Head For the Red

Financial Issues

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 06:55:47 PST

I've needed a new car for about a year now. I've kept it running with willpower and the blessings of the spirits I work with, but I just get this feeling my days are getting more and more numbered. A light came on that's come on before, but it brings a feeling of immanent destruction that I can't shake.

I planned on buying one at the end of the month, and I'm on track to have the money needed by then, but I just feel like I need to move a little faster. I'm about $500 short of what I need, basically the taxes, title, and tag fees. Damned taxes.

Anyway, I've got ways to make money quickly as a result of my efforts over the last few years, and I'm going to take advantage of them. Like so:

For a limited time only, you can receive membership in the complete Red Work series of courses, including the Black, White, and Green Work for only $125.

You must use the buy now buttons below to get this deal. If you go to my site and buy it there, the prices will be the regular prices. I will leave this button up for at least one day, but after 24 hours I might drop it any time without warning.*

* Because I don't know when I'll get around to it, but it will probably be Saturday morning. Unless I oversleep. Or get distracted.

The Favor of Kings

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 13:22:53 PST

A lot of people go around the world feeling like ... well, I don't know, small. Insignificant. Afraid. Worthless. Unwanted, superfluous, an extra in the play of life that no one notices until they trip and screw up the lead's blocking.

It strikes all of us at some point, but knowing that everyone else feels small and insignifcant and afraid sometimes doesn't really make it any easier to live with when it's happening to you personally. In fact, I'm pretty sure it makes it worse.

Magicians throughout time and space have had to suffer this feeling, and at some point, one of them did something about it. Or maybe everyone eventually does something about it when they realize they can. I don't know. Whatever happened, we have the Favor of Kings, and it's pretty fucking sweet.

I first ran across it in my Demon Magic time. There, nestled in the attributes of Eligor, Orobas, Orias and Belial, I found spirits who brought the Love of Lords and Great People, and who brought the favour of friends and foes. Favor. Love. It means, quite simply, that these spirits can make the people in power, the people in your life like you, really like you. When people like you, they make ways for you to succeed. They help, they give money, they give time, they set up interviews with their bosses for you. And when the King likes you, everyone else has to at least pretend to like you, so it's a win-win, pretty much.

I've seen it in other places since then. I've found methods of accomplishing this result in my Work in all the spheres, with all the angels. Saturn makes you wise, and can put you in positions of influence with powerful people. Jupiter makes you Kingly yourself, and people like hanging out with Kingly types who are quick to laugh healthy, hearty laughs. Mars establishes you as a key person on any team with targeted goals. The Sun just fucking crowns you the Golden Child, makes you shining and brilliant, and people flock to you. Venus makes you inspirational. Mercury makes you eloquent. The Moon teaches you the ways of the Glamour.

And I tell you brothers and sisters, it feels good to be liked. It helps you get ahead in life when powerful people like you.

I've been busy at work lately. My contract was cancelled, and they benched me. That means they pay you from the overhead pile of cash until they find other work for you to do that's billable. If they can't find anything for you quickly, they fire you. So I've been relying on the Favor of Kings a lot lately. I got punted to a couple writing projects that were desperate, and I blew everyone away with my mad skills. I think my boss has kept my skills her little secret. Today during a boring meeting with a project manager in Atlanta, it slipped that I'm famous in DC, Atlanta, and my own Baltimore office among the management. There's nothing they've thrown at me that I haven't been able to handle like a boss. And I don't think I've done anything all that spectacular.

So find a way to tap into that. Conjure the archangel of your favorite planet, the one that rules your Sun sign is a good start if you can't think of any that you'd like to work with, and ask them to bless you with the Favor of Kings. Make yourself a talisman in the right hour, and ask them to bless it, and carry it around with you. You'll quickly find that people like you, for no apparent reason.

It's exactly like that feeling you get when you feel insignificant for no particular reason, but completely opposite. And totally worth the time it takes.

Applied Hermetics Update and Tips on Buying Occult Services

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 10:10:13 PST

Life is good, brothers and sisters, life is good. Sales are up, people are learning traditional Hermetic magic with a firm grounding in the principles of Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy, and I'm making bank. The Red Work series of courses is doing phenomenally well. So well, in fact, it needs my full attention for a while.

As a result, I'm cutting back on the Applied Hermetics Services. Going forward, I'm only offering the Hermetic Diagnosis, and the Business Booster rite. I'll no longer be taking on new client work. This will give me the time to focus more on the completion and maintenance of the Courses, and to catch up on some backlogged work without extending the backlog even further.

I'll continue to work with existing clients on an as-needed basis, but all new client requests (other than Hermetic Diagnoses and Business Booster Rites) will receive recommendations to other practitioners I feel are qualified. In fact, I can tell you straight up who I'd recommend now and save some time*:

Jason Miller
The Valentines
Michael Cecchetelli
Chris Warnock
Conjureman Ali
De Heer Balthazar
Lavanah

There are others I'd recommend who haven't formally started taking on clients that I know of (cough cough Deb, Fr. SEA, VonFaustus, Fr. AIT, Witchdoctor Joe, Adam cough cough).

These are the no-bullshit magical practitioners-for-money who I'm confident can deliver what they offer, no punk, no funk, no elevator junk.

Except Valentines, he can bring the punk on occasion, when it's fucking necessary.

And they've all got the funk.

But no elevator junk! They all rock it hard in their own way.

Whatever you do, go with someone who takes money, for a couple of reasons. When you give money for a service, it creates a very Hermetic/Mercurial sympathetic bond between the two of you. The exchange of money for a service seals a covenant between you and the practitioner, just exactly like the pacts made between Abraham and YHVH, and every other magician before or since.

Also, when you give a magician money in a covenantal, pact-based exchange of cash for services, they incur a debt, an obligation that they are held to by higher powers. They have to deliver to the best of their abilities, or else they pay the price. It's a magical oath the magician is held to as strongly as the Oath of the Abyss or the Bodhisattva vows. So buying the services of a magician provides its own built-in warranty that you will receive what you pay for.

That doesn't mean you get what you want, it only means the magician has to do what they said they would do for you. You can pay a magician all you want to get rich, but that won't guarantee any wealth rituals will work for you. It will only guarantee that they will do whatever they can to make you wealthy, or else.

Basically, when you hire a magician, you're doing the same thing a magician does when he conjures a spirit. The spirit you conjure by buying a service happens to be in a physical body like yours, but you're still creating a pact with a spirit and their associates to work on your behalf to manifest the world in accordance with your desires.

* If you provide occult services and would like to be mentioned, don't bother asking for a referral unless I know you really well and have expressed my respect for your work. I might have forgotten to mention some folks because I have a mind like a solid steel sieve, but don't be expecting me to mention you if I don't know you from Adam. (Adam, I'm not talking about you, I'll refer them to you whenever you're ready to start taking clients.)

Spiritual Trauma and the Shamanic Death Trip

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 12:07:29 PST

I love me some HGA talk!

