I Do Not Believe In Spirits, Yet It Would Seem They Believe In Me

So, you’re a Muggle and you want to become a wizard wielding powerful magics. In that case, I recommend you start your magical career by performing a simple ritual offering to the spirits at least once a week. What is that you say? You don’t believe in spirits?  It’s quite o.k. that you don’t believe in spirits, because the spirits probably believe in you. How do I know this? I know this because I too do not believe in spirits, but it would seem that they do indeed believe in me. Let me tell you my story (of course all names have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty).

Once upon a time there lived a wealthy ogre who purchased a great deal of land within the town of Sod. Being industrious, this ogre set about petitioning the town’s council to grant him permission to build an ogre fortress on his newly acquired property. Despite opposition by the town folk, the ogre secured all of the permissions necessary to build his fortress and began to mark off the territory for construction. Now it just so happened that there lived adjacent to the ogre’s property a peasant by the name of Mift. Peasant Mift knew that if the ogre built his fortress next to his land that not only would he have to endure an increase in ogre traffic but that his property would lose some of its value (who wants to live next to an ogre fortress?). Concerned over the matter, Peasant Mift pondered as to what he should do. Now Peasant Mift had been making weekly offerings to the local spirits for some time prior to all of this. He was not entirely comfortable doing this since he did not believe in spirits, but he nevertheless gave weekly offerings to the spirits of the land because some roaming sorcerers had told him that miraculous things would begin to occur if he did so. Thinking about his plight, Peasant Mift decided to inform the local spirits about the ogre’s intentions and asked them to intervene. It was their land too after all.  Later, after some months passed and he became busied with his normal routine, Peasant Mift forgot all about his conversation with the spirits. Then one day, quite unexpectedly, Peasant Mift’s wife came to him and informed him that the ogre was no longer interested in building his fortress and that he would be putting the land up for sale. Upon hearing the news, Peasant Mift immediately recalled what he had asked of the spirits and began to laugh. He laughed because he did not believe in spirits, yet the spirits obviously believed in him.

Peas In A Pod Honey Jar Spell (aka, A Magical Clusterfuck Spell For Ailing Families)

In a blog post over at Strategic Sorcery Jason Miller describes a house cleansing working he undertook and articulates that the whole operation, for those coming from either a Christian or Buddhist background, would appear to be a clusterfuck (original post here). While I respect Jason and his work, you should know that you will never get a similitude of a clusterfuck here.  Here, you will get the real thing! While I have no qualms performing clusterfuck magick, I do my damndest to avoid allowing my magick to slip into being a chicken-goat-fuck.* Now, for those of you who know not the dreaded “chicken-goat-fuck,” this cursed event has been defined as:

A chicken goat fuck is a situation so hopelessly chaotic that you can only sit back and laugh (or weep, depending on your sensibilities). It's identical to a clusterfuck except in terms of scale; a chicken goat fuck is what you've got when a clusterfuck goes bad.(CGF source)

So, I take pride in my magical clusterfucks. While indeed clusterfucks, they are (I hope) clusterfucks with style and efficacy.

For those of you who are into clusterfuck magick or who feel that they can learn something from clusterfuck magick, I will present a recently created magickal clusterfuck spell below. Before doing so, however, I must first set the stage for my operation by talking briefly about families. Sometimes, family members do not get along. Sometimes, they do not get along even when love is shared between them. Sometimes, the bad days can outnumber the good and chip away at the love that remains. I know this because that family is my family. For whatever reason, my family has entered into the “dark night of the soul.” In fact, we have been there for some time. While there is recognition of this fact among all members of my family, we have been unsuccessful in remedying the situation. So, being the magician that I hope one day to be, I thought our situation calls for some magical sweetening. To sweeten our relationships with one another I chose to create a spell based upon an adaptation of a Hoodoo honey jar spell. While honey jar spells are traditionally utilized to bring forth a lover, my adaptation is designed to foster the enhancement of loving-kindness between members of my family. So, without delay here is how I perform a Peas In A Pod Honey Jar Spell (aka, A Magical Clusterfuck Spell For Ailing Families).

