Grieving at Unexpected Changes

Some things are harder to talk about than others. I’ve delayed this post for several days while I ponder what I want to do, if anything.

The yard where I keep my shrine here in Rochester was visited by over-zealous landscapers.

This wasn’t the idea, of course. We all agreed that it would be a fabulous thing: the landscaper would remove leaves, mow and edge the lawn, drag off the appreciable tree-fall. I asked if the service could be extended to the leaves inside the shrine.

It was, but they didn’t stop there. When I arrived back from my most recent trip, all but the three largest plants had been swept away. There were no leaves in the shrine, but also almost nothing living. Hekate’s dog bones, also gone. The statues themselves are unbroken, but the serenity that used to inhabit the place is gone.

When I discovered the state of affairs, I left immediately, with my heart in my mouth. I returned to the shrine this morning, with flowers and the intent to undo some of the damage. I cleaned the birdbath and the mirror pool on the Set-Typhon altar but couldn’t find any of the vases that used to hold the flowers or the scissors I used to cut them. I left incense after having asked the shrine deities to help me decide what to do.

The rational mind is of little help here. Clearly, we all had the best intentions, including the guys who were working for the landscapers. At the moment, I feel like this is the universe telling me to leave nothing behind when I move away from Rochester. This will happen soon, so maybe it’s time to return the shrine to its previous condition, "de-sacralizing" it? Or should I try to grow more plants? Or just wait for the tiny ivy plants to re-establish themselves?

I’m incredibly disappointed, and uncertain of how to handle the situation. So much like the rest of life, when unexpected crises happen…I'll be watching, listening and waiting for inspiration.

Blessed be thou.

Devotional Work is the Engine

This summer has seen a number of improvements to the shrine I built last spring behind the garage belonging to my friend K. I added a statue of Mary, to help deepen my relationship with her more mysterious sides, and some lovely flowering plants. I also added a concrete bird bath, which is used by the visiting humans as a scrying pool and by the birds for its intended purpose. As you know if you’ve been following along, I take flowers and incense every Sunday morning and now have added the duty of scrubbing out the birdbath.

In reflection of the tradition of physical sacrifice, I fertilize all the plants within the canopy of the shrine with blood meal.

But why is this practice important to me? The ongoing conversation of “asking” the denizens of the invisible universe for things makes me want to talk about this. Back to that in a moment.

I engage in devotional activities to beautify and enliven my world. To create a link between myself and divinity. To fill in the abyssal hole left by my previous partnership. To help make sense out of a world where I feel not just a little bit lost. There is a strong sense that this place is my cloister.

So, let me say something may upset some people. As members of a profoundly materialistic and secular culture, we may not actually know what it is to have a relationship with the divine. In particular, I have a hunch that we don’t know how to have a relationship that would be recognizable to the ancients or a writer of a grimoire. Our world is not the same, our thinking absolutely different, and our expectations unrecognizable to our magical ancestors. Our familial ones, too, of course, but that is a larger question.

Before rational thinking became the only “approved” way of interacting with the world, before the Enlightenment, before the Scientific Revolution, before WSIWYG… people were surrounded by religious activities. It wasn’t just magical practitioners and the otherwise unhinged that maintained household shrines. Instead of seeing lightning as a plasma formed by clouds at different electrical potentials, we saw forces with names. Entities we could interact with, placate, and plead to. It’s impossible for us to imagine what that was like but let me urge you briefly to try.

And then, recognize that we’ve only been trying to think like this for a couple of hundred or so years, out of all of human history. We’re globally not good at it yet. This fact can be gleaned even from a newspaper. So-called “critical thinking” is almost impossible for most people, and for those of us who do it in our day jobs, it’s largely a game. A game with a purpose, to be sure, but it’s not our native language.

And we miss the fullness of a divinely inspired world, we long for the presence of the gods, their company. We feel alone. We feel powerless. We ache. We’re left in the Matrix’s “desert of the real.”

And so, we, as confused polytheistic seekers, try to put this god-driven reality back together, except we have no pre-existing community to help us with it. Imagine having an entire culture that recognized the gods at its core (not that there aren’t issues with this, as history teaches), imagine a more completely enlivened world and realize that human beings basically evolved within this earlier paradigm. In some senses, and not exclusively, we’re programmed for this religio-magical thinking.

This gets to my thoughts about “asking” the spirits and gods for things, for comfort, for help, and the words we use to do that. The way we “ask” for things is no longer informed by an existing cultus and community, so we fall back on other paradigms: our relationship with our parents and whatever our relationship to the gods of our fathers. Or worse, it’s a kind of mechanical “push button, get banana” thinking. It’s not bad framing so much as using a secular gloss to address religious ideas. It’s trying to use material skills for a mystical purpose.

This is bound to make us look like kids at a vending machine, trying to buy a Snickers bar. We didn’t previously have to install the vending machine or maintain it. We get mad when the candy gets hung up on the way to the delivery chute and have a complete meltdown when we don’t get what we “paid” for. If we get the wrong thing? An outrage.