Acher's recent publication of his initial research on the origins of the HGA has sparked more discussion on one of my favorite topics. You'd better not go Gordon and be all, "“meh, I’ll catch it next time around. Might have something new to say then.”

This is important to you personally because you've been fed a line of total bullshit about the HGA all your occult life, and if you're going to understand it and be able to work with it the way god intended, you'd damned well better be reprogramming yourself by reading these discussions when they come up.

I'll try to keep it entertaining, and interesting though, I know how you are.*

So Rose wrote a post today about the HGA and her take on it. She expressed concern about potential blogosphere backlash for expressing her belief that the published rites and rituals aren't required to gain K&CHGA, and I feel her pain.**

Rose is right on when she says the HGA is there from birth, it says so clearly in the Abramelin manuscripts. Check Mathers and Dehn, if you don't believe me. See Chapter thirteen of the Mathers version, it's online and handy so I can look it up. Look at what happens on the 7th day, what he tells you about your life with him that you've never known. Couldn't happen unless Rose is spot on accurate about the spirit being there all the time from birth.

It's there working with you and for you whether you know it or not. All the rite provides is conscious interaction with it, and the ability to see it.

Rose expresses her thoughts on the relationship between trauma and spiritual experiences, gifts, and insights, and how sometimes they can serve to kick off the ability to see, hear, and interact with spirits. I think that's not only accurate, but a key insight into understanding what actually goes on in these HGA rites anyway.

The rites and rituals that are designed to put you into contact with the HGA in modern times are functionally designed to induce a traumatic event so intense that you are able to see, hear, and interact with your HGA. You spend your six months or eighteen months ritually creating the circumstances necessary to instigate a psychic breakdown, to create a reframing experience that allows your whole perception to be altered. You use special oils and perfumes to put your brain into a particular state, and there's some speculation that you get high to help. Aaron Leitch very carefully doesn't mention that he uses Marijuana as a psychoreagent in his Work with the Holy Guardian Angel. He also carefully doesn't show it in a picture on his blog.

In my experience with gaining K&CHGA, I started doing Liber Samekh, minus the GD line dancing, and two weeks later I had the experience that indicates contact has been made. Two weeks! That's not 6 months, or 18 months. It's not even close!

But it happened after 2 fucking years of spiritual hell. I'd been pure fundy, pouring my heart out to god, literally in tears in his presence on a daily basis looking for answers, help, peace, succor. I was on an ecstatic mystic's journey to the heart of the Sun for years before hearing a still small voice telling me to go back to the occult and looking at it through the eyes of a born again new creation in Christ. The framework was laid, the pump was primed, I'd spent years enflamed in prayer, systematically destroying my psyche through the well-intended but spiritually bereft advice books of the modern Charismatic-Puritan movement in the Church. I mean, I was basically living like a Plymouth Brother, Crowley's home religion. It makes perfect sense that his rite would work for me, when you think about it.

But the trauma is the key. You've got to get yourself all hyped up, all psyched out, and maintain it for a while to hit that moment of breakthrough when you smell that smell and say, blessed is the day of the Lord! It's not a once-and-done kind of thing. It's a full on rebirth experience that drives you a little bit crazy to make you a little bit more sane.

It's just exactly like the Shamanic Death Trip, at least as far as I understand it. The shamans were ritually buried and hopped up on psychoactive drugs to get through to the spirit world, receive a vision and an ally or two, and return able to cross the bridge between the realms to fight spiritual battles for their community. I'm sure that's not exactly historically accurate, but that's basically the understanding I have. The Masons recreate the Death Trip as part of their initiations too. You go through something traumatic.

But here's the thing. These rites and rituals create specifically designed traumatic experiences. Think about it. How did they figure out they needed to artificially create trauma to establish conscious communion with the spirit realm? From real life trauma.

They saw that when someone got hit in the head and started seeing spirits and speaking in tongues. Yeah, maybe it was brain damage sometimes, but other times the weird shit they said came true. Putting a leaf in a fire under the right stars and mumbling gibberish made the hunts more successful, and when that guy died, they had to figure out how to replace him. Physical trauma didn't always work, but drugs and ritual death seemed to, and next thing you know, a few thousand years later, we have Abramelin and Liber Samekh.

They're artificial recreations of real life trauma events, modified, toned down, but geared towards the same result. And anyone who's been through attaining K&CHGA will tell you, it comes after pain. Solar initiations are represented by the Cross for a reason in Rosicrucian symbolism. Death and resurrection, man. Death hurts, even when it's temporary.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, the things that caused trauma didn't go away. As technology improved and populations grew and spread, new forms of psychic-vision-producing trauma evolved. Severe emotional and physical trauma ranks pretty high up there in the list of things that bring visions of angels to this very day. In a lot of ways, they're actually the more natural method of obtaining K&CHGA. Less predictable, less reliable, but still effective in creating re-framing experiences that allow you to see things that no one else can see.

So I'm with Rose. I think the rites and ceremonies are a much more preferable way to induce the trauma that results in the Vision and the Voice, but they aren't the only way at all.

* Tiny little attention span, pressed for time, and hungry for something fun and useful at the same time. Like me.

** I don't write up a whole lot of stuff that goes on in my practice and life because the results of the Traditional Grimoire and Aggrippinian Neo-Platonic Hermetic Magical Practice(TM) looks a WHOOOOOLE lot like the kind of stuff I've made fun of when it happens to New Agers and Paranormal Investigators. And we're supposed to be a dignified bunch, who are above that kind of poppycock. No pre-17th century documentation? It's bullshit!

That's the law.

I realized I had boxed myself into a prison of my own creation recently when I found myself jealous of Ian for being a neopagan who can just make shit up and get away with it, as long as it works. I make shit up all the time, and it works great, but I don't write it up or talk about it or sell it from the blog because it's damned hokey, and I've got an image to maintain or some shit.

Yeah, fuck all that shit.

Fr. Acher on the HGA

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:01:19 PST

When someone tries to figure out the history of the Holy Guardian Angel in the Western Occult traditions, it's a lot like trying to excavate the Valley of Kings with a spoon. I tried it a few times over the years, but I never felt confident going back any further than Plato's Timaeus dialogue. I really felt completely out of my depth going back any further.

Fr. Acher started looking into it after some comments we exchanged about the HGA and Evil Daimon on this post back a few months ago. After much research, he's begun to publish his results. If you're an HGA aficionado, it's a very good read so far. I'm looking forward to future installments.

I had a little trouble figuring out that you click the morphing image to get to the articles at first, so here's some short cut links for technofeebs like myself:

Family Harmonics Follow-Up

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 07:17:44 PST

A couple commenters on the Family Harmonics post asked some specific questions that I thought deserved their own post.

Mike Sententia writes:

Hi RO, love seeing case studies like this. Could you comment on the results of this magick? Also, I'm curious, how much does your family know of your magick, of this work in particular, and did they participate?