Essential Material:

Glass jar with lid

Enough honey to fill jar

uncooked peas (one for each family member…yourself included)

toothpicks

Green thread

Green permanent marker or paint

Permanent markers or paints the color of which corresponds to the astrological color of each family member.

A sweet/ flowery smelling tealight candle

Non-essential/optional material:

These items can be anything you choose that will enhance your working and give the spell some added oomph.

Spell Preparation:

Pea Preparation:

Take one uncooked pea for each family member and pierce it with a toothpick and set somewhere to dry.

Once the peas are dry, remove the toothpicks and place a pea under each family member’s mattress so that it is underneath each as they sleep (don’t forget yourself). By doing this the peas will become “associated” with each family member. I would suggest locating the peas near the corners of the beds as the dried peas sometimes crush if directly slept on. After a week’s time retrieve the peas and string them together with green thread.

Jar Preparation:

On the lid of a glass jar paint/draw the seal of Venus in green.

Paint or draw a green ring around the jar near the center.

After the green paint dries, paint/draw a symbol/sigil to represent each family member (in a color that corresponds to the astrological color of each) along the green line. Let dry.

Putting It Together:

Once the peas and jar are ready, fill the jar with honey and submerge the “necklace” of peas into the honey. Add anything else that will give strength to the working and seal the jar with its lid.

Spell Activation:

On Friday during a Venus hour, light a sweet/flowery smelling tealight candle on top of the jar and take some time to visualize your desired goal (i.e., you and your family members acting in a loving and kind manner toward one another).  At the end of the Venus hour, blow out the candle and preserve the jar in a safe place. Repeat the spell activation whenever needed.

*I wish to thank Robert Hager, author of Doing Magick, for introducing me to this interesting term.

A True Ghost Story?

Pre-show

It is often difficult to write an interesting and informative blog post on a topic that one knows well. It is often even harder to produce a quality post when the subject that one is writing about is a new topic of interest. I should know, because I am just a baby in the field of magic and the occult. While I have for many years skimmed the surface of magical literature and practices, I had not set upon studying the occult to any great degree until about two years ago. Because I am a novice, I often find myself creating posts for my blog that contain a great deal of personal experience rather than strict information. Personally, I only rarely find another person’s blogged experiences to be of value to me. It happens, but not very often. I am indeed an information kind of guy in the material I prefer. As such, I have recently been trying to steer myself away from reporting personal experiences and concentrating on delivering more informative type posts. I don’t think I have succeeded in the transformation of my blog quite yet, but it is the direction I want to take. That being said, magic is not just information. Magic is both information and experience. Without the experience one can only hope to be an armchair magician at best and a scholar at worst (just a little friendly stab at the academic community). So, because experience is important and because I want to record the event for posterity, I will once again succumb to relaying for you an experience I had recently.

The Main Event

A few nights back as I was walking past our spare bedroom I saw someone standing in the room near the laundry baskets that were resting on the floor. I just assumed it was my daughter putting away her clean clothes (her bedroom is accessed by going through the spare bedroom). When I got downstairs, I found my daughter quite busy at the computer. It then occurred to me that it must have been my wife upstairs next to the laundry baskets and I went into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. With coffee in had I proceeded into the living room where I found my wife engrossed with assembling a puzzle.  At first I thought nothing of it. Then, I felt a strange eeriness overcome me. I asked my wife if she had recently been upstairs. I think you can now guess her reply. No, she had not been upstairs.

After Show

So, what had I experienced? I really don’t know but some ideas come to mind.

1) I mistakenly thought I saw something and falsely attributed it to being my daughter and wife.
2) I saw something tangible (i.e., some physical thing in the room) and falsely attributed it to being my daughter and wife.
3) I saw something paranormal (ghost, spirit … whatever) and falsely attributed it to being my daughter and wife.