In some ways, this whole system is mechanically based in cause and effect. We must have the right currency to operate the machine, we must know how to ask it for the Snickers and not the Twix. We must know when it no longer contains the things we want. In short, we have to know how to “ask” the machine for the product.

Returning to the previous description of magical thinking, though, besides needing to understand how to work the vending machine, there are some metaphysical realities. We need to know it’s there. We need to recognize that someone other than us is taking care of it, refilling it, collecting the money, keeping the area around it clean and safe. The vending machine – the gods and spirits – is an environment. As religious/magical people, we need to recognize our role in making the system work.

The mechanical analogy, though, dies wheezing because the gods and spirits are not machines, they are entities. They’re not your parents either. They are only anthropomorphic because they are easier to imagine and have a relationship with that way. This winds itself back into my description of shrine work because devotional work is the establishment of that relationship. A recognition that I don’t really know who or what they are, but that I need them for my life to feel complete.

One last musing: I do ask the gods and spirits to do things for me. I can track through my journals the fact that my requests are more often granted since I started keeping the shrine. Is this transactional? I don’t think so. We can probably map this onto simple human emotion. When a person cares deeply for another person, they express their love by giving. This is what makes them a lover, not what they get in return. When we serve the gods, we hope they take care of us, but it’s the care we bring to the table that starts the engine. It’s the thing that makes the rest of our practices possible.

Blessed be thou.

Becoming Like Fire

 It’s spring in Rochester, and I’m celebrating by planning updates to the shrine. First came the cleaning of the space. The little animals that I share the shrine with were busy last week and had distributed all of the dog bones that sit on Hekate’s plinth hither and yon. I collected them all and replaced them after cleaning the top of the pillar.

I’m planning to add more pavers to the path on the way from the breach in the bushes that serves as the door to the shrine to the concrete pad. Also, I’ll clear out the brush a bit and plant some shade-friendly ground cover on the inside of the grove.

More seriously, there is a massive forsythia bush inside that is about half dead and desperately needs trimmed.

As things green up, I’m considering a birdbath away from the statues as a relief for the animals as well as a scrying surface.

A dear friend and I were talking recently about devotional work as the engine to magical work, and he gave me a tidbit from the Desert Fathers:

Abba Lot came to Abba Joseph and said: Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, meditation and contemplative silence; and, according as I am able, I strive to cleanse my heart of thoughts: now what more should I do? The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He said: Why not become fire?

In my mostly monastic existence, I find a lot of comfort in this particular quotation. My shrine work would be called by Christians “faith in action,” in that it’s something I can DO to become fire. After all, this is what we want the gods to help us do, isn’t it?

Blessed be thou.

Evolution of a God-shrine in Western NY State

 

On a windy day in May last year, I started to build an outdoor shrine to Hekate and Typhon behind the garage of the house where I was living in Rochester NY. Starting with a cracked concrete pad hidden within a patch of brambles and small trees, I cut a “room” out of the hanging branches and laid a sidewalk of leftover construction material, slate rectangles. I added a plinth in the center of the pad with a statue of Hekate on it and a stump with another slate piece on top with a statue of Set. Around the perimeter of the pad are hung candles. 

Every Sunday morning, I serve the gods flowers and prayers. Sometimes they receive incense, sometimes blood, sometimes tears. 

For an entire year, my devotional work has revolved around the maintenance and evolution of this shrine. I feel more connected to big forces than ever. It supports my magical work, the view I hold of myself and my place here on the Earth. It fills a hole that has been present for a very long time.

This spring, I will plant low-light ground cover inside the shrine and add a statue and a birdbath for scrying. Watch this space...

Blessed be Thou.

This photo was taken after Hekate was installed early last summer.

Last Sunday, the first sunny shrine day in months. Some little creature eats all the carnations that I leave, and only the carnations.

Hekate with the bones of dog hit by a car in MN. Doggo was an old lad or lady, canine teeth dull with use. He has a hero's welcome here.

Magick in Isolation, I

A friend posted on FB this morning that she’s finding the current liminal times to be supportive to her practices and hearing her talking about it has made me finally sit down to talk about something similar.

This past year has been a time of abrupt and mostly painful change: friction with dear friends, a professional lay-off and then a new job that is supposed to be half time in Rochester NY. I stepped down as Master of the local OTO body, had still more medical procedures, had to put down my cat Max (shown riding shotgun in my Mazda). I lost access to my martial arts group because of the time in NY. The net result was the near-complete loss of my personal practice.

Getting back on the pony has been hard work, but Josh and I are doing weekly conjurations, mostly Goetic ones, and I’m studying the PGM in a class from the Blackthorne School (more on that soon). I have magical partners in Rochester (complete with plans postponed), but I still haven’t recovered my asana and pranayama practices.

The very last thing I did before I confined myself was to perform an initiation at Leaping Laughter. We had fewer than ten people, we observed proper social distancing, those of us contacting the candidates wore nitrile gloves. Our post-initiation meal consisted of box lunches from Jimmy John’s. It actually was amazingly powerful, because, rather than in spite of, the times.

The reason I’m creating all this context is because since the advent of COVID and near elimination of social contact, scrying for me has been easier than ever. It’s not only physical sensations and auditory impressions. Now I have consistent visual encounters with spirits and can do deep and complicated visualizations when I want to, without a lot of preparation. The magics I’ve worked these past four weeks have been effective, powerful, proven.

