Getting Added to my Blogroll and RSS Feed News

No magick here, just blog news.

First off, I just found out what a feed was and how to use it. I’m now using a blog reader and this will hopefully help me keep up with my blogs better. I’ve also added the feed link in my sidebar, but firefox also has it in the bar too, so I don’t know if that will help anyone.

Secondly I’d like to talk about my blogroll and the blogs I read. If anyone has a blog they think should be listed there, send me a link. In fact, this post would be a good place to leave a comment about your blog. Especially give me a shout out if you’re linking to me, I usually like to return links.

I do have a few rules though surrounding the blogs I’ll link to. Pretty much I’m looking for blogs that are related to metaphysics, magick, and spirituality in anyway (regardless of specific belief systems or the exact focus of the blog). Blogs that at least sometimes have actual techniques, exercises, and rituals posted are of especial interest to me.

However from now on I am no longer linking to blogs which don’t have  a blogroll of their own (I don’t have to be on the blogroll, I just have to see it exists), and I urge other bloggers to do the same. I keep a blogroll as a service to my readers to inform them of sites I find interesting, and also to help promote those sites which I find interesting and think should have more readers. If a blog author doesn’t want to link to other blogs and support the spiritual/magical blogging community, that’s fine, but I don’t think they should be reaping the benefits of being part of the community.

Beyond that I won’t link to sites that are hateful towards any particular religion or race, to sites that only or usually post non-original material (be it other bloggers’ posts or public domain works), and to sites where the general tone is typically negative, angst-ridden, immature, or filled with self-pity.

I’m not too keen on Pagan or Magick news sites, although I do make exceptions (The Wild Hunt seems like an interesting site, and Augoeides is not only a good news site, but offers much more), mainly because I really don’t care about what’s going on. And I’m staying completely away from political sites. I’m not much into politics, and my political views lean quite a bit to the right in most cases, in stark contrast to the majority of the metaphysical community. Personal diaries of practitioners which are bereft any magical value really don’t interest me either.

Finally I definitely will not link to sites which are anti-magick, anti-spiritual, or anti-metaphysical. This includes Atheist sites, and a lot of the sites that deal with parapsychology, demonology, and ghost hunting. I will not link to commercial blogs that are designed only to sell a product (even if you pay me). If you are a sufficient dumb-ass, I also won’t link to you. Usually this is fine, but there’s a point where your dumb-assery will have a negative effect on me through association.

One other thing to note, I don’t add blogs when they are very new with only a few posts. From my experiences more often than not the blog ends up just being abandoned within a week or two of me adding it.

The Core of Magick – How to be a Successful Magician (as inspired by recent blogosphere drama).

Frater Barrabas recently said that at the core of his magical discipline was assuming the godhead, and he said this in response to Jason Miller’s claim that to him the most important aspect of magick was meditation. Somehow that led to a fight. I believe the two eventually kissed and made up. Apparently the real issue was that Miller was resentful because Barrabas never molested him and took that as a sign that Barrabas didn’t think he was attractive enough or loved him or something, and Barrabas meanwhile didn’t molest Miller because he believes molestation is wrong. Or maybe that was an episode of South Park. I honestly wasn’t really paying attention to the drama and I was watching South Park at the time.

The whole thing got me thinking about what is at the core of magick. I have to say that I don’t agree with either of them. I would agree with Barrabas that a divine connection of any kind is one of the most significant and important aspects of the spiritual path of anyone that has achieved it. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say it should be the core of ones spirituality or is the most important part of magick. It really comes down to the fact that I don’t like the idea of my existence or my spirituality being defined by my divine connection. I like to think that there’s something more than just that. I like things like the idea of achieving divinity, superseding divinity, or even the idea of just wandering the universe to better oneself. In my eyes the gods are there to guide me and help me get where I’m going, to aid and protect, to befriend, I’m even okay if they supposedly have some adversarial role. But I’m not going to elevate them to being the most important aspect of ones spiritual work. To me saying that is like answering the question, “Where are you going on vacation this year?” with “I’m driving to the airport and getting on a plane.” And the whole idea of connecting back into the spark of creation being the height of spiritual evolution seems too much like crawling back into the womb for me.

I disagree with Mr Miller too. Although meditation is an important tool, I don’t think it’s as important as he makes it out to be, and I also think he has a very limited definition of the term meditation and what it can be used for. So the question remains, what is at the core of magical ability?

At first I came up with a short list of essential skills, things that to me, when taken as a group, are both essential to and strengthen almost every other magical ability or skill. What I came up with was meditation, trance, energy manipulation, channeling, and astral projection. But I’d probably also be wrong. After all, both Mr Miller and Frater B. both seem to be competent magicians and both have quite a few years on me (and I say quite because I’ve not yet come to terms with the I am growing older and may soon be old myself), and they came up with completely different answers. Answers which I find very wrong. And you might find these things I listed as being wrong or unnecessary. There’s a good chance you might be right. I guess we could say that it’s different for everybody, but that’s a cop-out that you come up with when you’re not smart enough to figure out the answer.

In truth, I’ve found one core thing that is essential to being successful with your spirituality. I’ve looked at hundreds of practitioners, from New Agers to Neopagans to Ceremonial Magicians to Satanists to Chaos Magicians to Discordians. It doesn’t matter what religion or spiritual beliefs you follow, or exactly what methods you use, it’s always the same thing. It’s present in every magician I’ve seen and its been absent in every person I’ve known that’s never been able to get magick to work. With magicians who are successful early on and then stagnate in their later years, it’s there when they’re young and it goes away when they get older. It’s been absent in every fake, phony, idiot, and mean person I’ve met since I first stepped into the magical community. It’s the thing that has taken me as far as I’ve gotten, is responsible for all of my magical success so far, and will probably end up taking me much further. If you were to research Mr Miller and Frater B. (italicized because it should be the name of a TV show) you’d probably find they have it too.

And it’s not something you’re born with. A lot of people say you need to be born with some innate ability, that you need to be special and elite. They’re liars. If your magick isn’t successful its only because you haven’t quite figured it out yet. I can do magick just fine and I’m a complete fuck up. I’ve regressed past lives thousands of years back, and in every single one I’m also a complete fuck up. And the people who go on about being born with innate magical power and being elite are usually far more fucked up than me. Remember that in every field and in everything else very successful people always have a ‘you can do it too attitude.’ People that tell you that you can’t do something because you’re not good enough or skilled enough or born right are almost always trying to mask their own inferiority.

All you need to be spiritually successful, to be able to perform magick, to astrally project, to connect with the gods, to become a god, to do whatever the hell else it is you want to do is have the proper attitude. That’s all it is. It isn’t just one thing though. It’s a group of different thoughts and beliefs and actions that all come back to proper attitude. So what are some of the things that encompass this proper attitude?

1. Never stop learning, growing, evolving spiritually

Spirituality is all about growing and evolving as a person. It’s not about becoming a master, or an adept, or achieving tenth degree. Titles and degrees are meaningless by themselves, and they’re even more meaningless if you cheated to get them. The important part isn’t being tenth degree, it’s all the crap you had to go through to get to tenth degree. And once you get there you better have new crap to go through or you’re not meeting your full potential.

Some people come into their spiritual path not wanting to grow or learn. It seems crazy, but I’ve seen it happen. You’re supposed to be walking down a spiritual path.  But some people choose a spiritual path because they want to have wisdom and magical power, not because they want to cultivate wisdom and magical power within themselves, and that makes a very big difference in terms of what they get out of their spirituality.

