a unique product or service which brings about beneficial change or added value.” – from Wikipedia’s Project Management entry.
As you may know, I’m a priest in the cult of Project Management (PM). It’s supposed to be a business methodology for accomplishing projects successfully and efficiently. Wikipedia says it’s a discipline, but in real life, the disciples of PM are the true believers, the Project Management Office in major corporations are the Priests of their true God, and the rest of the team are heathens claiming to be converts to keep their jobs. The QA team is the Holy Inquisition, audits are their inquests, and …
Ok, I can see I’ll slip off into some weirdness if I keep comparing my job to a religion. So to the point!
Each project has a “life cycle” that can be broken down into basic phases. Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitoring and Control, and Closeout. It’s all pretty much common sense, but having it codified makes things a lot easier to figure out how to make things work. It provides a template for developing your projects efficiently.
In my Great Work activities, I find that using the simple approach of PM helps immensely. It’s not something I have to do nearly as strictly, but it provides a framework within which I can work and excel.
Usually when you decide to do a ritual, it’s in response to a need that has become apparent to you in your life. Obvious, eh? I know, but writing it down helps the rest of the post.
When you’ve identified that something needs to be addressed Magically, you can enter the “Initiation” stage. In this stage, you identify what you want to happen, the result, or “deliverable” of the project. You identify when you want to start the project, and when you want it to finish. You loosely identify the scope, that is, the area of impact of your ritual, and put into writing exactly why you need or want to use magic to accomplish this result. You also figure out whether you can actually do the magic, whether you have the resources of time, skill, and information available to accomplish your desired result.
Many ideas for projects get tossed in the trash can after this phase in business. The place I work added a pre-initiation phase to their projects called “Discovery” to eliminate the number of projects that got started and shit-canned along the way. It saved them a lot of money because one person can do the discovery phase in a major corporation, while to do the Initiation phase properly, you end up using a lot of people and wasting everyone’s time and cash.
Magicians don’t have to worry about that. The primary value of going through the steps of an Initiation Phase in magical projects is that you have a time set aside to really think about the ritual and put some things in writing so you don’t lose focus along the way. When you’re finished with you Initiation Phase, you should have everything you need to begin the Planning phase. You should have on one piece of paper:
The next phase is Planning. In this phase, you take your deliverable and reverse engineer the requirements and processes you’ll need to be able to perform the ritual. In this phase, you identify what kind of spirit you’ll be working with, for example, Angels, Daimons, Gods, or Heroes using Iamblichus’ classifications of spiritual entities. You identify the planets, astrological influences, or which specific spirits you’ll be working with. You identify the prerequisites, like whether you need to be more in tune with a particular power to be able to direct the subjects of a particular spirit. You gather information about what herbs, incenses, or elemental forces that are in harmony with your intent.
When you are finished with this phase, you will have a list of all the things related to your ritual that you will be using to perform the ritual. Writing these things down in bulleted lists grouped by subject area is an exercise that makes the following phase much easier.
The next phase is the Design phase. In this phase, you actually write up the ritual. On Mars day in Mars hour, you burn Mars herbs and call upon Martial Intelligence, Martial Spirit, and the Elemental King of Fire in the Martial Names of God while wearing the Martial Lamen and tracing the Seals of the spirits you will be working with. You’ll write out your oration notes, and develop your basic Playbook. This is a document that details each step of the process you will be doing during the next phase, Execution. Personally my “playbook” will be written on 3×5″ cards. The Orations are usually just noted with the specific names of the beings, and I have place holders for when I’m supposed to ring a bell or light incense or trace particular seals using particular elemental weapons. When this phase is complete, you should have the following:
Once you have all the planning and design finished, and you know specifically what you will be doing during the ritual, you’re ready to begin the Execution phase. In this phase, you gather all the ingredients you’ve identified in your requirements, and you make sure you’ve got everything you need ready to go at the right time identified in your playbook. This is the phase where I’ll be melting the copper and banging it into a disk to engrave in the appropriate hour, or performing preparatory kinetic meditations, or seeking initiation into the spheres I’ll be working with if I haven’t worked them before. This is the time that you set up your altar, if it isn’t set up already. This is the time you make sure all the candles are in their holders, the lighter has fluid, and the charcoal is sitting in the brazier ready to be lit. The last thing you do before the Execution phase is complete is perform the ritual you have designed.
