Thursday, July 31, 2008

Joseph the Visionary

By request, here is the Prayer of Joseph the Visionary that I mentioned in the "rappin with Gabe" post. Its from the Greek Orthodox tradition. I sometimes sprinkle some hyssop water on myself when saying it.

Cleanse my hidden mind with the hyssop of your grace
For I draw near to the holy of holies of your mysteries
Wash me from all my understanding of the flesh
and may an understanding of the spirit be mingled with my soul
Cause to reside in me a faith that percieves your mysteries,
so that I may percieve you as you are, and not as I am.
Create in me eyes that I may see with your eyes,
what I cannot see with my own
My every bodily image be wiped from my minds eye
and may you alone be recognised before the eye of the mind.
Amen.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Why "Sorcery"

Someone on one of the lists I subscribe to asked me an interesting question today:

"You call yourself a socerer How do you define Sorcery versus other forms of magick?"
I really use the term sorcerer for two reasons:

1. It has the connotation of practical magick. While I do use magick
for personal development, spiritual fulfillment, and illumination; I
also use it to make changes in real world events and effect real
peoples minds. Thaumaturgic action is the outward expression of
Theurgic Illumination.

2. It's an underused term that doesnt have a mess of modern baggage
heaped upon it. I have over 20 years been involved in a lot of
different aspects of magick. I started studying GD influenced magick
along side of Rootworking while I was still in High School. There are
some that think of me only as a Ceremonial Magician. Some who even know
me primarily as a Thelemite. Some know me a Witch while others know me
primarily as Rootworker. Many know me only as a Tantrik Buddhist and
nothing else.

The problem is that some of these terms have unwanted connections, and
some imply that you are NOT something else. For instance if someone
describes me as a Ceremonial Magician, for many that indicated I am NOT
a Witch or Rootworker. Some ceremonial magicians have freaked out when
they hear that I do practical magick for other people, feeling that
magick is only about spiritual development and inner change. When they
find out that I do it for money thier heads implode. However, if I get
described as a rootworker than its assumed I dont practice Ceremonial
Magick, which is also clearly not true. If I get described as a witch,
I have to explain that I am not wiccan.

As someone who was in the OTO for years, founded a chapter of that
body, and still lecture regularly at the Philadlphia Lodge, some people
introduce me as a Thelemite. While it is true in the broadest sense (ie
in the Collona and Rabelaisian sense), most people hear that and think
I am a Crowley head, which clearly I am not.

My views on magick over all are most shaped by Tibetan Magical systems,
which incorporate internal yogas, very advanced ceremonial magick
technique, and rootwork style spell work seamlessly in one package.
They spent as much energy on magick in Tibet, as we have on science and
technology for the last 1200 years. When I turned my attention back to
western methods, every system seemed lacking when taken alone, so I
need to incorporate methods to have all the bases covered.

I like not to be bound by loaded terms and the crap that has been laid
upon them recently. Magician, Witch, Rootworker, Yogi, etc all have
baggage that I try to avoid. I used to use the term "Cunning Man" but
that has been so twisted and misused by certain quarters of the
Traditional Witchcraft community that I don't use it anymore either.

As I try to put my views and methods of practical magick into a
comprehensable teaching I decided on the term Sorcery because, other
than Moloch, nobody is using it these days.

In the future I plan on shifting much of my spiritual work to the role of Gnostic Christian Priest. Clearly that too will have a lot of baggage and many people will make assumptions about things that I am NOT, including a Sorcerer. I will have to jump off that bridge when I come to it.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Rappin with Gabe


A few months ago I made a holy table for talking to the arcangels according to the method used by Frater R.O. in his excellenet primer A Modern Grimoire of Angel Magick, but I never got around to using it.

So, since I have been meaning to cycle through the seven angels and ask for certain "attunements", last night I took a solomonic bath, threw on the alb, and broke out the table, wand, and crystal.