And with it, my entire world has taken a turn to the more sensual. Light is brighter, the wind caresses me. I smell the damp earth from inside the house, Ripley’s fur is softer than velvet. For that matter, my velvet pants are orgiastic. On the other side, tap water smells loudly of chloramines and when people walking by smoke, I know.

There is an intensity to the….porosity….of my reality. I feel cracked open by things and people in a way that I would never have predicted. I am in a certain sense empty and unguarded. It’s powerful and delicious, and I love it.

There's so much more to report about this, but here's a beginning.

Blessed be Thou.

Extreme Listening

It's time to get back to magick. A series of life events have me re-evaluating my priorities, and I'm thankful to be back to doing some of the things that I have unfortunately been ignoring for a bit.

So, most people recognize that my partner and fiance, Rufus Opus, is very interested in the place of love in the Great Work. It's impossible to hang out with him for very long and not be pondering these questions yourself, and my recent pondering has to do with the role of listening.

It's sort of a foregone conclusion in Hermetics that our lives represent in some way the actions of the larger forces of the Universe. The simple way to talk about it, I suppose, is that we humans are a microcosm to the macrocosm of the larger world or the Invisible world, or both. This implies that our ordinary human relationships are representative of our relationship with gods and spirits and Nature and the conceptual universe. They, naturally, deserve our attention anyway, but when seen as a training ground for how we represent ourselves before the Big Things, they take on a different feel.

Aristophanes, in Plato's Symposium, states that humans were originally fashioned by the gods with 4 legs, 4 arms and a single head with two faces. These original, although to our eyes unwieldy, humans, were incredibly powerful and the gods became concerned that they would make trouble. They were, in fact, worried that the humans would conquer the gods. Initially, they considered destroying the humans with lightning, but then the tribute given by humans would be lost.

The gods, therefore, split the humans in half. Apollo sewed the up and reconstituted their bodies. Each human had only one set of personal parts and would forever long for his or her lost half. 

The tendency of humans to pair up seems to support this poetically, although there is a lot of biology involved in that bond as well.

But, keeping with the story, here we are, cut in half and the only ways to connect with the other half involve touch and speech. We pretend we can read each others' minds, but this is a dicey thing to depend upon. If we want to be effective at communicating with other people, we need to practice the arts of physical contact and verbal communication.

And in connection with the intended content of this blog, we need to train these skills to be an effective seer. If we humans are a subset of the original human format, how much more are we a subset of the Universe at large? Some of the skills required to be a good human partner are exactly the same as those required to perform successful scrying.

Listening is particularly important. One can only listen well from a position of confidence, this is clear. Knowing well your own value makes it possible to actually hear without feeling threatened. Additionally, it helps one to hear what's being said rather than waiting to speak. Controlling the conversation is the opposite of listening. It's also necessary to not predict what's about to be said; thinking you know ahead of time what is going to happen is counterproductive to communication with both humans and invisible friends.

Ask questions.

Repeat what you have heard.

Try to picture what's being felt and said.

Obviously, don't interrupt.

And remember in particular to come at this from a position of power. You are here for a reason, communicating for a reason. Recognize your own value; allow yourself to bring it all to the table in compassion and understanding.

And blessed be thou!

Devotion to Venus

In recognition of her place in our lives, and to reclaim some space for our combined practice, RO and I yesterday did a conjuration of the angel of Venus, Haniel. The intention was only devotional, we had no questions and no real purpose, other than to present offerings of incense, fire and wine.

We both bathed beforehand in a prosaic manner, no real spiritual juice to mine at least. And no salt, no mantra, no white towel on my head. We have both been ill with a stomach virus, so it was a low-key jeans and tee shirt event.

Together, we performed the Seven Spheres opening, the blessing of the fire and incense. Together we read Patrick Dunn's new translation of the Orphic Hymn to Venus.

Then we basked in the environment that we had constructed. 

As the incense burned to about the middle point, two streams of smoke began to issue from the stick. It curled thickly in the air of the living room, and began to reach out to caress our faces. It was never so thick to be obnoxious, only inviting. It seemed very dance-like and felt as though our offerings were gladly accepted.

Blessed be thou.

Brandy William's Time Machine (a book review)

Those dirty guys at Amazon won't let me post this review right now, so you'll get it here first.  :o)

I know I haven't posted for a long time.  I'll remedy that situation soon, as we are planning some interesting ritual work here at Castle ROHF soon.  Meanwhile, my review for Brandy William's book, to be released later this week:

In preparation for an interview that I recently performed for the Ordo Templi Orientis U.S. Grand Lodge podcast, “Thelema Now,” Ms. William’s publishers, Llewellyn Publications, sent me a pre-release copy of her book “For the Love of the Gods: The History and Modern Practice of Theurgy.”

I have enjoyed this book in several ways.  I expected a high level of scholarship, and was delighted at the engaging way in which stories were told relating the practices of theurgy throughout the ages.

