Over the past few months, I’ve been rubbing shoulders with more practitioners of Santería and Palo Mayombe than I ever expected to, to my ever-increasing delight and education.  I was even invited to a San Lazaro party in December, which was fantastic (when the crowd chuckles and eggs on a 12-year-old girl getting possessed by a god instead of freaking out, you know you’re at a good party).  One of the things that indicates someone as an ATR practitioner, specifically Santeros and Santeras, is the eleke or collar, a type of beaded necklace or bracelet that marks a person as receiving the blessing and initiation into a particular orisha.  These aren’t usually fancy things; just a string of seed beads in alternating colors or specific patterns with specific colors.  For instance, the eleke of Orunmila, the orisha of divination and life path knowledge, is a string of alternating green and yellow beads; Yemaya, the orisha of the oceans and seas, has blue and white beads; and so forth.  Essentially, an eleke is a piece of consecrated jewelry made from a particular power’s colors.  If you’re still lost, do a search for “orisha eleke” and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

That got me to thinking: why not make variants of elekes for my own work?  After all, beads come in many colors, and Hermetic magic (thanks to Qabbalah and the Golden Dawn) has a large and well-known set of colors for the planets, elements, signs of the Zodiac, and so forth.  So, for instance, why not make a bead necklace using orange and purple beads for Mercury, or green and amber for Venus?  Of course, since only Santería has elekes, these wouldn’t be the same nor would they be “fed” (consecrated) in the same way, so I’m calling them something else: carcanets, a French word meaning “necklace” or “choker”; the etymology of the word is unclear, but it may have a Germanic origin or a root in the Latin word carcer, meaning “prison” (which may sound familiar to the geomancers out there).  Carcanet is a sufficiently distinct term from a simple “necklace”, and I’m using it to describe these magical bead necklaces and bracelets.

To that end, I went ahead and made sets of carcanets for each of the seven planets and four elements using their planetary colors.  Of course, since bead-makers don’t make all the fine gradations of colors the Golden Dawn king and queen scales prescribe (nor could most eyes tell the differences, anyway), my choices were slightly limited, but I think they turned out pretty well.  Since then, my beading skills have improved, and I’ve moved onto making chaplets and rosaries, but carcanets are definitely among the most ritual-oriented wear I’ve made yet.

I made two forms of carcanets for each planet: a simple carcanet consisting of alternating colors (king and queen scales) of that particular planet, and a grand carcanet that consists of a specific bead pattern (corresponding to the number of that planet in Qabbalah) with extra gemstone beads in appropriate colors.  The elements have only simple carcanets, which use the flashing colors of the Golden Dawn.  Each force and type of carcanet has a necklace and two bracelets, forming a three-piece set.  I’ll consecrate them under their respective angels in my upcoming conjurations, using the grand carcanets for ritual wear (in addition to or in lieu of sashes, girdles, stoles, etc. for a particular force) and using the simple carcanets for daily wear and on-the-go rituals.  Essentially, carcanets would be another style of talisman that wouldn’t be as obtrusive as yet another pendant or as expensive as having a custom-made ring.

Making them isn’t that hard, and since it wouldn’t be hard for me to turn them out for others, I’ve decided to take commissions especially for carcanets.  More importantly, you can commission them easily at my recently-opened Etsy shop!  Yes, I finally took the plunge and opened up an Etsy page, where you can instantly buy my ebooks as well as buy crafts from me, such as these carcanets as well as some of my woodwork (Tables of Practice especially).

A few notes:

• The Seven Planets and Four Elements carcanets are only available as necklaces and cannot be combined as a set with wrist carcanets.
• The elemental carcanets, Seven Planets carcanet, and Four Elements carcanet are only available as simple carcanets.
• Carcanets will include consecration and maintenance instructions included with the package.  However, since I know some people would rather others handle ritual and consecration, I’ll offer to consecrate your chosen carcanets for an extra $20 (both simple and grand carcanets).  Due to the extra work involved, the Seven Planets and Four Elements carcanets will be $40 to consecrate.  Requesting consecration may delay shipping by up to seven weeks in addition to crafting time, depending on the force requested.  Look at the styles on my Etsy page, figure out which one you want and the cost, then contact me directly and we’ll work it out over PayPal instead of Etsy.
• Carcanets are not proper elekes and are not to be confused with them, nor do they have any association with the orishas or practice of Santería, nor do I have any experience with or initiation into Santería.  Just sayin’.  These things are their own things.

As always, if you’re interested in any other commissions, contact me and we’ll work things out over email and PayPal.  Until then, enjoy the convenience of Etsy, especially now that I’ve updated my own business cards!  Also, note that I’ve now taken down my ebooks from the Services page, since they’re now more easily available through Etsy.

I’ve gotten a few requests from people for me to teach them magic and ritual.  This is fantastic;  I’m glad people are eager to learn more about themselves, their place in the cosmos, their innate godhood, and everything like that.  In fact, that’s one of the reasons why I started writing this blog, not just to vent and show people the things I do and how easy(?) putting Hermetics to use is.  That said, I’m hesitant to teach, not only because I find myself as-yet unworthy of having students, but also because I don’t consider it possible to teach anyone magic as an isolated subject; one doesn’t “just learn” magic, just as one cannot “just learn” how to build a spaceship or “just learn” protein synthesis.  Before I even consider taking up anyone as a student of mine, I insist that they have the proper foundations that provide the context in which ritual magic can be done.

For anyone to learn anything, they need to have a strong foundation upon which they can build.  For ritual magic, indeed, any life that involves ritual, those foundations are myth, technology, and reason.  Above the others, however, myth is the single-most important factor in any magician’s knowledge.

It’s important to understand what I mean when I say “myth”.  I don’t mean a set of fanciful stories about primitive worldviews or pre-scientific notions of how things work.  I mean “myth” in the classical sense: the overarching backstory to the world, the legends that fuel our lives, and the causes for things.  Myth has been described as “ideology in narrative form” and, to a large extent, I agree with this.  Instead of understanding it as a collection of stories, you might interpret myth as “theory” or “philosophy”; myth provides the reason for us to live our lives in the world we happen to live in.  If your worldview includes gods, then the mythos you should learn will involve those gods, their natures, their stories, their likes and dislikes, and their adventures and pleasures and wraths.  If your worldview is atheistic and focused on energies, then the mythos you should learn will involve the background of energy, how it works, how it flows, and how it affects and is affected by other things in the cosmos.  If your worldview is based around emanationist Qabbalah, then the mythos you should learn will involve the sephiroth, the planets, the elements, the angels, God and his different names and forms, and how events in any sphere of existence are reflected, affected, and effected by other spheres.  Myth provides the theoretical framework upon which myth is based upon; it can be as terse as tables of correspondences, or it can be as flowery as ancient histories and stories passed down by mouth from one generation to the next.

Technology, on the other hand, might be considered the opposite of myth.  Technology is the study of useful skills, arts, and crafts.  Knowing how things should be in the ideal world is one thing, but knowing how to accomplish things in the real world is quite another.  While technology can involve any sort of tool usage, it can also include methodologies such as procedures to make something, from food to clothing to houses to jewelry.  Anything you do down in this world involves technology in some way; learning how to use technology efficiently and powerfully is important in being successful in the world.  Something doesn’t have to be hi-tech to be considered technology here; writing systems, calendars, proper usage of heat to cook food, and eloquent speaking can all be considered technologies, as can building windmills, solar panels, computers, jewelry, or orgone accelerators.  Technology uses the world around us to make or change something for a particular end with a particular method and process.  If you’re a computer scientist, then your technology should consist of programming languages, setting up computers, managing RAID storage systems, and the like.  If you’re a chef, then your technology should consist of knives and other implements, cutting foodstuffs for preparation, using ovens and stoves and grills, and presentation of food for aesthetic pleasure, and the like.  If you’re a masseuse, then your technology should consist of strong hands and arms, energy manipulation, proper oils for lubrication and sensuality, and the like.  Technology is what we do down here to do stuff.

Reason is the bridge that combines mythos with technology for a higher aim.  This is essentially logic, but not necessarily the formal logic of mathematicians and legalists.  Logic here can consist of that, but it can also consist of emotions (how to feel better), survival (how to keep living), economics (how to become wealthier), or philosophy (how to live better), and other styles.  Reason uses myth as its values and axioms, upon which all arguments and actions can be based; everything else that follows is either a logical derivative of myth (e.g. if Aphrodite dislikes Helios for revealing her tryst with Ares, it follows that involving the powers of Venus and the Sun in the same place may not end up well) or an application of mythos with technology (e.g. if Aphrodite likes apples due to the whole Paris-Helen thing, one should probably sacrifice apples to Aphrodite).  Reason is what allows myths, tables of correspondences, divine preferences, and stories to be effected in the world using technology, as well as being what allows technological results to form more myths.  Understanding the causes and effects of things in a strictly material sense, strictly spiritual sense, and some combination of material and spiritual senses involves reason all around.  Figuring out “how things work” in a technological sense within a mythological framework involves reason every step of the way.