Now I have used Trithemius's basic method before, but Frater R.O. does it with no circle, using a more intricate holy table instead. I meant to do it with no circle. But somehow or another I just ended up doing my typical circle casting for Angelic work without even noticing I was doing it till I was halfway through. This basically consists of the Lords prayer in Latin, incorporating the Khabbalistic Cross movements into the Doxology (keeping it in latin instead of hebrew) and than using the circle opening from the 6th and 7th: "Consecro et benedicto istum circulum, etc etc" while tracing the circle on the ground with the wand.

I also added the prayer of St Joseph the Visionary, which I have found helps with removing the normal senses, so that the subtle ones can take over. Other than that I used R.O.'s instructions.

Wonderful results. The table is simple enough in design, but tuned in Gabriel very quickly.

I can't discuss the specifics of what the session was like, at least for now, but I did recieve signs this morning that what I asked for was granted.

If you are reading this, and looking for a way to get your feet wet with Evocation, but not go all crazy with extraneus crap, I highly recommend contacting Frater R.O. and asking nicely for his PDF.

Monday, July 28, 2008

EXCERPT FROM NEW BOOK

The following is a excerpt from the rough draft of the influencing section of my upcomming book "The Sorcerer's Secret, Strategies in Practical Magick". I thought it might be interesting to post here because in it, I take a small digression from the topic and talk about the nature of magickal correspondances and whether they exist in only the mind of the magician or whether they exist objectivly themselves. I hope you enjoy it.


DROPPING ANCHORS

Anchors are an NLP term for events that your mind associates with a specific feeling or idea. The most famous example of an anchor is probably Pavlov’s bell. Pavlov would ring a bell before feeding his dogs every day. Eventually he could get the dogs to salivate simply by ringing the bell with no food present. People experience anchors all the time. Songs that evoke the nostalgia of old lovers and smells that remind you of mom’s kitchen evoking a sense of home are examples of anchors. Your morning coffee signaling the brain that its time to wake up even before the caffeine hits your system is another.

The anchors I list above are all examples of anchors that are set over long periods of time. A skilled practitioner however can set and use anchors in the course of just one conversation. Returning again to the example of a car salesmen talking about the feeling of freedom and joy that came with owning a first car, while the salesman is doing this he can make a gesture like stroking his chin. If he does this a few times, later in the conversation he can stroke his chin and remind the client of this feeling of freedom and joy without ever mentioning the pitch. In courses on advanced techniques of public speaking they teach how to set anchors for the audience by saying different things at different point on the stage. Eventually, by moving to a particular spot on the stage, your audience will experience a certain response. This in itself IS magick, but its taught openly in corporate marketing, sales, and speaking seminars. Just because modern society has accepted it and uses it, doesn’t make it not part of magick anymore. Of course, real sorcerers will be able to amplify the effects using direct application of energy, which I will get to shortly.

In a sense, much of the gestures and correspondences of magick are anchors. If a ceremonial magician uses the color red, it probably evokes feelings of martial power because of its association with the planet mars. If a Tibetan magician sees the color red it is associated with the magick of enchanting and influencing people. If a Rootworker sees red it evokes the magick of sex. If a Haitian Vodousant sees red it evokes the Petro nation of Loa. Colors, gestures, directions, and words are all anchors that are used to call certain powers and feelings to mind.

Now, because one thing may have different associations in different systems of magick, it is tempting to think that the correspondences have no real meaning exists only in your own mind. This is a mistaken view. While it is true that the correspondences of color, direction and so on have to inherent and universal meaning, that doesn’t mean that they don’t have a firm meaning beyond just your own brain. They have a meaning within the current of magick that you are working, and as long as you are standing within that current, you should take heed of their meaning. For example, an old roommate of mine was once making a daily practice of a Jupiter Invoking Hexagram ritual that used the GD style of drawing the hexagram in a certain way to invoke certain planets. Instead of feeling the power of Jupiter flowing through him however, he spiraled into a depression and uncharacteristic sluggishness for weeks. One morning, while I was watching him do his daily practice I noted that he was making Saturn Invoking Hexagrams by mistake. Though he didn’t know the system well enough to know the difference, even subconsciously, the mistake caused Saturnian energies to be evoked. Despite his intent, despite his will, the technical mistake caused the wrong planetary energy to be invoked, and because he was not prepared to channel that energy, it got out of control. Clearly, the correspondence between the gesture and the planet existed beyond just his own mind.