The results have been consistent with the kinds of results I've seen over the years when I conjured a spirit directly to help with an issue. The issue gets resolved, and the stress goes away. For example, my son was having issues with stress from his school work load, and a general request for assistance to all the spirits represented brought that right down to manageable levels.

The results aren't necessarily any different than any other method of involving the Spirits of the spheres in your life, it's just easier to light a candle and say a quick prayer in a stressful time. There's a passive aid that's being applied by the spirits as well, all the time, but how do you quantify that? There's more cheer, less jeer. Clearer communications, more self-control under pressure. People are nicer and happier, it seems. But it's not a make it all perfect all the time rite. It just makes things better, and it's more convenient to tap into the influence of the spirits represented.

My family is aware that I do magic, I don't hide it from them, but I raise my kids Catholic and explain it's something I do in addition to the core faith that is not necessary for everyone else to do. I don't include them in the rites, they're kids. Their brains aren't finished growing yet. I prefer to lay a foundation in the core tenets of the Faith, and then provide advanced lessons as they get older and start showing signs of interest, or a calling. I'm not going to force my weird on them. They'll have to get their own weird.

Anonymous writes:

Great post! Are the consecrations general or do they differ according to the seal? Can you post an example? It would be appreciated.

The consecrations I used were based on the type of rite that I always do, modeled on the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals. I conjured each of the archangels of the planets in the appropriate hour of the appropriate day, and asked them to bring their influence and guidance of the powers they represent to benefit the individual members of the family in their daily lives, and the unit as a whole as we make our way from cradle to grave, and beyond.

The rites recorded in the Gates series of ebooks would be appropriate.

Encouraging Harmony at Home

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:12:54 PST

Running a household is a complicated thing. My wife and I have to manage the budget, child development and education, extracurricular activities, transportation, communications, facilities maintenance, interior decorations, landscaping, sanitation, supply logistics, laundering, entertainment, and weekly menus. Fortunately, my wife manages most of that stuff. I make sure the money's there to pay for it all, and do the husband-father things as necessary. She's brilliant at it, too.

But it's an intricate and complex thing with many moving parts on complicated schedules, and keeping it all running smoothly and harmoniously is a real chore, and by the time it's warm enough, we're ready to hit the beach and unwind, work out frustrations wrestling with the sea, and recharge the brain's supply of negative ions produced by the pounding waves of the never-ending tide upon the land.

As Priest-King/God-Emperor of the Opus Estates, I consider it my job to make sure the spiritual forces that are manifesting in all these aspects of my life are working together in harmony. I use magic to help keep things running smoothly, and to deal with interruptions in the flow of processes before they can propagate across all the systems, bringing production and operations to a complete stand-still.

My first attempts at family support magic focused on Working specifically with Anael of Venus. Venus gathers together people around a common cause or idea. Family is an idea, a concept that unifies the Opus household every bit as much as the genetic ties. It's crucial that all the members of a family have a shared idea of what being a member of the family means. Everyone will have their own take and interpretation on that core idea, but they should all be harmonious.

So I started by drawing the seal of Anael on the back of a picture of our family, and performing a conjuration and consecration of the photo as a talisman to bring harmony. And it worked out really well. Ongoing conflicts and resentments were resolved, and the whole system began to run more smoothly. The family was more expressive of compassion in the form of service to one another, for love's sake. It sounds a lot cooler when I write it out like that. No one seemed to be conscious of the effects, not even me for a while. The kids quit the constant bickering, my wife and I got along better, and everyone helped each other out more with a lot less complaining. I realized one day that things had gotten better, and I was happy with the results.

But then over time, I realized that it's not just our family that affects us. Outside forces have a lot of influence. Social groups, school politics, the global economy, traffic patterns, and communications issues impacted us all the time. We dealt with it better than some people, more harmoniously as a group, but we still had to deal with external disruptions to our plans and processes.

So I expanded the talisman. The issues that come up in everyone's life run the spectrum of planetary forces. Every sphere on the Chain of Manifestation, from Saturn to the elemental kingdoms has a role in all the processes of our daily lives.

To get all these forces harmonized, I drew an image based on my altar glyph on the back of a family photo, and took the time to consecrate it in each sphere, the same way I performed the Gates Rites in each sphere to aid in Kingdom Management. I wish I could say that we've never had any problems again, but that's just not how life works. It doesn't make everything perfect all the time, but it does make it a lot easier to get the spirits working together and in harmony to resolve the issues when they arise. I go to the framed photo with the seals on the back and burn the appropriate incense, light a consecrated candle, and ask the appropriate spirits to aid in the resolution of whatever situation has come up.

I added the names and seals of the planetary archangels to the outer sphere, didn't mention the elements, and eliminated the names of the demonic kings offensive in the elements in the center circle when I sketched it out on the back of the photo, but here's the basic layout of the Altar Glyph:

I started putting seals of the archangels on the backs of photos of people to help my sister in law deal with a nephesh she had acquired. It worked so well I used it on a client's family in dealing with some spirits that were plaguing their children. The key is not the seal drawn on the back of the photo as much as it is the consecration rite that draws the forces of the planets down into the sphere of the people pictured. The seal helps a great deal in creating the physical link between the spirit and the subject of the rite, but the seal alone won't do much.

Below is an image of the names of the spirits and their seals:

The Scary Dangers of Magic

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:04:12 PST

Over on the Spiritus Mundi yahoo group, the topic of the dangers of magic has reared its fearsome head. It started with an Algol talisman, which Chris Warnock discusses in this post. To summarize, someone used a rootworker's technique with a traditional astrological talisman, and it backfired. They made an Algol talisman to ward off any magic worked against them, and then buried it where they ran into their main enemy the most. After this, they experienced a run of bad luck, and it was determined that the spirit of the talisman was upset because the magician had used the talisman wrong. (You're supposed to wear the talisman, not bury it.)

The analysis of the problem seems legit to me. It passes the book-check (sources support that the use was altered) and it passes the common sense check. (Medusa can be a touchy spirit to work with. She's got snakes for hair, you know.) And screwing around mixing up traditions and approaches can be dangerous. You get unwanted effects. You suffer maladies. You get ill, you lose your job, your relationship hits the rocks, your car breaks down, and your kids talk back, with intent.

This experience prompted a Palero on the list to point out that MAGIC IS NO JOKE! and that is why you follow the instructions. Magic is real. It does stuff. It's not all pretend make believe that doesn't really change anything but your feel-feels. Magic works. That's important to remember.

John Michael Greer then wrote a post full of wisdom and common sense, exhorting people to follow the instructions we are given in traditional resources. He made an analogy between electronics and magic. You would follow the warnings and recommended techniques of an electrician when wiring a circuit, wouldn't you? It's your best bet to avoid electrocuting yourself or burning your house down. (I'm paraphrasing, except that last bit, that's a direct quote.)

I agree with him. Speaking as someone who burned their house down using demon magic that went wrong, I have an informed opinion on this subject. You really can burn your house down using magic. My house fire was the result of a really poorly phrased statement of intent, though, not a poor technique. The technique worked great, honestly.