A lot of people start out just perfect though. They’re growing and learning and open minded and everything about magick fills them with a sense of wonder and awe. But then they get to a point where they have some success, they get some degrees, and then they stop. They start to consider themselves a master, and other people in the community start to consider them a master too, and so they don’t see a need to push themselves to reach that next level. At the same time it can be very hard for them to start from the very beginning and learn something new. It can be very hard for them to accept anything beyond what they already believe is true, especially that which is contradictory to what they believe is true. It’s very hard for them to listen to someone they believe is their inferior.

For instance, can you see yourself spending twenty years in a system, achieving the highest degree, leading your own group for a long time, and then going to a Wiccan high priestess over ten years your junior who has been involved with the craft all but a year and a day and asking to be initiated in at the first degree? A lot of magicians would believe that due to their power and years of practice and experience they deserve to start out at a higher degree and should have a good deal of respect within the group and a good deal of control over group policy, despite the fact that they haven’t spent one day working with or doing anything for the coven. Some might even feel that they, not the high priestess who founded the group and has been building it and who the members have gathered to learn from, should be running it. And yet if you’ve never studied Wicca, if you’ve never opened a book on it, if you’ve never been a part of a coven, you need to be initiated at the first degree and start from the beginning if you want to get anywhere with it. It’s hard for someone who has worked all these years to attain a position of respect and power to go back to the beginning and start again even once, let alone doing it continuously through out their lives.

And it’s hard for people to remain open minded to things through out their entire life, especially once some of what they believe in has been verified through proof. For example many, many ceremonial magicians believe the power of positive thought is complete bullshit, despite the fact that it is based on the same core theories which hermetics and likewise modern ceremonial magick is based on, and that the suggested application of the theories in practical use are sound. Instead you get, “It’s absurd and pure fantasy to believe that you can make money appear just by wishing for it. How stupid do you have to be to think that will work. What you need to do is banish the evil spirits in the room, draw a magic circle on the ground, wave around your sword and wand, evoke several gods into yourself, summon forth a demon, have anal sex with another man for purely spiritual and not homosexual reasons, and then once again banish any evil spirits that appear. Any intelligent person will tell you that method makes much more sense.”

I have a friend, and he’s far from perfect, he has his faults, but there is one thing that I really do respect about him. He was initiated at three years old, yet through out his entire life he has gone through this same cycle. He gets involved with a system. He starts at the very bottom. He works his way up through the system, and ideally he makes it to the highest possible degree, sometimes group issues prevent him from doing this though. He’s very talented though and he can move through a system fairly quickly. Then he leaves the system, finds a new system, and starts over again. So far he’s mastered Traditional Witchcraft, several forms of Wicca, Catholocism, Luciferianism, Ceremonial Magic, and Louisiana Voodoo among many others I’m sure I don’t even know about. He’s also been involved in several failed systems that didn’t really work, and many different movements. A few years back he was getting involved in Spirtualism and now he wants to study Buhddism.

Despite being a master many times over he still starts at the beginning again and again. He’s also usually open to trying out new rituals and methods, experimenting magically, and listening to the advice of others. He’s constantly adding new things to his ritual and expanding his practical work. This is the way we all should try to be.

And the thing is, master is a relative term. You never actually get to be a true master. From now until forever you will always be going down your spiritual path, you will never be a master of it. You also always want to be pushing yourself to that next level, seeing what will happen if you become even more powerful than what you are today. And there’s always going to be something there for you to learn. If you aren’t becomming stronger, if you aren’t advancing, and if you aren’t learning something new right now, you need to fix that. If you can’t find anything else, join a group or religion you’ve never been a part of until you figure something out.

2. Be fearless in your practice

I’ve brought this up before. Seeing it again and again it’s become one of my pet peeves. If you want to be able to do magick, you have to be willing to do magick. A lot of people who call  themselves magicians are not very keen on taking risks, yet that’s the very thing they need to do in order to be a magician.

Don’t just look at spirituality, but look at any field. Making completely calculated and entirely safe decisions, only ever betting on the sure thing, and not taking any action without being confident and secure in the outcome are not qualities we generally associate with successful people. In fact they’re qualities we associate with mediocrity. Why should spirituality be any different, and why should these same behaviors when taken in the context of spirituality make one a part of the so-called elite?

Experience is the key to spiritual evolution and growth. It’s the key to gaining more power. And we learn quickest through trial an error. And we also learn from our failures. I’m not saying things won’t sometimes get really bad. When you screw around with magick things can get really messy. You may die or go insane and lots of other bad things can happen too. But if you want to be a magician you need to be okay with that, you need to come to terms with it, and you need to be okay with the bad things that happen and the bad things that might happen.

If you don’t have this attitude of being unafraid and taking huge risks for huge rewards, you won’t get anywhere with magic. You’ll prepare yourself over and over, and you won’t really get any stronger or safer because you don’t have the experience and practice that you need to become stronger. Eventually you’ll get discouraged and shy away from doing anything too scary or dangerous. If you should happen upon something bad, it will probably just send you into an even deeper spiral, maybe even make you a born again Christian. In any case you’ll probably end up telling people they shouldn’t go messing around with magick at all because it’s just too dangerous. Meanwhile if you would’ve spent just a few months completely unafraid you probably would have gained so much power that the stuff that scares you now would be completely insignificant and meaningless compared to you. And if it took you ten years to get to this point, and you could’ve been that much stronger after only a few months, how strong would you have been after ten years?

Honestly this is a path I’ve seen taken again, and again, and again. And the people on it generally regard themselves as wise and experienced even though they don’t have a bit of practical knowledge. These same people will go around shouting about how experienced magicians are being irresponsible and needlessly endangering themselves, and even more deluded ones will say they’re possibly going to destroy the world or a continent or something. This is so super common we even have a term for these people, armchair magician.

3. Be Curious

In the past I’ve described myself as having a Pandora complex. If I don’t know what’s in the box, consequences be damned, I can’t not open it. If I find a puzzle, I have to figure it out. If I come up with a question, I need an answer. And I will go through anything and risk everything to get that answer. It’s a trait that has served me very well spiritually.

The universe is made up of puzzles and riddles and questions. Solving these things is what spirituality ultimately comes down to. We are looking for answers. Not everybody is looking for answers though. In college I had a professor who was devoted to the ideals of science and Atheistic logic, but he was also a very faithful and devoted Christian. He would come up with explanations about how his biblical and personal understanding of God didn’t negate the scientific factual information he new and believed in. At some point he always hit a wall though, and that’s when he would pull out his ace. He’d say, “A man trying to understand God is like an ant trying to understand man. An ant is a simple and small creature, it has a small brain, and with its limited capacities it can’t even hope to begin to understand as complex as a person.” Of course if you start with the theory that you can’t understand God, of course you’ll never understand God.

It’s the same as answering spiritual questions with, “God works in mysterious ways.” It’s also the same as saying, “I don’t know the answer and I don’t want to try and figure it out, but I still want to seem wise and logical to you.”

Magicians are people who need to get the answer to unanswered questions. They’re not the type who are content if something is left unanswered. At the same time it really doesn’t matter how significant the question is or how much shit you’re going to have to go through to find out the answer. What matters is you have a question you don’t know the answer to, and that needs to be corrected. I have literally walked through hell to answer a question, in fact the question was what does it feel like to literally walk through hell. If you’re wondering, it doesn’t feel at all pleasant.

4. Enjoy yourself, love what you’re doing

This is something I’ve brought up before. You have to enjoy your spirituality. You have to love every aspect of it. People who are the most successful at their careers are the ones who love what they do. And this isn’t even a career. This is more akin to a hobby. You don’t get paid for this. You work somewhere to get paid so you can do this.

