Diamond Magick

 

 

Over the last couple of months I have been performing some magick that I never dreamed I would. The first bout of magick, unfortunately, turned out to be a dud.  Despite the fact that my magick failed to manifest, I can’t be too upset with the results.  Not only did I learn a few things from my working, but the first round of failed magick led me to where I am today … right at the heart of some complicated and perhaps profitable diamond magick.

In my dealings with diamond magick I have come to see that the procedure of diamond evaluation can actually be utilized as a model for aiding magickal practitioners in evaluating and structuring their magickal workings. In order to demonstrate this, we must first take a brief detour and learn how diamonds are evaluated or appraised.

 

 

Cut diamonds are appraised on four qualities (known as The Four C’s):

1) Cut – In simplest terms, the shape of the diamond.

2) Color – While most people probably are familiar with “colorless” or “white” diamonds, diamonds actually come in a wide array of colors (these colored diamonds are referred to as “Fancy Color Diamonds”).

3) Carat – This is the weight of the diamond. One carat = .0070547924 ounces; 200 milligrams; 0.2 grams or 1/5 of a gram.

4) Clarity – This refers to the number and type of blemishes or inclusions found within the diamond or on the diamond’s surface.

 

The Four C's Of Diamond Magick

Now, the Four C’s become magickally useful when we utilize them as a pre-working strategy for understanding both the situation that is eliciting a magickal response and our own mental/emotional makeup. Hopefully, these understandings will be of benefit when devising a magickal working.

1) Cut – Analyze the “shape” or “form” of the situation that is eliciting a magickal response? What does the situation “contain” and what are its limits? How is the situation structured? Does it have many levels? What is the shape of your response to the situation? Is your “shape-response” appropriate? Does your shape-response need to be reformed in order to better work with the situation at hand? Begin to think how you will structure your magical response.

2) Color – What is the “color” of the situation eliciting a magickal response? Is it a cool blue situation that can be handled calmly or a fiery red situation that demands an equally red response? Is the situation so red that it would be better to not respond at all? What “color” does the situation make you? Would a different hue be more beneficial when planning and carrying out your response?

3) Carat – What is the “weight” or “gravity” of the situation eliciting a magickal response? Is the situation “heavy” or pressing and demand an immediate response or is the situation “light in weight,” allowing one to ease into a response? Is the situation light enough that it requires no exertion on your part at all? What “weight” does the situation elicit in you? Is the weight you are experiencing appropriate or would a loss/ gain of weight be more beneficial to you?

4) Clarity – What are the imperfections or problems found within the situation eliciting a magickal response? Are they surface imperfections than can be polished away or are they invariably tied to the situation. Is there a way to minimize the problem areas that can’t be irradiated? Can the situation be worked in spite of its problem areas or should the situation be abandoned altogether? What blemishes or problems do you find within yourself that might limit your response to the situation at hand? Do you have too many blemishes at the current time to attempt to shape a response?

The questions above are just a sampling of many that can be asked as a precursor to any magickal operation. Hopefully, by utilizing “diamond magic” modeled on the Four C”s the stage can be set for a more efficient and productive magical operation.

 

 

A Kurukulla Sigil Working

The above photo is a derivative of Shakira Rock in Rio 08 003 by Andres.Arranz. Permission granted under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Spain license.

The Good, The Bad and the Novel: Some Thoughts On Magical Innovation

Whether or not you have evoked a demon listed in one of the many grimoires, chances are that you have at some point become cursorily familiar with one or more them. They are the “bad boys” of the Western Magical Tradition and as such have ignited the imaginations of magicians and muggels alike for hundreds of years. If nothing else, you have probably encountered a fictionalized analogue of one or more of them in a movie.

 Working with one of these demons using the traditional methods set down in the grimoires can be a real challenge. The acquisition and preparation of the necessary tools to accomplish the evocations is in itself a daunting task, not to mention the mental preparation and purification of the mage him/herself. Not only is working with these grimoire demons difficult, it can be dangerous as well. There are abundant warnings to the would-be-conjurer that precautions must be taken to avoid getting their ass kicked by one of these malevolent entities.

Despite the warnings about deviating from the traditional methods of dealing with these entities set down in the grimoires, I have begun to witness a growing tendency among magical practitioners to attempt interacting with these beings in non-traditional ways.  Even though I am a non-traditional eclectic magician, the idea of working with these malevolent beings in innovative ways causes me some concern. I mean, after all, the texts that deal with them and the traditions that work with them both warn of the capricious and malicious nature of many of these so-called “demons.”  Is it really wise to call upon Bune for financial success, for example, without a traditional protective circle? (Please do not assume I am suggesting that you will be entirely safe even if you use a traditional circle … after all, Bune can be rather nasty. If you don’t believe me, just ask Rufus Opus, author of Head for the Red blog. According to RO, Bune graciously burnt done his house! You can read about RO's tragic encounter with Bune by searching with the key words "burned house" here.)

So, what is a magician to do when he or she cannot, for whatever reason, work with a grimoire demon in a traditional manner? My answer … don’t work with them! There are many benign entities in other traditions that can be incorporated into ones practices that do not require a preoccupation with ones safety. Instead of seeking riches through Bune, one might try working with the Buddhist deity Vasudhara (or Vasundhara), for example, who according to tradition is a Bodhisattva that specifically offers financial assistance to lay practitioners. While there are specific rites and meditations (sadhanas) to work with Vasudhara (primarily performed by Buddhist monks for the benefit of the laity), it is highly unlikely that she will burn your ass if you approach her in a non-traditional manner. I do not mean to suggest that working with Vasudhara will be all peaches and cream. In addition to providing sentient beings with material wealth she is a bodhisattva, and as such she is concerned with their highest good. Thus, she may present the mage with situations that might not be experienced as pleasing if they are directed to further the mage along the path of the Great Work. Unlike a grimoire demon, however, she does not act out of animosity.

If you want to work with Vasudhara, there is a great deal of information to be found about her on the Internet. Just remember, if you work with Vasudhara she will expect you to pay forward to your fellow human beings some of the “wealth” that she bequeaths upon you.

*For those interested in working with Buddhist deities, I highly recommend reading Aghor Pir’s recent blog post on Kurukulla, a tantric deity whose specialty is enchantment and subjugation.

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).