In a history that begins in Egypt before the Common Era, and moves into our temporal backyard with Theosophists and modern occultists, we are taken into the lives of those who have studied and practiced these techniques. In the stories that compose the first portion of the book, we are projected into stories generated around historical fact that transport the reader into the lives of those who sought personal relationship with deity.  The tales illustrate the techniques of theurgy, the teaching mechanisms employed, and the relationship between the theoretical and experiential aspects of the tradition, the importance of ritual.

The final portion of the book introduces the reader to studies, practices and rituals adapted from historical sources and tailored for today’s reader. This part is the praxis to bring the theory and history uncovered beforehand to life.

In short, this book is a time machine.  In it, we receive an almost familial sense of continuity between ancient practitioners and those people who are stalking direct encounters with divinity today.  A quote from the text (p 257): “Theurgic ritual is performed today.  To a Witch, Ceremonial magician or Pagan student of history, the rituals performed by Hellenistic era magicians two thousand years ago seem very familiar.  The spells in the papyri are strikingly comprehensible.  Our world is contiguous with the world in which these rituals were created, and there is a traceable connection through the literature of Neo-Platonic philosophy, so it should not be surprising that the rituals themselves expressing this philosophy are understandable to us.”

Thanks to Brandy Williams for a readable, enjoyable and rigorous history of theurgy and its practices, and thanks also to Kat Sanborn at Llewyllen for providing me with a REAL BOOK to read, and not teasing me about my allergy to reading electronically!

Initiation by the Solar Wind

I am sorry if any of you were missing me.  I’ve been busy.  This spring we moved houses again, this time into one with our names on the mortgage.  We have had lots of guests, lots of Great Work.  I’ve also been involved in a very intimate and deep solar initiation.

You see, I was diagnosed with breast cancer in April.  First there was an irregularity on the mammogram.  After the mammogram was the biopsy, after the biopsy was the surgery, after the surgery was the radiation therapy…and I’m almost done with that.

This is not an adventure for the faint of heart under any circumstances.  It’s painful, frightening, embarrassing, fatiguing, terribly hard.  Even if I weren’t sort of spiritually inclined by nature, it would bring into sharp focus the way so many ordinary folks are wandering the world with so much hidden pain.

 

My fellow cancer-travelers are like me: we have surgery, basically, and get up to go back to work.  Some of the ladies in the waiting room worked through their chemo.  And they go to baby showers, shop for groceries and mow the lawn in their post-mastectomy gear.  Life goes on, and you’d never know about their situation by looking at them.  Their husbands come with them sometimes, and they have the fear of losing their life-partners all about them.  It’s like a cloying scent, the fear of death is always on the partners.

Never forget that the people in your life have hidden pain.  This is a lesson that brings compassion in 55 gallon drums.

I have been lucky.  The tumor was small and not very aggressive. I didn’t need classic lose-your-hair chemo.  The surgery made a mess, but most everything is still there.  Radiation is freaky and turns your skin the most amazing color of red, but that side effect is most likely temporary; in general, I’m told that I have tolerated the treatment well.

And the treatment seems to me to be the most solar of initiatory experiences…

“Radiation treatment” for cancer is exposure to x-rays.  Lots and lots of x-rays.  It’s performed in the hopes of killing the cancer cells that remained after the surgery, of course, but it doesn’t just kill cancer cells.  Normal tissue is also impacted.

 

My thoughts about my experience changed when I realized that in nature, X-rays are emitted by stars.  When the sun throws off solar material in a coronal mass ejection, x-rays are also produced.  These particles end up causing the phenomenon called the solar wind, which encounters the gases in our atmosphere to make the aurorae. 

Of course, the solar wind also removed all Mars’ atmosphere.  It’s strong stuff to the unprotected.

On a hermetic level, the experience is also solar because of the intensity and the processing of the impure things out of the system.  As Crowley states in Magick in Theory and Practice (bold font mine), “The First Matter is a man, that is to say, a perishable parasite, bred of the earth’s crust, crawling irritably upon it for a span, and at last returning to the dirt whence he sprang. The process of initiation consists in removing his impurities, and finding in his true self an immortal intelligence, to whom matter is no more than the means of manifestation. The initiate is eternally individual; he is ineffable, incorruptible, immune from everything. He possesses infinite wisdom and infinite power in himself. This equation is identical with that of a talisman. The Magician takes an idea, purifies it, intensifies it by invoking into it the inspiration of his soul. It is no longer a scrawl scratched on a sheep-skin, but a word of Truth, imperishable, mighty to prevail throughout the sphere of its purport.’

One of my impurities, it seems, was a tumor.  So, it’s gone now, dissected and photographed for posterity.  So is the innocence that is related to the visceral health that I previously enjoyed, the feeling of physical immortality.  I feel fragile now, even though I am still strong and, tumor notwithstanding, healthy.  I am not afraid to die, but very cognizant of the fact that I may well die of something related to the cancer or its brutal treatment.

The only thing to do is to treat it like a message from god.  I am being initiated intimately with the solar wind into a different person.  It is a literal shamanic death trip.  It is necessary for the shaman in training to undergo some type of serious crisis, and I guess this is mine. 