After all these years I am still in constant awe and wonder of the things I get to see and do. I read books on spirituality for my own enjoyment. I write this blog for my own enjoyment. I like doing rituals. I like casting spells. I like the way these things make me feel. There really isn’t any aspect of my spirituality I dislike. If you’re not having fun with your spirituality, you’re doing something wrong.

I’m not saying everything is always peachy. I’ve had horrible things happen to me because I practice magick. I’ve gone through my trials like everyone, and its taken me a lot of effort and practice to get where I am with my spiritual practice. But I’m not complaining about it. I don’t regret having done it, and I don’t mind that I’ll have to keep doing it. I don’t need any rewards or degrees for what I’ve gone through either. The fact that I get to practice magick is my reward.

Not too long ago I read an article online about people coming into covens with the wrong attitudes. One of the complaints was that a lot of people join because they think it will be cool or lots of fun to be in a coven, but being part of a coven is a lot of hard work. I would never join a group where the group leader said this. Why should I be a part of a group if it isn’t cool and fun? I go to a job to work and they pay me money. This is my free time. I don’t want to work. I could be sitting at home playing video games. Video games are both cool and fun.

A lot of people go on about how spiritual attainment involves a lot of hard work and sacrifice and they complain about all the stuff they had to do and all the stuff they still have to do. That’s all bullshit. Your spiritual endeavors shouldn’t be work. It shouldn’t be a chore. You shouldn’t feel as if you have to do anything. You should want to do it. You should look forward to every ritual and group meeting and everything else with giddy excitement. And if you don’t want to do it, if it doesn’t make you happy, don’t do it.

If you’re not happy with your spirituality, you’re doing something wrong. Maybe you shouldn’t be a spiritual person, but if you’ve read this far, even skimming, I doubt that. You probably just haven’t found the right spiritual path for you, or you’ve fallen in with a bad crowd. If the people in your spiritual group are miserable and unhappy people, if they make you do things you don’t want to do, if they try to turn your spiritual attainment into school or work or church; fuck them. Go find better people to hang around with, or start your own fun group, or work in solitary for a while. Anything would be better than sticking around in a situation that isn’t fun.

And if you don’t like something, don’t do it. If you can’t stand to read, maybe you shouldn’t be reading books, and you definitely shouldn’t be reading books written by the Golden Dawn boys (they wrote horrifically, far beyond their language skills, and attempted to emulate older scholarly styles, and did so poorly). And there are people that will tell you that you have to read books if you want to gain any kind of insight or attainment. And if you don’t do that, they’ll call you lazy. There’s also people that will tell you that you have to do a lot of other things that maybe you don’t enjoy doing to find spiritual attainment. Fuck them. It’s your spirituality and you can do whatever the hell you goddamn want with it. One of the best parts about being an adept is you get to do whatever you want, and no one can tell you what to do.

And don’t think you have to be all stoic and solemn and serious about something just because it happens to be sacred. You should be having fun and joking around and enjoying yourself and expressing all that joy that’s welled up in you because you’re doing magick. In olden times rituals were places where you would eat at feasts, hang out with your friends, try and pick up dates, dance, sing, drink, and if you were at the right one even get laid.

I’ve never met a competent magician that didn’t have a sense of humor, that wasn’t prone to, at times, make wisecracks or have a fit of the giggles during a ritual. And I’ve never talked with a god that didn’t understand the concept of humor. I’ve never talked with a god that, all other things being equal, didn’t want people to be happy and joyous.

5. Don’t become financially or emotionally dependent upon your spirituality

This is the number that I figure might get me flamed, so I’m going to take time to explain it. If you want to write a book or lead a group because you think you have something important and worthwhile to teach people, that’s a good reason to do those things. If you want to write a book because you think being an occult author is a better life than working a real job, or if you want to start a group because you need to feel empowered, these are bad reasons.

And there’s nothing wrong with making a fair amount of money for you hardwork. There’s nothing wrong with becoming emotionally attached to the people in your group. But problems start occurring when you start becoming dependent on your spirituality to fulfill financial and emotional needs.

It’s even okay if your sole means of income is selling spiritual books or being a psychic or whatever. What’s important is that you have the necessary skills to quit your spiritual job and go back to a regular mundane job and still live the lifestyle you’re accustomed to.

What’s important is that you are not dependent upon a group you’re leading to make you feel powerful or intelligent or special. That you’re able to make friends and find romantic partners outside of your spiritual outlets.

What you should consider is if you became an Atheist tomorrow, you would of course be spiritually empty, but would you continue to have about the same quality of life in every other aspect of your life? Do you have ties to friends you’ve met outside of spiritual groups and functions? Can you make friends outside of spiritual groups and functions? If you’re single or a polygamist or sleeping around, can you find romantic partners outside of spiritual groups and functions. If you don’t have your roles and memberships within certain groups, would you still feel validated and important and feel that you do important things. Are you able to support yourself and your family through non-spiritual means?

You should have answered yes to everything, and if you can’t you have a dependence. You’re dependent upon your spirituality to fulfill a non-spiritual need. When you get to that point, you’re always in danger of compromising your spirituality to meet some other need.

You won’t always do it, and it may not be a big compromise, but when a crisis occurs, it’s really hard not to make that compromise. And once you make a compromise you’re spiritually less than what you were, and it makes the next compromise that much easier.

Consider this. You’re an occult author. You have no other job skill or means of support. This year your books haven’t been selling. You’re on the verge of losing your home and becoming homeless. Your publisher says that he has some really high quality ghost written books on subjects you don’t quite subscribe to, but which are currently in vogue. If you sign over your rights to use your name as an author, he’ll write you a check right now and there’s a good chance you’ll get some royalty money from these books later on. Are you willing to be homeless in this situation?

What if you make your money as a psychic, you don’t have any other job skills, and for years you do just fine with accurate hot readings all the time. Then one day you notice that, for whatever reason, doing those psychic readings are getting harder and harder. When you can’t read for a client do you give them their money back and go hungry, or do you do a cold reading instead?

What if you don’t have any strong family ties and all the close friends you have are in your coven. Your spouse dies. If that coven ceases to provide for you spiritually, are you going to leave that coven? What if you notice the group leader taking sexual advantage of new members. Are you willing to stand up to them and risk getting thrown out of the coven, knowing that you’re in a personal crisis and your entire emotional support network is that coven?

What if you are leading a group and that group is the only thing that seems to give your life meaning and the only worthwhile reason for living. Are you going to make decisions that are in the best interest of serving your group members and yourself spiritually, or are you going to make decisions that are going to secure and preserve the continued existence of the group?

If you’re not putting your spirituality first in these situations, you’re compromising yourself spiritually. And it might not always seem like much, but it makes you less of a magician than you could be, and these kinds of things can really spiral out of control.

The Great Griswald is a famous example. Tim Burton portrayed him as more of a charlatan and showman, but friends who knew him said that he truly believed that he was gifted and could see the future from a young age. Early on he was doing his predictions for fun on the radio as part of an advertisement and he became famous because some were actually accurate. He said once he started making money off of his gift, it started to go away. Was he being punished? No. He probably could’ve got it back. But by that point he was dependent upon it for his income, so he went on to use his reputation to make cold predictions. Eventually his reputation was destroyed, but by then he had a reputation as a showman. He died without ever regaining this wonderful gift, and it’s something that he regretted losing.

And there are lots of stories like that. A lot of psychics and mediums were doing real work early on, but their power started to fade so they started pretending to do the work, because they had no other job skill or way to support themselves. Instead of figuring out what was wrong and working to regain their spirituality, they instead continued down a path of compromise that eventually robbed them of all the spirituality they had, and ruined their reputation while smearing everyone who will ever follow them into their profession.