The statement was fucked. "Get me the money by any means necessary, just as long as no one in my family gets hurt." That's a TERRIBLE way to do magic. It (probably) wouldn't matter if I'd said that to demons or angels, but the fact that the spirit I was Working with at the time happened to be from the lower spheres certainly didn't help. Angels seem to have a higher perspective based on living at a bit more distance from the hands-on material world than Bune does, but that doesn't mean they won't burn your house down to get you an insurance check, and prove a particular point about your use of magic at the same time.

But whenever people start talking about how dangerous magic is, I feel compelled to say, yeah, it's dangerous... but do it anyway! Burnt fingers are our primary teachers as we explore the books and figure out how it all works. There is no real life Hogwartz to attend. Some lodges may offer a curriculum that trains you in magical practice, but most are based on post-1899 magical theory. The only Order I know of that taught medieval alchemy and traditional Hermetics is pretty much defunct, and even they were open and honest about how they were experimenting and figuring out what the grimoires were all about on their own. They passed on the information that worked, and warnings about mistakes they made, but they were still front-line soldiers, pioneers exploring the wilderness with faulty maps and compasses that didn't always point North.

Modern magicians interested in learning how to do the magic recorded in the Picatrix and Agrippa's Three Books are going to, by necessity, have to explore and cover ground that hasn't been covered in recent history. Even the most comprehensive and detailed grimoires have gaps. The context of some of the manuscripts we've received is lost to history, and we're left to argue over whether all the spirits of a manuscript are called into Triangles of Art, or only the ones that specifically mention the Triangle.

Personally, I've never done anything with magic that messed up my life so badly that it couldn't be fixed with magic. It's dangerous, yes, but that's what makes it an adventure. Have courage, be bold!

Just be rational about it. Heed the warnings of those who have been there and done that, follow the instructions.

But don't be afraid to have fun.

More on Ian's "Court of Brigid" Project

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:27:31 PST

The point of my previous post was not to criticize Ian's project. It was meant to be more of a critique of my own hypocrisy when it comes to neopagans doing the same kinds of things I do, and the kinds of things I plan to do in the next year or so.

The comments I've seen so far indicate it's not coming across that way to some folks, so I thought I'd make it as clear as possible outside the comments.

Intellectual and Personal Responses to the "Court of Brigid"

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:26:16 PST

[Edit: After seeing a couple of the comments so far, I want to make it clear up front in this post that I'm not intending this post as a criticism of Ian's project, it's an observation of my own hypocrisy.]

I've been following Ian Corrigan's development of his "Court of Brigid" rites with a great deal of interest. He describes it as an "effort to develop a ritual spirit arte that applies the general principles of Euro-Grimoiric methods using the Druidic Order of Ritual and inside a pre-Neoplatonic, Indo-European mythic cosmos."

I've got conflicting perspectives on the whole thing. Intellectually, it's fascinating to see what he's doing and to read his results. I'm very interested to see what happens when he gets to the conjurations of the spirits of the "Courts" he's identified. In my opinion, the proof of his concept will be demonstrated in his results in that specific aspect of the rites.

But personally, I find the whole thing fundamentally distasteful. In the '80s and '90s, it was really popular to make up your own flavor of Wicca. Faery Wicca, Dancing with Dragons Wicca, Lord of the Rings Wicca, it didn't matter what theme you picked, you just took the basic novice-grade GD-derived rites and substituted the God-Names and Elemental Representatives with whatever you wanted. As recently as 2008, Raven Grimassi published a book on how to make up your own Wiccan tradition. It's a standard practice in Neopaganism, with roots going back to Gardner, as far as I know.

Ian's up to the same old mischief, only he's gotten rid of the GD stuff and went back further to the approaches of the grimoires. I'll admit it, I'm a bit territorial when it comes to the grimoires, and the appropriation of techniques I happen to use by others. I see in his list of published books a lot of the techniques and approaches to magic explored by Jason Miller, Jake Stratton-Kent, and Aaron Leitch. I see a neopaganized version of the kinds of things I've been blogging about for the last six years, and I feel a bit used, and uncompensated. (That may be code for jealous, but I'm not entirely sure.)

I don't know if my issues with the approach are based on anything valid or not though. We all adapt stuff to suit our needs and desires. I'm fascinated with Jake Stratton-Kent's efforts to revitalize the Goetic traditions of the past and turn the Magical Revival into a living tradition in our culture. I see my own work with Hermetics to be an effort in that direction, with less emphasis on the roots of Goetia, but still focused on practicing a practical living tradition that helps people today using the magical techniques that have been around for at least the last 10,000 years.

We're all creating new systems based on the old ones, to varying degrees, but never exactly as performed at any stage in history. We make adjustments, include pieces of different approaches according to our own personal intuition and input from our glorified spirit guides about what needs to go where. Frater Ashen is the most traditional magician I know and work with, and even he makes adaptations as he sees fit. His adaptations all come from traditional sources, and make sense, and look really good, but they are still adaptations.

Hell, I don't think any two magicians have ever performed the exact same rite, honestly. There's always variance.

But there's something about neopagan adaptations that rubs me the wrong way, in the same way that the worst kinds of Chaos Magic rubs me the wrong way. It just has an air of fraudulence, an aroma of flatulence. The Court of Brigid? Really? What Bardic epic points to Brigid ever having a court of spirit assistants that were ever conjured and worked with the way a grimoire magician works with the rank and file of angels and demons? Wasn't she a Warrior Queen or something? Boudica, the Celtic Warrior Princess? Trapped in a tower by an evil Fairy who used her hair for magical purposes, but it could never be cut with iron shears, and then one day she let an errant prince into her tower with her hair, and he raped her while she slept, and the twin babies were lost in a forest when the ravens ate their trail of breadcrumbs or something?

I'm not real sure what she did, but I'm pretty sure she never had a Court of Servant Spirits, or responded to any conjurations.

But at the same time, it's a logical conclusion he's made, Powerful Dead spirits who get worshiped after their death usually would, in theory, accumulate a gaggle of assistant spirits over time, as adherents and dedicants died and went on to whatever functions they might have in the afterlife. That's how several of the pantheons in ATRs came into being, if I understand the process correctly.

And as far as mixing systems in our adaptations goes, I've included Orphic Hymns to the gods of the Planets in my planetary rites with Archangels, Intelligences and Spirits. It's effective. It's powerful. It's an adaptation based on sound theory that has useful results.

So I just don't really know what to think about the whole thing he's got going on in the depths of that Mound he's always going into. If he managed a visible manifestation that changed his world entirely, and demonstrated the 16 or so sub-spirits of the system were at least as potent as the saints of the Catholic tradition in meeting the needs of the incarnate, it would go a long way towards convincing me that he's onto something real, something big, and something effective.