In getting ready for the radiation, the technicians put me in a CT machine to figure exactly where the tumor-bed lay in my mangled breast.  They marked me with small tattoos in a cross that lays across my breastbone so that they could use lasers to position me the same way each time on the table under the linear accelerator that makes the x-rays.  

Every morning, when I lay down to be positioned in the machine, the lasers overlap the tattoos in a three dimensional cross that bisects me in each of three dimensions.  And then the treatment starts.  The technicians leave the room, of course.  It’s lined with a foot of lead in every direction.  It is as alone as being in the Alaskan wilderness.  The buzzing that indicates that the machines is on, the smell of ozone from the x-rays ionizing the air.  That’s all there is in that room.

Every morning, I anoint and bless myself with Abramelin oil.  “Bless me, an animate creature of god…”  I lay in the machine and perform the Middle Pillar exercise.  I feel a presence at times that may be some of the first inklings of K and C.  My daily meditations have become sharp and easy, my pranayama practice the same.

 My body has been scourged with many whips, but I remain. 

I remain.

Be thou blessed.

Demands and Requests

Quiet for a long time, I know.  Practical realities have been in the way, as well as self-care and holidays.

I have not been without my seership practice, however.

Last week, RO had some work to do for a client, working with the spirit Caim.  I came home absolutely exhausted from a stressful day at work (hardware release coming, it's not ready... that kind of thing), ate dinner and declared that I would get ready for bed.  RO stated that he needed to do the work, that it wouldn't take long and that he'd join me momentarily.

I went into the bathroom and began to take my contact lenses out.  All of a sudden, my eyes began to water.  Not single tears, mind you, but like a hose.  It was like cutting onions, the worst onions in the universe.  Still dripping, I went into see what RO was doing.  He hadn't started yet.  I explained what was happening, he asked me if I'd like to participate in the working.  I was intrigued and agreed to scry for him.  Immediately, the weeping stopped.

We got into the meat of the working, and it was clear that the spirit needed a voice.  There were some complicated ideas that needed to be expressed. My presence seemed to be helpful for the expression of concerns from the spirit before he granted his agreement to help RO's client.

There's a first time for everything, and this post documents the first time I was ever invited to a rite by the spirit.

Be thou blessed.

Driving

As I threatened/promised in my last post, RO and I had more work to do.

The night before last, we switched roles. He was the scryer and I the conjurer.  We used the same modified Trithemian rite as usual, but started things off with Thelemic version of the LRP and LRH.  Once the space was made consecrated and defensible, I summoned the spirit:

"In your name and by your seal, I conjure you, Bune, Thou great and mighty Duke. Appear before us and speak clearly and truly without the least ambiguity, so that even men such as ourselves may understand. Be comely in thine appearance and equally comely in thy manner. We bring you here today to bless these spirit pots, if you find them acceptable. Also we ask for the gift of your eloquence so as to clearly and concisely speak our Wills into being."

RO felt the spirit right away, and knew him. They've worked together extensively in the past, as you know, so this makes sense. I asked the seer what the spirit looked like: RO reported that he did not have a vision of the spirit so much as sensed him. There was a heavy heat in the room as we started talking to him.

RO asked him for approval of pots, which he immediately gave. There was a field of “yum” about this that was palpable.  The spirit had a quiet, expectant energy.

I then asked him if he had anything else to communicate, and he said that making spirit pots for other people was fine, but not to sell them to anyone stupid (I almost cracked up about that).  He explained that they are connected in a way, and if we made too many of them would diminish their power, like objects in a flow causing turbulence. This would interrupt the hydrodynamic flow in the same sense as putting big rocks in a stream. The flow can be used to create power, he said, but it must be allowed to move without impediment.  Additionally, he made a wry and crabby statement about the least common denominator which I don't remember well.

I asked Bune what the spirits received from having relationships with people: he said that other spirit were like forces of nature, and therefore couldn't choose their actions. They are a cause-and-effect system, and there’s no responsiveness in them; people are different in that way, and therefore interesting to “speak with.” Additionally,  he said, that humans are almost like mirrors to him, and allow him to see himself, as well as communicate outwardly.

He spontaneously stated that he liked my vocabulary and would like to help me with my writing and marketing efforts. I thanked him and accepted that gift.

The spirit then fell silent. I dribbled the spirit pots with whiskey, and I gave leave to depart.
I said: Be thou blessed, be thou cleansed and raised. By my skills and office, I bless you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. May all impediments and obstacles standing between you and your Source be removed. (RO talks in his post a bit more about us having been ordained, so I won't go over it here.)

We then extinguished the candles and tipped over, because we'd been sitting on our heels for so long and our feet were completely asleep.

Be thou blessed.

 

In need of practice...

Last night was our first private working together in our new house. We have been here for two months, but have had visitors for most of that time; not at all conducive to the invitation of and conversation with the spirits. In between, we did a working together with two other magicians in which we conversed with Usiel and Ansoel about divorce shenanigans for a client. My first paid working. It was strange, and I’ll comment about it one day. Not now, though.