So, consider the case where someone wants to build a spaceship.  First, they need to understand the mythos of spaceships: the physical theory behind flight both in air and in space, the mathematical knowledge of arithmetic and calculus, the material properties of steel and aluminum, the theoretical programming of spaceship software, gravity, meteorology, and the like.  They also need to have a solid technological footing to build spaceships: how to cut metal apart and rivet it back together, how to wire computers together, how to set up an air ventilation and water filtration system, where to purchase fuel from, where and when to launch from, and the like.  They also need to have reason: how will the dynamics of space travel affect the integrity of the ship, how will high-acceleration and low-gravity environments affect the human body, where it might be legal to build and launch a spaceship, whether it’s a good idea given one’s finances and health to build and launch a spaceship, and the like.  No matter what, though, the theoretical knowledge (the “myth”) behind building spaceships is most important, because one cannot figure out whether a spaceship will work without knowing the mathematics and physics behind spaceships.

All these same things come into play when working with magic, just with different mythos, technology, and reason.  This is why I insist that, for people who want to learn my style of magic and Hermetics, someone have an exceptionally strong footing in the classical stories of European literature, such as the Homeric Cycle, the Bible, apocryphal and philosophical texts from different European and Mediterranean religions, tables of correspondences and qualities of the elements and planets and zodiac signs and lunar mansions, astrology and astrological timing, etc. Beyond the others, myth is the single most important foundation someone can and must have in order to learn magic and ritual.  All ritual takes place within mythology, whether it’s building a spaceship within the mythos of physics, making a talisman within the mythos of astrology, or making sacrifices within the mythos of a particular deity.  The technology can be picked up as one learns and grows, and the reason to link mythos with technology can be cultivated over time to produce new and hitherto-unknown ritual, but myth is that which guides and directs us to pick up either the needed technologies to implement it or the reason to bind it and bridge the gap between technology and myth.

Myth should never be dismissed as something that is merely primitive.  Myth is the foundation for our lives, and if all ritual is an extrapolation or extension of life itself, then ritual is even more based on myth than our lives.  Ritual brings myth into our lives and makes our lives into living myths; if one has no myth, one will necessarily have no ritual.

I get a lot of hits on my blog from across the realm of the Internet, many of which are from links on Facebook, Twitter, or RSS readers.  To you guys who follow me: thank you!  You give me many happies.  However, I also get a huge number of new visitors daily to my blog from people who search around the Internet for various search terms.  As part of a monthly project, here are some short replies to some of the search terms people have used to arrive here at the Digital Ambler.  This focuses on some search terms that caught my eye during the month of January 2014.

“honoring hermes on fourth day of the month” — One tidbit about Hermes is that he was born in the tenth month of the lunar year (starting with the first new moon after the summer solstice, so sometime in April) on the fourth day of the lunar month (four-ish days after the New Moon).  The religious practices of Attic Greece, where Athens was and thus where most of our knowledge about ancient and classical Greece is focused, celebrated a bevy of gods on their “monthly birthdays”, as evidenced by what we know of their calendar (which forms the basis of my lunisolar grammatomantic calendar).  Thus, a monthly public ritual was performed for Hermes on the fourth of every lunar month in ancient Athens, which is the day I use as well for my monthly Hermaia ritual.  For example, yesterday was the new moon, so today is the first day of the lunar month; the fourth day would then be this coming Monday, February 3, when I celebrate the next monthly Hermaia.

“letter a in shorthand”, “short hand alphabet”, “shorthand in english alphbet”, etc. — I get a lot of talks about shorthand, and my posts on the personal shorthand I’ve devised as a type of private cursive are among the most popular posts on this blog.  That said, I think it’s important to realize that shorthand is just cursive writing taken to its logical extreme.  Normal handwriting, or “print”, is meant to be formal and clear; cursive (from Latin currere, “to run”) is meant for faster, more fluid writing.  Shorthand is handwriting sped up to keep up with speech as it happens; because it can be difficult to maintain a congruence between spoken sounds and sometimes convoluted rules of spelling, most stenographic systems use phonetic methods of writing as opposed to normal ways of spelling.  A few such systems used in the Anglophone world are Pittman and Gregg, which can be found on this page at Omniglot.  My style of shorthand differs in that it’s meant to preserve the orthographic spelling of English while being fast to write; in that sense, it’s much more a cursive than a shorthand, which is often more a style of abbreviated symbolic writing than proper orthographic writing.

“orgone pot leaf” — I…uh?  I know doing a lot of drugs can lead you into some weird places, but…what?  I mean, I suppose you could use cannabis leaves to make an orgone accumulator, being an organic substance that attracts orgone, but why waste good weed?

“what periodof the day does the ruling archangel of the planet start?” — I don’t your English understand quite so.  Angels can be said to rule over particular hours of the day based on the planetary hours, and Trithemius gives a list of them in his ritual.  As always, planetary hours are based on your local latitude and longitude, since it relies on sunrise and sunset times, and may not be calculable at extreme latitudes due to the extreme brevity or complete lack of solar daytime and nighttime.

“what does each geomantic figure mean?” — You may be interested in checking out my series of posts on geomancy, De Geomanteia, where I go over what each geomantic figure means in a Western geomantic-divinatory framework.

“the magical value of mem in the hebrew alphabet” — Ah, the occult study of letters!  Normally I work with Greek, but knowledge of Hebrew letters and their occult significations is also highly regarded in modern Hermetic magic, especially given the influence of the Golden Dawn.  Mem is the 13th letter of the Hebrew script, with a phonetic value of /m/ and two written forms mem and mem sofit; the former is given the gematria value of 40 and the latter the value of 600, though 40 is the more important value to know.  Cornelius Agrippa gives it the magical correspondence of the Zodiac sign Virgo, though the Golden Dawn (based on other qabbalistic works) give it the association of the element Water.  Going by the Kircher Tree of Life used by the Golden Dawn and Thelema, Mem is associated with the Tarot card trump XII, the Hanged Man, as well as path 23, between Geburah and Hod on the Pillar of Severity.  Its form is said to come from the Egyptian hieroglyph for water, and its name from the Phoenician word for the same, and is associated with the Greek letter mu and Latin/Cyrillic letters em.

“can a pentacle really charge an object” — Er…it depends, really.  To “charge” something implies the use of what what’s known as the “energy model” of magic, where magic works due to some ethereal, nonphysical energy that can be directed around to achieve occult ends.  If we “charge” something, we consider it to be filled with an energy, much as we charge batteries.  To that end, I suppose you could say that some pentacles, when properly made, become a source of a particular energy or are themselves charged with an energy, and can then (if designed in a certain way) give that charge to other objects.  Not all pentacles are designed to do this, though; some pentacles are used to attract love, which isn’t charging any kind of object.  Further, this only makes sense if you use the energy model of magic, which is a pretty modern framework; the more traditional framework is the “spirit model”, where magic works due to the action of and interaction with spirits.  In this model, a pentacle might be a place of habitation for a spirit or receive its blessing to attain a certain end, and using the pentacle essentially sends the spirit out to change something out in the cosmos.  It’s not so much a matter of “charging” as it is “spirit-action”, so it depends on your worldview and which model you think works best at a given moment.  Generally speaking, though, and to prevent any more use of semantic sophistry, yes, a pentacle can charge an object given that that’s what the pentacle was designed to do.

“can labradorite be used for grounding” — I wouldn’t suggest it.  My thoughts on labradorite associate it most with the sphere of the fixed stars, along with the Sun, Moon, and Mercury.  It’s a very stellar, astral type of stone, and I use it for work with Iophiel as well as with pure Light.  Grounding suggests bringing things in the body outward and literally grounding it out, like an electrical charge, so it helps to calm and make the body more mundane, more earthy, more relaxed, and less charged.  Labradorite, on the other hand, I’ve found works for subtle charging generally or strong empowerment with stellar or lucid force, so it would not be good for grounding.

“geomantic wizard” — At your service.

“the hexagram of ifa” — As a prefatory disclaimer, I know little about ifá besides what I’ve learned from Western geomancy and its history.  Ifá is the great geomantic tradition of the Yoruban people based in Nigeria, often seen in the West nowadays closely allied with Santeria communities.  Ifá uses the same sixteen figures as Western geomancy, though with different names and meanings; however, unlike Western geomancy that uses four Mothers to generate 65536 charts, ifá diviners (often called “babalawo” or “father of secrets”), only use two figures to generate 256 readings.  That said, each of the 256 readings has about a Bible’s worth of knowledge, stories, prohibitions, rules, situations, and the like that can be ascribed to it, all of which for all the combinations must be memorized by heart.  It’s an intense system, and one that has my highest respect.  That said, I know of no part of ifá that uses any sort of hexagram; the figures themselves have four rows of one or two marks each, and the figures are not arranged in any form of hexagram or six-figure arrangement.  You may be getting ifá confused with the Chinese I Ching, which does have hexagrams instead of tetragrams.