In short, while the correspondences of a system may not have independent and universal existence, the current that they exist within does. If you evoke a being or power from one system by the protocols of another, if your ritual works at all, it may not take it kindly, If you choose to work with multiple currents, a perfectly natural thing to do our increasing small and multi-cultural world, you need to take this into account. That said, lets take a look at how to use all this effectively in conversation.

If we know how to channel different energies subtly, without all the show of the tools and robes that one might use in the temple, we can impregnate our anchors with magick. One way to do this is to use the pore breathing techniques from the first section of the book and fill your body with the essence of a pure element or planetary power, than channel it towards the gesture that you are using as an anchor. Not long ago I used this technique to calm down a family member that I knew would be upset when I had to share some bad news. I started the conversation by saying some flattering and calming things while placing my hand over my heart. Meanwhile I quickly accumulated elemental water energy into my heart. After I broke the news and could see this person starting to fly off the handle, I dropped the anchor by placing my hand over my heart again and letting the elemental water flow between us.

In the Hevajra Tantra, there are techniques for controlling other people by accumulating enchanting energy by seeing a silent mantra encircling the heart, than letting that energy flow out in hooked lights that enter the right nostril of the target, and flow out the left nostril back into your body. I have used this technique while using traditional mudras (hand gestures) from that Tantra as anchors. The effect on the target was immediate and amazing. They were repeating everything I said, and agreed to it all. I was tempted to end the conversation with “these are not the druids your looking for”, but figured that would probably blow it…

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Sibilla



I have always been "just ok" with card readings. I have dozens of Tarot Decks, and have been rotating between them for over 20 years. I am very good with spiritual issues, but have not impressed myself with predicting events and practical matters. I am good at scrying for future events. I am good at questioning spirits. I am even decent at Dowsing Rods. But cards, or any type of sortilege outside of Urim and Thummim readings, just dont give me the accuracy I have been looking for.

Until now.

A couple months ago, I picked up a Sibilla Deck at a yard sale in Ocean City. Almost immediately I began to give really exact readings that have for the most part all come to pass. A couple weeks ago when i was doing some speed readings at The Cauldon in Pt Pleasant, I was so hot that even Sandra, an old time Strega from Italy, asked for a reading. She never lets anyone read for her. Even her daughters.

For those that don't know, Sibilla decks, like the Minor Arcana of the Tarot, grew out playing cards. In the mid-1800's specialty decks with images on them started gaining popularity in France and Italy. Often a tiny image of the playing card would be in the corner of the deck. Very often there are only 36 cards in these decks as they use the Lenormand system of reading. My deck has all 52.

The most popular deck of this syle in the states has been the Gypsy Witch cards, which you see a lot during halloween as they have an orange and black design on the back. This deck is a broken Sibilla. It's symbolism has been deliberately tampered with to give bad readings, so that the reader can than offer to "lift the dark curse"... for a fee. There's nothing wrong with following up readings with offers of magickal help of course. Thats how it works in most traditional cultures, but the reading should be legitimate.

As long as you stay away from the Gypsy Witch deck, I can't think of a better tool than a Sibilla to give exceedingly practical readings.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

DuQuette comming around?

I have never met or conversed with DuQuette. He has my respect as a writer: he is clear and entertaining, and has an excellent way of explained even the most complex subjects. I respect him also as a magician. He clearly does the magick he writes about, and that alone is worthy of respect. I do however disagree with his views on the nature of spirits and the importance of materials. I always have.