The next two stages are the ones most magicians don’t bother with. In Monitoring and Control, you are supposed to be watching how the ritual you did is unfolding in your life. You’re supposed to be checking to see that things are working as designed. Unfortunately, Crowley with his warnings about “lust for results” and the Chaos Magic meme’s insistence on banishing with laughter and forgetting that you even did the rite have made a lot of magicians stupid. Between the time you perform the ritual and the time you expect it to manifest, you should be keeping tabs on the results without “lusting” after them. You do this by checking with the spirits to see where they’re at in their processes, and by paying attention to the subject areas of your life related to the ritual. If something comes up that is obviously going to fuck up the result, you take steps to implement your controls, processes you design into the ritual to mitigate unforeseen risks to the successful completion of the project.
The final phase of a project is the Closeout stage. In business, this means you’ve delivered the deliverable, you’ve made sure it’s working, and you pass on responsibility of ongoing maintenance to the appropriate business area “owner.” In magic, you enter this phase when the result has been accomplished. You clean up any offerings that were left out for the spirits, you send your spiritual thank you notes to the spirits that attended, and you write up the results of the ritual in your Magical PM log. This write up should include any lessons you’ve learned that will make future projects go more smoothly.
Chances are you already use a process similar to this in your own Work. the steps are common sense, after all, but maybe you don’t bother writing anything up along the way. By taking the time to formulate your statement of intent and the requirements and the playbook and the documentation of the manifestation and lessons learned, you’ll have more repeatable, traceable, and consistent results. The planning that goes into each phase will help you identify any potential gaps that could become “showstoppers,” the things that will totally derail your intended manifestation.
HERMES, the God who presides over language, was formerly very properly considered as common to all priests; and the power who presides over the true science concerning the Gods is one and the same in the whole of things. – Iamblichus, On the Mysteries
I’m guilty of a terrible crime. If I belonged to an Order, a militaristic organization of magicians with a hierarchy of supervising rank and file to whom I would be accountable, I’m sure I’d frequently be demoted for Conduct Unbecoming a Magician.
Fortunately, I belong to no such Order. There’s no person who has been through more initiations in charge of me. There is no committee of flesh and blood to which someone can report me. There is no chain of command that I must obey.
There is no code of conduct.
People have these rather stupid ideas of what someone who is “into magic” should look like. They have these ignorant expectations of how Adepts, Masters, and Illuminated Saints ought to behave. They think we should all be like Jesus, turning the other cheek, striving to be gentle and kind, never cursing, never harsh, never subject to raw emotion. As a result of the refinement of the process of the great Work, we’re supposed to be Heroes, with the powers of the Gods and the approachability of mortals.
I’ve met some really powerful magicians, folks who are incredibly illuminated. You can feel the power of their spheres radiating outward from them into the universe around them. Talking to them leaves the weak-willed fawning and gibbering like tweens at a Jonas Brothers concert.
They get angry, depressed, and violent like anyone else. When they do, the world has suddenly collapsed for these dweebs, and they’re left looking like the little girl dressed up like Princess Padme-Amidalla in the Natalie Portman interview video I posted a while back.
Now don’t be all thinking I’m bitching about people that I think I’m better than. I’m not. I have these stupid pedestals in my heart and mind that I put people on too. I’m no better. I’ve learned to take it in stride when my heroes turn out to be human, though. I’ve lowered my expectations. I try to remember some basic things when I meet people I think are really cool:
These three little precious jewels serve to remind me not to set unrealistic expectations on people that they can’t live up to.
WTF does any of this have to do with Iamblichus?
It has a lot to do with the opening he made in his refutation to Porphyry: HERMES, the God who presides over language, was formerly very properly considered as common to all priests.