“concave golden dawn pentacle” — My Golden Dawn-style pentacle is just a flat wooden disc I got at a Michaels that I woodburned, colored, and customized to my ends.  Now, I’m no expert on Golden Dawn regalia or paraphernalia, so I’m unsure about the precise needs or designs of these things.  That said, if I recall correctly from my days sneaking into my older brother’s neopagan stuff long ago, Donald Michael Kraig had offered this design idea in his Modern Magick.  His idea was that the pentacle, the Elemental Weapon of Earth, was used to both collect the forces of Earth as well as act as a shield for protection.  If we use rays of light as a metaphor, if we use a flat mirror, we reflect the light away from the source; if we use a convex mirror (one that bulges outward), only a small portion gets reflected at the source; if we use a concave mirror (one that sinks inward), nearly all the light gets reflected back at the source.  Thus, if we use a concave pentacle, anything unwanted sent towards us gets reflected back at the source; plus, it acts to “collect” the energy of Earth with its bowl-like shape, much as the chalice “collects” the energy of Water.

“is ritual and invocation one and the same?” — No; an invocation is a type of ritual, but there are many types of ritual.  There are many types of ritual, some of which I’ve classified before in my own admittedly-arbitrary system.  Sometimes you may want to get rid of something (banishing or exorcism), which is the opposite of bringing something in or up (invocation or evocation), though either type of ritual may involve the other (clearing out a space for something to be brought in, or invoking a higher power to drive something away forcefully).

“is orgone bunk?” — God, how I wish it were, yet I know from my experiments with orgone that it’s actually useful magical tech.  It just seems like such BS because of its modern pseudoscientific quackery language, but it’s actually pretty good stuff when applied and understood from a less forcedly-modern scientific manner.  It’s like how people often used to phrase theories and explanations of magic based on electricity (Raphaelite 1800s occultism) or magnetism (Franz Bardon) or quantum physics (modern New Age swill); the theories offered simply don’t line up with what’s physically happening, and betray a deep misunderstanding of the actual physics involved with electricity, magnetism, quantum physics, etc.  However, when it’s removed from this sort of stuff, orgone fits right in with an energy-based model of magic, not unlike the use of ki/qi in Eastern systems of energy manipulation.  So, no, orgone is not bunk, though it certainly can be seen that way when viewed from the way Wilhelm Reich wanted it to be viewed.

“digital phylactery” — This one puzzled me a bit; I have information about a phylactery of mine I made before, but I don’t quite know what a digital phylactery is.  Then I realized that I use several of them, based on modern advances with Buddhist prayer wheels.  A prayer wheel is a device used in prayer or meditation that rotates; the rotating object is a chamber that contains a written prayer, like a mantra or holy image, that when spun generates the same effect as having said that mantra or seen that holy image.  Usually, the paper inside contains many hundreds or thousands of repetitions of that mantra or prayer, so one spin of the prayer wheel would be equivalent to saying that mantra as many times as it was written.  Consider that we use computers with hard disks, pieces of cylindrical or circular hardware that store data written on it and that spin at speeds of as much as or exceeding 15000 RPM.  Data written on hard disks is the same as any other data just using a different writing system, theoretically, so having a mantra or prayer in a text file spinning on a hard disk can be used immensely well.  Thus, you might consider saving a text file with a prayer, mantra, bitmap image of a holy image or shrine, on any computer you work with or own that has a hard drive (solid-state drives are another matter).  For instance, I have prayers to XaTuring (yes, I still occasionally do a minor thing or two with that patron god of the Internet) saved in my home directory as invisible files on the UNIX servers I use at work, as well as on my personal Linux machines.  You might set up your own server that contains nothing but a RAID array of prayer text files spinning up and down at regular intervals, which could easily suffice as a high-grade digital phylactery.

“how to conjure demon wordpress” — I’m unsure whether this is asking about how to conjure the demon known as WordPress (one unknown to me) or how to conjure a demon by means of WordPress, and since I know nothing of the demon called WordPress (and I’m pretty fond of the platform), I assume it must be the latter.  I mean, there is the one time I made a post in thanks to and in homage of the elemental demon Paimon, but that’s not really a conjuration.  You might have the conjuration text along with an image of the demon’s seal stored on a hard drive to use the “digital phylactery” idea from above, and draw a Solomonic triangle or Table of Practice on the hard disk or put the entire computer within one, or you might use a consecrated computer where you write WordPress blog posts within conjurations of a demon as a running liber spirituum.  I dunno, really.

“japanese alphabet with english letters” — This is one thing I really don’t get; so many people have come to my blog looking for Japanese writing translated into English, when I’ve mentioned Japanese four times on my blog to date, and none were about transliterating Japanese into English.  First, Japanese does not use an alphabet; an alphabet is a system of writing that uses letters to indicate either consonants or vowels.  Japanese uses several writing systems, among them kanji (Chinese characters that are combinations of semantic, phonetic, and pictoral images drawn in a codified way) and the syllabaries hiragana and katakana.  A syllabary is a writing system that use letters to indicate syllables, often consonant-vowel combinations.  Thus, while English uses the two letters “k” and “i” to write the syllable “ki” (as in “key”), Japanese might use キ (in katakana), き (in hiragana), and any number of kanji for the syllable depending on the context and meaning of the character; some might be 幾 (meaning “some” or “how many”), 氣 (meaning “energy” or “atmosphere”), 木 (meaning “tree”), 箕 (referring to the “winnowing basket” constellation in Chinese astrology), or any other number of kanji, all of which we would transliterate as “ki”.  So it’s not as easy as it sounds; not everything is an alphabet!

“using pewter in orgonite” — Pewter is an inorganic material, not having organic sources, so in orgonic terms it’d be used in orgone systems to repel orgone.  You could also use lead, mercury, arsenic, or cyanide (provided it comes from an inorganic source!) equally well, especially so if you like wasting your life on orgonite (which, unlike orgone, is bunk as far as I can reckon.  Pewter is a blend of metals, any generic cheap greyish alloy, so because of its mixed material it’s assigned to the planet Mercury, if that makes any difference in the waste of materials that is orgonite.

Between divination readings last night, I decided to procrastinate a bit and dawdle on Facebook.  I had the dubiously-awesome idea to publicize my blog a little bit more, because, well, that’s what social media is for, right?  I ended up making a page just for this blog, the Digital Ambler, which you should totally go ahead and like, you social media addict.  That is, of course, if you have a Facebook account, and if you don’t, I deeply respect you for that (don’t ever change, you loveable luddite).

While the blog and magicking won’t be affected, nor will I go through and cull everyone off my personal Facebook friends list whom I don’t know, getting in touch with me through the Facebook page in the future might be a recommended practice.  I plan to occasionally post special deals on crafts, commissions, divinations, or ritual services through the Facebook page, and you can better keep up with me that way instead of being subjected to my crazy mundane crap I post on my personal profile anyhow.  You have the incentive to like it, so do so!  I’ll also start posting my Daily Grammatomancy posts (on the days I actually get around to posting them) on the Facebook page, too.

Alas, I recently had to dismantle my beloved MaGOS altar, though not because it failed its purpose.  Rather, it’s been a fantastic bit of magical machinery, and it taught me no small amount about orgone and magical energies generally, as well as applying modern magical methods to traditional systems.  No, I had to dismantle it because I needed the space.  I swear, I’m going to be ecstatic when I move into a new place where I can get a whole room all to myself for use as a temple and have all my magical shit lining the walls without having to worry about things like beds or desks or porn.

Why did I need the space?  Because I needed to set up a new altar for a new spirit.  Of course, I don’t erect altars for every spirit I work with; my two big altars, my devotional altar where I make the majority of my prayers and my magical altar or Table of Manifestation where I do some of my  Work, suffice for most of my purposes.  The other altars around my room are for big-name deities, like Hermes and Dionysus, or for my ancestors. The other spirits I work with I make occasional offerings to at my devotional altar or dedicate a bit of jewelry to them and wear it in their honor every now and then.  No, altars for me are where I do major spiritual work at, and if I have to set up an altar for something, it’s going to be for a long-term good purpose.

So, who’s this new altar going to?  Someone with whom I should’ve probably called on long before now: Saint Cyprian of Antioch, the patron saint of magicians and necromancers.  He’s been undergoing a resurgence and reemergence as of late, which is no bad thing, and I’ll leave you to do the clicky-clicky on the linky-linkies and read up more about him if you’re unfamiliar.  Of course, he’s not officially recognized by the Roman Catholic Church anymore, but that hasn’t really stopped him from playing a significant role in the lives of those who call upon him.

Why this good Saint?  I’m working with angels and calling on the name of Christ, as well as getting involved with paranormal investigation and spiritual counseling, plus getting plenty of further integration and connection with various Central American African diasporic religions.  The fact that this saint is a Christian magician, the archetype of many such magicians, plus a Faustian figure (if not the archetypal one), gives Saint Cyprian a special resonance with the work I already do.  I mean, I’m no Christian in name, but I’m certainly not opposed to chilling with Christ or calling on his name, especially since my work is leading me in a direction that is parallel or even meeting up with him.  Beyond that, though, Cyprian is especially good at working magic with spirits, especially those of the underworld in their many and sundry varieties, and working with the dead is becoming more of a focus in my work than I had anticipated, either with my own or with that of the areas I visit.  Demons, too, which is still going to be a project of mine when I get the time for it, are something Cyprian works nicely with, and having this extra help for me is no bad thing.  Perhaps most importantly, however, Saint Cyprian is mostly known in Central/South American, Hispanic, and ATR circles nowadays, and has major associations with a number of their gods (e.g. Babalu Aye of the Santeros, in addition to Saint Lazarus).  It’s not that I want to work with these deities, necessarily, but it will help bridge a gap between what I do and what some of my associates do, especially in the necromantic department.