I am reading his latest book “Enochian Vision Magick” and enjoying it immensely. He does however push his view quite strongly. Some quotes from the current work:

“The only real changes I can effect with magick are changes within myself”
“Its all in your head, you just have no idea how big your head is”
“If you can’t make the magick ring out of paper, you can’t make it out of gold”
“In the art of magick, the magician must behave (at least for the duration of the operation) that the spirits are independent intelligences and have objective existence in a dimension outside of his or her own mind.”


In this book he is joining in with the scads of magicians that are looking back past the GD/Crowley lens that has affected most magick for the last 100 years, and presenting the system as it was received by Dee and Kelly, ditching much of the material that they stuck onto it, and taking seriously the parts that Mathers and Crowley ignored. He does this, he assures us, because it will help get you psychologically inserted into the system, not because any of it is inherently important.

The thing is, that I don’t think even he believes this anymore. I think that because he is a good experimental magician, that he took a look at the material that Christeos Pir sent him, and the info contained in Petersons book and began to work with it. Work with it and find that it works better than the GD/Crowley stuff. I think, and I may be way off base here, that it disturbed him to find it so. He almost hints at this himself when he talks about challenging his own motto “Don’t try to duplicate the magick Dee and Kelley used to receive the system, just use the system they received!”

Throughout the book he seems distinctly uncomfortable when he has to advise the reader to dig a little deeper into the view that Dee and Kelley actually held about magick and religion. He seems VERY uncomfortable in advising people to pray. I think he is pushing his “mind-only” view very hard in this book because of it. God forbid that we accept that the angels actually advised the ring be made of gold for a reason. No, it must work just as well out of paper because that is the theory. Gold doesn’t have any special magickal properties at all. Nope, Nothing to see here..,

In my experience, if it works it works. If it doesnt it doesnt. Belief has surprisingly little to do with magick. Enochian works because its REAL, not because its easy to believe in. Recently someone asked Dr Kioni whether they could use a spell that required a Christian prayer even though he wasnt a believer. I loved his answer: "The name of Christ commands all the angels in heaven and earth. It doesnt matter whether you believe that or not. It just does..." Opere Ex Operato baby.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the book is awesome, and possibly the best I have ever read on the subject. I admit to not having picked up Enochiana for almost 8 years, but there was a time when I was quite involved with it. The name Inominandum was given to me by an angel during an Enochian scrying session. When I did work with it, the more I cut out a lot of the GD protocols like drawn pentagrams and such and just used the calls and other prayers, the better I did with it. I wish I had this book then and am tempted to set aside a year or so in the future to re-visit the system.

Its a great book. I am just amused at teh legths that DuQuette is going to in order to keep his psychological viewpoint.

I will be writing a review of the book for Behutet when I finish it, but just wanted to share these thoughts.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

What God Is

Since I blathered so much about God and divinity in the last post, I thought I might take a moment to articulate my current conception of deity. I have actually had to explain this quite a bit to my fellow Buddhist friends since I began the process to become ordained as an independent Catholic Priest, yet have no intention of renouncing Buddhism.

The problem is, there is no God in Buddhism. At least not in the “creator God” sense. Buddha himself remained silent when asked about ultimate divinity. Silence was his answer. However, because Samsara, the world of appearance, sprang up because of Ignorance, most Buddhists take this to mean an Atheistic spirituality. There are actually twelve stages of interdependent origination: Ignorance, Conditioning, Consciousness, Name and form, the Six Senses, Contact, Feeling, Craving, Grasping, Becoming, Rebirth, Aging and Death.

I am in total agreement about all the stages except the first one. I get the lack of independent existence, but I have always felt a direction and guiding force. The thing is, the chain works exactly the same if you put “creative impulse” as the first cause. When I had my first “experience” at the age of five, the one that sparked my lifelong obsession with magick and mysticism, I saw and understood this guiding awareness quite clearly as only a child can. In a way, it has taken me years of practice to know it as an adult, as well as I knew it as a child.

