Rufus Opus

Tag: Teachings

Tag: Teachings

  • What the HELL is going on here?

    Magicians. We’re all seeking the powers of the universe, changing ourselves into something greater than we started out as, or at least more pure so we can participate with God in the CREATION of the UNIVERSE. Okay, well, maybe just managing and maintaining the manifestation as it occurs, but being consciously aware of the fact during the planning and processing stages of the project at hand.

    But here I am reading John Dee this week, and come to find out, one of the “greater” magicians of recorded history was fumbling in just as much dark as me. He spent all that time with Kelley developing (or receiving, if you will) what amounts to a system of planetary magic. He conjured and cajoled, enticed and entreated God to send him these spirits that revealed a system of magic that he never even used.

    Heading back to Agrippa, the man was a brilliant librarian, researcher, and reporter. But for all his knowledge, he was just like us too. A man who had to keep his public and private beliefs strictly regimented. The only evidence we have that Agrippa actually performed magic is his obvious “insider’s” understanding of the material he recorded. That inference can’t even be made objectively. We have to experience the results of the operations he describes to realize what he is recording between the lines. Based on that experience, we can begin to understand the deeper implications of his writing.

    Leap ahead a couple years to Crowley. A great magician, an eager and prolific promoter of occult philosophy, Crowley stands out in history for his intelligence, wit, and most offensively to some, his self-confidence. Yet read through Soror Achitha’s Vision of the Amalantrah Working, and you see that Crowley in his magickal practice was a sulky, petulant, ignorant man. Not ignorant in terms of knowledge, learning, or experience, but ignorant of what is to come. He worries about money, and worries about plans to go to Cairo. He is revealed to be a whiner to the spirits, much like Dee and Kelley both. He shows a deep concern for his safety and well-being that speaks volumes, at least to me, of his lack of faith that “existence is pure joy.”

    Across history to the present day, magicians are fumbling in the dark, trying to figure out what the HELL is going on, and trying to influence things to work out in their favor. Their private diaries reveal them to be very small and very dependent upon the forces they work with for their mental well-being. Their greatest contributions to their fellow occultists are little more than sign posts and travel commentaries about the realms they visit.

    It’s baffling.

    From my own limited experience in the occult, in conjuring the spirits, in speaking with the intelligences of the spheres, in traversing the heavens that lie between us and God Almighty, I have seen things that make my toes curl in wonder and awe. I have done things that are miraculous in every sense of the word. In my conversations with the spirits of the realms, I’m no whining supplicant, begging for scraps of answers or a pittance to get to Egypt in the spring. I’m not demanding answers about God or the heavens, or secrets of the cosmos. I’m a traveler in the macrocosmic realms, a co-worker with the spirits in the microcosmic realms. There is no thing or state of existence beyond my ability to access and manifest through ritual activities. There are no limits beyond the practical.

    So just what the HELL is going on here? Am I the only magician that uses magic to rise above the problems of mundane existence? By no means is my life, or my skill in the Art of magic perfect and complete. My recent escapades with Bune seem to be unprecedented among my fellow magicians for example, although they have confirmed in one way or another through their own magical works that the source of the problem was related to the way I had approached the idea of being a Hierophant.

    The point is, when I found out what was going on, the first thing I did was fix it. Using magic. That’s my general approach to everything. It works really well. I use Magic to get ideas about what I should be doing in my mundane life. I use it to get ideas about what spiritual activities I should be pursuing. I use it for food, health, safety, and travel. With the knowledge I get reading and meditating, I create and perform rituals that bring about what I want to happen in my life and my world.

    I know I’m not the only one that does this. I talk to many magicians on the internet across the world who are doing the same thing. What I don’t understand is why it’s so relatively rare. The number of magicians in control of their lives is staggeringly low. Most people interested in the occult are interested in the power to control their worlds, but compared to the number of people interested, the number of people doing the Work, doing the magic that transforms their existence is less than half of one percent.

    Magic. It’s what a magician does. It’s not a last resort, it’s a first resort. The lungs breathe, the liver filters, the brain processes. The magician does magic. The magician is in control of their world, not isolated from other influences, but in a position of authority in determining which of the opportunities life will present, and how those opportunities will come about.