It’s weird, but I get nothing but good omens for working with him.  Besides, having someone on my side lower than the angels is a good thing, especially when I get around to doing work that’s lower than what I normally do, anyway.  Once I get a few more supplies (prayer cards for an amparo, saint medallion, yet another incense burner, etc.) and make a few initial charms and things, I’ll start working with Saint Cyprian of Antioch in the coming weeks.  Deo volente, I’ll be able to get into another side of the magic I already do.

If you already work with Saint Cyprian of Antioch, what have some of your experiences been like?  Do you have any advice for others who want to learn more about working with this saint?

It’s interesting what you can pick up from talking with spirits.  The other day, I was enjoying my weekly chat with my ancestors, making the usual offerings and just chewing the fat with them.  I don’t just include the ancestors of my blood and kin, though; the ancestors include everyone whose work or lives led to my own, so it’s a pretty wide field.  Generally speaking, as a magician, I have two large fields for my ancestors: one for ancestors of my blood and kin, and another for those of my faith and practice.  Magicians, priests, pagans, Christians, Jews, Hermeticists, anyone who’s already crossed and yet led to my spiritual life is considered an ancestor, and I have a special place for the ancestors of my Work in my heart.  There are other ancestors thrown into the mix of those two groups, of course, but those are the big ones.

When I told them that I was writing a book on geomancy, some in the ghostly crowd perked their ears up and started chatting more with me.  Geomancy being one of the most popular forms of divination in Europe historically over the past millennium, this isn’t too surprising, though I was caught a little off-guard by how on-board they were with that.  Since I like tapping into the ancestral font of knowledge those who have gone before me provide, I asked them for some advice with geomancy.  Besides some techniques I plan to do some more research on, one of the things they mentioned was performing another elemental analysis of the geomantic figures.  I got an image of Fortuna Maior transforming into Carcer, then again into Fortuna Minor, then again into Coniunctio, and then again into Fortuna Maior in a cycle.  I got the hint, and after a few inspired flashes of insight, I got the gist for a new(?) kind of elemental analysis for the figures.  I’ve already delved into one such analysis before, but this is a different kind focusing on the structure of the figures.

As you might have guessed, this post is gonna get into some geomantic theory.  Run away now if that’s not your thing or get some wine.

When considering the geomantic figures as mathematical objects, I normally ascribe four operations that can be done on them: addition, inversion, reversion, and conversion.  Readers of my De Geomanteia posts may recall this in my descriptions of the figures, but put briefly:

• Addition: adding two figures to get a third (e.g. Puer added to Puella to obtain Coniunctio).  The interaction, harmony, and force between a pair of figures or forces in the cosmos.
• Inversion: replacing all the single dots with double dots and vice versa (e.g. Puer inverted becomes Albus).  Everything this figure is not on an external level.
• Reversion: rotating a figure upside down (e.g. Puer reverted becomes Puella).  The same qualities of this figure taken to its opposite, internal extreme.
• Conversion: inversion with reversion (e.g. Puer converted becomes Rubeus).  The same qualities of this figure expressed in a similar, contraparallel manner.

The ancestors showed me yet another method to alter a geomantic figure, which I’m tentatively terming descending.  Descending a figure takes the bottommost row of a figure and stacks it on top of the figure, pushing the other rows downward.  Thus, Puer descended once becomes Cauda Draconis; this descends again into Caput Draconis, and again into Puella; and  again into Puer.  In doing this, we get several groups of figures that descend in a particular order: two monadic cycles, one binadic cycle, and three tetradic cycles of descent.

• Populus descends into Populus
• Via descends into Via
• Acquisitio and Amissio descend into each other
• Laetitia descends into Rubeus, which descends into Albus, which descends into Tristitia, which descends into Laetitia
• Fortuna Maior descends into Carcer, which descends into Fortuna Minor, which descends into Coniunctio, which descends into Fortuna Maior
• Caput Draconis descends into Puella, which descends into Puer, which descends into Cauda Draconis, which descends into Caput Draconis

Taken from an elemental viewpoint, this is the process by which the elements of a figure transform into their next most available state.  I forget where I read it from (something from Plato, probably), but the elements have two qualities, only one of which is primary.  The qualities are broken into two pairs of opposing natures: hot and cold, and wet and dry.  For instance, while the element fire is both hot and dry, it is primarily hot and secondarily dry.  The list of the elements then becomes:

1. Fire: primarily hot, secondarily dry
2. Air: primarily wet, secondarily hot
3. Water: primarily cold, secondarily wet
4. Earth: primarily dry, secondarily cold

Moreover, the elements are capable of changing into each other by replacing one of the qualities with its opposite.  Water, for instance, can turn into earth by making its moisture dry, and air can turn into water by cooling its heat; air can likewise turn into fire by drying its moisture, and fire can turn into earth by removing its heat.  The transformation of the elements can go in either direction, with the process from fire to earth signifying a process of settling or stability and the process from earth to fire signifying entropy or activity.  However, the elements also form a cycle, such that earth can also directly become fire without going through water or air, and likewise fire into earth.

Descending, then, is essentially the “settling” process of the elements applied to the structure of the geomantic figures.  The number of dots within a figure is preserved (note how Laetitia, Rubeus, Albus, and Tristitia descend into each other and all contain the same seven dots in different arrangements).  The reverse process of ascending is the “entropy” process of the elements, where the top line becomes the bottom and the rest of the elemental rows are pushed up.  Since the geomantic figures can be seen as abstract combinations of the elements, what the elements can do, so too can the geomantic figures.

Via and Populus are interesting in that they’re the only figures that descend (or ascend) into themselves.  Since they have the same activity or passivity in every line of their figures, they can only ever descend into what was already present.  I take this to mean that Populus and Via are at extremes of the elements: either there is absolutely nothing or there is absolutely everything, a void or a singularity.  Where there is nothing, nothing can be done since there is nothing to be acted upon; where there is totality, nothing can be meaningfully changed since it already includes everything.

Acquisitio and Amissio, similarly, are unusual in that they only descend into each other, without another two figures filling in the cycle.  Acquisitio is a combination of air and earth; Amissio is a combination of fire and water.  These elemental pairs are opposites, so by preserving their structural relationships, the descent of one figure composed from opposite elements is another figure composed from opposite elements.  No other figure in geomancy are like these two because of this.  Further, while the combination of air and earth produces gain, the combination of fire and air produces loss; moisture/dryness is a separate beast from heat/cold, so while one relies on the material bases of things (Acquisitio) which relies on the energetic and spiritual, the other relies on the energetic means of things (Amissio) which consumes the material and physical.  In order to gain things, one must expend effort or resources for it; in order to lose something, one must get meaning and direction for it.

The real show of descent comes into play with the other twelve figures of geomancy.  The simplest case is that with figures that contain a single active element: Laetitia, Rubeus, Albus, and Tristitia.  Laetitia is pure fire, and is a figure of joy, elation, optimism, and planning, all due to its hot and dry nature.  It has nothing else to go for it, though, so when that energy becomes less goal-oriented (fire) and settles down into a more material state (air), Laetitia becomes Rubeus, which is a figure of violence, chaos, confusion, and destruction.  That same energy is there, but it’s pure and untempered by anything else, so without direction the energy from Laetitia becomes scattered and dispersed.  Over time, the dispersion of energy in Rubeus settles further into Albus, with it starting to collect back into itself in a more contemplative, reflective manner.  The energy becomes less capable of causing change and is now more capable of being changed, becoming passive (not in elemental terms, here) instead of active.  Further, once the detached reflection of Albus settles further into Tristitia, the energy becomes locked down and completely crystallized into matter, unable to do anything on its own and only capable of being acted upon as a basis for other work.  Tristitia is a figure of fixidity and rigidness, without ability to move or act; it is only when the material of Tristitia is consumed and rejuvenated can it become active again, burning the dry fuel of Tristitia into Laetitia once more.

The next tetrad of figures in descent is Fortuna Maior, Carcer, Fortuna Minor, and Coniunctio.  Here, Fortuna Maior is a figure of slow and independent development, like a river carving out a canyon by its own nature and movement.  However, over time that energy becomes less and less, with all its potential used up; this devolves the nurturing force of Fortuna Maior into Carcer, which is no longer nourishing but only vacant.  Nothing can be done with this energy as it is, since it has lost all means of interacting with the world around itself; it is only when an outside force picks it up can it be sustained or made use of again, as indicated by the descent of Carcer into Fortuna Minor.  This mingling of forces leads to further mingling, focusing less on action and more on interaction, leading from Fortuna Minor to Coniunctio.  Communicationa and interaction becomes the theme, at least for a short while, until the interaction of forces settles further into self-action, separation of ways into one’s own path, which leads once again to the force of Fortuna Maior.

