Interview with the Magickian

(I thought I had posted this, but apparently not)

Recently I was introduced to another occultist by a mutual friend. Friends often know people that I “really must meet” and friends who understand me actually tend to have a good idea on who I’d find a purpose in engaging. When I first started talking to this person (who I’ll call Jordan for no reason other than it is a name from the book beside me) he immediately took control of the social dynamic and began the questioning. I was fine with this, by letting him think he had control of our conversation I could observe him easier without seemingly like I was doing so, ironically I realize also a pattern from the book beside me.

At first Jordan’s line of questioning was fairly typical for such an encounter. He asked about the systems I studied, for how long, were they solitary or group, was I self-taught or did I have a teacher? Very superficial getting a feel for my path, then the conversation went 90 degrees from the direction I expected, I was expecting questions about lineage or practice or results, but suddenly he asked what I was doing in my life. Answer: Going to school for a few degrees. He asked what the degrees were for, so I told him about the job field they prepare me for, he asked why I wanted that field, why I started late on that goal (I was 24 starting University), and questions related to my education and career choices, past and future. I thought I was understanding the general trend of the questioning when he switched it up again, and began asking about hobbies, what I did for fun, and oddly enough he seemed more interested in my talk of playing the theremin and the piano, hiking the Bluffs, and painting, than he did about my brief mentions of Buddhism and ceremonial magick.

I found this entire conversation fairly odd, far more directed than expected, more of an interview in some ways. Suddenly an understanding and appreciation for Jordan spread through me. He was doing what I would like to do in a similar situation, but I find such methods make people feel uncomfortable, thankfully he either didn’t care or realized I don’t respond normally to most social interactions. He was interviewing me frankly, and he wanted to know one thing: was I a good magickian? Too many people on the surface they think a good magickian should have extensive knowledge of systems, have lists of transcendent experiences where the world was revealed to them, have spirits as though on speed-dial ready to help, and many stories of events that just shouldn’t be. Now a magickian can have all of these things, don’t get me wrong, but a magickian in many ways needs none of these things. Jordan wasn’t looking for such stories of magick and mystery, he was looking for the signs of a true magickian.

Success and happiness.

I’d phrase it as progress/functionality and contentment, but his language was success and happiness when I called him on the mode of his interview, so I’ll stick with that. This is what I appreciated, he wasn’t evaluating me as a magickian based upon how much Hebrew I knew, how many Goetic and Enochian entities I dealt with, how many times reality “fell apart” around me. No, he was evaluating based upon my life, my past, my present, my future, and my situation within all of them. He wanted to see where I had come from, where I wanted to be, and if I was on my way. This is what magick is for, at least on this level, not trying to deny a spiritual/religious aspect as possible or important in some cases.

Magick is a tool for being who you are, and becoming who you are to be. Magick is a tool to find your path, to put you on your path, and to keep you there. To Jordan my being on this path was more important than the technical knowledge, practical results here and now. Needless to say we got along well because we began to talk on magick as a practical system meant to get results and our issues with people who use magick more of an excuse than a tool. (And I guess I should be glad that I “passed” his test heh) It was very refreshing to get to talk with an occultist who saw things in this way, as so many magickians (if I decide not to be a judgemental ass) seem to focus on the wrong things. It might be splitting hairs, but this is part of the distinction between magick and faith religions, it’s not about belief or visions, it’s about getting your shit together, and getting shit done.

Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely room and reason for the mystical experiences rather than magickal results, but for the point of this post I’m just harping on the over-emphasis some have on experience to the detriment of results.

After all, Crowley’s definition of magick wasn’t about dreams of the Goddess, seeing spirits, and collecting tomes, it was about causing change.

Review: Tantra Yoga Secrets – Mukunda Stiles

Tantra Yoga Secrets: Eighteen Transformational Lessons to Serenity, Radiance, and Bliss. – Mukunda Stiles
Weiser, 2011, 361pp., 9781578635030

“Tantra has been greatly misunderstood, particularly in the West, where it is perceived primarily as sacred sexuality. This view is what I seek to transform with this book, so that the reader will not only understand but experience the wholeness of this path to communion” (4).

This opening line had me greatly reassured about this book. Tantra is horribly misrepresented, so honestly I was a bit apprehensive to read this book, but I quickly realized that Mukunda Stiles understood the nature of tantra and was not writing another crappy book on sex pretending to be ancient spirituality.

Now, too be clear, there can be sex involved in tantra, and this book has sexual exercises in it, but sex is just a small part of the system. “Tantra is not better sex. Tantra is sadhana to be free of karma” (271). Stiles also touches on how the system’s sexual aspects can be used if one is celibate/asexual, or if one is in a same-sex relationship, which might seem like a minor point, but is wonderful to see included.