But ultimately, he doesn't have to prove anything to me. He has to prove its effectiveness and applicability to no one but himself. Regardless, I'm watching what happens because I want to delve into some of the stuff Jake talks about in Geosophia, and I want to do it using the Modern Angelic Grimoire techniques, talk to the Heroes and Sibyls in a Crystal like God intended.

eBook Page Fixed

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:39:08 PST

Apparently, my eBook page was acting up and the PayPal buttons weren't working. After hacking into the code, I discovered some missing form fields. No idea how that happened. They were working fine up until a month or so ago.

But it's fixed. You can now order my stuff using both PayPal and Google Checkout, whichever you prefer.

If anyone runs into any problems purchasing eBooks, Red Work Courses, or any Applied Hermetics services, please let me know.

In my Lifetime

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:18:27 PST

In my lifetime, the Moon will be colonized.

This is awesome. Ever since I was a child reading Science Fiction genre books, I've been watching the hard truths of reality overcome the aspirations of countless humans who took it for granted that some day we would be living on the Moon. I'm almost 40 now, and after the 90s and the first decade of the 21st century, I'd about given up on it. The last 20 years have seen some of the biggest boom times of our history, and even with all that money, we weren't living on the Moon.

But at last, they're starting to make the strides necessary to get us off the planet. It's important to us as a species. The planet's a temporary home, at best. And I don't mean spiritually, though that's true enough.

I don't know how far we'll get. We've got a lot of issues as a species that need to be worked out. What good is spreading the hatred and violence we lavish on one another to the stars going to do the universe at large? And who says we're even smart enough to manage it?

The path of Hermetics that I follow leads to joining in the choirs of angels that live beyond the terrestrial sphere. It's all about taking my place in the brotherhood of trans-material entities who travel freely between the planets. I focus my efforts in the spiritual realms, but I'm proud of my human brothers and sisters who are taking it to the material plane as well.

It's All One Thing that Functions as if It were Lots of Things

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:19:43 PST

Today's post is inspired by the discussions on whether or not "it" is "all in your head" and stuff. Fr. SEA, Jason Miller, Patrick Dunn, and Eion Keith Boyle have weighed in, making various points from various perspectives. My name came up in Fr. SEA's comments, so I feel obliged to throw in my two cents' worth. The title sums up my position, everything below is just commentary on it.

The way I see it, it's all One big Thing, this existence we experience, and it all comes from One Source, and it's all still connected, and it can only be truly appreciated when you look at it as a whole.

But it all manifests as if it were independent. I am of God, but not God, even though I'm an extension of God. I experience my world as if I were separate from it, an object within a field of objects that all interact and are interdependent, but still with definable borders between "me" and "not me."

The various spiritual experiences and the meanings we discern from these experiences fall somewhere on the spectrum between "It's all One Thing" and "It's all separate things." Both ends of the spectrum are true and useful for various contexts, and where you're at consciously on that spectrum depends a lot on what you're dealing with.

If I'm focusing on Ascension and Theurgy, I tend to get more solipsistic. If I'm focusing on changing my world, I tend to focus more on the individuation of the All Thing. Most of the time, I'm practical about my life, and regardless of whether it's all in some big Universal Mind or not, I have to deal with the expressions of that Mind as if they weren't all the same thing.

But when I don't have to focus on the individuations of the All Thing, I can focus on how it's just a big beautiful process, that just goes on and on in awesomeness.

Spirits are as separate from me as I am from you. They are also as connected. Compassion, my least favorite of spiritual lessons, has taught me that what I do to and for myself impacts others, and that matters in the grand scheme of things. Wisdom has taught me that at the same time, I'm not personally responsible for your decisions or circumstances. I'm obligated to help where I can, and I'm obligated to not help where I cannot.

It's a balance. You move your awareness along the spectrum to deal with the context you're addressing. I don't expect to ever be "at one with the All Thing" any more (or less) than I am now. If that were the point, I wouldn't have ever manifested separately in the first place. As far as I can tell, I get to be separate for as long as separation exists, and no one's shared the scheduled date for the return to Cosmic Singularity with me.

Most of the time, it hasn't mattered much that it's all One Thing. That "truth" just helps me keep some things in perspective, some of the time. Other times, it just gets on my nerves.

Post Title Undetermined

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:19:14 PST

I don't have any kind of formal post in mind today, but these are some random thoughts passing through my mind about Teachers in general. Approaches to teaching, phases we go through, things we think about. Moods that come and go.

They're all things I've thought or felt at various times as a teacher, some more often than others. They're also things I see in my fellow teachers of occultism, and if you're a blogger, you're included in that category in my cosmogram.

Everybody's a Fucking Idiot but me, so send Me your Money!
Oh my GOD, this is AWESOME SHIT right here, you gotta fuckin' TRY it, like NOW! Hurry, you're just wasting time!
Fuck this shit. I quit.
To date, these are the things I've learned, but there's a lot more to go. I'll put it in words that work best for me, but you'll have to figure out the meaning in your own way, or discover a meaning behind the symbols that is better suited for where you're at in your life's context.
Oh my god, no one ever listens to me! I've been saying that shit for years, for fuck's sake. Jesus, people, catch the fuck up.
FUCK! I was wrong... still no refunds.
If you had only done the research, and the practical Work related to it, you wouldn't be arguing with me. Try it some time, and then you'll see that I'm right, or you'll at least be better qualified to argue with me.
Holy shit, I'm more enlightened than YOU!? Fuck.
Some shit works, some shit doesn't. The journey's not that great, and the destination is less pleasant than anticipated. And I'm pretty sure they made it that way on purpose just to keep you moving on.
No shit, Sherlock.
Oh my god, really? Really!? I need a drink.
Hey, this is stuff that helped me achieve a measure of happiness that I am currently enjoying. Hope it works for you as well as it works for me.
You're doing it wrong.
I will RULE TEH WORLDS!!! And you can rule yours too!
You did what? And it did what? Sweet! I gotta try that some time.
You're doing it right!
Now what?
Hmmm. That's interesting. Let me think about it.
I used to be an adventurer like you.

I think that about covers the moods and approaches I've been through since starting out in this teaching gig, not necessarily in any kind of chronological order. Ego, ambition, disappointment, excitement, the thrill of the hunt.

It's interesting how many of them are more about other people than about where I'm at and where I'm going. Relationships with other people are important, apparently. And I have an inclination to think I'm right that is usually justifiable, but maybe not as accurate as I'd like to think.

And there's an irritability that drives a lot of my Work, a certain Holy Dissatisfaction that keeps me moving onward and upward. That's neat. Should have gotten its own post, probably.

I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with feeling any of these ways at different times, except that first one, and most of us get past that before we really start becoming useful teachers. I cycle through most of the rest regularly.

I don't really know why I'm posting this. Usually when I write the random-thought posts, they sit in the draft bin for years before I get around to deleting them. But I think I'm posting this so you'll think about how teachers are, how they act, and remember that they're people of varied interests and moods, just like you. Learn from people, but take what they're saying with a grain of salt. Sometimes they're brilliant, other times they're assholes, and in the end it's all beautiful.

Until you take an arrow to the knee.

NYNY: Some Enchanted Evening

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:04:50 PST

I'm behind schedule on the New Year, New You Experiment.