The last tetrad of figures in descent is Caput Draconis, Puella, Puer, and Cauda Draconis.  Caput Draconis is the figure of beginnings, with everything but fire being present; unlike its inverse of optimistic Laetitia which is all plan and no potential, Caput Draconis has all the material and interactive potential but nowhere and no impetus to use it; it is a pure seed.  The force of Caput Draconis, once it settles into Puella, becomes patient and harmonizing, aware of one’s physical means and of the need of others to make use of it.  In this phase, there is still little means to use something, but at least the desire for use is present.  Puella awaits the arrival and energy of Puer, which is the force that uses what Puella has to offer while having little of its own to use.  Puer is active and direct, countering Puella’s passivity and indirectness, and seeks to find and join with.  However, once Puer attains this and uses up everything obtained, this all settles down into an ending with Cauda Draconis; either the hero accomplishes his journey successfully or falls short and fails having exhausted his means prematurely.  Cauda Draconis is everything but earth, all energy and interaction but no means or substance, and quickly falls apart.  However, the residue from the collapse of Cauda Draconis plants the germ for the next iteration, starting with Caput Draconis again.

Bear in mind that each figure is a representation of the four elements that compose everything in our world; it’s not a stretch to consider the geomantic elements like alchemical formulae or states of the cosmos, and if we consider the figures to represent closed systems (as opposed to open systems that the operation of addition affords us), then we can analyze how a situation can evolve based on a single figure.  This enables us to make better use of single-figure readings: if we draw Coniunctio as a single answering figure for a query about a relationship, we can certainly say that things are going well and will continue to do so, but the relationship will also allow for self-discovery by means of the relationship and eventual self-growth (Fortuna Maior), with periods of being alone to process it or with difficulty (Carcer), and recovery with the help of the partner to come back to more connection (Fortuna Minor).  Likewise, if we add two figures in a house chart to understand the interaction between them, we can use the descent of the figures to see how that interaction will progress over time independent of the other factors in the chart.

Similar explanations of the tetrads of the figures can be given for the ascent transformation, as well, but I leave that as an exercise for the interested geomancy-minded reader.  Consider what we’re doing when we descend a figure: we take the elements within that figure, and turn the secondary quality into its opposite and make it the primary quality.  So, fire, which is primarily hot and secondarily dry, turns into air by our taking the secondary quality (dry) and turning it into its opposite (wet) and making it primary; the element that is primarily wet and secondarily hot is air.  The ascent of the figure is the opposite case: we take the primary quality of the elements, turn that into its opposite, and make it secondary.  Thus, fire (primarily hot and secondarily dry) becomes earth by taking its primarily quality (hot), turning it into its opposite (cold) and making it secondary; the element that is primarily dry and secondarily cold is earth.  I would say that it’s more natural for an element to descend than ascend, since it’s easier to change an element’s secondarily quality than it is to change its primary quality, so while the descent of the elements indicates a natural evolution without interference, the ascent of the elements can indicate a forced evolution from within the situation itself.  A situation might go either way, depending on the actions of those involved in the situation, but until outside forces are brought in to break the transformation by ascent or descent through addition, things are going to keep cycling in a particular pattern metaphorically and realistically.

Not a bad idea from sharing some rum with dead folk.

One of the complaints my boyfriend has about my style of magic is that I’m way too wordy.  It’s true, I admit; a standard Trithemian-style conjuration has about five to ten minutes of preliminary prayer, not including the spiritual preparation and ritual space setup.  I like using the Orphic Hymns frequently, long-winded prayers, strings of barbarous words from the PGM, and so forth.  While he gets a bottle of rum and a cigar for his spirits and gets to work, I prefer my candles, incense, altar cloths, summoning circles, and so forth.  He’s not the type to get into heavy ritual, anyway, but that’s alright.  Someone’s gotta do the work, after all.

Thing is, though, he has a good point.  The stuff I do takes time and patience and perseverance, and with my life being already so full of spirits, not to mention commuting and martial arts classes and being social, my time is increasingly limited.  This got me to thinking about how I can do the same work with the same spirits I do work with in different ways, which led to my having to reevaluate the necessity of my ritual structure and format.  If I lived a court astrologer’s life, or some beneficiary of a magnate paying me to do magic, I could devote all my time to this stuff and not get enough; as it is, though, that’s not gonna happen anytime soon (regrettably), and I have to keep doing the work with the resources and time I have.  And since the time my rituals take is based largely in my habits of formality, perhaps I should reevaluate how necessary such formality is.

When you’re starting work with some new spirit, whether it’s the angel of a celestial sphere or a saint or a genius loci, it pays handsomely to be formal and proper in the beginning.  It’s like making a new professional contact: you want to make a good impression, so you get out your nice suit, you prepare your business cards and elevator speeches, you make sure you schedule the meetings at the right time and show up on time, and so forth. You go the extra nine yards to make sure communication is clear and effective and that you lay the foundations for a solid partnership; it’s a good time to get information on the contact, to make sure they’re who you think they are, and whether you want to continue working with them.  Likewise, it’s good for you to give them the right idea about who you are, what you’re capable of, how comfortable you are in meeting and discussing things with them, and so forth.  The same goes for spirits: you want to make sure they’re comfortable with working with you and you with them, so you make things as proper as you can when you start off with them.

But over time, as the relationship between you and the spirit develops, things can (but are not necessarily) get more casual.  The spirit might be more comfortable with calling on them whenever as opposed to a specific time, the use fewer tools if any at all, opening up to trying different offerings than the standard stuff, the use of special or true names, and so on.  Special permission might be given or agreed upon to work with them in different contexts than you may have been limited to in the past.  As a relationship develops, so too does flexibility and understanding between you and the spirit.  And that’s where things can get interesting for developing one’s own unique spiritual practice.  Of course, this is all dependent on the spirit itself, and sometimes they insist on the formality of something being done in a proper way.  It’s hard to generalize, but generally, formality isn’t as needed after building up a solid relationship.   Building up a solid relationship can take a good amount of time and trials, though.

Take the Trithemian conjuration ritual, for instance.  In the beginning of my magical career, I spent the time and built my own tools and put them to use at the proper time in a space I cleansed and prepared beforehand with the proper candles, incense, prayers, and so on handy and ready to go.  Hundreds of conjurations later, I still do this same thing, even after saying at the end of every ritual “return to me when I call you in His name to whom every knee bows down”.  The angels I work with largely agree to that; they don’t need the conjuration ritual to be present when a simple invocation of them will suffice.  Sure, the full ritual helps in communication and scrying and pathwalking, but none of the ritual is strictly necessary to do any of that, especially after the initiations I’ve received from them and the relationships I’ve built with them.  If I don’t need to do the formal ritual with them to do the same things when simpler, faster rituals will do, why not just go with the simpler, faster rituals?

Part of it is that I’m stuck in the habit of being formal.  I do enjoy donning my white linen robe and sitting down at a specially-prepared conjuration altar, but that takes a good chunk of time that I don’t always have.  I mean, I have my primary magician altar with all my talismans and tools of the planets and elements on it that I hardly use, when it fills all the same needs as a Table of Practice does and is permanently set up.  Why not just do the conjuration there on a slightly more informal level, sans robe and lengthy prep prayers?  I mean, the setup and preliminary preparation does have its good purposes which should never be overlooked, but after having done them so often for so long, maybe they’re not as needed as much anymore.  I mean, consider my ancestor practice: every Monday I get flowers, rum, water, and incense for them, and open up with an invocation and invitation for my ancestors to be with me.  Putting aside the fact that our ancestors are always already with us (they’re literally in our blood, after all), I also wear a pendant dedicated just to them and I invoke them every morning.  They’ve told me to cut the long-windedness and just sit down and chat with them, because they don’t need the formal prayers recognizing them when it’s part of a weekly observance and chillout.  The other spirits I work with, namely the angels of the planets and elements and stars, are more than happy to use a different means of contacting them besides a full ritual at a custom-made conjuration altar, especially if it means I get to still advance in my work without sacrificing my health or sleep too much.

For big rituals where I need the power for a specific purpose, or for a monthly or yearly observance celebrating the feast of some god or other, nothing beats a good formal ritual with all its attendant pomp and circumstance.  For general checkups or offerings, though, the formality isn’t as necessary, especially if I already have a good working relationship with the spirit.  So long as the rules and wishes of the spirit are abided by, everything else is pretty much up for grabs if we’re tight enough to be informal and casual.  Deformalizing rituals with spirits you’re already integrated with is one good way to simplify one’s spiritual life, and one I definitely need to work on.  Nobody’s gonna put more days in the week, after all, and I need as much time as I can get.

Another way to simplify one’s spiritual life is to condense altars and spiritual tools, but that’s a topic for another day.  Perhaps one when I’m not eyeing alternative furniture arrangements to fit in another altar to another spirit.