So if tantra is more than just sex, what is this book about? “Sharing and being with Chinnamasta is to me the living experience of the mysterious delight of Tantra, that is continuously arising and expanding as the sacred tremor of the tantric spanda” (xi). Tantra is a religious path, considered a rapid path to enlightenment. The focus of tantra is about overcoming your restrictions, and self-transformation, through prana (energy) work, meditation, and mental development.

“These eighteen lessons are specifically designed to reveal your limitations” (xiv) and cover everything from sensing the flow of prana in your body, to healing with prana, learning how to use mantras, physical conditioning, and prayer. The book moves along at a quick pace, recommend no more than two weeks per lesson. If you’re looking for a system to work with and develop through that has clear exercises and timelines this is a great book to start with. Each chapter ends with a Question and Answer section with questions that Stiles has collected from internet correspondences and personal communication and classes, more than once a question that hit me throughout the chapter was clarified in this section.

What impressed me most was the seriousness and understanding of Stiles in regards to tantra and the limitations of the medium of text. “These Tantrik teachings rest on a cornerstone of experiential knowledge gained over the ages by the men and women of this lineage. That knowledge can only be summarized and pointed to in book form” (xiv). Also that “Chaitanya mantras are the most popular mantras given and yet, without empowerment from the teacher, they don’t produce the desired result. It is like having a lamp, but not plugging it into a circuit” (107). It is a pleasant surprise to see a book that explains it is not, and cannot be, the substitute for a properly qualified teacher, that some techniques are offered hypothetically and will only become alive with person-to-person transmissions.

While this book has a few problems, including referencing important exercises that are included in other books, but not explained here, for the most part it is quite excellent. It may not cover the academic scope, or the theoretical cosmology that some people look for in tantra, when it comes to experiential work and self-development this book is amazing. To anyone with interest in a tantric path, or beginning self-work to overcome limitations, this is most definitely the book I would recommend for that.

Success, Signs, and Proof of Magickal Workings

A young monk was doing a meditation retreat, and every day during his afternoon meditation Buddha would appear to him in a brilliant light. Finally he said to his teacher “Every time I meditate I see Lord Buddha.” His teacher nodded and said “Just keep breathing, he goes away eventually.”

At dinner a friend asked me “What are the signs of a successful magickal working?” At first I gave two answers which dealt more with the path of results, but then I went back to the exceedingly obvious and true answer “What was intended, comes to pass.” Much like the young monk we often get too caught up in the signs during, but really it is the sign after that matters.

When I cook dinner, the sign of a good meal has nothing to do with how the water boiled, if the onion chopped perfectly, or if the sauce bubbled in a specific shape. I’ve bad great meals where everything goes wrong, things burn, or don’t brown right, or nothing seems to happen at all. The sign of a good meal is when it’s all over if it is delicious and well-made.

Every once and a while the debate flairs up about visual/physical manifestation during magick, and I think it deals with the phenomena all wrong. Sometimes when I do magick I get the weird noises, lights, solid looking faces forming out of smoke, stuff moving, glass shattering, and the other woogity. Sometimes I feel like I’m in a dark smoky room, staring at a black mirror and just talking to myself.

The odd part to some people? Just because a face forms out of smoke doesn’t mean I’m any more likely to succeed than the times it feels silent. I think these signs are probably dependant on something why don’t fully understand, some complex combination that people don’t have the whole picture of, and that’s okay. What matters is getting results, especially results with repeated success.

A friend contracted me for some magick last week; he lost something valuable three days before and couldn’t find it. He offered to pay me for the help, and only because he is my best friend did I allow him the deal that I only got paid if I succeeded. So I did a brief divination, which gave an area for him to search, but also said that “yes this item would be found.” I told him that, and then I contracted two spirits I use specifically for lost objects, they agreed to help and said it wasn’t a problem. This was before bed, when he went into work the next morning a co-worker had found the item and gave it back to him. My friend decided that this wasn’t a magickal success, after all, he didn’t have a chance to look where the dice said, and someone just happened to find it and gave it back to him four days later randomly, within twelve hours of my work on the case.

I let this slide, he’s my best friend, I’d help him without the offer of payment, but I was more confused by the idea that the success wasn’t magick. I guess I forgot to stipulate it had to be delivered by blue butterflies, as well as arriving at the right time. The signs of successful magick aren’t what happens during the ritual, aren’t the ways it happens (not necessarily at least), but that success occurs. More precisely though I’d say that success occurs repeatedly, against the odds of both individual and repeated occurrences.