Needless to say, I went back to where I “saw” the “person” and tried to figure out what physical thing in the room I could have mistaken for my daughter (#2 above). There was a guitar in its case propped up at the side of the bed, but it I don’t think it was visible from the angle I glanced into the room. Besides, the guitar was located far left of the spot I saw the “person”.  I find it interesting that I found myself trying to rationalize the event away. I mean, it really must have been a glimpse of the guitar that I saw…right? I found the ease at which I rationalized the event away very striking, since encountering “apparitions” is just the sort of thing occultists claim happen when you engage in magic. Now, I have for the last several months been giving a weekly offering to various spirits and ancestors as advocated by Brother Moloch, et al. I guess I should not rule out nor be surprised by the possibility that some “spirit” has decided to call upon me.

Archangel Michael's Golden Coin

Last week I finally made a much overdue trip to visit my parents. It takes about twenty-four hours to reach my parents door by car. So, being that I have not seen them in ten years (I know, I know, bad me), I wanted to spend as much time as possible visiting rather than driving and chose to fly rather than drive. Did I ever mention that I HATE flying? I know that statistics suggest that I would be much more likely to die in a car accident on my way to my parent’s house than in a plane, but my mind tells me that I have at least a chance at surviving a car crash whereas a drop from 36,000 ft. would most assuredly secure my demise. So, being the budding sorcerer that I am, I decided to make a talisman/amulet* that would offer some protection while on my travels. Making such an object is rather straightforward for anyone who operates within a specific magical system, as such systems typically provide a blueprint for constructing magickal tools. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), I have never found a system of magick that appeals to me. This is largely due to the fact that my personal beliefs (or lack thereof) prohibit me from adopting any of the systems I have encountered thus far. Rather than adhering to any one particular magickal system, I prefer to build my magickal modus operandi  based upon the structure of magickal technique rather than any specific system of magick and then tweak it to suit my particular world view. I guess you could probably liken my method of practicing magick to the processes of certain Chaos Magicians. For me, this is the only way I can practice magick. It allows me to bypass the inherent belief structure of any particular system of magick. Of course, my way of practicing magick will probably be viewed as ineffectual by those who maintain that magickal efficacy stems from the correct performance of the magickal blueprint provided by a magickal system. For me, however, magical efficacy is more a result of personal ability than it is of inherent power within prescribed words and rituals. While my view permits me to do magick, it comes at a cost. I have no magickal blueprint to follow, only vague sketches and outlines. Basically, I have to build each magical undertaking from the ground up. And so it was the case when I wanted to create a protective object (Archangel Michael’s Golden Coin) to take with me on my journey to the land of my birth.

The first decision I had to make concerned the material from which my object would be constructed. I chose to shape my object out of corn starch clay (see post on this tool here) since I could fashion this material into any shape and size desired AND it would get through airport security undetected. Since Archangel Michael has a reputation for providing protection, I chose to paint the “coin” gold (the planetary color associated with Archangel Michael) and draw the sigil/character of Archangel Michael in red (the elemental color associated with Archangel Michael) on one side of the “coin.” On the other side of the “coin” I drew a sigil that had imbedded within it the intention of physical safety and well-being. To seal the deal, the object was coated with an acrylic sealer. The object was then consecrated during the hour of the Sun (the planetary hour associated with Archangel Michael) where I, holding the “coin” over  the smoke produced by a cone of Dragon’s Blood incense that had been anointed with banishing oil (to banish physical harm), asked Archangel Michael and my HGA to infuse the “coin” with protective power.

I have no idea whether Archangel Michael’s Golden Coin performed its intended function or whether I merely survived the plane trip because I was statistically likely to survive. Either way, I am alive and posting to my blog. I am grateful either way.

*I am not sure what to call this object, since it was constructed in such a fashion that it resembles both an amulet (banish physical harm) and a talisman (bring forth protective powers).

Tibet's Living Dead

Being that Halloween is just around the corner, I thought it would be an appropriate time to discuss the living dead, in particular, some of the notions of the living dead found within Tibetan society. 