Recently, I had someone ask me for help in creating a lamen for use with the Trithemian conjuration ritual.  While the original text doesn’t go into details about it, it says that “the pentacle may be either wrote on clean virgin parchment, or engraven on a square plate of silver and suspended from thy neck to the breast”.  In other words, the lamen used in conjuration is a type of pentacle or talisman worn, and this talisman is associated with the spirit to be conjured by writing the name and seal of the spirit upon the lamen.   It’s very similar to wearing the seal of the demon to be conjured according to the Lemegeton Goetia, so the idea is the same, though its execution is a little different.

For one, the lamen used in this conjuration has thirteen names of God written around the edge; I’ve explained these names in an earlier post.  Within the names of God is the name of the spirit, its seal, a hexagram, and at least four pentagrams.  The original form of the lamen, say for the angel Michael according to Trithemius and Fr. Rufus Opus, has it follow the general pattern:

Here, the name of the spirit is written twice, once in Hebrew (Celestial, in this case) outside and above the hexagram, and once in Roman script inside the hexagram with the seal, with four pentagrams surround the hexagram.  Why four?  It’s unclear, but we have a strong hint from Cornelius Agrippa (book IV, chapter 10) (emphasis mine)

Now the Lamen which is to be used to invoke any good spirit, you shall make after this maner; either in metal conformable, or in new wax, mixt with species and colours conformable: or it may be made in clean paper, with convenient colours: and and the outward form or figure thereof may be square, circular, or triangular, or of the like sort, according to the rule of the numbers: in which there must be written the divine names, as well the general names as the special. And in the centre of the Lamen, let there be drawn a character of six corners (Hexagonus); in the middle whereof, let there be written the name and character of the Star, or of the Spirit his governour, to whom the good spirit that is to be called is subject. And about this character, let there be placed so many characters of five corners (Pentagonus), as the spirits we would call together at once. And if we shall call onely one spirit, nevertheless there shall be made four Pentagones, wherein the name of the spirit or spirits, with their characters, is to be written. Now this table ought to be composed when the Moon in increasing, on those days and hours which then agree to the Spirit. And if we take a fortunate star herewith, it will be the better. Which Table being made in this manner, it is to be consecrated according to the rules above delivered.

So it seems like the spirit in the hexagram isn’t actually the spirit we conjure, but rather the ruler of the spirit.  So, if we were to call upon Nakhiel, the intelligence of the Sun, we still have Michael’s name and seal in the hexagram and the name and seal of Nakhiel in all four pentagrams.  If we were to call upon the intelligence Nakhiel, spirit Sorath, and three angels from the choir of Virtues, we’d have five pentagrams around the hexagram, each with a different name and seal according to the spirits we summon.  Considering the size of the lamen, this gets way too complicated way too fast.  It’s easier to simply deal with the spirit ruling over the sphere we’re coming in contact with and have them in the conjuration to bring the other spirits we wish to commune with.  For some reason, though, there should always be at least four pentagrams.  Why?  It’s never really said, but the number four has plenty of oomph in it, so maybe it’s just a numerological thing; it’s unclear.

So why do we have the name of the spirit both in Hebrew and in Roman outside and inside the hexagram?  It’s never really said, and both I and Donald Tyson (who published an updated version of Agrippa’s Books of Occult Philosophy with notes and commentary) think this is an error, or at least unnecessary duplication.  In either case, the name should be the same no matter what script you use.  If one uses Hebrew on the outside and Roman on the inside, the names should accord given the writing system they’re written in, only using Roman script inside the hexagram and some other script outside.  I think they should be different scripts, so if the script used originally for the spirit was Roman, you might consider the use of Theban script outside the hexagram.  It gets real crazy real fast, admittedly.

Because of the confusion with the designs, between the number of pentagrams to use and what names should go where and written in which writing system, I decided to come up with my own version of the lamen, based more on Solomonic and Goetic practice.  This was a while back, and I wrote a post about it before, but my versions have worked fine and clear for me.  For example, contrast the following lamen of Michael to the prior one:

The differences between this lamen style and the Trithemian one aren’t that many, really, but they’re important:

• The name of the spirit is written in another ring around a central circle using only one language most appropriate for the spirit
• Always use six pentagrams around the arms of the hexagrams, points facing outward.
• No Romanization of the spirit’s name.
• Center hexagram is embiggened and centered in the central circle.
• Godnames rotated 90° so that El is aligned at the top.

To reduce confusion, I only write the name of the spirit once around the hexagram and pentagrams, using the inside of the hexagram for the spirit itself and leaving the pentagrams blank.

One thing that can be clearly deduced from Agrippa and Trithemius is how to make the lamen.  For timing, the lamens are to be made while the Moon is waxing in a planetary day and hour appropriate to the spirit.  Thus, lamens for spirits of the Sun should be made on Sundays in an hour of the Sun, those of Mars should be made on Tuesdays in an hour of Mars, and so forth; this is pretty simple, and fairly basic as far as talismanic creation goes.  As for materials, this is where you can really go crazy; I use heavy fancy résumé paper, color the border with gold leaf, and color the insides of the stars and hexagrams according to that planet’s associated colors per the Golden Dawn color rules.

I use simple circles for my lamen designs, though I’ve made other sets before that use different polygons whose number of sides accord with the numbers of the planets, e.g. a triangle for Saturn, a pentagon for Mars, and a nonagon for the Moon.  I use a circular shape since I have a circular wooden picture frame I modified to act as a lamen holder, but having your lamens be punched with a hole in the top is also totally workable.  Instead of paper, you might use parchment, or you might go really fancy and use colored wax made with essential oils of herbs associated with the planet, or go all out and make silver, gold, or other metallic lamens that accord with the planet.  While this isn’t strictly necessary (I haven’t had problems using even plain uncolored copy paper lamens), it’ll help over time to strengthen the contact between you and the spirit, but so would putting more effort with a simpler construction.  Of course, if the spirit isn’t planetary or doesn’t really care, you can use whatever method you want for making the lamen so long as it works for the spirit.

So what about the seals inside the hexagrams themselves?  It’s easy to find seals for Lemegeton goetic demons or the angels of the planets, but what about the seals for some arbitrary spirit?  It can get awkward, I admit, if you only have a name and no seal.  One route you can go by is using some sort of sigil generator to make a seal for the spirit based on its name; if the name is in Hebrew, you’d use the Golden Dawn Rosy Cross sigil wheel, and if it’s in Greek, you might try my own sigil wheel for the Greek alphabet based on stoicheiometric principles.  If the spirit is associated with a particular planet, you might use the qamea (magic square) of that planet to generate the names, which is how Agrippa gets his seals for the planetary intelligences and spirits (book II, chapter 22).  If you have any familiarity with modern magic techniques, you might make a simple sigil based on the letters themselves a la chaos magic.  Alternatively, you might not use any seal for the spirit at all, but actually ask for a seal directly from the spirit themselves; this is my approach to them, and how I got my seals for the elemental archangels.

Don’t forget that, despite their role in conjuration, lamens are simply talismans, and should be made according to the same rules and upheld to the same maintenance you’d use for other talismans.  These talismans will help link you to the spirit and its sphere to aid in conjuration, communion, and communication, and so should be made with that spirit and sphere in mind.  Although it’s traditional to wear the lamen in conjuration, I’ve seen some magicians (including Fr. Rufus Opus in his more modern style of conjuration) just use a metal talisman placed on the Table of Practice itself, so you still have freedom to experiment here.  Make the lamen with the spirit you want to communicate with in mind, following a simple premade layout for names and seals, and you’ll be good to go.  You might want to wear it, place it on the conjuration circle itself under the scrying medium, or simply set a candle atop it; so long as you use the lamen, you’ll be bringing the spirit down for conjuration.

Yes, despite my constant activity and increasing workload, I am still teaching classes at the metaphysical shop near me in Fairfax, VA, known as Sticks and Stones.  It’s been a while since I taught anything there, and now that I’m only going there to do readings every other weekend (ish) instead of every weekend, some of you guys might miss the chance to see me.  But fear not, I’m not abandoning the place!  This is a list of the three classes I’m teaching at the local store through May 2014.  If you’re attending, feel free to let me know in the comments or select attending on the Sticks and Stones event pages in the links!

Geomancy I and II ($50), Sunday 3/2 and Sunday 3/9, 2pm ~ 4pm both days
Tired of Tarot?  Pained by pendulums?  Weary of runes?  Want something new and fun, or just a system of divination that makes sense?  Learn geomancy!  This ancient art was second only to astrology for centuries, and known across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East for its ease and accuracy of getting answers.  Join a seasoned geomancer, yours truly, as he introduces geomancy back into the occult scene once more.  Learn about its history from desert sands of the Sahara to its modern revival across the world, the sixteen geomantic figures and their meanings, and how to answer any kind of question with geomancy using basic and advanced techniques.  Note that this class is not about feng shui, the I Ching, ley lines, or sacred geography, all of which may be called “geomancy” in other contexts.  Due to the amount of material, this class is broken up into two sessions; attending the first is a requirement for attending the second!  A basic knowledge of astrology and mathematics is suggested but not required.