Crowley said “Success be thy proof” not “Crazy-ass lights while you yell in Hebrew be thy proof” or “Your Scarlet Woman coalesces out of thin air be thy proof.” Success people. Magick is a path and all paths are made of goals, look for the success.

Efficient Practices: The Shadow of Use What Works

I jog semi-regularly (since New Year’s not so much) generally each time I’m out is about 30 minutes. I also used to stretch the way I was told to, which took 20 minutes before hand. Then I read a study referencing the Tarahumari who are really the world’s greatest runners, they don’t stretch at all, when they need to run, they just go. Also despite what people believe those who stretch before running have a higher injury rate (also the more expensive your runners are, the more likely you are to get injured, but that’s irrelevant, just amusing). So I cut out the 20 minute long stretching, and my runs stayed the same, then got a bit better in regards to knee pains. What does this have to do with magick? Simply put: stop doing useless shit.

The axiom “Use what works” gets tossed around a lot, but less emphasis is placed on its double-negative twin “Don’t use what doesn’t work.”

I’m a big supporter of daily practices and magicking from multiple angles, but sometimes they are done wrong. The Law of Diminishing Returns applies to magickal practice just as well as anything else. Most people will recognize this, but most don’t think to apply it to daily practice. Simplified the law states that at a certain point what you put into something does not equal what you get out of it, and can even lessen it to an extreme. The common example is farming. A plot of land can yield X amount of crops in a year, with Y units of fertilizer is may yield 110% X, with 2Y it may yield 120% X but with 3Y only 125%X. Eventually fertilizer can only do so much, and too much fertilizer actually burns the soil and crops and you end up with less than initially.

Magick is often the same way. There reaches a point where you have done pretty much everything you can, and anything more will not do as much as you think, or will even work against your goals. Daily practice is the same way, maybe it’s time to cull what you do. This is where “Don’t use what doesn’t work” comes into play.

This is part of my two week period between my birthday and New Years, I evaluate what has worked, and doesn’t work, what practice is useless, or does not do enough for the time and/or effort involved. If you spend all of your time and energy on stuff that does little or nothing, then you’ll lack the time and energy to do what you need to be successful. If you’re magickal focus is scattered between all these practices then your results will be just as scattered.

I wish I were making this example up. I know someone (not a friend) who is a member of the OTO, the Golden Dawn, studying with a Tantric Yogi, attending a Buddhist Temple, working his way through Initiation into Hermetics, while keeping up a personal practice of Energy Work. While his commitment is to be admired, as a magickian he’s not successful. Simple reason; he’s doing too much, he can’t grapple any of the systems with the depth they deserve, and is doing so many different daily practices that he’s pulling his etheric body in twelve directions at once (as well as probably spending too much time in magickal practice and not enough in real world action).

Not to say multiple practices and traditions are bad, but there is a point of diminishing returns. Take a look at your daily practice, what isn’t serving you anymore? Do you really need three different types of meditation? Do they support each other, or conflict? How many Pentagram/Hexagram rituals do you really need in a day? Are you really getting results from three different methods of strengthening and invigorating your energy body? I’ve recently cut about thirty minutes from my daily practices, and I’m still trying to prune more that I feel is more superfluous than effective. (Of course in my case it doesn’t help my pruning that my lama keeps giving me something else to do for a few weeks or months, but that’s the danger of studying under someone.)

If you’re not sure try cutting something out for a month, and see how you feel. Does your life fall apart without your daily Middle Pillar? Does your monkey mind reassert itself if you drop that third short session of meditation? Find out if what you’re doing is actually serving you, or if you’re getting an appropriate return for it. If not, maybe it is a time to let it go. Sometimes the greater commitment or devotion to a few practices can give you far greater results than spreading your time and energy too thin.

The trouble is we’re creatures of habit, we do what is familiar, we do what we’re taught, and we get locked into these patterns. If you’ve never seen the video of chimpanzees and kids learning how to open a box it’s a great illustration. Compare how the children get locked into the pattern they’re taught, but the chimpanzees (with their monkey minds) don’t have that problem. (There is also a possibility of obedience and performance in this test…just ignore that variable to take the point)

It is more difficult to point to, but the same problem can occur when trying to achieve a magick goal. Sometimes you can over-magick a goal, and instead of getting a few forces working to the same end, you get a clusterfuck where nothing can happen and things interfere with each other. The most clear example of this I had was a goal several years ago and my working failed, so when I called up the spirit to see what went wrong they said to me “You summoned someone else to do the same thing, so I thought you wanted them to handle it.” By using two spirits, perhaps because they were from the same system, and not telling them to work together, they both did nothing assuming I wanted the other to do the work.