It’s a sad end, but all you need to avoid that fate is the ability to walk away. If you have a spiritual job, or a spiritual group, or whatever you just need to have the option to walk away from it without it completely changing a non-spiritual part of your life.

6. You are, more or less, whatever you pretend to be.

This is really more of a tip that was given to me than anything else, but it’s one of the great secrets of becoming a master and it falls under attitude. You more or less are whatever you pretend to be.

For example, if you’re new to magick and you enter a group and you have the attitude that you’re just starting to learn about things and you’re sure you’re completely inexperienced and they’re probably so much more knowledgable than you and have mastered so many different things and have such wonderful experiences you can’t even fathom, you’re going to be right about yourself.

If, on the other hand, you go in confident of your magical knowledge and ability, even though you’re new to this, and act the way you think a spiritual master would, answer questions the way you think a spiritual master would, and consider yourself an adept and a guru, you’re probably also going to be right about yourself.

I know it sounds like complete BS, and I didn’t think it would work either, but it does! I stopped acting like I didn’t know what I was talking about and I started acting like I did know what I was talking about. And it turns out I did. Once you start acting like an adept things will start clicking in your head and you’ll gain this deep spiritual insight into a lot of things and people will ask you questions, and you won’t know the answer before, but when they ask them you’ll notice your brain will just figure it out and it will spew out of your mouth. And when you act like an adept and a master you’ll do all of the things that an adept and master would do and think the way they would think, or at least how you imagine they’d do these things, in other words how you’d probably do these things if you were an adept and master. Before long you’ll notice you just made yourself an adept.

Sure maybe someone will call you out. They’ll want you to channel something or be a medium or write an effective spell or something. Just remember that you’re an adept now, and as an adept you’re probably able to do these things. So just do it.

Just try it out as an experiment and see what happens. Start fresh and attend an open meeting for a local group where nobody knows you, or you can even find an active online forum you’ve never been to. Just remember you’re not lying and you’re not cheating, you’re acting. In other words don’t go into an online forum and use that as an excuse to look up answers in books or online. Just say what you think the right answer is.

That’s the secret to being an adept. You just wake up one morning and you decide that you’re an adept. Then you act like one. And that is one of the most well guarded secrets in magick, the way in which a person becomes an adept.

It’s what I did. I just started calling myself an adept one day. It’s the path that lead me here. It’s really all you have to do too.

Book Advice: Writing a Better Grimoire

I’m putting together a list of recommended titles that I’ll be posting on a separate page. Hopefully I’ll have that list up by the end of the month. Basically I’ve been going through my personal collection and other books I’ve read and I’m figuring out which books were either a great source of new ideas and inspiration the first time I read them, or books I’ve gone back to again and again as a reference.

Doing this, I’ve gotten a better idea of what I like in an esoteric book, what makes them valuable and worth the price, and also the books I don’t ever use. Since there are quite a few low price to free small press, self publishing, and POD options available, there are a lot more writers on the market, and really anyone can do it. They’re also flooding the market with books few people actually want and find valuable. Anyways here some things that I think really make a book stand out:

1. Keep it Short – This is the number one rule, granted there are some exceptions. If you’re doing a book on a very detailed in depth subject like tarot or astrology, or if you’re doing a compilation or overview, if it’s well organized you can have 300 or more pages. Generally though I’d say between 30-150 pages would be ideal for an esoteric book.

I mean, has anyone here actually read The Secret Doctrine cover to cover. A major work and a major influence on many of the authors who came after it, it has a strong reputation, and it’s in the public domain so it’s free, so it should be a lot stronger than a lot of new books by new and even established authors on the market. But no one reads it because it’s over a thousand pages long! At best, it maybe gets skimmed, sometimes. And it doesn’t mean that a reader is not devoted to their spirituality or lazy because they won’t read a 1200+ page book. It just means they have better things to do with their time and they’ll get the information somewhere else.

Books that are lean and concise, full of useful information, and which can be quickly read and added to ones accumulated knowledge are very attractive to a lot of practitioners, especially ones who may have money to buy books but not a lot of time to read them. And number two will help with this too.

2. Pick a specific subject and work with it – It’s a common complaint that everything on the market is magick or wicca 101. The problem is most of these books try to cover everything, and even in 500 pages we’re talking a few pages devoted to each subject, just enough space to give a cursory overview and not enough space to get in depth. But a book dedicated to a specific subject, like evocations or astral projection, can usually cover the subject completely, covering basic information and in depth information.

3. Completions and overviews can be useful – I’m adding this because a few of the books that made my list are very long overviews of magick in general and completions of materials from other books. Done correctly, these can be wonderful collections of information. They’re great for exposing a beginner to a lot of different information, and they’re great as a single reference of many works for a more experienced practitioner. Unfortunately, due to modern copyright law, they’re very difficult to put together, unless you manage to work for a major publisher who is willing to allow the best parts of all their works to be compiled into a single volume.

4. Keep it separate and organized – You don’t want a narrative flow within your work. You don’t want a work that starts with a few ideas, and builds on them chapter to chapter, until the reader reaches a point of understanding at the end. Readers usually don’t like that book, or if they do they’re forgiving it its shortcomings. Readers will get a lot more use out of a book when they can easily turn to the information they want out of it right now. Books that can be used as a reference are a lot better than books that can’t. Some people will only want a book for one or two chapters. An experienced or even well read practitioner may already be familiar with the basic information you’re supplying and only want the book for the advanced material. To them, it’s important that they can skip to the best part of the book. When a person first sees a book, nine out of ten will go right to the table of contents and see how many chapters look interesting. Then they’ll pick a couple of interesting chapters and see if they have anything worthwhile in them.

5. Be original and speak from experience – Too many books just reiterate the information from other books. This is a common complaint from many readers. Before you even start writing a book, you should really ask yourself if you have anything new or original to add to the subject matter, or a new way of presenting it. Remember all of these subjects have already been covered by other authors, authors who are better established and more well known, and whose books have been out longer (so there’s a good chance someone interested in the subject matter has already bought their book).

6. Be positive, not negative – This is something that I see more and more with new self-published authors as opposed to established names. They’re negative. They talk about groups of people they don’t like, they talk about authors they don’t like, and they talk about how people are stupid. It looks unprofessional for one. It also alienates potential readers. No matter how good your book is, if your opening chapter dismisses Wiccans, or New Agers, or any other major group, any devoted follower of that ideology is going to put the book down and never come back. Also an established author will have a fan base, and when you bash that author, you turn his or her fanbase away from your work. A lot of times this comes down to nothing more than an author being petty or jealous of someone or some other group’s success. And this isn’t an attractive image to project. You’re supposed to be knowledgable and an enlightened guru of sorts, not someone partial to petty drama and full of teenage angst.

Instead be positive. Don’t talk about how horrible someone elses information is. Talk about how great your information is. Talk about how once the reader finishes your book, they’ll be able to practice the subject matter much better than they could before. Focus on how great your book is and what it can offer to the reader, because in the end this is what matters to someone buying your book, not how the market is overflooded with inferior work or how everything by author or group X is pure crap.

And remember, there’s nothing wrong with ignorance. If it wasn’t for ignorance, no one would need your book. If your book fails to alleviate ignorance, it’s not the fault of your readers or potential audience either. It’s because you failed as a teacher, or as an author, or in correctly marketing your work.

7. Have spells, rituals, or exercises included in your work – Depending on what your writing, one or more of these may be appropriate. A book on general magical practices will probably be partial to spells. A book that is an introduction to a new or established religion will probably be partial to rituals. Things like astral projection and remote viewing usually are more geared towards general exercises as opposed to formal ritual work. But these are all practical information.