But you shouldn’t take my belief in God to mean belief in some entity outside the universe, or a micro-managing deity that controls the wheels of destiny. No, that’s not it at all.

God is consciousness. Consciousness pervades all space, time, and probability. The universe is “just right for life”, as physicist Paul Davies puts it in his book “Cosmic Jackpot”, because consciousness itself makes it so.

Consciousness in its final stages of the evolution of has to filter back to the very beginning of time so that it can insure its own evolution, so that it can reach its final stages, so that it can filter back and insure its own evolution…. Etc etc. Davies, who really helped me articulate some ideas I have had since I was five, but who would argue with my conclusions, calls this a quantum feedback loop.

If this all sounds a bit too “Doctor Who” for you, than think of it like this: God, is us, but not as we are now. As Meister Eckhart said: “The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God as if he stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge.” This truth is known by anyone that has crossed the Abyss for even a second. Or if you like, ascended to the 8th and 9th, as Hermes Trismegistus would have said.

It is the work of every sentient being to become liberated and head towards this goal. In the process of filtering backwards, God/Consiousness also impacts the creation of certain special individuals. Thus the Buddhas, Saviors, Avatars and so on throughout time. Some have greater impact than others.

As Athanasius put it: "God became man so that man might become a god." This being the Great Work.

Deus Caritas Est

So I was in a conversation yesterday with Xanthias and Brother H over this fascinating article by a Rabbi who feels that the Tetragrammatons (YHVH) secret pronunciation is that it was supposed to be pronounced backwards, which yields something that sounds like the Hebrew words for “He” and “She”.

The conversation spun on with further linguistic extrapolation by Xanthias who suggested that if we insert the fiery “Shin” into the name, how we get YeHaShuA, and read it backwards we get Hu-Shia which would be the Egyptian HU (logos) and SA/Sii (roughly corresponding to Sophia).

As we further contemplated the wonders of Divinity as union of opposites, Brother H observed the following:

“What's equally interesting are the folks who attempt to point out the unity of Good & Evil, Jesus and The Adversary. I..e. Church of the Final Process, dear old Mr. Manson and in recent years I've read about some South American minister with a congregation in the 100's of 1000's claiming to reconcile the two. I guess I shouldn't get started on the Yezidi (sp.?)”

Here, however, is where I must part ways with the concept. You can say that Divinity is a union of Male and Female principals and all that extends to. You can say that it’s a union of Chthonic and Ouranic principals and all that extends to as well. But not everything we call opposites needs to be in union.

Through study and mystical experience I have come to the understanding that Hatred and Evil are extensions of Ignorance. In my experience of divinity, God does not hate and God is not evil because God is not Ignorant. Similarly in Buddhist terms Goodness, Compassion, and Understanding are qualities of Buddhahood or enlightened mind. Evil, Hatred and Ignorance are qualities of unenlightened mind. One does not unite Ignorance with Knowledge to attain Gnosis, so similarly one does not unite Good and Evil, or Love and Hatred. Buddhas and Gods have no Evil in them.

Pope Benedict got it right in his very first encyclical: Deus Caritas Est. God Is Love

I wont argue that the Process, Charles Manson, and Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda all look to blend Good and Evil, but that’s not exactly the company I want keep, theologically or otherwise. The Yezidi of have been much misunderstood because of early and shoddy research, and if you read anything more recent than Idres Shah about them you know that Melek Taus is a fully redeemed angel. No blending of Good and Evil.

Of course if you are talking “The Devil”, especially as Lucifer rather than Satan, there is a really good argument against painting him as Evil. I have come to know Lucifer well, and take this view. You can see Lucifer and Christ as representing paths of Indulgence and Renunciation that perhaps lead to the same Gnosis. Similar to Tantra and Sutra in Buddhism.