Of course it’s not just spirits in this sense that can begin to conflict with each other. Sometimes it is hard to predict what will conflict, what spheres and forces and spirits just won’t mesh. If you’re going to try enchanting for an end from multiple perspectives take some time to perform some divination first and see if each successive method will help or hinder.

Moral of the story: Stop doing useless shit.

Divining Direction: Planning Magick

Recently I’ve been talking with an occultist from the city; he asked me about my “occult odd-jobs” as mentioned on my About page. He asked me hypothetically what I’d do for someone asking about wealth magick. There are two “levels” of service I provide. One is a very simple one size fits all; granted what it is changes from time to time but it’s usually a charm and a short petition, no real depth or detail. The other is more in depth, rather than just tossing wealth magick at someone I investigate the source of the issue and work out how to solve this case specifically. More time intensive, but I prefer it. So I couldn’t really answer…until about a week and a half after that someone contacted me for some financial work. With her permission I’m going to talk about the process of the investigation and how I decided what to do. For people who are used to just tossing magick blindly at problems hopefully this will show a bit more about narrowing down and focusing the aims. Sometimes it is a very narrow and clear cut process, sometimes like this it is a bit more intuitive and open-ended.

To start off with I generally use a Mo divination. It is very clear in regards to what is causing a problem and how to solve it. So I cast the die and received Ah Tsa – The Bright Star. This lists the various types of wealth coming your way. I was actually very confused by this, the person is having financial problems and the first step of the divination essentially said “Don’t worry about it, money is on the way.”

I then turn the tarot, but usually I have a clear direction in mind thanks to the Mo, this time I didn’t. Using the Watcher Angel Tarot I began my spread. “What do I need to know to improve “Moni”’s finances over the next month?” XXI – The World – Metatron. Everything must be pulled together magick-wise, the answer will come from everything I’ve learnt. This wasn’t going to be easy, it’s a card about magick, but it’s about the completion, everything used along the way, whatever my method was to be it wasn’t going to be simple.

Understanding the cause is important in planning. If Moni was unemployed, just divorced, or recently robbed, each would require a different magickal path to help best. So what is the cause of the financial problems? IV – The Emperor – Azazel. The Emperor is a sign of the system, so I’m pretty sure the money problem is the government’s fault. Another problem would likely be giving others control and not being active enough.

How can the issues of the Emperor be overcome? Nine of Pentacles. Create, art projects, produce, accept the windfall that is coming and charge into it. I didn’t know what this meant.

After the first stage of divination was done I contacted Moni with the results and asked for more details. It felt very odd, I’ve never had to say “You want me to do some financial magick, but apparently money is already on the way.” Anyways, I got my clarification one of the main issues is the government recently recalculated her deceased husband’s pension and started sending her almost half what they used to. So it was a government issue, another smaller part of it, was Moni runs a hobby jewellery business on the weekends and in fighting with the government over the benefits she’s been too stressed to keep it up, even though it wasn’t a major loss it started to add up. I asked since apparently money was on its way if she wanted my services still, she decided even if it looks like it is improving she’d like some help so we began looking at this as financial maintenance magick.

Continuing the divination: What can I do magickally? Two of Swords – Stalemate. This just gets better and better. I wasn’t sure what to think about this, tossed around a few ideas in my head and none clicked, so I turned to the book and read “Opposing forces are locked in balance, for the moment.” That clicked. Mercury is Retrograde and turning stationary tomorrow. That’s the “for the moment.”

What can I do after Mercury goes Direct? VIII – Strength – Turiel. Okay maybe there was a bit of bias using the Watcher Angel Tarot, but aside from the meaning of the card I felt it was pretty clear it was to be an Angelic working. Strength is always about a subtle power to me, coercion, and grace, so this is going to be a gentle working. Not a strong evocation, but something gentle. I’ve sent Moni an Angelic Seal to use and she is to offer it water, bread, and a tealight candle each day along with a two sentence prayer. I’m doing the same thing on my end, except the Angel is receiving an eight-fold offering (a Buddhist practice) each day with a longer prayer and petition and a specially crafted honey jar filled with the usual things and a few offering ingredients specific to this angel. This will be done until at least January first, when Mercury it out of its shadow. Moni can continue it after that point, but until then is the only obligation on our part.