    There’s too much slap-dash going on. People slap together a quick one-time rite, and dash off to the next thing, which is usually something they are reacting to. There’s little or no actual proactive planning and implementation of their lives. They’re content to sit back and follow the script they’ve been given for the most part, with a little dabbling here and there.

    I’m not advocating any “Left Hand Path” philosophy here, but I do want to point out that YOU are not a passive part of existence. You have choices to make that affect many others. If you choose not to choose, you still have made a choice, to quote Rush. You’re an active part of existence, and magic gives you the keys to the Kingdom. You’ve got at your beck and call the very spirits that make up the world. Why on earth would you not choose to use them?

    Why didn’t Dee use the Angelic system of magic he received? Why didn’t Agrippa put his skills in the occult arts to use to keep from having to recant his writings? Why didn’t Crowley just manifest the cash to go to Cairo if he was that worried about it?

    Was it a lack of faith in their magic? Was it that they, like so many magicians today, believed that magic is interesting and neat, but when the rubber meets the road, you have to deal with life from the mundane? I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense to me.

    I understand that things won’t always work out the way you expect, and that’s fine, but one thing I’ve learned in this Great Work is that I am in control of what I experience in life. There is nothing beyond my ability to research, conjure, and influence. Sometimes the influence will be on my own expectations, changing what I want as I learn why things are the way they are. But there’s nothing my Daimon and I can’t handle, manipulate, and shape into what ought to be.

    So let’s all kick it up a notch or two. No whining, no fear. Let honest curiosity and righteous indignation fuel our endeavors. If money is a problem, conjure cash and multiple streams of income. If health is a problem, conjure healing and aid. If something is broken, fix it. If you don’t know how to fix it, find out how to fix it. You’re one meditation away from the brightest intelligences in the universe, literally.

    And trust the things you’re studying and learning in the occult. It really is real. And there’s nothing to be afraid of. You’ll be just fine.

  • Daimon Brainstorming Sessions Part 2

    This is Part 2 of the Daimon-Brainstorming sessions that resulted from my recent experiences with getting sick from a Bune operation gone awry. For background see “The Weirdest Bune Thing Yet” and “Daimon Brainstorming Sessions Part 1.”

    Picking up where we left off, I had woken up feeling great after performing a really quick rite with my spirit pot that houses Bune. That doesn’t really convey how much better I was feeling than before, the difference was totally miraculous. But I also wanted to make sure it didn’t happen again by following up on the Hierophant information I had received through the tarot divination and the first brainstorming session with my Daimon.

    So that night, I sat down with my Daimon, and we talked. I can’t really convey the conversation because I don’t remember the actual dialog. I took notes, but it was the information we were discussing that I wrote down, and not the conversation.

    Basically, I asked it what I should be focusing on to enact the resolution shown in the tarot reading (Hierophant, six of Wands, King of Wands). It revealed I hadn’t been plugging into the Above spoken of in the Emerald Tablet of Hermes. Most of my magical practices are pretty mundane-focused. I haven’t been doing a lot of Scrying of the Aethyrs, rising through the Spheres, or traveling through the heavens in a fiery chariot like Ezekiel did.

    And the Daimon reminded me that this is why the Hierophant is the Hierophant. The roles of the Hierophant are a reflection, a side effect of his relationship with God. The Hierophant gets his knowledge and experience and the ability to be a Hierophant on these spiritual journeys, and from contemplating the Divine Source.

    I hadn’t been doing these things much lately.

    So the next most obvious question was, “What should I actually be doing then?”

    We brainstormed for awhile, and what came out of that was a Merkavah–esque meditative ritual that includes visiting each Sphere of the Elements, the Seven Heavens (classical planetary realms), the “Heaven of the Stars” symbolized by Chokmah on the GD Tree of Life most are familiar with, and then the realm of the Prima Materia, the First Material that manifested in Kether. From there, my Daimon said, I needed to travel through the Pleroma and into the Divine Darkness in which the Creator dwells. After I was finished, I was to return going through each of the spheres in reverse order and then grounding out.

    This was all to be done in the Body of Light, making this a meditative and contemplative ritual. I don’t do many of those, and this one pretty much makes up for that fact.