Practical information makes these books useful. They give the reader something they can do or try to better themselves. It’s something that makes a book valuable even after its been read. It’s something that most readers really want out of a book, and it’s usually the part of the book they value the most. Meanwhile if you don’t have any practical information, I can only assume that you don’t know enough to create it. You can’t write a spell, or ritual, or figure out exercises to help me improve a skill; and if you’re not at a level where you can do that, why should I buy anything you write?

8. Expand without fluffing – Suppose you pick a subject, let’s say astral projection. You write your little book and say everything you want to say, and you only have twenty pages. You could, at this point, publish a twenty page book (and some have). What most people do though is try to expand the twenty pages into sixty or a hundred. They don’t add any valuable information, what they do is reorganize it and go more in depth on various subjects and try to expand each section as much as they can. What they end up with is the same twenty pages worth of material, only now it takes up five times as many pages.

The fluff is usually non-valuable and useless, and there’s no reason for it. Instead try to find more useful information to add into the work. This may mean expanding the subject of the book into related topics. For instance, lucid dreaming and meditation would be closely related to astral projection, and chapters on these subjects would easily fit into a book on astral projection. Now your core information is still just twenty short pages, you haven’t fluffed it up any. Instead you’ve added new information about related subjects which will make your book even more valuable to a potential reader.

9. Mention other authors and books you like – You can do this in a few different ways. You can mention them directly in the text. Or you can have a recommended reading list. Or you can have a works referenced page at the end of your book. It really doesn’t matter, but I’m not talking about a list of other books you’ve written or a page or advertisement for other books by your publisher. This won’t so much help you sell your book, but it’s a good practice. It informs readers who like your work of other works they may enjoy. It helps promote other authors in the same field. It helps you direct people towards the good books and helps you make sure that people are spending their book buying money on good purchases, and not buying the crap books you’re not supposed to talk about according to #6. A while back this was a standard practice in esoteric works. It’s kind of fallen out of vogue (and the reason why probably has something to do with certain publishing houses too), but it was a good practice that should really be revived.

10. Concluding thoughts (time and value) – Most of what I’ve written here about good books comes down to two words, time and value. I know I don’t have time to be reading books all day long. I assume most people don’t either. Most people have a job they have to go to, they have families they have to take care of, and they have significant others they want to do fun things with. They also want leisure time to relax and watch TV, or a movie, or keep up with the internet, or whatever. And spiritual people also have to have time to practice their spirituality and deal with groups and meet-ups and rituals and what-not. It’s not that people are lazy or don’t want to read or better themselves, it’s just that they don’t have the time to wade through forty pages of crap to get two pages of something interesting. People value their time, and as a writer you should too. You should make it easy for someone to get exactly what they want out of your book as quickly as possible.

The other word is value. What is the value of your book? A lot of authors have tried to use number of pages or word count to value their work. But more often than not the smaller books are the more valuable ones, if for no other reason than the fact that they’re more accessible. The information in the book is what makes it valuable. And what may make a book worth anywhere from $5 to up to $500 in the case of some rare OOP books for someone might not be any more than a few pages or even sentences. Fill your book with new information that people will actually want and find useful and practical information and a lot more people will find it worth buying.

The Sigils of Thomas Pendragon

This is a heads up that my friend Tom has been working on channeling and transcribing a series of 84 sigils (28 sigils of the Ether, 28 of the Abyss, and 28 of Earth), these are not only beautiful, but full of symbolic meaning (some of it which is hidden and has never been published) and they’re all very powerful. Right now Tom is printing them for everyone to see and hopes to eventually publish them with some sort of scheme that will allow others to use and expand upon the work in their own publications. He’s also working on commentary for all the sigils which will incorporate his own work and experiences with them.

The binding sigil was one that really struck me because it contained a symbol which I routinely use as part of a binding spell (now that it is given away, I’ll be posting it shortly). I’ve never actually told anyone the methodology of the spell, especially Tom since I use it against him when he tries to get in magical shenanigans when I’m driving him places.

 

 

 

The Short History of the Sigils

Part One: Alagon.

Sometime before I met Tom, while he was living in Florida, he managed to open a lot of stuff up at once and happened upon an entity which called itself Alagon that took an interest in him. Tom began channeling the gospel of Alagon and distributing it to others. He managed to find several other people who knew of Alagon and his work. Alagon meanwhile was causing Tom headaches and some bleeding from his head. Others who worked with Alagon had the same problems, and some apparently died of aneurysm. At the time the true nature of Alagon wasn’t known. Tom was still in contact with Alagon when he moved to Las Vegas, and a local magician, Bon Necron, managed to break Alagon from Tom and partially bind him. Later Tom would give me some of Alagon’s gospel to look over, and reading it I did come into contact with Alagon and suffered a severe headache from it. The true nature of Alagon wouldn’t be known for some time.

Part Two: Adiemus

Adiemus was the magical name of a practitioner, who is sometimes also referred to as the Baron, who was active up until his death somewhere around 1920. He was a very powerful practitioner who had access to quite a bit of information and claims to have known and disliked Allister Crowley. Since his death he’s been in contact with prospective students, although his brutal and violent teaching methods typically lead his students to a gory death if they advance too far into his studies. Some of his knowledge and teachings are openly traded within some circles of the community, and stories of his unfortunate past students are out there. Adiemus had a very strong connection to Persephone and had dealt largely with interdimensional travel, astral projection, and dream walking. Tom had come across some pieces of information on Adiemus throughout his travels.

Tom eventually gave me the information he had concerning Adiemus as a curiosity to work with. I don’t intend to speak for Adiemus, and to be honest I think he might be a little off-put by me, but he has taken an interest of sorts in me. Like him a have a very strong connection to Persephone, so that may have something to do with it. Over the years I’ve gained information from Adiemus, and that is where I first learned of the gates and what Alagon, like Adiemus, truly was.

From Adiemus I learned that there were 28 gates of this world. The gates had long ago been sealed, and each gate belonged to some god. However it was an impossibility to close the gates since things must be allowed to pass through for the survivability of the world, and so unto each gate was given a guardian. This guardian, when they ascended into the gate, would gain all of the knowledge and power of the gate, and all those who had been a part of it before them. But this was only a temporary, and detestable, job. Each guardian had the power to seek out there successor, so they could move on, although in doing so they give up the knowledge and power of the gate.

In order to take a gate, a person needs to have a strong connection to the god to which the gate belongs. They also need to seek out the current guardian and undergo their trials and prove themselves worthy of the gate. Finally they need to be fully informed about what the gate is, what guardianship entails, and that it is a trap, and then still choose of their own will to take the gate.

Adiemus is the last person to take his gate, the gate of Persephone. Alagon is the name of the an older entity which guarded its gate, although it has now gone through seven or eight guardians since, but it regards itself as being all that has come before it.

Part III: Phillip

Several weeks ago after a failed magical experiment me and Tom were screwing around with automatic writing when Tom happened upon a magician known has Phillip who had some cool sigils. After talking to him for some time, Phillip claimed to know about several more sigils (the 28 sigils of the ether) and agreed to show them to Tom. Very quickly Tom managed to figure out how to retrieve the sigils without Phillip’s aid. He also happened upon knowledge of other sigils. First the 28 sigils of the Abyss. And then the 28 sigils of Earth, which he reckoned to be the gates that Adiemus and Alagon are connected into.

For a couple of weeks now Tom has been feverishly working on completing the ether sigils and his commentary on them. He then hopes to do the Abyss and Earth sigils.