Our first private working, then, in our new space, was a spirit pot working. RO has some client work bound up in these, and lately gave a talk including a brief mention of their use at MNCON, an OTO convention held last weekend in Minneapolis at Leaping Laughter Lodge. A spirit pot, basically, is a particularly rich talisman that gives a meeting place between you and a spirit, a place from which the spirit can influence your physical reality. He’s written extensively on such things, have a look here:

http://headforred.blogspot.com/2011/07/spirit-pots.html

The actual recipe for the pots were using will be in his blog post of today (he’s sitting next to me writing it, in fact… “Babe, what’s the herb we used that smells like a dirty sock?”)

http://headforred.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-dukes-are-back-in-town.html

The target for my spirit pot was a duke, as described in the the Pseudomonarchia daemonorum:

"Vapula is a great duke and a strong, he is seene like a lion with griphens wings, he maketh a man subtill and wonderfull in handicrafts, philosophie, and in sciences conteined in bookes, and is ruler over thirtie six legions.”

Yesterday, Venus was in Leo. Additionally, of course, Friday is the day of Venus, and the Dukes are all about Venus…

My part in the working began with a ritual bath, NaCl and NaHCO3 added. I took kratom beforehand; I was interested in its effects on my scrying. Kratom is an herb local to Thailand (currently legal, but this status may soon change – keep your eye on Erowid) that is considered a mild stimulant and intoxicant. In candlelight, I sang Lutheran Te Deum, and put my head under the water and listened to the sounds of the house, the tub, my heart beating. When the water started to cool off, I got out and bound my hair in a white, new dishtowel.

RO began the Trithemian rite by calling on the Source/First Father. After that, he performed the LRP and I the LRH. After that, we returned to the script described in the latest entries. Before we donned our phlacteries, I took off the towel. RO consecrated me to the work at hand, and then he summoned Vapula.

When he entered, my head (the back particularly) became hot and slightly prickly. The crystal had in it a figure like a superposition of a hawk’s head and the skull of a big rodent. There seemed also to be a pointy tail underneath these things - a scorpion’s tail, perhaps.

Vapula made the crystal appear to be a tiny planet, complete with an atmosphere. This seemed a wonderful trick that he did just for me. Then, the atmosphere became a black aura around the crystal that throbbed.

When RO asked him if he had anything to tell us, he said, breathily, “Who are you?” Then he told RO to speak to him more. RO reminded him of other workings they had done together.

When prompted, he agreed to work with me on deepening both my learning of physical sciences and occult history and philosophy. He agreed to come when I call on him. He liked the spirit pot, and wants menstrual blood to be applied to his seal.

[I’ll have to consider that request…]

At this point, he showed me several different phases and forms of iron, including blood, before we wrapped up.

When releasing Vapula, RO blessed him and said, amongst other things, that we hoped any obstacles between V. and his Source would be removed. V seemed to like that very much.

A couple of comments on the rite: I’m out of practice and I could tell. I guess it’s like playing a musical instrument. If you play guitar and you lose your callouses, it’s hard to dive in. Perhaps worse if you play a woodwind or brass instrument and need an embouchure.

I’m also not drinking alcohol at the moment, and am as a result more sensitive about all sorts of things. The kratom gave me a terrific headache later, so use with caution. I am not going to use it again.

Tonight…more spirit pots. For those of you interested in the male-female/conjurer-seer stuff, you should know that I’ll be driving this time. I’ll report back.



Blessed be thou.

Yin and Yang of Ritual Work

The role of women as magicians is a topic that rolls around the internet periodically. It seems to be back in sight at the moment, and I wanted to say a thing about it. Most of what has surfaced is the usual. Lots of it is advice driven: Don’t hang out with people who want you to do things that seem inappropriate to you (no sex for initiations, don’t pay the guru too much, etc). Find something that resonates with your interests, and don’t be intimidated into doing things. There’s nothing earth-shattering here. People should do what feels right to them, and avoid doing anything that feels wrong.

Another topic that has surfaced (again and again) is whether certain magickal organizations are inherently sexist. Under particular scrutiny at the moment are the societies that were developed in late Victorian times with a masonic structure. Certainly, when looked at with modern eyes, the people who developed these societies look fairly sexist. For their times, however, they were for the most part quite progressive. The organizations founded around the turn of the 20th Century that are still in existence also find themselves on the edge of social progress. Since they promote the double-edged sword of personal freedom and responsibility for one’s actions, these occultists are typically supportive of LBGT rights and of any sort of consensual relationship. Many are champions of civil rights of all kinds.

The “sexist” label comes into play, at least in the OTO, because of the lack of outwardly recognized female saints and the very rigorously defined roles of priestess and priest in the Gnostic Mass. Since this is the only OTO ritual that most people know anything about, this evidence can appear somewhat damning. However, there are reasons for the sexual polarity invoked in the Mass, having to do with the energy of procreation.

Descriptions of the reasons for the public silence involved in female saints and this sexual polarity of the Mass are numerous, and truly scholarly work exists to explain how this is in no way represents a sexist situation. I’m not going to go into those things, because others have done a beautiful job of it already, and if you’re going to allow yourself to have a knee-jerk reaction about the facts in the paragraph above, adding my voice to those will not change your mind. The reason I brought this up is that I wanted to address some polarities in ceremonial ritual work that have been under discussion lately.