    To begin, I lit a candle in my Lamp on my altar to represent the Light of God. Then I lit my incense charcoal and got some Abramelin Incense burning. It’s my favorite, and since I always start with a conjuration of my Daimon, it’s always appropriate.

    I then sat in my Comfy Chair (every magician should have one, as Patrick Dunn says; mine is IKEA’s Poang chair with the matching footstool). I had my notes. I entered my astral temple. I performed the rite. It took a while.

    First I conjured my Daimon. We have an agreement, I call, he comes. Next I quickly traveled up through the Elemental Spheres in my Body of Light. In the realm of Earth, I took on the form of a Bull, in Water the form of a Man, in Air the form of an Eagle, and in Fire the form of a Lion. When I got to the Lunar realm, I conjured Gabriel, the Archangel of the Moon using her Name, Seal from the Magical Calendar, and the name of God Shaddai El Chai. I then traveled through the Sphere of the Moon in my Body of Light with my Daimon until we got to the Gate leading to the Sphere of Mercury.

    At that Gate, I conjured Raphael, Archangel of Mercury. I follow the Trithemian school of placement for the archangels Raphael and Michael. This means that they are switched from what you see in the Magical Calendar link above. The seals stay with the planets, as they are the seals of the Intelligence of the planet. Only the names “Raphael” and “Michael” are switched from the Magical Calendar’s representation in the Trithemian school of correspondences.

    So at the Gate of Mercury, I conjured Raphael using his Seal and the God Name Elohim Tzabaoth. I traveled through Mercury to the Gate of Venus, and did the same with Haniel using the God Name Jehovah Tzabaoth. For each of the remaining spheres, it was the same, conhjure Archangel using the Sigil, name of the angel, and appropriate God Name, and then travel the sphere to the Gate to the next Sphere. After Venus, it went Sun-Michael-Seal-Eloah Va Da’at, Mars-Camael-Seal-Elohim Gibor, Jupiter-Sachiel-El, Saturn-Cassiel-Jehovah Elohim.

    When I got to the Gate to the Heaven of the Stars (roughly corresponding to Chokmah on the GD Tree of Life, I conjured Ratziel in the God Name Jah. I used the name Ratziel spelled out in the Celestial Script for the spirit’s Seal. After traveling through that sphere, I conjured the Archangel Metatron using the Name Eheieh to get access into Kether.

    The rest can’t really be described in words. I continued traveling through what is represented by the three negative veils. The first negative veil, the Ain Soph Aur was to me the Pleroma of the Gnostics. Multiple heavens, multiple entities that spoke in light instead of sound. Very interesting. I think that’s what you go through when you scry the Enochian Aethyrs, but I don’t know that to be true, just a suspicion. After that, I went through the Divine Darkness that Dionysius talks about. This is a must-read, in my opinion. Click that link later.

    Then I returned through the Spheres I had ascended through on the way up, conjuring each spirit at each gate until I reached the Elemental realm of fire. There I conjure Michael Angel of the the Element Fire and had him guide me through the Sphere to the Gate to the Realm of Air, where I conjured Raphael to lead me to the Gate of Water, then Gabriel who lead me to the Gate of Earth, and finally Uriel, who lead me back to my own Astral Temple. I thanked him, and my Daimon and then got up and did some grounding-out exercises.

    It took SIX HOURS. Strangely, three of those hours were spent in the Realm of the Moon on the way up. The rest took much less time. I had a lot of Lunar things to deal with. I may or may not blog about them. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of your own things to discover if you choose to do a rite like this, although the Moon realm might not take you as long.

    Dee does say something about needing to travel three times around the Earth in the Realm of the Moon before you can reach the next sphere in his Hieroglyphic Monad though, and I hadn’t known that before doing the rite. Maybe that’s part of it, I don’t know.

    Well, that’s Part 2. I wanted to get these out tonight before I forgot some of the details.

    Good Nigh, and Good Magick.

  • Chthonic vs. Celestial

    Jake Stratton-Kent wrote the following explanation of his views on the Goetia as a genre (not just a grimoire in a grimoire). I’ve found the information Jake presented really useful in discussions with Goetic and Celestial entities alike since first reading it, and he was kind enough to let me post it here.