The RO household is packed with four birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Eve between November 21 and January 25. It's the busiest two months of my year, and it physically, mentally, and especially financially kicks my ass every year.

This year has been as busy and tiring and costly as ever, but I've made it through son's birthday, Thanksgiving, daughter's birthday, Christmas, New Year's, and now my wife's birthday. Only one daughter's birthday left to go, and that's already planned and paid for, and I don't have to do nothin' else to support that.

Halleluiah!

So, as the bandwidth becomes available, I'm allocating it to my other projects. I'm still in the Clean Up phase in some things, specifically the courses. I've got client work backed up that I have to catch up on too. My wife helped me get the time to do a lot of course writing over the Christmas vacation, and one of my students helped with editing support (thanks Alex!), but I keep thinking "there's still a lot left to do before I'm ready to start focusing on the actual radical transformation through magic."

And that's my biggest hurdle. There's always something else to do before I can get started on something else.

So I'm changing the scope of the project. My new goals for this Experiment are:

Old Business - Finish it.
New Business - Start it.

With that in mind, here's my planned Enchanted Evening:

On a Mercury Day, in a Mercury Hour (tonight around 7:30), perform the Mercury Gate rite with the following statement of intent:

Raphael, Tiriel, Taphthartharath, thou spirits of Mercury ever flowing, encapsulators of Idea into Form, aid me in the accomplishment of the tasks at hand. Empower me, inspire me, bring me the eloquence to express clearly the Mysteries I have seen. Aid me in the completion of the Red Work series of Courses, and the completion of all outstanding Old Business. Let it flow cohesively into being from the Mind of God through me into the finished work projected into the minds of those called to receive the Hermetic revelations I've been granted. Let the right word be ever present, let no writer's block stand in my way. Grant the peace of mind that comes from all things being in their place accomplishing their function, that I may focus clearly on the tasks at hand. Bring the Old Business to conclusion quickly, completely, and to the satisfaction of all who read it.

Or something like that. Definitely along those lines. I'm not going to focus on New Business until the end of the Old Business is in sight. I keep finding more and more Old Business that I never finished, and that's got to end. If this doesn't do it, I may have to resort to Saturnine and Martial forces to get the work done.

Top Traffic Source: Piracy!

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 07:06:20 PST

So, checking some blog stats, I found the number one search term that brings visitors to my site is this:

restitution ro rufus opus "restitution for piracy"

TROLOLOLOLOL!

Ok, you piratin' bitches, hope you landed here this time, so I can set you straight:

ALL CURSES ARE LIFTED.

There is no curse on anyone anywhere on the planet as a result of pirating my work, in any way, shape or form. You're forgiven.* I lifted the curse a year or more ago after adjusting my business perspective on the whole piracy thing. I still disapprove, but it generates buzz about my work, and that leads to more sales, so, whatever.

Point is, there is no curse on you if you pirated my stuff, ok? If your life sucks, it's not because you pirated my work, specifically, it's just because life sucks. So use that shit you pirated to make it a better place.

* You want to pay for your crimes? Send me an email and I'll send you a $50 invoice to absolve your conscience. Money's not required to lift the curse, but I love money, and if it makes you feel better to send me some, by all means, do so! And I'll even send you an official "No worries!" email absolving you of any subsequent pangs of guilt.

The Initiatory Work of the Traditional Grimoires

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:49:03 PST

When you go through the painstaking process of creating all the tools, talismans, implements, and Magic Circles of the traditional grimoires with the heart of the true magician, on fire and enflamed with the passion of your true Love, you go through one of the most rigorous and life changing initiations possible.

The creation of a real talisman, from raw metal to finished, engraved, consecrated talisman is a process of transformation that is Alchemical in every sense of the word. After you've made and consecrated a talisman, you've interacted with the Four Elemental Kingdoms in all three of their phases, you've spent an extended time in the presence of the spirit who works through the talisman, and that interaction as you and it worked together to create the finished thing and brought it into being in the material plane has forever changed the harmonics of your sphere. You've been tuned through the properties of spiritual resonance.

When someone like Mr. Ashen or Mr. Cecchetelli goes through the process of creating the tools for his Solomonic rites, he's going through that initiatory process of talisman creation at every stage of the preparation. His heart's aflame with the passion of his intent, and that intent blazes through the Spheres, a clarion call to the Spirits.

How many of these initiations do they go through to perform something like a conjuration from the Lemegeton's Goetia? How many times do they end up inscribing the Ten Names and Seals of the Intelligences of the Spheres? At least twice, for the lion's skin belt, and for the Magic Circle they stand within. You make a MAgic Circle full size, and it's incredible how you feel standing in the center as the paint dries. You feel the spirits aiding you as you write out their names, and if you're trying to do it without the right heart, the right attitude of reverence, they invariably smack you down and make you start again.

It's a Holy process.

A process of transformation.

If you're having a hard time seeing and hearing the spirits, take a few months and devote it to creating all the implements of the grimoire of your choice. The Almadel, the Arbatel, the Ars Paulina, the True Grimoire, the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals, Crossed Keys, the Order of the Black Powdered Octopus, The Greater Key of Solomon, Abramelin, Samekh, the exercises in Strategic Sorcery or Protection and Reversal Magic.

Do them well, do them honest, do them pure and true, or as true as you can, and it will start that process of change that leads to the visible and audible manifestation of spirits.

Unless you're spiritually blind and deaf. It's a condition that some people have, and it's nothing to be ashamed of, although it's certainly frustrating. If you've gone to all the work of putting together a straight, by-the book rite, and you've performed it at the appropriate astrological timing, and you've meant every word you've uttered, from the heart, and you're still not getting anything, and you've done it a lot more than once with zero results, don't despair. There are several grimoires that suggest working with a seer because the simple fact is this: Everyone doesn't see or hear spirits. That doesn't mean the magic doesn't work, it just means some folks are deaf and blind to the spirit world for whatever reason.

And who knows... it might be for a very good reason.

Transform this decayed form... to MUMRA! The EVER-LIVING!!!

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:21:09 PST

As I prepare for tonight's Jupiter rite (3 minutes and counting), I can't get that Mumra thing out of my head.

Without the "Evil" part, and without nearly as much maniacal laughter afterwards, that's how I feel when I conjure up my HGA before doing the rites.

NYNY: Doing Something Nice... For Myself?

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:34:38 PST

Man...

I look at the writing prompt for the New Year New You Experiment this week, and I'm all... whoa, WTF, Deb? Do something nice for ME?

I can't even think of anything that would be nice to do for myself...

[pause to go re-read Deb's Prompt]

Ok, so I went back and re-read the list of things she suggests for pampering yourself, and I think I maybe might have possibly figured out what the problem is...

I already do all that stuff, whenever I want to.

* A salted caramel hot cocoa from Starbucks at a bookstore where you look at French Vogue and pretend you're part of GossipGirl

I got a Caramel Frappuccino last time I went to Target and just sat and drank it there in the store, browsing through the blogs on my phone, enjoying that I'm awesome amongst the awesomest friends and co-Workers.