 

Thoughts on Teachers

In the terms of our magickal practices, the most important and strongest relationships we develop are with our teachers. And by teacher I’m referring to a traditional one on one spiritual mentorship. There is also the more modern usage which would refer to someone running a class or seminar on a metaphysical topic. That is an entirely different situation with different rules and boundaries, and nothing said here is in regards to that situation.

Often times our teachers will push on in new directions of thought and practice beyond our normal boundaries and press us to think and do things which may make us uncomfortable. They are people who are above us, who we deem as more powerful and more knowledgeable, who guide and instruct us, and who many of us will naturally seek the approval of. And they typically come to us when we’re still new to the community, and before we know any better. They demand us to trust and have faith in them. And that trust and faith demands a great deal of responsibility on the teacher’s part. It’s very easy for the student to be taken advantage of in a student-teacher relationship. It’s also common enough for the student to be seeking a teacher for all the wrong reasons. In any instance, the teacher is considered the superior person in this relationship, and no matter what the circumstances they should know better. Below are some thoughts and facts on the student-teacher relationship and what it should ideally be, which I’m providing as a guide for students and prospective students. I would hope that anyone engaging in the teaching side of a student teacher relationship would already know all this.

1. Most importantly, and the cardinal rule of the student teacher relationship, is that our teachers come to use when we need them, and we instinctively know that they are our teachers and we need to follow them. Every part of our being tells us that the relationship is true and right. If there is doubt that a person is really your teacher, if you don’t feel instinctively drawn to the person and their teachings, then they are not your teacher.

2. A lot of people in the community actively seek teachers, either because they want to possess their power or they want the prestige that comes with being a student of a particular teacher. These are the wrong reasons to be taught by someone, and a person should be wary of anyone willing to teach them under these circumstances. Besides, power comes from yourself, not your teacher, and your prestige, if you are a worthwhile practitioner, should be because of your acts and your ability, not because of your lineage.

3. Your teacher should be teaching you because it is their role and their place in the relationship, the same as it is the student’s role and place to learn. Just as a student feels a compulsion to be taught by the teacher, the teacher feels a compulsion to teach the student. That being said, teaching is not a career or a service rendered. The student shouldn’t have to earn their teaching in any way. This means paying money of course, but it also means buying gifts for their teacher (including paying for meals or going out with them), driving their teacher places, doing chores for their teacher, or working for free or at a reduced wage for their teacher (such as in a metaphysical store). Not all teachers will have money though, and it is acceptable for the student to be expected to pay their own way, ie buying their own books and magickal tools and supplies for spellwork, paying for their meal when they go out to eat, and even bringing something to a pot luck gathering they attend with their teacher.

4. Sex –> it’s inappropriate for a student to have sex or engage in any other type of romantic act with their teacher. There is no reason for it, and a teacher should never even ask. A student should never feel as if they have to, or that there’s something to be gained by it. It is appropriate for a teacher to instruct and give advice concerning sex magick or sex in general, however a boundary is crossed when telling turns into showing or doing. Sexual magick is something that is ideally done between equal partners. Sex magick is something that sexual partners explore together. The teacher-student relationship is not a partnership of equals, but one of a superior and inferior person.

5. Your teacher is not your friend or your romantic partner. These are relationships that are based, at least in part, on an equality and mutual respect. They are also relationships that move outside the boundaries a teacher should keep. It’s perfectly natural for a student and teacher to develop a very close and intimate relationship with one-another, however this relationship will still remain in the boundaries of the student-teacher relationship. It can only develop into something else after the student has completed the teaching and has had time to develop themselves so as to be a peer to their teacher. And it very rarely ever develops into a relationship that breaks the boundaries of the student-teacher relationship.

6. Teaching shouldn’t last forever. It’d be rare for it to last much longer than a year. Whatever the case, eventually the teacher will have fulfilled their purpose and at that point they should release the student from their bond so both can move on with their spiritual paths. There are those in the community who attempt to get students and then try to keep them forever beneath them and forever their students, which leads directly into number seven.

7. The ultimate goal and dream of every teacher should be that their students exceed them. In this way every successive generation becomes more powerful than the last. This isn’t always the case, some students will never reach the level of their teacher, but it should be the goal.

8. A student is not their teacher. Every spiritual path is different, and a student’s path may not match their teacher’s. While the relationship persists, the student may be very much in line with their teacher’s thinking and methodologies. However at some point the student should break away and craft their understanding, magick, and spirituality to fit their needs and personality.

Why Do They Call Themselves Satanists (And Other Fun Facts About Group Structures)

They claim they don’t follow any concepts of Christianity, including those surrounding Satan. They don’t worship or even believe in Satan (those folk call themselves Luciferians, not Satanists, mainly to differentiate themselves from Satanists). Most members are actually atheists, typically with no spiritual views, or if they do have them they are few and limited. If you ask them why they call themselves Satanists, they’ll come up with all sorts of insane and convoluted answers that may partially tie into the philosophies of Satanism. Ultimately though, it isn’t truth.

The real reason they call themselves Satanists is product branding. If they called themselves something else, like say Levayism, then very few people would have heard of them and their membership would be limited to those few who actually care about what Levay thought. But Satanism had a reputation long before the Church of Satan opened its doors. People already had an idea of what it was. And centuries before Levay came along there was already a long line of customers forming who wanted to be Satanists, but had no where to go.

Generally Pagans are a very poor lot. Ceremonial magicians can go either way, some are rich, more often though they have expensive tastes and a poor work ethic though. So for groups like these to form groups in the community, they need to think of creative ways to fund themselves. One method is the pyramid scheme. You have a short few who do the serious work, the inner circle, and this group is funded by the much larger outer circle. Everyone only has to put in a little, and that little bit is enough to fund the smaller inner circle group and keep it operating.

The problem is the inner circle will eventually get to big. Generally the allure of these groups is spiritual progressions, particularly making it into the inner-circle where the best secrets are. Now as an example, if you figure it takes five outer-circle members to fund each inner circle member, that means every time you promote a member to the inner circle your outer circle has to grow by five members. When the group’s growth peaks there’s a lot of room to hand out inner-circle promotions, but eventually it slows down. It might seem as if one could sustain the group indefinitely by sparsely handing out inner-circle promotions, but then we get into another problem. You don’t need a gross gain of five members, you need a net gain. And if you aren’t promoting them into the inner-circle fast enough, they’ll leave and go to a different group. In the end the group falls in on itself.

The CoS was not the first group to employ this method, but it was the first to effectively combine it with product branding to circumvent its worst flaw. The word Satan draws in a lot of members. And these people don’t want to be promoted or get enlightened. They come for other reasons. They want to show off to their friends, be bad-ass, be a rebel, screw with their parents, fuck with Christianity, whatever. They pay their dues, and the Church makes them a member, even gives them a card to show off to other people. And in turn these dues fund the magickal work, and in some cases even the private income, of a select few Satanists. It’s a method that could possibly be sustained indefinitely, because the outer-circle is large whereas the inner-circle can be kept small.

Of course there are other methods to employ too. You could go the route of fleecing the rich. Basically you find well-to-do types and convince them to enter into your group, and then get them to make large donations to it. There is the ‘some second rate things in life are free’ types. These people hold meetings and rituals in parks and at local restaurants and bookstores. The very rarely do any real work. There’s also the pay to play model employed by groups like the New Agers, but this only works if, like the New Agers, the average member of the group is upper middle class with money to burn on books, tapes, seminars, vacations, ect.

So Long Mr Grabbe…

It just came to my attention that about three months ago J. Orlin Grabbe passed away.

I only recently found about about Mr Grabbe, in the same way many others did, when my website hits nearly tripled because he linked to one of my articles. When I followed the link back to its origin, I found a website filled with links to news articles on science, the economy, politics, conspiracy theories, and other important things, all interlaced with pictures, mostly of naked women. It seemed like a strange site at first, and yet I found myself checking it regularly.