I want to talk about the polarity that exists in the working pair of the magician and the seer. In this operative pair, the magician is the projective element, and the seer the receptive element. This is not the same as doing dishes as compared to changing the oil in the car. The latter pair of activities do not have an inherent polarity, they just both need doing. The only thing that is similar about the two pairs of activities is that there are not inherent gender assignments for either one. The relationship of the magician and the seer in conjuration is the same as an outgoing email is to the electronic answer. They form a necessary couplet, which is a communication. It is also as gender specific as this example, which is to say, not at all. It's not even a different function, it's more like a frequency shift, as in the gif of the sine waves.

To more thoroughly beat this dead horse, then, men are not inherently the projective part of the pair. Women are not naturally more sensitive, and therefore the seer. I would venture that you can’t do either at will, you need to do some homework. Some people have brought forward that I’m the seer end of the R.O. – H.F. dyad because I’m female. Folks, it’s just not that simple. My professional life is thoroughly masculine. I’m normally the only woman in the room at any meeting. About my role in magickal operations, I have been the projective part of our magickal couple many times, but prefer the receptive part because I need the practice. My “mundane” life doesn't give me that opportunity; I’m lucky to have it in my spiritual work.

In closing, I’d like to say something indirectly related. It’s been forever since I’ve written a post. I’ve been finding a new job, finding a new home in a city 1300 miles away from where I am now. And now I’m packing. Prior to that, the room that served as our temple developed a leak in the window that the landlord wouldn’t repair, making it impossible for us to use that room the way we were beforehand. I am hoping my focus returns to ritual work shortly; life isn’t the same without feeling the invisible friends at your side. Is it?

Blessed be thou.

Shabbatai!

RO and I performed a conjuration of Tzaphkiel, spirit of Saturn, last night.  It was the first planetary working for some time, since we’ve been busy with Thelemic things (including an invocation of Baphomet that I may describe at a later point).  Tzaphkiel is held to be the angel of YHVH Elohim, and is connected with the sephira of Binah.  The link between “understanding” as the characteristic of Binah and patience and hidden things (a few of Saturn’s attributes) is chiefly made through the application of silence and observation, which will explain some of what we experienced.

I started with a purification bath, with sea salt, magnesium sulfate and sodium bicarbonate.  I made it as hot as I could bear, as I have reported previously, and sat singing bits of Lutheran liturgy until the water was cold, then dressed in a black robe with my phylactery and a black filmy veil.  I was absolutely empty at this point.  I went into the temple room, where RO was finalizing the preparations of the altar and the space, and sat down.  Then we began.

We purified one another with hyssop and consecrated with Abramelin oil.  We then together said the phrase from the Stele of Jeu (ΑΟΘ ΑΒΡΑΟΘ ΒΑΣΙΜ ΙΣΑΚ ΣΑΒΑΟΘ ΙΑΟ).  After that we called universal forces with the First Father prayer, and consecrated the crystal and the incense. RO then summoned Tzaphkiel.  I then read Fr. Achad’s Conjuration of Kronos (http://hermetic.com/achad/misc/conjuration-of-kronos.htm ).  The room began to thicken, and I put down the veil.  It made the candlelight dance in an interesting and confusing way (meaning it was perfect).

RO then read the Orphic hymn to Saturn.  The room was electric, and I peered into the crystal.  I saw first a mouth with a thousand very slender and pointed teeth, and it then resolved itself into any eye.  The overall sense was a quiet expectant waiting.  RO saw an old man in the crystal, but I will leave his impressions for his blog post on the subject. 

RO then stated our requests, for Tzaphkiel to open us to the wisdom of his sphere, to help us on the path to occult wisdom and understanding.

Everything felt of quiet and patient waiting (although I confess to being concerned about the flammability of the veil and the lack of a strong impression) when I heard the voice:

“You can take off the veil any time you want.”

Of course, there was a mild joke in it about my headdress, but it was also directly addressing our request.  Apparently, it really is up to us.

Blessed be thou.

Photo credit: http://www..aworldofmyths.com%2FGreek_Gods%2FCronus.html

"Reality" and the Observation of Unseen Things

RO and I have been talking about people and their experience of the realm invisible.  He was explaining that one of the most common questions that he is asked is "how can I see spirits?"

Well, I think I'll start answering this question.  In the last couple of posts, I have stated that it is not a unique ability.  In fact, it's a practice, not an inherent skill.

So, first.

Why don't you ask yourself if you think you know what reality is.  I'm referring to something basic, something that we can all agree with.  Is there such a thing?

Lost because it wouldn't fit through the door of my new apartment was the Couch.  I was sad when the movers had to donate it to a good home, because that sofa had taught me something truly useful.  It was a giant brown couch.  Or a giant purple couch.  It's color actually depended upon the observer.  My son and many of his friends would swear on a stack of bibles (or at least their current favorite DM manual) that the sofa was purple.  To me, it was brown, brown like dark chocolate.

What color was it "really"?  It should come as no surprise that different people have different experiences of the external world, but I was certainly surprised that this effect extended to basic visual characteristics of things.  The discussion of whether this is a sensor problem or a processor problem is left to a future post.  The take-home lesson is that your world and my world are not the same.