Hermes, the god who presides over language. Patrick Dunn has provided a better explanation than I can about the role of language and symbol in magic in Magic, Power, Language, Symbol: A Magicians Exploration of Linguistics. If you haven’t read it, you should. We who are Hermetic Magicians are priests of the god of Language. As a Christian, a believer in the Word of God made flesh, I am even more aware of my role as priest to this god in my magical practice.*
Language is symbolic of something else. There’s a difference between the words we use and the things we refer to, the meanings of the words. Different people have different meanings for the same words.
It’s important that we understand that words and our interpretations of them are not the things they represent. Hierophants, for example, are simply “interpretors of the Mysteries.” They aren’t perfect ascended masters, wizened and ready to do everything perfectly in every interaction with every person. There is no job description for Hierophant that includes “having reached my idea of what a Hierophant should be.” Anyone who can interpret the mysteries in a way that provides initiation into the mystery to those seeking his or her advice is qualified. If you expect your Hierophant to be perfect, you’re in for a shock.
The same is true for any spiritual mentor. If the person you’re learning from is in the flesh, they are capable of being wrong about things. Don’t deceive yourself, or you’ll be running head first, full speed towards disappointment. Keep your definitons real, your expectations managed, and at the same time strive for the ideal, knowing that the words, symbols, and entities we interact with are representative of the ideal, not the ideal itself.
* No, I don’t have Hermes as a god before God. That’s against the Law.
Ok, so the other day on Facebook, I took a quiz called “Are you on a Boat.” It turned out I was on a boat. I had no idea what the fuck it was about.
Today I found out. Saturday Night Live has these little movies and I had no idea. Digital Shorts. Hulu, thanks for rotting my brain the rest of the way. If you get a chance, check out Dick in a Box with Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg. And Motherlovers.
But the most important thing you can watch today…
Ok, not the MOST important. Watching other people perform isn’t that important, really. yOu should be all performing your duties as a magician, fulfilling your roles and responsibilities as the Image of God, you fuckin’ slacker…
But in between conjuring angels and demons to rule the world, take a break and watch a day in the life of Natalie Portman. For all the fans of Star Wars, V for Vendetta, and … did she do anything else? Who knows. But this I like.
The best encapsulation of the neo-platonic creation story that I’ve found is in the second book of The Divine Pymander by Hermes Trismegistus. (Check wikipedia for his story.) It’s simple and to the point. Christians like myself can identify enough parallels to feel at ease in it, and pagans can find enough other gods that they feel at home too. It’s a good little catch-all, and that makes sense when you study its history. Which I won’t get into here. Lots of debate around that, and I’d rather get to the point.
My understanding of the Creation is summarized below. There’s a lot I’m omitting for the sake of brevity, but I’m trying to include the required pieces to to lay the foundation.
In the beginning was essential God-the-Progenitor, dwelling in perfect darkness. In that perfect darkness, God still and always resides. By its nature, it radiates infinite pure light. In The Divine Pymander, Hermes Trismegistus is given a vision of the creation of the material realm. Within the infinite light appeared a great darkness, smoking as if it were on fire. Out of the infinite Light leaped a “certain holy Word” and that Word joined itself to the dark mass of Matter that came into being. When this holy Word entered the darkness, it separated into four realms. Fire leaped up highest to be closest to the infinite light, followed by Air, which seemed to hang between the Fire and Earth-Water below.
Next, God created a Workman. This guy created seven governors, each with their own sphere, surrounding the realm of Matter. When he did, the Word leaped up and cohabited with the Workman. This being then set the spheres in motion, and the natural world began creating animals and plants.
Meanwhile, God made Man in Its image. Man was the honored and beloved “brother” of the family. Eventually, after a lot went down (!), Man entered the physical realm, containing a spark of infinite God within, and yet also loving and being loved by Nature. We’re of two natures, mortal and immortal.
The Spark of the Divine within is what gives us “authority” overt the elements, and the seven governors. We’re coworkers though, not masters and slaves.
Ptolemy laid out the basic cosmology of the NP system. the center sphere is the sphere of Earth, surrounded by the sphere of Water, then Air, then Fire. Then there are the seven Spheres of the Governors. Each of these spheres is associated with one of the seven planets of classical astrology, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Around these are the “fixt stars,” whose influence is primarily felt through the planetary governors. Beyond the stars is the realm of eternal light, and sitting in eternal divine darkness, radiating the light outwards and willing existence is the Primum Mobile, God.