* A bottle of Prosecco, bread, fruit, cheese and dried meats and your favorite book.

Literally had a plate of jalapeno jack, peperoni, and the fancy crackers (not the Ritz, the ones in the box that only have a single row that they sell above the cheeses) just two nights ago.

* An hour playing a video game you never have time for

Bitch, please! I've always got an hour for video games! That's how I stay sane! Dead Island is my current favorite, I just can't seem to get into MW3, and Skyrim takes some commitment.

* Going to a yoga class and then feel smug about the sundae you eat afterwards.

Heh, I don't go to yoga classes, but I DID buy myself a gallon of Rocky Road last time I was at the grocery store, and actually got a couple bowls before the kids murdered it.

* Buying yourself a small luxury item just because (flowers, cashmere socks, a favorite magazine, a new lipstick).

I bought myself a Sonic Screwdriver the week before Christmas, just because sonic screwdrivers are cool.

* A car ride in the countryside with your favorite music playing

I take the back roads home on the way home from work when I want that.

* A long bath

I prefer showers, the kind where you ever so slightly make it warmer a little at a time until you're standing in almost pure hot water, right where you know if you go a little further you'll end up all Two-Face:

And I did that Monday, for like an hour.

* A massage

My wife gave me a heavenly one last week.

* A pedicure (it's good for boys too, I assure you)

For real, I gave myself one last night before reading her list of suggestions. My son had gotten my wife one of those foot-callous remover things for Christmas, and I totally used it and trimmed my nails and rubbed my feet with balm.

* A mini marathon of your favorite trashy telly show with your favorite indulgence (smoking, drinking, junk food, etc.)

Spent a while last night watching Warehouse 13, Doctor Who (the Tom Baker episodes), and Torchwood on Netflix while eating a whole tub full of reheated roast beast with mashed potatoes and gravy.

So... yeah, I don't know if this counts or not.

On Visible Conjurations

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:48:26 PST

Fraters Ashen and Cecchetelli, two magicians who I respect highly as individuals and co-Workers in the divine sense, have recently posted their views regarding the visible appearance of spirits to magicians when performing grimoire magic. I do not disagree with any of their statements or conclusions, but I do have concerns about their emphasis on the visibility of spirits and the ability to clearly hear the spirits speak.

Mr. Ashen has made it clear that he doesn't believe your average guy walking down the street, peeking in through a window during a conjuration is going to see the spirits the magician sees during the rite. I'm pretty sure Mr. Cecchetelli would also agree that the things the magician "sees" during the ritual are not necessarily going to be seen by anyone else standing in the room with him.

Mr. Ashen presents a cogent theory about why this happens. If you don't have the framework to mentally process the presence of the spirit, you don't see it. He gives the following example:

An excellent story I heard from my anthropology class was about a researcher who went to investigate the powers of a shaman somewhere in the south Asian jungles. The shaman was curing an afflicted boy who's disease was caused by a local demon the village people said. .... During the exorcism, the tribes folk all saw the demon fly out of the boy and break a limb of a tree with its body as it left. The anthropologist was present, felt strong winds arise and witnessed the breaking limb but could not see the demon.... A great case study as I recall, the researcher was amazed and quite disturbed but didn't have the "aptitude" or mental language to see the spirit directly.. In the realm of hypnosis and mental/unconscious comprehension ... You see this a lot.

And this is why I'm concerned about the emphasis: if you don't have the 'aptitude' or mental language to see the spirit directly, you will not see it.

Most people simply do not have that aptitude when they begin practicing magic. Mr. Ashen talks about how his ability to "see" and "hear" the spirits grew over time. He didn't start out seeing and hearing spirits clearly. Mr. Cecchetelli also talks about how he had been doing magic for a while before he began to see and hear the spirits. No one, not even Lisiewski believes the spirits are going to be visible to everyone during a conjuration. There's too much evidence to the contrary in the grimoires themselves, and all through the historic source material of the grimoires, and in our personal experiences with the spirits. The spirits appear only to the magician conjuring them, or their scrying assistants.

The ability to see and hear the spirits comes, in my experience, after you've started contacting the spirits. The more time you spend with them, the more you become like them. As you reclaim your divine heritage and come to terms with your role in existence, you get the senses you need to be able to interact with your spiritual co-creators in the hierarchy of spirits that manifest the World. The Great Work transforms you from a lump of mostly flesh and bone with some basic urges to survive and a curiosity about this whole "magic" business into a consciously aware Creator and Maintainer of your existence, the half-god, half-human fulcrum between the manifest and unmanifest realms who ascends to the heavens and returns in power to create their world.

It's a process. You develop the skills to see and hear the spirits over time.

And until you do, you aren't going to be able to see anything, or hear anything. That doesn't mean your results aren't real. If you set your expectations at the outset of your conjuration endeavors at visible appearance and audible voices, you're going to fail. If you reject all your experiences that aren't in line with this expectation, you'll reject everything that happens that leads to the ability to see and hear the spirits.

I've talked to people who have performed the very strict requirements of the Lemegeton's Goetia, including the making of the lion skin belt, who have had visible and audible manifestations of the spirits. I've also talked to a few people who bought the lion skin and made the belt the way the grimoire says who experienced absolutely nothing. It's not the belt that makes the magician.

I've never made or used a lion skin belt. The system I use is based on the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals. I reduced the complexity to write up the Modern Angelic Grimoire and provide new magicians with everything they need to perform effective conjurations the same day they buy the book. I did so because it's most important to me to get more people doing magic.

When I perform conjurations, I use an even more modified adaptation of the Modern Angelic Grimoire. I use a cigar box that I've got wired up to light an LED after the current passes through a metal talisman placed across two electrodes poking up through The Box. The LED lights up my crystal ball, which rests on an bezel. The crystal ball sits in the center of the Table of Practice from the Modern Angelic Grimoire.

I'm so far removed in my practice from the original Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals that I doubt whoever wrote it originally would be able to discern that I based my practice on that manuscript.

Yet I have used this method to conjure spirits across the spectrum of Hermetic spiritual hierarchies to visible and audible appearance. I have "actually witnessed the poundings on the wall, flashes of light, smells, moans, screams, voices, and visible appearance of a spirit," as Mr. Ashen puts it, even though my methodology is vastly different from his. I've felt that divine bliss Mr. Ashen attempts* to describe towards the end of his post.

But I will still tell my students that these phenomena do not matter, at least, at first. They are not required for successful magic, and poltergeist activity does not guarantee you'll get the things you're Working towards in your conjuration. What good is it to have a haunted house if you're not getting any Work done?

And I have yet to meet any magician who has experienced this stuff from the very beginning of their work, although I've met plenty of magicians who spent hundreds on lion skins and made their belts to specification who had as much to show for their efforts as someone who printed out a Table of Practice and a Lamen and used a coffee mug full of colored water to scry into.