    Chthonic versus Celestial
    by Jake Stratton-Kent

    All ancient religions differ from modern religions in several major respects. We’re used to seeing things from a cultural perspective at least partly defined by what is known as *Revealed Religion*, in which *Revelation* (ultimately in the form of a Book) is received from on high (what we might term the *Celestial* region). The centre of gravity of this type of religion is the Celestial region, even though other realms of experience are considered – such as Earth, Hell and the physical universe in general.

    Ancient religions, and ‘primitive’ religion generally, is significantly different. Collectively they are termed Natural Religion (not to be confused with Nature Religion) which in contrast with Revelation from the Celestial realm evolves from the ground up, via deductive reasoning and observation of the world, including perceived supernatural components. It’s centre of gravity is Chthonic – it is notable that the Greeks at every stage of religious development considered the Earth the source of oracular power (contrasting Oracles with Revelations). Note again that this centre of gravity does not exclude consideration of other regions of experience, and thus gods of
    thunder, Sun, Moon etc. are not excluded by this focus.

    In the subsequent development of Greek religion the Celestial gained in importance, while the Chthonic powers for a long time retained divine status (notwithstanding some unpleasant characters in the underworld and elsewhere). My comparison of goetia with African Traditional Religions is intended to reflect this earlier status, and the chthonic ‘centre of gravity’ from which it evolved. The comparison is part of an effort to provide a position from which the pre-devaluation form of goetia may be understood in something like its own terms. In the past – whether in traditional sources, later publications or in discussions on the internet – goetia and dealing with the underworld has almost invariably been seen and described in terms of the later ‘Revealed Religion’ and has assumed the Celestial centre of gravity. That this gives an entirely false idea of how goetia originally operated – prior to devaluation – is obvious once this is taken on board. Otherwise it is very difficult to get past the perspective of Revealed Religion etc. which has prevailed in our culture for upwards of 2000 years.

    Additional perspective may be useful: the ‘goetia’ implicit in my usage is what Cumont called the ‘coarse and ancient goetia’; rites which preceded the adoption of supposed Persian ‘magic’ by the Greeks. That one survived alongside the other does not detract from the fact they had different frames of reference. In later magic goetia is not understood in its own original terms, having become a survival within a host tradition with another perspective. My use of chthonic and
    celestial refers to this aspect of the discussion, and as should be obvious I’m interested in recovering the perspective of goetia rather than of the host tradition (with which we’re all familiar in various guises).

  • Daimon Brainstorming Sessions Part 2

    This is Part 2 of the Daimon-Brainstorming sessions that resulted from my recent experiences with getting sick from a Bune operation gone awry. For background see “The Weirdest Bune Thing Yet” and “Daimon Brainstorming Sessions Part 1.”

    Picking up where we left off, I had woken up feeling great after performing a really quick rite with my spirit pot that houses Bune. That doesn’t really convey how much better I was feeling than before, the difference was totally miraculous. But I also wanted to make sure it didn’t happen again by following up on the Hierophant information I had received through the tarot divination and the first brainstorming session with my Daimon.

    So that night, I sat down with my Daimon, and we talked. I can’t really convey the conversation because I don’t remember the actual dialog. I took notes, but it was the information we were discussing that I wrote down, and not the conversation.

    Basically, I asked it what I should be focusing on to enact the resolution shown in the tarot reading (Hierophant, six of Wands, King of Wands). It revealed I hadn’t been plugging into the Above spoken of in the Emerald Tablet of Hermes. Most of my magical practices are pretty mundane-focused. I haven’t been doing a lot of Scrying of the Aethyrs, rising through the Spheres, or traveling through the heavens in a fiery chariot like Ezekiel did.

    And the Daimon reminded me that this is why the Hierophant is the Hierophant. The roles of the Hierophant are a reflection, a side effect of his relationship with God. The Hierophant gets his knowledge and experience and the ability to be a Hierophant on these spiritual journeys, and from contemplating the Divine Source.

    I hadn’t been doing these things much lately.

    So the next most obvious question was, “What should I actually be doing then?”