The following image displays the basic cosmology of the NP system:
Good news, everyone, I got it! I mean, I got it. I really got it.
I had an epiphany last night and early this morning. I’ll try not to
wax all mystical and ecstatic on it, but it was beautiful. It made
sense of everything. Literally, everything. Birth, life,m death, struggles, woe, time, death, eternity, bliss, joy, it all wrapped up together around 4:30 a.m. in the following. The glyph is the key, ultimately.
I’m not getting into the boring details at the moment, I’m just going to summarize. I posted this to Ritual Magick, so if you’ve been there, you’ll be wasting your time unless you want to hear me talk more about it. You should be working on this shit. I’ll be coming down with a minor messiah complex for a few days, but I DID do some conjuring in the name of Messiah at daybreak, so hey, what can you expect?
Anyway, the result of my moment is the following layout for the altar:
In the center, you place four sealed vessels that have the spirits
of the Four Kings of the elements bound within, each in their
appropriate quadrant:
Make sure you seal these demons in using something that you can let
them out if you need them later in your existence, but you want them
sealed unless they are actively performing something you’ve told them
to do.
Around these four sealed vessels, you place the following talismen
in their appropriate quadrant:
These talismen should NOT use the seals of the angels as attributed
in other grimoires. These are the four elemental Kings, not the
Archangels of the planetary spheres that share the same names. To
get the appropriate seal, conjure each of the Elemental Kings
separately.
Beside each of the Elemental Kings’ talismen, place the appropriate
elemental weapon. The wand in the East, the Cup in the North, the
Knife in the West, and in the South your own personal seal.
You now have two circles on your altar, the infernal circle in the
center, and the elemental circle around that. These two spheres
*are* the material realm, and at the exact same time they *are* your
personal Sphere as a magician.
Starting in the South, place 7 planetary Talisman in the following
order clockwise, 51.429 degrees apart (give or take a hundredth of a
degree):
These are the seven spheres that surround the magician’s sphere.
These create the table of practice.
That’s the physical manifestation of the Key. The Lamp should be
placed outside this circle to the east. The Divine Darkness that
Dionysius the Areopogate is outside the light.
The altar is now complete.
This is what mine looks like:
As you can see, I’m using the four elemental kings of the Tarot as temporary placeholders for Michael, Uriel, Raphael, and Gabriel.
I’ve gotten some interesting comments on the Anger Magitude post, and I’m thankful to everyone for their comments. They are constructive and helpful.
I’m going to continue to Work with Mars on eliminating my anger issues. I’ve had similar issues in the past, and Martial work eliminated the symptoms, and I was fine for a while. When the triggers manifest again though, the path of least resistance is rage.
The point for me is to Work with Mars until everything that is anger-related is so pure that there is no room for unrighteous wrath.
The thing is though, “unrighteous” implies that there is a “righteous” wrath. In the Bible, Paul writes, “in your anger, sin not,” saying that anger itself isn’t a sin, it’s the things you do when you’re angry that can be sinful.
In the modern Western world, the same general approach is taken. Scientists and Psychologists are quick to point out that Anger is a Survival Mechanism(tm), and that the released hormones help us in the fight or flight response. Her’s a sample definition of Anger from angermgmt.com:
Anger is a natural human emotion and is nature’s way of empowering us to “ward off” our perception of an attack or threat to our well being.
Check the people they show on the web site. Five people, black woman, white guy, black guy, oriental guy, and a white woman, all smiling, relaxed, and dressed business professional. Obviously EVERY successful person, regardless of race or gender, knows the secrets on this page, right?
Because we accept Anger as a natural force, a natural reaction in our modern culture, the types of techniques for managing anger treat the symptoms. From a Christian Counseling page:
Similar stuff can be found in different words below:
My favorite is the “Using Humor” part of the last site above. “Picture yourself a God or Goddess; the idea that you could be such a thing is so FUNNY you won’t be angry…” Yeah right, he don’t know magicians very well, do he?
But anyway, the basic point of each is summed up in this statement:
The goal of anger management is to reduce both your emotional feelings and the physiological arousal that anger causes. You can’t get rid of, or avoid, the things or the people that enrage you, nor can you change them, but you can learn to control your reactions.