While checking the astrology of the situation I realized Jupiter is also Retrograde (people only complain about Mercury) and while not horribly transiting her chart, it could be better, but it’s almost over. So I asked what I could do once Jupiter goes Direct? King of Wands. This is a card about passion and strength, the ability to forge ahead, to pick a goal and trample over anything to get it. Don’t be deceived by how the King is lounging, he only looks so relaxed because he is so confident. King of Wands is also Fire of Fire. So lots of Fire and trampling obstacles, to me it was a pretty clear choice. Once Jupiter is Direct I’ll perform a Riwo sangchö (ri bo bsang mchod), a type of smoke and fire offering. Along with the traditional ingredients in the offering I’ll include several with Jovial attributes. This offering is accompanied by a ritual, in this case the offering will be dedicated primarily to Jovial forces, to help pick them up in Moni’s life as Jupiter comes out of Retrograde, to feed and prime these attributes, as well as to clear obstacles from Moni’s path. Also a request that Jupiter keep the path open, and an evocation to a Jovial spirit with the aim that Moni continues to get her benefits and the government doesn’t try to cut out any more.

So Moni is getting a variety of services, like the World indicated. Some Ceremonial Magick, some Hoodoo, some Buddhist rituals. As her problem apparently is taking care of itself this became more of a financial magick tune-up, rather than a rescue, which is unusual, but not a bad idea. Some work on keeping what is functioning working well, as well as work to try to call in some new life to these matters.

Mayhaps from time to time I’ll post these type of reports, just to show a little bit of what can be done about narrowing down your magick. As this was a tune-up it didn’t get as precise as I often would, but I think serves as an example of the process of figuring out what is to be done.

Review: Money Magic – Frater U∴D∴

Money Magic: Mastering Prosperity in its True Element – Frater U∴D∴
Llewellyn. 2011. 221pp. 9780738721279.

Frater U∴D∴ is back with a new book, this time tackling the sticky issue of money magick. It is an odd beast, but while most non-occultists (and a lot of occultists) think of magick in a financial arena there is very little actually devoted to money magick, especially in a practical and overt sense. Enter Frater U∴D∴’s Money Magic. When I’m feeling cynical I say that so few occultists and authors focus on money magick as unlike a lot of magick you can’t get around the hard nature of money. I’m in good company it seems. “[M]oney magic is utterly objectified: either you achieve what you’re conducting a spell for … or you don’t. Thus, there is little room left for fond delusions and facile cop-outs.” (xi)

Right from the beginning he is pulling no punches, money magick, it will work or not work, no dancing around it. The book starts with U∴D∴ making a case for what element money is, and while the answer is that we can’t really simplify anything down too much he makes a very compelling argument for money being Air as opposed to the more traditional Earth. Money isn’t some dead and static component in our lives or society, but it is a living, dynamic being which is better represented by Air than Earth. I actually used Water as the element of money for most of the same reasons U∴D∴ suggests.

A lot of the book is focused not on what most people would consider money magick, but more internal work. Why? Because we are filled with “culturally conditioned psychological blockages that have evolved over the centuries to actually prevent us from making [money magic] work.” (xii) We’re programmed with views on wealth and money that hinder us far more than they help us, and unless we can tackle them we will work for these programmed systems rather than our own benefit. I was very glad to see this current throughout the book, as a frank discussion on why we fail and a practical system to dig us out of our conditioned states is really needed.

The book contains some of the basic material that it seems every book from a big publisher must have these days: ritual creation 101, LBRP, planetary and elemental associations, and the like. Even though the majority of the magick in the book is freeform (as one would expect with Frater U∴D∴) many examples are given in the Hermetic frame work, to help us ceremonialists get our heads around his ideas.

Magick-wise he covers the creation of good luck charms (and their purpose isn’t what you think), deconditioning notions of self-worth and how money flows in our society, sigil magick, and use of planetary forces, specifically how Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn all work together to increase or constrain out finances.

The book is written in Frater U∴D∴’s usual easy to follow and straightforward style. Examples, ideas, and exercises and woven into the book in a way that facilitates understanding of the material, requiring no backtracking unless that’s what the reader wants. Practical magick in concise writing and intelligently tackled. This book will get you thinking about money magick in a new way, and I would highly recommend it, even to people who currently don’t need help in that area, just to get your thinking in a new way.

Planetary Balancing Ritual Set

Our body/mind/spirit is maintained by a delicate and unique balance of forces; too little is just as bad as too much, and one imbalance leads to another. While this is a philosophy I gleaned from the notion of lüng (rlung) in Tibetan Buddhism I find it applies to other forces in our lives.