Anyway, that’s my view. It’s important in magick, especially high magick, mysticism, and esoteric religion, not to take metaphors to far or to literally, and I thought this was a good example.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Talking with the Nagas.




Yesterday my wife and I spent a good part of the day at Island Beach state park. As we were lounging on the beach, we saw storm clouds rolling in so T, asked me if I could keep the clouds away. Now, I have used magick to directly influence the weather before, but with mixed results. I have stopped storms by trapping them in magickal chalices, and breathed pure elemental energy into the sky to change a storms course or burn it up or what have you. I am not all that fond it though. I always get a feeling that I am making things worse somewhere else. So instead I decided to talk to the nagas.

For those that don’t know, Nagas are serpentine beings that are often propitiated (or exorcised) in Indian and Tibetan magick. They influence various things like the flow of wealth and weather. They can be very touchy, but if you know how to make allies with them they are powerful friends. A few years ago, when the Ngakpa Zhonnu Khang went camping for a week with Lama Vajranatha we did quite a lot of work with the Nagas. We were stopping and starting the rain according to our teaching schedule almost exactly, and I never got the feeling that we were making things better or worse anywhere else.

So, I decided to talk to the Nagas, who told me that the beach was going to be rained on, and I was too late to do anything about that, however they would steer the main storm clear of my particular stretch of beach. I told T and we stayed through a quick sprinkle, than the sun came out. About an hour later, we started to hear thunder and saw another storm approaching. She asked me if they were still saying the same thing, and they insisted that we were clear. When we saw lightening, my wife decided that the Nagas must be wrong and we packed it into the car. However, the Nagas were not wrong. It rained holy hell and flooded the road about a quarter of a mile from where we were, but it didn’t do anything but spit drizzle near us for about 10 minutres.

Why am I relating this? Because the lesson here is that there are many ways to accomplish the same thing, some of which are smarter than others. In the old days I would have used some direct application of power, but here I just had to ask nicely.

Also, when the Nagas tell you something, believe them. You might get another hour of beach time because of it.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Welcome to Strategic Sorcery

Welcome to Strategic Sorcery. My name is Jason Miller, or if you like, Inominandum. It’s certainly easier to Google me under the latter than the former. If you do Google me, you will find little links relating to me all over the place. I have a Live Journal, My Space, Facebook, and even an old outdated Angelfire called Tantrickery. So why have another web-presence? If I already have an LJ, why another blog?

This site is dedicated solely to magick, both illuminative and practical. You will find rituals, essays, comments, links, and quotes, as well as info on upcoming appearances and classes by yours truly. Thus the first part of the blog’s subtitle: Inominandum’s Musings on Magick.

The second part of the subtitle, The Emergence of a New Arcana, takes a bit more explaining. In the past I have always written about bits and pieces of magick from here and there. I would indicate things I have found useful or interesting, share stories of experiments, and even present a couple rituals of my own creation; but I never tried to present a cohesive system of my own. In fact, I have purposely avoided creating a tradition of my own because I tend to think that the dividing up of magick into “this” tradition and “that” tradition is unnecessary and unhelpful. The structures that can help get us started at the beginning can end up limiting us severely further on if we hold to them to dear. “There are to many traditions as it is” I thought. I didn’t want to add to the confusion.

Yet as I sit here at my desk writing my second book, The Sorcerers Secret, Strategies in Practical Magick, I find that I am putting together a cohesive system. Even when I drive, or sleep, I find myself channeling information from my HGA, linking the system together. There is a view and work forming in my mindstream that I think is unique enough to warrant being put to paper. There is already more to this system than I have room for in the book, so I will be starting on another one almost immediately after this one is written. I intend this blog to be a tool to help me sort some of this out as it comes.

Whatever emerges though, don’t call it a tradition. It’s just a teaching. Just another way of doing things that will be attractive to some and of no interest to others. It will be a record of what has worked well for me. In time it will grow with new things that work well for others.