Meanwhile in the Buddhist Orient, there’s another interpretation. The very definition of Anger in Buddhist is completely different and presupposes a universal view that is so radically different from the modern West’s view of the Mind that there is no easy reconciliation:
Anger is a deluded mind that focuses on an animate or inanimate object, feels it to be unattractive, exaggerates its bad qualities, and wishes to harm it.
That’s from the “Anger Management Techniques.org” web site. As you can see, the fundamental approach is different. A deluded mind. Here they teach that the source of anger is something else too:
Anger is a response to feelings of unhappiness, which in turn arise whenever we meet with unpleasant circumstances. Whenever we are prevented from fulfilling our wishes, or forced into a situation we dislike – in short, whenever we have to put up with something we would rather avoid – our uncontrolled mind reacts by immediately feeling unhappy.
Ok, honestly, the West has understood that part pretty well too. They’re like, it’s pride, dude, self-centered, narcissistic pride that leads to anger. How could something like THIS happen to ME!!!?
Anyway, still, neat stuff.
The other main reason we become unhappy and angry is because we are faced with a situation we do not want or like. Every day we encounter hundreds of situations we do not like, from stubbing our toe or having a disagreement with our partner, to discovering that our house has burnt down or that we have cancer; and our normal reaction to all of these occurrences is to become unhappy and angry. However, try as we might, we cannot prevent unpleasant things happening to us. We cannot promise that for the rest of the day nothing bad will happen to us; we cannot even promise that we shall be alive to see the end of the day. In samsara we are not in control of what happens to us. (Emphasis added by RO.)
So how does the Buddhist deal with anger? What are their anger management techniques? Let me tell you, they are a lot different than the ones listed above from Western sources. Lots of my free-will believing readers are going to puke at the thought of what’s about to come, but to this neo-Calvinist, it was pure honey:
Since it is impossible to fulfil all our desires or to stop unwanted things happening to us, we need to find a different way of relating to frustrated desires and unwanted occurrences. We need to learn patient acceptance.(From here.)
WHOAH! How many people read that and were like, “Fuck that!”? PAtient Acceptance of shit that pisses ME off?
It gets worse:
In reality most of our emotional problems are nothing more than a failure to accept things as they are – in which case it is patient acceptance, rather than attempting to change externals, that is the solution.
Yep. You see, they aren’t justifying anger as a natural response, instead they are placing the entire responsibility for your reaction to events you don’t like squarely on YOU. Because you’re a big baby who can’t take reality without throwing a temper tantrum.
They understand what we’re trying to grasp in the Great Work, that it’s MIND that forms reality, and everything else is symbolic. Cool stuff. I highly recommend reading every page on that Buddhist site. It’s much more in alignment with the teaching of the Corpus Hermeticum, and the teachings of Christ (not Paul). It doesn’t advcocate doing nothing or not taking pragmatic steps to get out of bad situations either, it’s not stupid.
So making it a bit more personal, the reason I’m hooked on anger is because I made room for it. I use it as a way to filter out things that I would need to Work on, that is, I use it so I don’t have to patiently accept what I have to deal with in samsara, the manifest world.The Buddhist perspective offers a way out of the cycle. The Western methods offer bandaid solutions, treatments of symptoms. The Buddhist solution is much more in keeping with Hermetic values. The modern Western methods are not.To me, it seems like a simple choice.
So, following up on Monday’s success, Tuesday night I conjured Kammael of Mars in a similar way to that performed with Gabriel Monday night. I spoke with him more, as I’ve been having anger management issues lately.
He explained what was going on, and again I “saw” an entity wrapped around me, a black evilness that had become attached. This time it wasn’t as squid-like. It was more scorpionish, or insectoid. It didn’t just let me go, either. Instead its appendages were burried in my symbolic flesh, and they were barbed. The weird thing was that they weren’t like piercing me and causing harm as much as they were embedded in the flesh. My symbolic flesh in the vision had welcomed the evil spirit of self-righteous indignation, made room for it, and grown around the barbs in a way that they couldn’t just be removed without causing damage.