    We brainstormed for awhile, and what came out of that was a Merkavah–esque meditative ritual that includes visiting each Sphere of the Elements, the Seven Heavens (classical planetary realms), the “Heaven of the Stars” symbolized by Chokmah on the GD Tree of Life most are familiar with, and then the realm of the Prima Materia, the First Material that manifested in Kether. From there, my Daimon said, I needed to travel through the Pleroma and into the Divine Darkness in which the Creator dwells. After I was finished, I was to return going through each of the spheres in reverse order and then grounding out.

    This was all to be done in the Body of Light, making this a meditative and contemplative ritual. I don’t do many of those, and this one pretty much makes up for that fact.

    To begin, I lit a candle in my Lamp on my altar to represent the Light of God. Then I lit my incense charcoal and got some Abramelin Incense burning. It’s my favorite, and since I always start with a conjuration of my Daimon, it’s always appropriate.

    I then sat in my Comfy Chair (every magician should have one, as Patrick Dunn says; mine is IKEA’s Poang chair with the matching footstool). I had my notes. I entered my astral temple. I performed the rite. It took a while.

    First I conjured my Daimon. We have an agreement, I call, he comes. Next I quickly traveled up through the Elemental Spheres in my Body of Light. In the realm of Earth, I took on the form of a Bull, in Water the form of a Man, in Air the form of an Eagle, and in Fire the form of a Lion. When I got to the Lunar realm, I conjured Gabriel, the Archangel of the Moon using her Name, Seal from the Magical Calendar, and the name of God Shaddai El Chai. I then traveled through the Sphere of the Moon in my Body of Light with my Daimon until we got to the Gate leading to the Sphere of Mercury.

    At that Gate, I conjured Raphael, Archangel of Mercury. I follow the Trithemian school of placement for the archangels Raphael and Michael. This means that they are switched from what you see in the Magical Calendar link above. The seals stay with the planets, as they are the seals of the Intelligence of the planet. Only the names “Raphael” and “Michael” are switched from the Magical Calendar’s representation in the Trithemian school of correspondences.

    So at the Gate of Mercury, I conjured Raphael using his Seal and the God Name Elohim Tzabaoth. I traveled through Mercury to the Gate of Venus, and did the same with Haniel using the God Name Jehovah Tzabaoth. For each of the remaining spheres, it was the same, conhjure Archangel using the Sigil, name of the angel, and appropriate God Name, and then travel the sphere to the Gate to the next Sphere. After Venus, it went Sun-Michael-Seal-Eloah Va Da’at, Mars-Camael-Seal-Elohim Gibor, Jupiter-Sachiel-El, Saturn-Cassiel-Jehovah Elohim.

    When I got to the Gate to the Heaven of the Stars (roughly corresponding to Chokmah on the GD Tree of Life, I conjured Ratziel in the God Name Jah. I used the name Ratziel spelled out in the Celestial Script for the spirit’s Seal. After traveling through that sphere, I conjured the Archangel Metatron using the Name Eheieh to get access into Kether.

    The rest can’t really be described in words. I continued traveling through what is represented by the three negative veils. The first negative veil, the Ain Soph Aur was to me the Pleroma of the Gnostics. Multiple heavens, multiple entities that spoke in light instead of sound. Very interesting. I think that’s what you go through when you scry the Enochian Aethyrs, but I don’t know that to be true, just a suspicion. After that, I went through the Divine Darkness that Dionysius talks about. This is a must-read, in my opinion. Click that link later.

    Then I returned through the Spheres I had ascended through on the way up, conjuring each spirit at each gate until I reached the Elemental realm of fire. There I conjure Michael Angel of the the Element Fire and had him guide me through the Sphere to the Gate to the Realm of Air, where I conjured Raphael to lead me to the Gate of Water, then Gabriel who lead me to the Gate of Earth, and finally Uriel, who lead me back to my own Astral Temple. I thanked him, and my Daimon and then got up and did some grounding-out exercises.

    It took SIX HOURS. Strangely, three of those hours were spent in the Realm of the Moon on the way up. The rest took much less time. I had a lot of Lunar things to deal with. I may or may not blog about them. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of your own things to discover if you choose to do a rite like this, although the Moon realm might not take you as long.