I also found myself, like many others, trying to figure out exactly what it was and who Grabbe was. As it turns out, he’s one of the original Internet conspiracy theorists, his conspiracies focusing on finance. However, unlike other conspiracy theorists, this wasn’t some random guy in a basement with a tin foil hat. Grabbe had a doctorate in economics obtained at ivy league schools and was renowned as a financial expert long before he ever got into conspiracy theories. Even after jumping into conspiracies he continued to produce important and well regarded works inside and outside of finance. The man was a conspiracy theorists, but he was also legit, not some random crazy but someone who should probably be listened to about the subject at hand.

He was also involved with cryptology, media works, and had a hand in discordianism. That last part probably explains everything.

We not only lost a remarkable man when we lost J. Orlin Grabbe, but we lost the man who was probably the only conspiracy theorist that was sane, logical, and possibly right about everything. My inner-discordian can’t help but think that the world is now bereft something wondrous and beautiful and so rare that we may never see the likes of it again, which in itself is remarkable because my inner-discordian is typically distracted mid-thought by something shiny or funny.

Also the man had impeccable taste in naked women.

Why Thelemites Lack Enlightenment

For many people, religion is an important thing, moreso than spirituality. Although variations exist, the human animal has evolved socially in such a way that religion fulfills various important functions that are not adequately fulfilled elsewhere, and for the past several hundred years, in the west, these duties have been fulfilled mainly by Christianity. A church is a place for people to meet, to socialize, to find others of similar beliefs, to court, to find solace and guidance, and to celebrate, among other things. Many people would do just as well as Atheists, so long as they were allowed to keep their church. Meanwhile many Atheists form Atheist groups which are meant to fulfill the functions of the church, even going so far as to proselytize their spiritual beliefs, or in their case a lack thereof.

Crowley recognized this basic social need for religion in most people, even those seeking spiritual enlightenment. Meanwhile Christianity, the current forerunner, generally frowns upon spiritual enlightenment, to say the least. Even considering the resent emergence of neo-pagan religions, these religions, at their best, barely manage to adequately meet the duties that even the smaller Christian churches can do quite well, while at the same time being just as detrimental, restrictive, and even malicious towards any individuals seeking enlightenment. The obvious solution would be for the enlightened to have their own religion, but in practice this idea fails as they tend to lack the necessary numbers to successfully perform the community functions of a church while their perspectives and beliefs are so dramatically varied and at times conflicting they lack the unity and cohesion of a religion.

Crowley’s solution to this problem was Thelema. Basically he was trying to create a religion to socially and spiritually satisfy the masses, attracting a large enough parish to fulfill all of the functions of the church, while at the same time leaving the group open to, and open ended enough to attract, those seeking enlightenment. The spiritual aspect of Thelema was really only meant for the unenlightened among the masses, not the enlightened who were there to receive the social benefits of the religion, not the spiritual.

But in practice Thelema has failed miserably. The OTO, the biggest proponent of the religion, has already died and been resurrected. Although the group may be able to point to rising numbers, the group still hasn’t shown large enough numbers in any single region for it to fulfill the community functions of the church, nor is it making significant gains to where we can assume this will happen within our lifetimes. Thelema has not done well in attracting general parishioners, who seem content to remain with Christianity, and without these parishioners there is no point in keeping Thelema around, because it fails to serve anybody in any capacity.

Absent Thelema, we are still left with Crowley’s works. These are largely quoted as gospel truth, by people who often times can’t understand the denotation of the sentences being quoted, and Crowley himself is transformed from being a practitioner’s peer to a Christ figure that is assumed to have been at an unattainable level, in other words we cannot be as Crowley was, we can only trust in the truth of what he has imparted to us. Most of his followers assume that by learning and following Crowley’s works they will eventually reach some spiritual attainment, a very Christian perspective, and in doing so they have become, like the neo-pagan religions, little more than Christians with different books.

One problem is there is very little attainment to be gained from what Crowley has left us. Even the great secrets of the OTO, which haven’t been well guarded and are easy enough to find and read, offer very little. Crowley was a remarkable teacher and at his worst still a competent magician. I credit Crowley with being solely responsible for me being able to learn the tarot as well as I have, and also with introducing me to quite a few of the subjects that can be categorized under magick. But Crowley’s works weren’t comprehensive guides, they were beginner manuals. The great secrets of Crowley’s works are the basics that lay the foundations for higher attainment.

This isn’t to say Crowley only knew the basics. His tarot deck implies a far deeper understanding of magick and the universe then is ever betrayed in his written works. The Book of Thoth essay though is only an introduction to tarot, despite being typically described as an advanced text.

Crowley never meant for his works to be the alpha and omega of a person’s spiritual attainment. They are just a foundation, enough information and ideas to get a neophyte to the next stage, and not necessarily filled with truth either, just being what the neophyte needs to know in the beginning. It is thought that any true practitioner will, upon completion of that stage, cast off Crowley’s teachings and forge a path of their own, eventually reaching a point of enlightenment and attainment to where they can consider themselves an adept in magick and an equal to Crowley.

Those that are Thelemites, and followers of Crowley, who fail to cast off the shackles of their religion, who expect to find secrets to the universe in introductory texts, who see Crowley not as a man or a peer or something to be surpassed but as infallible and unattainable, will never know spiritual enlightenment, because they cannot spiritually evolve, and they cannot follow their spiritual path and find truth for themselves as all practitioners must.

Expect More From the Community

[Originally written over a year ago, I have no idea if I actually posted this anywhere. Found it on the HD tonight and thought I’d put it up.]

For the most part, the magick community is no longer about following ones spiritual path. It’s not even about dressing up like everyday is renfair and prancing around while extolling the benefits of fanatic feminism. It’s about money and power now. And those of us who are seeking aid from the community and those of us who wish to help are suffering for it. The mundane’s have commandeered our leadership positions.

As an example, me and some friends went around to the various metaphysical stores in the area to see if any of them would help us advertise for a local meet-up group we were putting together. All but one turned us down. The reason given was that they hold paid classes and workshops, and our free offering would be competing with them, and they don’t want to help their customers find any outlet for their spiritual advancement outside of the store. Then, of course, they expect us to pay $300 for a crystal ball I can get for less than $30 at the flea market.

I’ve been to some of the free classes being offered around town, and I’ve found them lacking. And the students seem to want something more than what’s offered. I’ve volunteered to help with these groups and teach these classes. I’ve been given excuses like these people won’t do any kind of work, or they’re not very advanced, ect. And the moment I say that doesn’t matter, I’m then told no because these people shouldn’t be taught anything worthwhile period.

I go to the different groups out here, and sometimes some of the people in the group start to respect me more than the group leaders. I don’t claim titles, and I don’t brag, so I can only assume they made a judgement call based on their own criteria. In any case, a lot of the times I end up being kicked out of the group, and then people start spreading rumors about me being chaotic and dangerous, usually because I told someone something real.

So I start my own group, with friends of course, and then certain leaders in the community start trying to make us out to be the villain. Now we’re ‘competing’ with them. I wasn’t aware that non-profit spiritual groups were in competition. I wasn’t aware that there was something immoral about offering better things than other groups can for free.

The point of all of this rambling is, things are pretty screwed up out there. The other point is that it’s everyone’s problem, and it’s everyone’s fault. People in the magick community need to stop supporting these people.