Obviously I’m attached to my anger. I like it. Or at least I perceive that I like it. That’s the trouble with this kind of Work, differentiating between the subjective reality and the subjective interpretation of the subjective reality.
This time it wasn’t nearly as easy to release the evil thing. It is still with me, and I can sort of sense it at any given moment. It feels a lot like an addiction, like that ever-present anxiety you feel when you consider quitting something you’re addicted to. Nicotine addicts will likely understand me better than most, but I’m sure a few pot heads who’ve had to face down their jones will grok what I’m talking about too.
IT’s kind of a weird way to Work with this kind of thing. Usually, when I need help with an issue, the spirit just appears and then the issue is gone, as if by MAGIC. This is taking a bit more effort on my part. I’m thinking it’s only taking more effort because I like the rush I get from anger. It’s not the kind of thing I’m happy liking though, so it shouldn’t be too hard to get over. A change of heart is in order, and that’s a relatively simple thing to arrange with the powers that be.
But again, I found a lightening of my attitude as soon as I performed the rite. I found myself laughing and carrying on in ways I hadn’t in a while.
I had an attitude adjustment Monday night. Don’t know what happened, exactly, but I can speculate.
I was falling asleep, and I remembered I was feeling glum about not doing enough magic lately. I got this overwhelming “It’s time” feeling/thought that sort of pushed down on my body as I laid there. Looking back, I recognize it as the same feeling I get at Church during the worship service (pentecostal) or during the Transubstantiation (Catholic). It’s this warm bath-of-Spirit.
At the time, my reaction was, “Sigh, oh what the hell.” I remembered it was still technically Monday, and I believe it happened to be in the hour of the Moon. I decided to conjure Gabriel, and do a little Lunar Work. I went “up” through the elemental spheres into the Lunar realm, met Gabriel, showed him the Silver Key (his seal) and asked for admittance and further initiation into the Sphere of the Moon in the Name of Shaddai El Chai.
Some stuff happened. Fishy-depths visuals, your basic transformation revelations, lots of scenes from The Big Blue, coral, jellyfish, clownfish, and yeah, it was like a scene from Nemo, but darker. Not as sunny-bright.
Next day at work, I noticed how people had REALLY shitty attitudes, and how my own had sort of conformed to theirs. In contemplation, I analyzed where it came from in my thoughts and expectations, took a look at where my desires weren’t meshing with the manifestation of God’s Will, and took soime minor, mostly symbolic corrective action. The results were immediate. I found myself leading a meeting, which isn’t the kind of thing you’d expect to be doing after a Water ritual. At least, not me.
But I was thrust into a leadership role the next day, and inuited my way through it, finding common ground, avoiding bitter cynicism, and generally not being a bitter bastard. People walked away from a rough meeting (rough because all the deliverables are late and getting later, and there’s nothing we can do now about it) feeling like they were part of a team, knowing what they had to focus on that day and the rest of the week, and who to reach to get the info they needed. It was a pleasant change from the usual diaspora that follows our meetings.
Later on, I kicked some upper-crust executives out of their “Executive Steering Committee” meeting, which is generally a poor career move. The suits all tend to look the same after a while, and I mistook the air of executive authority the bald suit was exuding as your basic prickness, so I sort of pricknessed him back and got my snotty admin attitude a bit. I’m not perfect.
But in general, I’ve noticed a much more positive flow to my expectations since the recent Lunar Work. One of the things I remember was the feeling of some black evil shit dissolving from around me in the depths of the sea. slippery slimy tendrils releasing me, like escaping from a black shadow-squid. Or being let go, rather. It definitely wasn’t an escape. More like, “ok, you can let go now,” and it was all, “ok, talk to you later.” There was a familiarity with it, like it was an old friend and partner in my life. As I think about it, yeah, I have some evil phases on occasion, I can be a bit of a bitter bastard once in a while. It makes sense that I’d have a familiarity, a working relationship with being a pessimist.
It’s us. And the secret is it’s what we do. And the initiation is that we’re doing it. And if you haven’t started doing it, then do.
The pictures beyond have nothing to do with the rest of this post. It’s just here to say Happy Easter.
Happy Easter.