Among Tibetans it has been known to occur that some individuals who have died miraculously return to life after sojourning within the intermediate state (bardo) between the present life and the next. Refered to as “Dālōk” (‘das log), these individuals, generally viewed to have acquired sufficient virtue in life to warrant their return to the land of the living, come back to life principally to share what they have learned within the bardo. Typically, the Dālōk relay the teachings they have received from the various deities, accomplished masters and celestial Buddhas encountered while in the intermediate state, as well as warn individuals of the hells seen and the human actions that caused them to be populated.

Sometimes, however, it is believed that during an individual’s death rites (which can last up to 49 days) the deceased person’s body is animated not by the returning dead person but by a negative or evil spirit bent on causing harm. Such a being is called a “Rōlang” (ro langs). Tibetans often speak of four types of Rōlang, each with its own particular method of destruction (though more universal methods of destroying a Rōlang can also be found).

Not only can a corpse be taken over by an evil spirit, it can be taken by a living individual skilled in consciousness transference through a practice called “Tōng Jūk” (grong 'jug). Tibetan stories portray Tōng Jūk as a practice that can be utilized for both religious and nefarious ends.

Thanks For The Support!

I have just been made aware that over the last few months several book purchases have occurred through my Amazon affiliate links.  I would like to thank all those who have made a purchase through one of my links for their support. While the return is small, the appreciation is great!

Magically Cleaning And Protecting Your Home

Methods for magically cleaning and protecting ones home vary widely between magical traditions and oftentimes among the practitioners comprising those traditions as well. Some of the methods are complex and involve intricate rituals and diverse accoutrements, while others are simple and involve few trappings. The procedure for magically cleansing and securing a dwelling delineated below is a very simple method of clearing negative energy from ones home and securing it so that negativity is prevented from entering into ones place of residence.  The method itself is an adaptation of certain other clearing/protecting practices that best suit my particular needs. If you find it useful … great … if not, there are a plethora of other methods to choose from.

What you will need…

Clearing/Banishing material:

1) Small black candle (I like tealite candles).

2) Small portion of sage incense.

3) Small dish/cup containing banishing oil (make your own oil, it’s easy).

4) Plate to hold the black candle, sage incense and dish of banishing oil.

Protecting material:

1) Small white candle (tealight or other).

2) Small portion of dragon’s blood incense.

3) Small dish/cup containing protection oil (again, no need to buy – just create your own).

4) Plate to hold the white candle, dragon’s blood incense and dish of protection oil (I reuse the plate used for the banishing material).

Procedure:

The procedure starts with a banishing of negativity from the home. Initiate the banishing in a room at the highest level of living space and work your way down to the basement/cellar (if you have one). At your beginning point light the black candle and sage incense and say, “By fire and air I purify this room of all negative energy and malevolent entities” (or something equivalent). Then dip your finger into the banishing oil and “anoint” some inconspicuous spot in the room (I say “inconspicuous” because the oil tends to leave an unsightly oil smudge. I prefer to “anoint” the top of the door frame, which prevents the oil smudges from being seen).* Proceed in like fashion throughout your entire house/apartment. When finished, find some central location and say, “By fire and air I purify this entire house/apartment so that every space, dark corner and crevice is free of negativity.” Afterwards, you can remove the banishing material from your plate.

After your banishing is complete and you have removed your banishing material from the plate, load your plate with your protecting material and return to the point at which you began your banishing. Light your white candle and dragon’s blood incense and say, “Having banished all negativity from this room, I now establish a wall of protection so that no negative energy or malevolent entity may enter here” (or something equivalent). ). Then dip your finger into the protection oil and “anoint” some inconspicuous spot in the room.* Proceed in like fashion throughout your entire house/apartment. When finished, find some central location and say, “Having banished all negativity from this house/apartment, I now establish a wall of protection around my home so that no negative energy or malevolent entity may enter.”  -  Il est fini.

*If you prefer not to “anoint” a spot in the room, simply dress each candle with their corresponding oils prior beginning the procedure and dispense with the anointing portion of the procedure entirely.