Greek Alphabet Divination ($30), Sunday 4/6, 2pm ~ 4:30pm
Alphabets and letters have always been held as magical tools and powers in their own right, and have been used as a form of divination in countless cultures.  Much like the Nordic runes, the ancient Greeks had their own method of letter-based divination or “grammatomancy”, where each letter has a particular oracular meaning.  When combined with the other astrological and magical meanings that the Greek alphabet has gained over the centuries, this can become a powerful divination and magical tool indeed!  Join yours truly in discussing the origins, development, and use of the Greek alphabet for easy-to-use divination and magic.  A copy of his first 60pp publication, “De Grammatomanteia”, is included with the course for reference and study.  No prior knowledge is necessary, though a familiarity with the basics of divination and magical ideas would be helpful.

Thinking With Planets ($15), Sunday 11/10, 2pm ~ 3:30pm
A lot of modern magical traditions focus on using the four elements of Fire, Air, Water, and Earth, occasionally with the fifth element of Spirit, as the primary or only forces of their work.  However, even a few hundred years ago, magicians of all kinds used another set of forces: the planets!  With the powers of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon, magicians were able to accomplish a lot more a lot faster, including directly affecting the elements themselves.  Join yours truly to learn how to introduce the use of the planets into your own work, basic magical timing, and how to connect the planets to the elements and vice versa.  No prior knowledge is necessary.

As you may already have heard elsewhere on the blogosphere, dear reader, there’s a new book out on one of the most central and confusing parts of modern Western Hermetic magic: the Holy Guardian Angel.  Michael Cecchetelli of The Lion’s Den, author of Crossed Keys and The Book of Abrasax, recently approved the final proof of his most recent book “Holy Guardian Angel: On the Practice and Experience of the Holy Guardian Angel” and it’s on its way to the printer with Nephilim Press.  With 10 authors contributing, including amongst others Jason Miller, Conjureman Ali, Scott Michael Stenwick, Aaron Leitch, Frater Ashen Chassan, and my own mentor Frater Rufus Opus, the book is one I’ve personally been waiting for for some time now. Happily, Fr. MC himself posted a call for reviewers, and after sending the good man an email, he sent me a copy of the text for my own review!  To say that I’m honored is an understatement.

I personally made contact with my HGA back in the summer of 2012, about the time when I was consecrating my Solomonic Ring and was undergoing a large amount of time doing solar work in addition to the Headless Rite at least once daily.  I made some allusions to it before, but never formally talked about making contact with my HGA or talked at length about my HGA’s nature.  Partially, that’s because I’ve been busy with other parts of my ritual work done or finishing up other projects, and in my life that’s already pretty busy to begin with, this is no trivial matter.  I haven’t done as much introspection and inspection of my HGA that I probably should have by now, and I admit that the feeling I get between us may be strong but is also somewhat distant.  That said, since having made contact with my HGA, he has never ignored me or abandoned me; that connection, though it may be distant and small, has never been weak or forsaken.  I’ve spoken with other magicians in my circle of friends about the nature of the HGA, with one of the best/most comical ideas being that the HGA is akin to a “divine sockpuppet”, throttling back the incomprehensible majesty of the Source into a single comprehensible figure for our individual selves, something like a personal Christ figure, but this might be more properly be considered akin to an agathodaimon or similar tutelary god.  It’s tricky, and during previous blogosphere debates on the HGA, I’ve never thought myself capable of getting enmeshed in them since I don’t really know what to say.  The connection with the HGA is something intensely personal and is truly a revealed mystery, and there’s really so little that can be said about the HGA to begin with.  Those who have contact with the HGA know what it’s like and have little need to talk about it; those without contact have no means to understand what can be said.  Still, even among those who do have contact with the HGA, there’s a lot that can be said about the development, use, and work with the HGA, and that’s what Fr. MC’s new book aims to accomplish.

The text itself is 216 pages long, beautifully typeset and well-edited, making the reading of it a pleasure all on its own.  The book is broken down into four parts: the nature of the HGA, what comes after contact and how to work with the HGA, different schools of thought about the HGA, and a whole section devoted to some of the important blog posts made during the 2011 pan-blogosphere debates on the HGA.  Of course, MC himself is only one contributing author to the book, and that only in the final section; as he says in the introduction, he “realized no author had set about producing such a volume [on achieving K&CHGA], wherein are presented a diverse and varying cross-section of the beliefs on the subject, was because no single author could”.  It’s a complicated subject with layers upon layers of interpretation, use, and philosophy, making writing such a book on such a spirit more daunting than any other series of tomes on almost any other part of magic.

One theme that’s developed throughout the work is that K&CHGA is not just part of the Great Work, but is in fact the whole of the Great Work itself.  Taken at face-value, that’s kinda a silly statement, and doesn’t make much sense, but on deeper inspection, it becomes abundantly clear.  Many people in the Golden Dawn associate contact with the HGA to start at the grade corresponding to Tiphareth on the Tree of Life (Adeptus Minor); it’s no coincidence that (as far as I’ve heard) there are no formal grades beyond this point beyond what’s directed by one’s HGA alone, though the structure exists for them.  The entire work from this point onward is directed by one’s HGA, who really is our true teacher to understand our True Will.  After a certain point, however, even the HGA disappears when it becomes no longer useful for us, like how a raft is left behind after a journey across a river.  This is why I almost always say that I’ve made “contact” with my HGA instead of “knowledge and conversation”; I have at least partial knowledge of my HGA, sure, but developing the deep connection between us to where there is nothing external to me, becoming one with, within, and as God, the true “conversation” of the HGA, is something I’ll forever be working on.  The HGA, indeed, is a fundamental part of the Great Work, and though Crowley states that “the single supreme ritual is the attainment of Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel”, this is a ritual that takes a lifetime to complete.

This theme is developed through the book, that attaining contact with the HGA isn’t a one-time thing.  Even for myself, where I already have contact with my HGA, Fr. MC’s book is packed with good advice from people who have done the Work beyond what they’ve generously written about, and it inspires me with new things I’m eager to try out.  While I don’t see the need at this point to go through the Abramelin operation or redo a six-month stint of daily Headless Rites, that doesn’t mean I completely understand and can do anything with my HGA that I want to do.  You don’t just do the rituals and be done with it, receiving a full spirit guide at your beck and call; it’s the opening to a relationship where you two must work together to understand the Work to be done.  Just as the Sun rising once for one day doesn’t give all the light and energy necessary for the Earth to do everything it needs to do for its predicted 3.7 billion years, it has to rise continuously over and over again, each time going through the nocturnal underworld in order for the Earth and all its life to continue developing, building, and lasting.  Speaking from experience, I can definitely attest to this being the case, but happily this book provides means and new ideas for me to continue working with my own HGA in a big way that I wouldn’t've thought of.

Something that I’m totally okay with and agree with as a matter of scope is that the book does not offer much in the way of ritual.  Several authors offer some ritual rubrics and ideas to actually work with the HGA, but these are still rubrics with mostly experiences of use with them and not detailed ritual instructions themselves.  Rather, the book focuses more on “what the HGA can do for you”, and points out that there are so many ways to approach the HGA and many ways to come in contact with it, not just via the Headless Rite or the Abramelin operation.  That’s one of the goals of this book and the overall work of the HGA, too: it really doesn’t matter how you do the work here, so long as you do something.  Fr. MC himself says as much in his final entry: “there is no substitute for experiential knowledge…what is most crucial is to DO”.  The rituals offered within the book are references to those from the PGM, Abramelin, Solomonic-inspired shamanic acts, or Gnostic Ogdoatic methods to work with the HGA, which is saying quite a lot about the background the book offers that it combines all of them near seamlessly into a cohesive text.  What this book is good for is that offers the reader a glance into the experience of those few practicing magicians with actual experience with the HGA, as well as their (wildly divergent but critically useful) thoughts on the spirit.

It’s the combination of authors within “The Holy Guardian Angel” that really gives authority and authenticity to the book.  There’s a lot written about the HGA out there, but very little of it can be trusted (even more than most stuff on magic out there).  Even Fr. MC himself says as much in one of his old blog posts (reproduced in the book as a part of the section on the blogosphere debates):

…of all those who claim they have established “Knowledge and Conversation….”, 70% are lying, 15% have interpreted the aforementioned S.A. or another helpful spirit AS the HGA when in fact it is not and therefore truly believe they HAVE Knowledge and Conversation… etc…, 10% have no contact with any spirit and are under the new age proliferated misconception that contact with spirits evoked comes in the form of “clear messages, like really reeeaallly clear messages in my head” or another such abominable lie.

5%, then, are those who genuinely have made conscious, true contact and have attained what Abramelin and Abraham von Worms call “Knowledge and Conversation of The Holy Guardian Angel”. And thats a liberal number. In the majority of cases, those who are among this 5% and have ascended to this level, will know recognize one another in conversation or when reading each others writing on the subject. This is because the experience of meeting this transcendent being is absofuckinglutely changing, and there are no circumstances under which one having done so could not be utterly, permanently changed.