    Dee does say something about needing to travel three times around the Earth in the Realm of the Moon before you can reach the next sphere in his Hieroglyphic Monad though, and I hadn’t known that before doing the rite. Maybe that’s part of it, I don’t know.

    Well, that’s Part 2. I wanted to get these out tonight before I forgot some of the details.

    Good Nigh, and Good Magick.

  • Note to self…

    Well, I just finished watching the Grudge 2.

    Remind me never to take the evil spirits from people and feed them to my daughter, ok?

    It always turns out bad in the end.

  • From the Sun to Saturn, and Back to the Sun

    I have a nemesis. Maybe that’s stretching it a bit, but there’s this guy on a couple of message boards that I belong to, and we tend to disagree. He’s an Aries, I’m a Taurus, and we fight. Many of the readers here who also read through the Yahoo occult groups will be familiar with this guy. His name is Logan.

    Anyone who has endured the misfortune of witnessing a “debate” between myself and Logan on any of the message boards we share deserves an apology. We can get boring, sarcastic, and we tend to use each other to demonstrate what we consider our own wit and brilliance. It usually lasts about as long as it takes for me to get disgusted and start calling him foul names. Every few months or so, I’ll forget why I can’t stand him, and enter into a conversation that rapidly becomes a debate, and then turns into a name-calling match. I’ve been better lately, but he still gets on my nerves.

    What bothers me most is that the smug self-righteous British bastard has helped me out a lot in my pursuit of the Grail, the Great Work. He helped me appreciate Plato, and destroyed my confidence in the GD Tree of Life by demonstrating its shaky foundations. This lead me to fully embrace the Neo-Platonic realm of Agrippa, and to understand something Patrick Dunn is always going on about regarding the arbitrariness of semiotic webs.

    So anyway, Logan told me months ago that I needed to read Eliphas Levi. He had quoted something about how Levi said “Magick is not a vocation” in response to my selling Conversation with the HGA through the conjuration of the Genius (See the Products and Services link at www.rufusopus.com). I have never read Levi, and with Logan as his sponsor in my current magical environment, I was set against it. Until earlier today.

    First off, Levi may have said Magick is not a vocation, but if he did (I haven’t gotten that far yet), he said it after saying the Magician is a Priest and King. Both Priests and Kings collect Tithes and Taxes, so the whole argument against taking money for magickal services is undermined right there, wha-bam!

    Ok, that said, Levi is really good reading. The guy presents magick with no holds barred. He tells it like it is, presents the Great Work more impressively than anything I’ve seen in a long time (outside my own writing, of course). It’s WORK. It’s hard. It’s even “dangerous” in that if you give up after starting, you’ll be worse off than if you’d never started at all. Not that you can quit once you’ve begun anyway, but at least he tells you you’ll end up a Monarch or a Madman at the start. Good stuff.

    What inspired this particular blog post though was the following:

    “there is no point in infinite extension which may not be regarded as the centre of a circle having an expanding circumference receding indefinitely into space”
    (Page 6 at http://www.hermetic.com/browe-archive/pdf/DogmaEtRituel%20Part%201.pdf)

    Think about that for a moment. We are such points, beginning in our Work at the center of a circle with a somewhat fixed circumference. As we progress, we expand the circumference, becoming aware of all the things within the circumference of that circle, learning to integrate the “energies” of the things we find into our own spheres as the limits of our spheres expand. The limits of the spheres expand as the Light from the center of the sphere increases its radiation, exposing more of what can be found within the darkness at the edges of our sphere of awareness.

    In Crowley’s popular magickal system, we find the Holy Guardian Angel (HGA) in Tiphareth, the Sephira that corresponds to the Sphere of the Sun. When the magician establishes Knowledge and Conversation with their HGA, they undergo a Solar Initiation. The hidden corners of their personal sphere are exposed to the light, and the magician is forced to confront and deal with those parts of themselves they hide in the darkness. Each character flaw, each untamed passion, every sin or self-destructive tendency comes to the fore and must be corrected, tamed, repented from, or channeled into proactive directions with the help of your HGA. The Point gets enflamed with the Light of the Sun, and as the Sun reveals more, the boundaries of the sphere of the magician are expanded.