This philosophy bleeds a lot into my magickal work, which led me to “create” a ritual of Planetary Balancing, which is really just a sequence of existing planetary rituals for a specific end. I just sent this over to a friend who needed it and decided I’d post about it here. Our psyche and our lives are composed of a balancing act of planetary forces, we might not be aware of it all the time, but it’s always at play. The problem is –like the lüng in Tibetan Buddhism– these forces can become unbalanced, too much Saturn, not enough Venus, and this spirals your internal and external world out of control. It may start with one force, but it spreads, too little of one force leaves an “energy surplus” that has to then go elsewhere, then you continue trying to compensate for having too much or too little in certain areas and it just gets worse. It seems everything starts going wrong; your desires/impulses seem off, your focus is wrong, and the world around you just doesn’t want to cooperate, it has the same appearance as bad luck or a curse in many cases. This ritual is relatively easy to perform requiring time and a willingness to wake up early more than anything. It’s nothing star-shattering, but it’s useful.

Now I suppose if you were focused and astute you could simply work on the specific problem force, but I find most of the time if it is getting bad it is best to start fresh. Sometimes when your diet is out of whack and your body isn’t reacting well and it can be tricky to get your diet and body back to normal while your body is still struggling with whatever is wrong. What do you do? You fast, you detox. Eliminate everything, and slowly reintroduce it back into your life. This is the basic idea behind my Planetary Balancing. In regards to the process of the various rituals of the pentagrams and hexagrams I won’t give instructions on them, if you don’t know them, they’re everywhere online and in books.

I personally start this ritual on Saturday. Any day of the week would work, but I find the order of Saturn – Sun – Moon very effective to get things moving, this is related to my personal symbol set of the layers of Self. Dawn brings about the same planetary hour as the force of the day, in this case Day of Saturn, Hour of Saturn. At dawn perform the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram and then the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Hexagram for the force of the day. The LBRP helps clear you out internally while the LBRH clears out the force of Saturn (in this case) in your life. The idea is to remove your internal mental/magickal detritus and the planetary detritus from you and your sphere/life. You’re flushing yourself and your world of these forces that may be unbalanced. Repeat this process for the entire week, obviously changing the planetary attribute with the day.

On the following Saturday (or whatever date you started on) wake up well before dawn and perform, in the same order as the week, all seven LBRP/LBRH. I haven’t tested this part to see if it is strictly necessary (which is unlike me I admit), but logistically to me it makes sense. Over the course of the week even though you’ve banished a force parts of it can begin to flow into your life again (nature abhors a vacuum), and the balance/compensation issues appear again. So I feel it is wise to give yourself and your sphere one final banishing of all the planetary forces.

Once dawn has arrived perform the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram followed by the appropriate Lesser Invoking Ritual of the Hexagram. I tested this and feel this is a better combination than two invoking rituals; the focus should be on invoking and reuniting with the planetary forces so the only invocation should be regarding these attributes. Again the LBRP clears out your internal detritus and establishes a baseline, a blank slate, or a vacuum even. Then you invoke the appropriate planetary force and since you are blank there is nothing to interfere with it flowing into you properly, nothing to disturb it or set it out of balance. Repeat this process for the entire week, again obviously changing the planetary attribute with the day.

On the following Saturday (or whenever) wake up for dawn and perform all seven LBRP/LIRH. Same as before, haven’t tried the ritual without it, but it makes logical sense to me. A week, in my experience, isn’t enough to totally unbalance a force, so your Saturn won’t be off-kilter by Sunday, but it is enough that things can warp a little and a little warp down the line can lead to a bigger instability. I think it’s helpful to give the planetary forces one last boost to balance them all out.

So over the course of two weeks you zero-out the planetary influences and slowly reintroduce them into your life, bringing them into balance. Now I’m sure you could achieve all this in less than two weeks, so why do I do it this way? For me at least, it is intense. I can’t say why it’s not like this when I do either LBRP-LBRH or LBRP-LIRH for other purposes, but this hits my life hard. Counter-intuitively the days I banish a planetary force are filled with those influences in positive active ways. I think it is as though my life is “using up” that last little bit of planetary fuel to clear it out. On the other hand the days I invoke a planetary force are filled with all sorts of little annoying mishaps related to the influences, like a series of retrogrades, even though the Sun and Moon don’t have retrogrades. It is as though the forces are kind of “clunky” when restarting from scratch. So you could try shortening it, but I find two weeks is a good processing period and spreads out the highs and lows that accompany this for me.

Flush out all the imbalanced forces introduce them back without the imbalance and instability and your mind and your life tend to reorganize. Personally I don’t do this often, maybe once a year, twice at absolute most, when I feel things are going wrong and there is no reason I can find for it. I perform this and by the end my life is back on track.

Retrojective Divination: Learning Systems though Hindsight

Recently I was helping two people with learning a divinatory system; two different systems, and two different circumstances and yet my advice was the same in both cases. If you’re having trouble learning the system, with making the symbols and process coalesce stop looking forward.