Almost anything you can find in a magick store you can find somewhere else (flea market, weapon shop, bookstore), and usually at a much lower price. And the online stores usually have a much better selection. So before you make purchases at a store, find out what they’re doing to help the local community. Do they, or would they be willing to, put up a billboard so local groups can post events? Would they be willing to pass out flyers or business cards to support a local non-profit group? Are they offering any free services to the magick community? Spend your money at the stores that are actually doing something for the community. As for the other ones, there’s really no point in having an overpriced store that offers nothing else in return.

And if the people running the group you’re working with aren’t giving you what you want, go somewhere else. You deserve to get something out of a group. Also don’t be afraid to question the leader’s abilities or credentials. And don’t be afraid to question their mental stability either. Or their control over members.

Does the group leader not allow members to attend functions outside of the group? Do they not allow group members to attend functions of certain groups or talk with certain people? Are they known to have uncontrolled emotional outbursts? Do they try to control the personal lives of members? Do they act as if they’re infallible? Do they become upset when someone corrects them? These aren’t things that good leaders won’t do, these are things that adequate leaders won’t do. This is the bare minimum of what should be required.

And if you can’t find a group that doesn’t do this, then start your own. Please, start your own. We need good groups led by competent people.

And we all need to be honest, to be confrontational, and to bring things out in the open. Too many of the leaders are lying about their background, titles, accomplishments, teachers, education, past actions, ect., openly and in front of people who know the truth, and yet no one bothers to correct them. Instead they’re allowed to carry on, and abuse a whole new set of people who don’t yet know better. It needs to stop. These people need to be stood up to, and when they lie, it needs to be corrected.

Let Us Bring Some Evil Into This World (A Call to End Inaction)

Within the realm of my blog, my book, when I speak with people, when I write people through email, I’ve been rather free about the magickal information I give out. I am very much aware of the danger this information can pose to the practitioner if it’s put to use. I’ve been hurt badly in the past, and I’m no doubt at least partly responsible for injuries that have occurred to others. Still, I continue, and will continue, as I have been, offering what information I have to anyone who truly wants to learn.

There is a disgusting trend that has emerged where information is being hidden away in fear that it may be used in such a way that the practitioner is hurt. Books are being burned or otherwise taken off the market, stores refuse to carry certain titles and authors, people are being told not to read certain works because of the ideas discussed within them, and some are asking, or even demanding, that people stop teaching spellwork, astral projection, channeling, mediumship, and the like to just anyone. Meanwhile practitioners are being urged not to practice. They are being told that they aren’t strong enough or learned enough yet to protect themselves if they chose to utilize magick. In some instances practitioners are being urged to give up magick completely as it’s far too dangerous to ever be used and instead to just be a part of a neopagan religion.

Change is upon us. If you can tap the energy of this place, the vast ocean of energy that exists around us, and fall into it, and follow it a bit into the future you’ll notice that it starts to twist and turn, that it’s twisting and turning right now. We’re heading towards an apocalypse of sort, this world is going through a great change. I can feel it, my teacher felt it, my peers feel it, and almost a hundred years ago Allister Crowley felt it. This isn’t something new.

A lot of people like to talk about this change. I’ve become certain that most can’t feel it, they’re just repeating what they’ve heard from others. They have no understanding of it. A common belief is that, once this change occurs, the veils will break and we’ll all be blessed with magickal and psychic powers. Another belief is that this effect is generational, we won’t gain these powers, but our children or grandchildren or whenever this happens will be born with it.

The truth is this change isn’t something that’s going to happen. It’s happening right now, and it’s been happening for some time. Those waiting to just wake up with their magick powers one day should give up now. It isn’t happening. No new power is coming into this world. The power has always been there, and it will always be there. Having power is a matter of grasping that power which has always been there to be grasped. What has changed is an increase in opportunity.

In the 19th century Levi’s works were only available to those who could speak French. In the early 20th century translations started appearing, but these translations along with their French counterparts were still difficult to find and treasured among those who owned them. By the 1970s increased interest in the metaphysical and cheaper printing techniques meant that Levi’s works were now more widely available, assuming you knew who he was and knew of a place that sold good occult books or a good mail order company. Today Levi’s works can be found at the local bookstore, they can easily be downloaded online, and even if you don’t know who he is typing magick into a search engine along with a week studying online should lead you to him.

Nearly all of the most famous magickal and spiritual works are available online. Every year more works are translated and better translations appear (compare Mather’s Sepher Yetzirah to Kaplan’s superior translation). Finding the exact book you want isn’t much harder than typing the name into an Amazon or Ebay search, or asking your local bookstore to order it. Meanwhile inventions like the Internet, HTML, and cheaper and more efficient POD techniques make publishing and distributing ideas, techniques, theories, and teachings easier.

Right now it is easier for a neophyte to find the information they need to begin solitary practice or work towards initiation than it has been in thousands of years. It is taking less and less work to find the necessary information, and more and more the information is simply presenting itself to people, no work required. And the situation is only going to get better, or worse depending on your perspective of it. No one is going to be gifted with magickal powers. Rather we’re being gifted with a better opportunity to acquire those powers.

This world is in the process of shifting. It’s moving towards some unforeseeable end, and currently it’s ripe to be influenced. I’ve seen factions of otherworldly beings forming. They’re parties that have an interest in where this world is heading and the final outcome of these events. They will take what they can by influence and they will take what they can by force. Wars will be fought between these powers that be, actually the battles have already started, and in the end their strength will determine the fate of this world.

Humanity has been castrated and robbed of the right to determine its own destiny. They’ve taken from us our gods and angels and heroes and villains and demons and old ones, the very things that were meant to show us what we could aspire to become.

And now the world shifts, and the power long ago taken from us is offered to us again. Some believe that we’re destroying this world, that we are a parasite to it, and that it seeks to expel us. This world clings to us and I hear it pleading with us to realize our potential and again become masters of our destiny and determine this world’s fate.

We are among the elite, and we are growing. We are those that have chosen not to cower behind a higher force, but rather to throw ourselves into the universe allowing our strength, our talent, our merits, and our character to lead us to our salvation, or our damnation. We are supposed to be the strong and the powerful who walk the path to enlightenment unhindered by fear, not the cautiously weak who chose ignorance out of fear.

A time will come when these battles come near to an end, and they will have taken what can be taken by influence, and they will have taken what can be taken by force, and the victor will determine what fate befalls all of humanity, and the only hope humanity will have to determine its own fate will be to prove themselves stronger and uninfluenced and take back by force what is rightfully theres.

Inside each of us is the potential to achieve power beyond that of even the gods. Those incarnate here have a greater right to determine the fate of this world than any other entity, and with that right comes the power to claim and defend it if we chose to.

This world does not need caution. It does not need fear. This world needs strength, and it needs practitioners that are practicing and growing in power so that they may face what is yet to come against them.

Power can only be achieved through experience. Risk is an essential element of progress. Read books. Read everything. Don’t be swayed from a particular author because they have been labeled as evil or dangerous. Look at their ideas and determine for yourself their validity. And cast spells, astral project, summon things, channel, in other words practice magick. Get into fights and mix it up with entities. Yes, all of this is dangerous. Do it anyways. Don’t wait to do things because you doubt your abilities. Your abilities will only grow through experience, and doing things now is the only way to grow your abilities. Time spent waiting for your abilities to develop from an armchair will only be time wasted.

We need to walk our paths fearlessly. We need to allow ourselves to grow spiritually. We need to have confidence in our abilities and faith not in higher powers but in our own power to protect ourselves and find salvation.

When we see ourselves as weak, we become mastered by our own limitation. When we believe that we our strong, strength tends to manifest within us.

The true master teaches empowerment, not subjugation. The true master preaches of the strength of his disciples, not their weaknesses. The true master sees himself not as having ascended to a point above others, but of having reached a higher point that others will hopefully exceed.