    Boundaries… yes, the realm of Saturn, the furthest planet observable by the naked eye. The first sphere of Form in the Kircher Tree of Life (Binah). The layer of emanation where ideas take form, where the limits are set, where the Lord tells the Sea, you may come this far and no further. These are the properties of Saturn.

    Knowing this, you can see that the act of spiritual advancement is the interplay of the Sun and Saturn. As the Light of the Sun increases, the limits set by Saturn are made mutable, and they move further out. As we explore our new boundaries, integrating the things that were hidden in shadow before, learning to function within the newly expanded sphere, we grow, gain insights, authority, and responsibility. With each new attribute of ourselves that we integrate, the understanding of the things we learned in our previous stages of advancement are enhanced. The responsibilities we had earlier change form, and we end up traveling back towards the Sun at the center of our sphere to reintegrate all the things we knew with the things we’ve learned. When we return to the sun at the center of our microcosm, we hit the next level, and the Light increases, and our boundaries expand, and we begin to explore the furthest reaches of the Light yet again.

    From the Sun to Saturn and Back again. The path of the Labyrinth. (Which is not to be confused with a maze; a Labyrinth has one entrance and one exit side by side, travels only to the center and back to the beginning. A Magician travels to the center and returns to the beginning, carrying with him the treasure held within and sharing that with the realm outside.)

    All this theory and stuff is great and fun and all, but I’m still a Taurus. It’s meaningless without application, in my humble opinion.

    Where are you at? Have you plateaued in your Work? Are you stuck at a level of attainment, and you need to expand your boundaries? The answer is Working the Sun and Saturn. Conjure up the Archangels Tzaphqiel and Michael. Are you feeling like you’re stumbling around in the dark? Work with Michael of the Sun to bring the hidden things to light. Have you worked through everything you can think of, and still feel stuck in a rut? Conjure Tzaphqiel and Work with him to move the boundaries of your sphere. Head between the Sun and Saturn, make that your path, and you won’t get stuck.

    Sorrow turns to Joy in the light of the Sun, and unfocused rays become lasers when their boundaries are properly aligned.

    Grace and Peace!

  • Sleep Paralysys, Night Hags, and the Work

    A friend asked me if I thought Sleep Paralysis or the Night Hag experience was greater or worse for people doing the Great Work.

    Starting with the basic cosmology, I believe the world as we know it is filled with spirits that we can’t see. Angels, fallen angels, elementals, and all the spirits of the dead that stick around this side of heaven, you know the drill.

    When we have strong emotions, we put off a certain kind of “energy” that can be sensed in a room or even a house. Some of the spirits we wade through every day can absorb nutrition from these strong emotions, the kind usually triggered by the amygdala.

    In order for the hags to be ble to feed off someone, they’ve got to be going through some kind of emotional duress or stress that has their amygdala working over time. Whatever the clonazepam does in the brain seems to patch this leak up in most people.

    The wandering hag spirit gets the scent of the leak and goes in for a free meal. Like a lamprey, the spirit attaches itself to the leak, and I believe it has something like the anesthetic saliva of a mosquito. this triggers that “I can’t move” effect in the brain, and if we wake up during the attack, we can’t do anything about it.

    As a magician pursues the Work, they’re patching up the holes, and learning new ways to deal with life that slowly eliminate the creation of any new leaks. So there’s less to feed on. We aren’t putting out a banquet every night for every wandering spirit.

    However, in the early stages, and especially during a Tiphareth Initiation, there’s usually a lot of pain involved. The “Gethsemane” experience, I like to call it. Crowley talks about the pain of a Tiphareth initiation in Liber XCV, “The Wake World.”

    “This Sixth House is called the Treasure House of Gold; it’s a most mysterious place as ever you were in. First there’s a tiny, tiny, tiny doorway, you must crawl through on your hands and knees; and even then I scraped ever such a lot of skin off my back; then you have to be nailed on a red board with four arms, with a great gold circle in the middle, and that hurts you dreadfully. Then they make you swear the most solemn things you ever heard of, how you would be faithful to the Fairy Prince, and live for nothing but to know him better and better. So the nails stopped hurting, because, of course, I saw that I was really being married, and this was part of it, and I was as glad as glad;”

    So until you get to the married part, if you haven’t done the Work in the previous spheres, you may have more hag experiences as the skin is scraped on your back.