This seems counterintuitive to some people as divination is mainly used to look forward, why stop? The future is the vast unknown, so when you don’t understand a system and you’re looking forward it’s like looking at meteorological data for tomorrow. You don’t understand how all the data comes together to make a coherent picture and you’re stuck trying to project meaning forward into the unknown. In the same way you’re not sure how that Queen of Pentacles under a reversed Ten of Wands means anything for the coming day. Also, some people believe that the future is mutable, so the cards may be right in the present but the future can change and you’re looking for a symbol/meaning that may no longer arise.

Looking backwards you don’t have this problem. You can see all the data, you can see the result, the event won’t change and from there you can start to unravel a meaning. In one case someone was asking about using geomancy, as there are different systems for generating Daughters and Nieces, and how to lay them on a chart. The other case was just someone having trouble learning how to relate abstract tarot meanings to their life. In both cases I said to toss their gaze backwards and use that. If you’re not sure which of the methods of generations is accurate or more accurate, pick a big event in your life and divine backward. If one set says things are happy and fast moving, and the other says things are painful has an overtone of loss, well if you’re looking at your Grandfather’s death, assuming you liked him, you know which is accurate. Same with tarot, if you can’t see how to draw meanings from the cards pick an event you know and that is important to you and divine it like you would the future and then knowing how things were, you can see the relation. Eventually this will help you look forward.

I call this retrojective divination. To me calling it retroactive would be about looking back for meaning, using divination for the same purpose as usual, just backwards. Retrojective though is a term I gleaned from my history professor, it refers specifically (in historical study at least) to act of interjecting meaning into the past from the present. That I feel is more the point. You’re not divining to find the deeper meaning of why your cat ran away when you were nine; you’re divining to see how your system displays the events of your cat running away so you understand the system. So turn your cards, your transits, your holes in the ground, whatever backward, and look to the past. The past isn’t going anywhere and you know it so you can study it to your heart’s content, the future you have to wait for and create. Find information in your past, learn to interpret the future. Simple.

Tarot Information As An Action Plan

Knowledge may be power, but that’s a simplification of matters. There is a lot of knowledge that is useless to most people, and there is a lot of knowledge that is useless on its own. Knowing that the mayor slept with underage sex workers isn’t power unless you know how to use that knowledge. Basic geometry and carpentry can be useless on their own unless you know how to apply that knowledge to make tables, chairs, buildings and more. So while knowledge may be power it, it is more the application of knowledge that is power.

This of course brings us to the tarot. A good tarot reading is full of knowledge but the trouble is to most people the reading is useless, informative, but useless. This is a problem that affects magickians and reading recipients alike. A reading provides them with the information they ask for, but they have no idea how to apply this information.
This is another one of those things in magick that I feel should be so obvious that it doesn’t need to be said, and yet when I look around I see the same mistake being made repeatedly. I used to make this mistake all the time, I still do occasionally. When rereading my magickal diaries I’m struck by how often my readings were accurate, and moreso how often I failed to do anything about it. The problem, if we want to go so far as to call it such, is that tarot readings are by their nature abstract, and even when they’re specific, there is a level of abstraction. People don’t know how to take the abstract and make it practical. The tarot gives ideas and advice, not action.

The cards may let you know that to succeed at work you have to stop reacting to your boss and keep the work place peaceful. Good idea, but it isn’t an action. The problem with ideas and abstractions is they aren’t remembered for long and make very poor guides. We have to turn this abstraction into something doable and memorable.

One piece of advice I got from a friend and mentor years ago, which I’ve adapted, is making plans from a reading. I always make two plans with any reading; one that can and will be started in the first 48 hours after the reading, and another that can be implemented over the following week. The first 48 hours after a reading are crucial, really the first 24 but some people find 24 too stressful to work with. The longer you wait to act, the less likely you are to act; that’s the major problem. The second issue is if you believe that the future is mutable then within the first few days after a reading then things can change, so in order to make the most of your reading you have to implement it as soon as possible.

The goals, especially the 48 hour goal, do not have to be anything large, they don’t have to solve the problem, and rarely will, but the point is to create a concrete action to get you started working with the problem. Say you need to stop reacting to your boss, think quick and small. Print a sign to put on your monitor or keyboard reminding you that after you read an email from the boss that bothers you, do something else for ten minutes, and then respond. This just gives you a little cool down time. Boom -a simple way of starting to handle the issue, and something small that gets you thinking right away about how to use your reading. You’re more likely to think of other ways to handle the issue if you’ve already having something small set into motion. The key is to do something. Other times my actions have been as simple as just writing out a pro/con list regarding the issue cause it hasn’t been thought through, anything that gets me to begin working on the issue.