Yet I also understand why he says, "To me, its a cop out, I smile yet feel sorry for the new magicians who settle for these words."

It does sell the whole experience short to say that this stuff "doesn't matter" at all. It is important, nothing transforms your perspective on what we're doing with magic quite like a visible and audible spirit manifesting in front of you. The idea that this stuff never happens, or should never be expected by the magician at best robs the student of the possibility of something cool, but at worst leaves them completely unprepared for when it actually happens. I personally believe that if you spend time conjuring spirits, sooner or later you will see and hear some weird shit.

And that's awesome.

If you want that kind of result, if you require that level of manifestation to overcome your doubts about the veracity of your practice, and these particular manifestations in your mind will serve to prove to your skeptical self that you really are experiencing the spirits and not just imagining things, then by all means, go for it. I would advise that you temper your expectations, and not take failure to see the visions or hear the voices right off the bat as a reason to give up. Keep at it, and sooner or later you will see enough to believe.

And frankly, the closer I've gotten to the actual instructions in the grimoires, the more manifestations I've seen. Mr. Ashen made me an ebony wand to the specifications given in the Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals, and when I use it, the air is filled with power from the moment I pick it up, and the visions of the spirits in the crystals come through with more clarity than when I do not. It's like I don't have to try as hard to see what they're trying to show me.

But to me, the proof of your magical effectiveness is not found in the visions or sounds you hear during a rite. The proof is in the transformation of your life, and the consistency of your results over time.

* I say "attempts" only because it's precisely the kind of experience that can't be described accurately; Mr. Ashen does as good of a job at describing it as is humanly possible.

Happy New Year

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 10:04:20 PST

Well, still trying to finish up my clean up stuff with the NYNY Experiment. It's New Year's Eve, and I've got about 11 hours to do about 8 hours' worth of writing and rewriting. It can be done!

But I'm taking a break now to get a Happy New Year's post up because otherwise I'll forget, and I really wanted to wish you all the VERY BEST YEAR OF YOUR LIFE.

Personally.

Cosmic Currents Flowing Toward Increase

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 12:07:37 PST

In other news, having passed the Winter Solstice, the days are getting longer. PLVS LVX, I said in the last post, More Light. That's a good thing for those of us stuck in the cold bleak wintery regions of the planet*.

Jupiter went Direct today, or it will sometime if it hasn't yet. Months of retrograde are gone, and we can again tap into the current of his blessings and expansion and have it be without detriment. This is good.

And the Moon is now Waxing. The time of the Unmanifest passing into the Manifest realms is upon us.

In the darkest hours of the coldest season, the momentum of the world shifts, and slowly begins to flow in new directions.

This Thursday, in other words, is a really good time to start doing some Jupiter Manifestation magics. Also, it's a good time to start that whole "Getting in touch with your HGA consciously" thing.

Do magic.

Create your world.

Like a boss.

* This year, not so bad. Sunny and warm right up til Christmas, the worst part was just the rain. I can handle cold rain. Global Warming: Terrible catastrophe, may bring the END OF THE WORLD, but also may bring Texas like weather to Baltimore. Gotta look on the bright side of things, yo.

Happiest of Hermetic Holidays

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 10:08:11 PST

So I had a tearful Christmas night. I was listening to Oh Holy Night on the radio on the way home from looking at The Miracle on 34th Street here in Baltimore, and I started tearing up when it got to this part:

Long lay the world in sin and error pining
til he appeared
and the soul felt its worth
a thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices
for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn
Fall on your knees
Oh Hear the Angel voices,
Oh night divine
Oh night when Christ was born.

It was the "Hear, the Angel Voices" part at first. Because you know, I Work with them. They're awesome. They celebrated the night Christ was born, the choirs of the heavens filled the sky with the music of the spheres.

But the more I thought about it, the more the song made sense to me on a deeper level. Long lay the world in sin and error pining, til he appeared, and the soul felt its worth. It's the night the Logos took flesh to come down to the material world and show mankind once and for all there is no separation between Mankind and Godkind, that we are family, all twinkling manifestations of Light in Extension, and the darkness of the world cannot ever change that, no matter what we do.

I talk a lot about how the Enneads of Plotinus showed me how the point of the Neoplatonists was to reclaim the divine race of humanity, to discover its eternal value. That's the song's central theme. And I got it, that thrill of hope, and weary with the state of things in this world, I too rejoiced. Yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

So we've made it through the darkest part of the year, and now the days will grow longer, and the Sun shall return to us again. Each day, there will be more light. PLVS LVX. More Light.

I don't know how you celebrated making it through the longest night this year. I do know a substantial number of you readers don't celebrate the birth of Christ as the most awesomest thing evar, and I understand the many reasons for that.

But however you celebrated this year, I hope it was beautiful.

Now, get ready, because here comes the Sun.

Crisis!

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:28:59 PST

Frankincense prices are going to be going up. Stock up now.

Also, if you live in areas where it will grow, consider planting some trees now. They're in danger of being lost due to over-harvesting and global climate changes, and just bad farming techniques. I don't think my area is warm enough year round to support them, but I'm going to try to raise some here. Maybe I can build them a shelter, or keep them in a greenhouse in the winter or something. Maybe global warming will change the climate enough to make it a viable crop around here, who knows.

Magic, Magic, Everywhere!

rufusopus@rufusopus.com — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 11:49:43 PST

So a friend posted something on FB about how great it is that pacifiers were invented, and I got one of those weird interests in it, and googled the history of pacifiers. I don't know why it sparked my interest, but I just sort of figured they've been around forever because most parents learn on their own in the first couple of weeks that if you put your finger in their mouths, they stop crying and fall asleep. I figured humans have been using them for 10,000 years in one form or another, and I wanted to see what a neolithic pacifier might have looked like.

It turns out the modern pacifier goes back to the 1600s, at least. And look at this:

In England in the 17th–19th centuries, a coral meant a teething toy made of coral, ivory or bone, often mounted in silver as the handle of a rattle.[1] A museum curator has suggested that these substances were used as "sympathetic magic"[2] and that the animal bone could symbolize animal strength to help the child cope with pain.
-Wikipedia

Magic. It's everywhere. Why the fuck would I give a shit about the history of the human pacifier? I dunno. Seemed interesting at the time. And I found magic in it.

This New Year, New You thing Deb's doing is important. Radical transformation of your life through applied magic. Magic's in the cracks and crevices of every aspect of existence because it's how the universe works.

And we have the privilege, the honor of being called to this, chosen to be magicians. Everyone doesn't get that calling. Everyone doesn't get shown the keys to the manifestation process of the universe. We're a specialized elect group among humanity. Shamans, priests, magicians. We stand as the fulcrum between the worlds Above and the worlds Below, we speak things into being, encapsulating the invisible inspirations and ideas into symbolic form that take on layers of existence as they come down the chain of manifestation into being.

That's my model, anyway, basically the water vapor cycle. Ascend, condense, fall, evaporate, repeat, but it's magic and not water.

Whatever model works for you, use it. Create your world.