    Also, as you progress in the Work, you begin to interact with the spirits more, and you get a few that hang around you. They tend to scare away the more aggressive spirits, wake you up before anything can happen, or just beat the shit out of the hungry ghosts that dare to infiltrate your sphere. Depends on the familiars you attract and work with.

  • Sleep Paralysys, Night Hags, and the Work

    A friend asked me if I thought Sleep Paralysis or the Night Hag experience was greater or worse for people doing the Great Work.

    Starting with the basic cosmology, I believe the world as we know it is filled with spirits that we can’t see. Angels, fallen angels, elementals, and all the spirits of the dead that stick around this side of heaven, you know the drill.

    When we have strong emotions, we put off a certain kind of “energy” that can be sensed in a room or even a house. Some of the spirits we wade through every day can absorb nutrition from these strong emotions, the kind usually triggered by the amygdala.

    In order for the hags to be ble to feed off someone, they’ve got to be going through some kind of emotional duress or stress that has their amygdala working over time. Whatever the clonazepam does in the brain seems to patch this leak up in most people.

    The wandering hag spirit gets the scent of the leak and goes in for a free meal. Like a lamprey, the spirit attaches itself to the leak, and I believe it has something like the anesthetic saliva of a mosquito. this triggers that “I can’t move” effect in the brain, and if we wake up during the attack, we can’t do anything about it.

    As a magician pursues the Work, they’re patching up the holes, and learning new ways to deal with life that slowly eliminate the creation of any new leaks. So there’s less to feed on. We aren’t putting out a banquet every night for every wandering spirit.

    However, in the early stages, and especially during a Tiphareth Initiation, there’s usually a lot of pain involved. The “Gethsemane” experience, I like to call it. Crowley talks about the pain of a Tiphareth initiation in Liber XCV, “The Wake World.”

    “This Sixth House is called the Treasure House of Gold; it’s a most mysterious place as ever you were in. First there’s a tiny, tiny, tiny doorway, you must crawl through on your hands and knees; and even then I scraped ever such a lot of skin off my back; then you have to be nailed on a red board with four arms, with a great gold circle in the middle, and that hurts you dreadfully. Then they make you swear the most solemn things you ever heard of, how you would be faithful to the Fairy Prince, and live for nothing but to know him better and better. So the nails stopped hurting, because, of course, I saw that I was really being married, and this was part of it, and I was as glad as glad;”

    So until you get to the married part, if you haven’t done the Work in the previous spheres, you may have more hag experiences as the skin is scraped on your back.

    Also, as you progress in the Work, you begin to interact with the spirits more, and you get a few that hang around you. They tend to scare away the more aggressive spirits, wake you up before anything can happen, or just beat the shit out of the hungry ghosts that dare to infiltrate your sphere. Depends on the familiars you attract and work with.

  • 4th Pentacle o’ Jupiter

    Ok, so now I’ve scanned the 4th Pentacle of Jupiter I made:


    I also have a digital image I made in “PowerPoint” of all the stupid things. It’s a rough approximation based on colors I have on my pc, fonts I have on my pc, and images I copy-pasted from Joe Peterson’s web site.

    The outermost circle has Muriel and its seal, then the next circle inwards has Jupiter, Tzadqiel, the characters of Jupiter, and the seal of the Archangel. The circle within has the gloria… psalm, and the innermost circle has the symbol from the Key of Solomon. The coloring below is allegedly based on the Picatrix, according to this site.

  • 4th Pentacle o’ Jupiter

    Ok, so now I’ve scanned the 4th Pentacle of Jupiter I made:


    I also have a digital image I made in “PowerPoint” of all the stupid things. It’s a rough approximation based on colors I have on my pc, fonts I have on my pc, and images I copy-pasted from Joe Peterson’s web site.

    The outermost circle has Muriel and its seal, then the next circle inwards has Jupiter, Tzadqiel, the characters of Jupiter, and the seal of the Archangel. The circle within has the gloria… psalm, and the innermost circle has the symbol from the Key of Solomon. The coloring below is allegedly based on the Picatrix, according to this site.