This effect was initially tested by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris at the University of Illinois  with a movie that is a classic test of selective attention.  It proves that if you're focused upon one characteristic of a scene, you might (many people do) fail to see strange and amazing things in the scene that you HAVEN'T been told told to monitor.  The youtube link above contains this video clip.

So, I think that we can agree that we are unable to gather and process all the data presented to us, at least in part because of our focus.  We focus on our jobs, spouses, children, pets, hobbies.  This to us is "reality."  In order to experience the rest of the data that we collect, but are not aware of, we must change of focus.  This is not rocket science.  Depending upon how deeply we are engaged with what we consider to be physical reality, it may not be easy to change your focus, but it is SIMPLE.

I propose to start discussing the development of the ability to sense the invisible with a simple exercise.  

For an entire day, decide to experience every sound without a clear origin as being a message from a disincarnate entity.  Your rational mind will hate this, most likely, so be intentional about the way to talk about it to yourself.  "What if that sound means a spirit is trying to send me a message."  "That faint buzzing sound might be an angel appreciating these flowers in my temple."  Don't spend any time trying to convince yourself, just entertain the possibility.  Lightly, if possible.  Treat it as an experiment.

Like I was saying in a previous post, there's a huge spectrum of information that we're exposed to every day, some of which we can't sense (parts of the EM spectrum, for example) and some parts that we can process (only a small part of our experience is used to derive our notions of "reality").  This little experiment may help to un-glue you from whatever you're used to paying attention to, and open your senses to something a little different.  Some of you are doing this all the time, for others it could be the first step into a slightly enlarged world.

Blessed be thou.

Data comparison, occultist style

Last week, fellow occultist Brother MS honored me with a request to take part in a double blind experiment, the conjuration of a spirit he had recently encountered.  He sent me the sigil (below) and a brief description, and asked that I report back on my findings.

Daisos' sigil

The spirit was initially encountered during some Jupiter work during which Fr. MS asked Jove to send him a spirit to help him with his concerns, particularly in regards to managing finances and obtaining wealth. MS provided the following description of his experience: “As soon as he had asked, he sat up straight as though in trance and had a vision of the sigil and following it, a small putto appeared wearing a dalmatic and stole, carrying a spade and sliver of a lightning bolt. Around him, in Greek letters, appeared his name: Daisos (Δαισος).”  A short conversation ensued between MS and Daisos, and the day after, MS received a small loan and then later, came into a larger sum of money that enabled him to pay off some debts.  Daisos seemed to him like a good character to know, and few days later, RO and I got to work, amusingly enough, without firstly looking up the definition for the word “putto”.

Daisos was conjured using a modified Trithemian rite and Tzadqiel as an intermediary, in honor of the Jupiterian nature of his initial arrival.  I felt him first of all as a burst of heat.  We asked after his nature, and he was a little confused.  He settled on something like "catalysis that brings expansion" and "quickening," such as when a plant germinates.  As to appearance, he "rode" me more than I saw him, but both RO and I saw a triangular image in the crystal, a little foxy.  RO had the initial impression that Daisos was a terrestrial spirit of air.  The spirit said that he was more comfortable with plants than people or animals. Our experience was that of an agricultural/botanical spirit.  The spirit even made reference to the three blue-purple morning glories that were on the altar in honor of Jupiter.

Further, he didn’t seem explicitly masculine, although he did have an expansive feel about him.  Indeed, he had a strong childlike quality about him: RO asked him what his favorite flavor was.

He didn't understand this question at all, and began (as a way to sideline the question almost) talking about how things smell.  I interpreted it as a Shinto nature spirit type of entity.

Daisos had words explicitly directed to MS: "needs to have heat to bring wealth, the heat that quickens" and he showed me a seed.

MS's drawing of Daisos

Following the conjuration, we spoke with MS.  The amount of agreement between our experiences was quite remarkable.  He agreed that Daisos was very ruddy - that was his first impression.  MS stated with respect to the first contact  “it wasn't so much seeing but there was a heat and then a more concrete image of the putto.”  MS showed us an image of Daisos that he had drawn, below, in which the spirit is similar to a winged cherub.  When the three of us were talking about the experience, I had to confess that I hadn’t known ahead of time what a putto was.  MS described a putto: “They're nature spirits. Usually called 'cherubs' but that's another thing. They are basically classic, Romano-Hellenic angels.”

MS felt as though we had achieved a very good confirmation of the basic nature of Daisos.  We both felt the heat, the agricultural/botanic nature of the spirit, as witnessed first by the little shovel.  The mention of the seed appealed very much to MS, as he often works with plant spirits.  The image of the seed had been appearing recently in dreams, additionally.  He confirmed the innocent of the spirit, “He's very childlike in my interactions.”

It was an amazing experience, and has built a little confidence into my practice.  I’ll be looking for further comparison work like this.  Thanks to Brother MS, to RO and, naturally, to Daisos!

MS may well tell this story from his side in his blog, The Digital Enchiridion: http://michaelseblux.wordpress.com/