So many people get readings and fail to use the information, they think just knowing what will help or hinder them will be enough. They think that in the heat of the moment they’ll suddenly remember what they should or shouldn’t do. They don’t and things don’t improve and the next reading just says more of the same, if not worse. It surprises some of my clients when after the reading I work with them to make a plan of action, some are confused, some are appreciative, and some are almost indignant that I assume they don’t know what to do with the reading. Yet pretty much all of my return clients who have seen other tarot consultants mention how helpful my reading was, if only because I gave them an avenue to make the abstract ideas of a reading into a practical plan of action.

When I see people involved with tarot reading, especially magickians, who are constantly doing readings and adding more cards, all I can think is that for all the information they’re turning up, they aren’t bothering to learn how to use it. If you’re doing large readings, constantly adding more cards, and doing lots of tarot spreads chances are you’re not really in need of all of that information, you’re just failing to put the information you have into action. Knowledge is knowledge, applied knowledge is power.

The key to turning the knowledge of a tarot reading into power, isn’t assuming that you’ll remember it, or know how to use it when the time comes; instead it is about taking the time during the reading to create a real plan of action, devising something you can do in the next day or two that begins to work on the issues of the reading. Without the plan and details you’re left with an abstract. Turn a reading into a roadmap and you’re far more likely to get the outcome you want.

Of course another part of the equation is knowing how to ask good questions, but that’s a tale for another time.

Review: Low Magick – Lon Milo DuQuette

Low Magick: It’s All In Your Head… You Just Have No Idea How Big Your Head Is – Lon Milo DuQuette
Llewellyn. 2010. 206pp. 9780738719245.

“Stories are magick.” (1) With that simple idea Lon Milo DuQuette begins to draw the reader into another wacky, hilarious, and insightful journey of magick and life. I will be frank right off the bat and discuss my problems with this text. I spend a lot of time on public transit reading and this memoir had people on the bus eyeing me like I was a bit crazy. Lon is quite simply a funny guy and at many points in his stories I found myself laughing- sometimes at him, sometimes with him, sometimes because a crazy idea seemed too much like me. Unfortunately when someone suddenly breaks out laughing (especially if that laugh has a tinge of mad scientist to it) people in public don’t know what to do. If you don’t mind odd looks you can read this in public, otherwise read it at home.

The humour is a great drive in the book it helps keep the stories from being too serious and not being a dry biography. Sometimes the asides and comments are just so random and funny that I couldn’t help but laugh such as the mention of nachos and guacamole as “the fast-food favorite of California magicians whose wives are out of town.” (73) That line was right in the centre of a fascinating story of a ritual spanning a few days involving Lon, the Tarot of Ceremonial Magick, and the various spirits tied to the deck.

Now this memoir isn’t just a stroll down memory lane, there is “a great deal of theory and technical information within my nonchronological narratives.” (2) So there are stories, there are laughs, and there is actual information. What I enjoyed what not so much how Lon did certain rituals but his discussion of why he did certain rituals and why he did them certain ways. When discussing a curse on a friend, rather than just using some standard ritual to undo it, or to just say what he did, Lon leads you into his head (and it is all in his head) to show why he decided to use A Midsummer Night’s Dream as the foundation to remove the curse.

Lon goes back and forth from discussing magick in a very traditional ceremonial sense and something more free form. The stories flow from Goetic demons to invoking Ganesha to the tune of “Pop Goes the Weasel,” from the Hermetic Rose Cross to gorging on quiche for astral adventures. The book covers so much in a great tone. On one hand Lon is confident about his experience and information but knows where his limitations are, and yet the book never has the tone of a magician who thinks too highly of himself. The book discusses success and failure, brilliant ideas and not-so-clever ones.

The title of the memoir is from an early work and it is a statement that I’ve seen people toss around both for and against DuQuette on various email lists and message boards. In this text he goes into more detail about it. “This is not to say, however, that I believe magick is purely psychological. What I am saying is there is more we don’t understand about the human mind than we do understand.” (133) In true DuQuette fairness he discusses this just before describing two stories where the magick and the results seem so removed from him that understanding it as being in his head is quite a challenge, even to him. Whether you agree or disagree with the idea, Lon does show through his experiences where his logic for this idea comes from. A strength of Lon’s writing is his ability to lead you into his understanding, so even if you disagree him you can understand why he thinks a certain way.

This is a hilarious book, filled with great insight into the world of magick, and into the head of one wise and wacky wizard.