While I may not agree with the literal percentages of these counts, it hits home when Crowley himself says that “until the Magician has attained to the Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel he is liable to endless deceptions”.  Attaining contact with the HGA is no easy thing, and while it’s no advanced thing either, it takes work and, like any real spiritual endeavor, it changes the entire game of one’s life.  It’s one of the closest parallels the modern Western mystery tradition has to a life-death-rebirth ritual seen in many other spiritual paths, and if you ask anyone who’s undergone that type of ritual, if it was done right then you and everyone around you knows for a goddamn fact it was done right.  Anything else is a lie and there is no substitute for it, either to get others to think you have the contact with this spirit or to get yourself to have contact with this spirit.  That we have such a collection of esteemed magicians who have the experience and scars to show they have the real deal with their corresponding HGAs is a treat for magicians in the modern day, especially since more and more is being written about the HGA by people who may not be anywhere as qualified to talk about it.

Whether you’ve already had contact with your HGA, or even already reached the grade of Ipsissimus in the Golden Dawn, or even are a newcomer to Hermetic magic generally, Fr. MC’s book “The Holy Guardian Angel” is going to be a wealth of information and practice for you.  It’ll give you things to look forward to if you don’t yet have contact with your HGA, and it’ll give you plenty to chew on if you already do (or think you do).  The book is one of the closest things we have to a textbook on working with the HGA especially when paired with things like the Book of Abramelin or Liber Samekh, but it’s also definitely one of the most approachable texts out there.  To see the words and minds of these magicians put together in a single volume on a complicated subject is a treat, both intellectually and spiritually, and definitely a must-have for ceremonial magicians.  Stop by Nephilim Press and place your orders soon!

Yada yada geomancy.  You know I know a lot about it, and I daresay I do myself.  Geomancy, over its 1000-year history, has developed many, many techniques to predict all kinds of stuff: how situations will resolve and under what circumstances, weather on a particular day, the types of diseases one may contract, where to find lost or stolen items, and so many other things.  It’s a fantastic and highly flexible divination system, especially considering it only has 16 symbols to use.  I’ve studied nearly every technique I can find in the Western traditions of geomancy, even having to translate stuff from arcane and poorly-written Latin to do so, and even after finding different correspondences between the figures and the Zodiac and body types and this and that, geomancy remains one of my top favorite, precise, clear, and accurate divination systems.

Alas, however, I have to consign a geomantic technique to the failure pile, and it’s not for lack of trying: determining names.  While it would make sense conceptually that one could determine names with geomancy, I have never been able to get such name charts to work right, from the first time I ran a name chart years ago up until the present day.  Add to it, I’ve found several methods to determine names with geomancy, and several ways to associate the letters to the figures, and I’ve tried them all, none of them giving anything remotely resembling an accurate answer.  This frustrates me to no end, because why the hell would this one technique not work when nearly every other technique I’ve tried has given me useful results?  This is especially frustrating, since being able to predict names would be exceptionally useful in the world, from determining the names of cities one might be successful in to determining the names of future spouses.

John Michael Greer (“Art and Practice of Geomancy”) gives one such method, where each figure is given one or two letters.  To determine the name of someone or something, one casts a chart with this type of query in mind and the geomancer inspects house I for the initial letter, houses X and VII for the medial letters, and house IV (and house V, for some reason) for the final letters.  Each figure is associated with one or two letters; in the case where a figure has two letters, one is chosen if that figure passes around in the chart and the other chosen if that figure does not pass out of its house.  JMG admittedly says that, because many names have more than four letters, “a fair amount of intuition can be needed in this form of divination”.

Robert Fludd (“Fasciculus Geomanticus” and “Utriusque Cosmi”), Christopher Cattan (“The Geomancie of Maister Christopher Cattan”), and John Heydon (“Theomagia, or the Temple of Wisdome”) all offer more methods to determine names:

1. House I indicates the first letter/syllable, houses X and VII the second and third syllables, and house IV the final syllable.  Basically JMG’s method given above; present in all the aforementioned books.
2. Take the letters of the figures in houses I and VII, and “as often as ye take the said letters, so oftentimes move your figure,  and then if ye find it not, take the letters of the tenth”; Heydon copies the English translation of Cattan verbatim for this.  This method is highly unclear and vague, and Robert Fludd says that “hic modus falsissimus est” (“this method is the most false”).
3. Basically the same as #1 above, but specifically for vowels according to Cattan and Fludd; Heydon doesn’t mention this.  Considering how some of the correspondences with the figures don’t even include vowels for all figures, I don’t see how this could be reliable.
4. Basically the same as #1 above, but using house X for the first syllable (not just a letter!), house VII the second, and house IV (according to Fludd) or both houses IV and V (according to Cattan) the last syllable.  Not mentioned in Heydon, nor do Fludd or Cattan say how one gets a syllable based on a single figure.

All authors give a set of correspondences between the figures and letters, but Fludd explicitly uses Cattan’s associations (hence the similarity between their rules).  Cattan, further, gives three “rules” of associations, with the first rule giving one or two letters to each of the figures, the second rule giving up to three letters, and the third rule giving up to eight; however, he never mentions the rules at all in his book or when to use which one!  Heydon, on the other hand, uses a radically different set of associations where he also includes Greek, Hebrew, and Celestial Hebrew (which is for some reason radically different than the Hebrew associations); JMG’s associations are based on Heydon’s, though no other author mentions anything about JMG’s use of selecting a primary or secondary letter based on whether the figure passes around in the chart.  Plus, as usual, the ever-convoluted-and-overwrought Heydon’s charts are riddled with errors, duplications of some figures/letters and omissions of others, etc.

Moreover, I can’t find any rhyme or reason as to why the figures were associated with the letters they were given by Cattan or Heydon.  My analytic mind couldn’t find a pattern, and none was offered in the texts as to why each figure had its sets of letters.  Either they were arbitrarily chosen by their authors, or they were observed after multiple readings and rules based upon them.  I tried my own hand at developing my own set of correspondences, hearkening back to my works with grammatomancy and stoicheia.  My thought was that if each letter can be associated with an element, planet, and zodiac sign, and each of those symbols can be associated with a letter (a la qabbalah), then it might work that we can give letters to the figures based on their stoicheiometric associations.  This works fairly neatly for the Hebrew and Greek scripts, but English was a different beast entirely; happily, Cornelius Agrippa gives such a table with English letters for the planets, elements, and signs of the Zodiac (book I, chapter 74), which I combined with Gerard of Cremona’s astrological associations between the figures and the Zodiac.

A summary of the different associations of Roman/English letters, according to Heydon, Cattan, and my own stoicheiometric correspondences, are in the table below.  Heydon was a pain in the ass to get right, since so much of his book is corrupted or jumbled, so I had to guess at some of the associations.

But even using any of the techniques with any set of correspondences, I kept coming up with wrong answers.  If I were lucky, some of the letters in the actual name I was trying to find might appear at random places in the chart, but this was by no means guaranteed.  I did notice a slight tendency for some of the letters to appear in houses II, V, and VIII, but there was no pattern for which letters (start, medial, end) appeared within them.  I even tried using the values of the Greek, Hebrew, and Celestial Hebrew associations that Heydon gives (untrusthworthy as his stuff tends to be) to see if it would get me anything closer than the Roman script association; nada.  Plus, many of the techniques assumes there to be at least four letters or syllables in a name; many names I ended up asking about after I did a reading on them had one or two syllables, or had even just three letters, and these techniques don’t specify what to do in the case of really short names.

Like I said, it’s not for lack of trying that I’m giving up on determining names with geomancy; it really does seem like no technique handed down to us works, nor any associations of the letters we have so far (and there are quite a few).  Even my own associations and analysis of name charts yields no good results.  Although I’ve heard of some (very few) geomancers getting good results with this type of divination, I’m really starting to question their results; most geomancers I’ve gotten word from suggest that name divination hasn’t worked well for them, either.  The fact that so many other techniques work well for myself and others, with the exception of this one, doesn’t bode well for determining names generally using geomancy.  Even if it were a divinatory problem that applied to just me due to some spiritual block or mental bottleneck that would prevent me from getting good results, if a good number of other people found the technique useful, I’d be happy to agree, but even that doesn’t seem the case.

Heck, even other diviners using other divination (besides straight-up getting knowledge from spirits in the astral or using a Ouija board, which is sketchy as hell) suggest similar poor results with determining names from any set of divinatory symbols.  The fact that this might be a widespread problem across divinatory methods (barring the occasional apocryphal or anecdotal story) suggests that, much like lotto numbers, specific names simply can’t be divined.  The issue of determining names themselves poses problems: what if someone uses a nickname they identify with more than their real name, or they don’t identify with any single name?  Or what if their real name is unknown to someone and they only use nicknames with that person?  Or what if they change their name legally?  Conceptually, geomancy should be able to see through this, or at least offer some sort of guidance, but even with names that are fixed under specific circumstances, nothing seems to work.  That, or when JMG said that “a fair amount of intuition can be needed”, he really wasn’t kidding, and I think this requires intuition to the point where geomancy stops being useful at all.

Add to it, I have an issue with the English language, and the Roman script generally, in magical use.  I simply don’t find it to be a very magical language; sure, I use it in my rituals pretty much exclusively save for brief phrases or what amount to cantrips, but perhaps it’s because it’s my native language that I find it so utterly mundane and convoluted.  It’s awesome for getting stuff done in this world with other people, of course, but it doesn’t seem to have the right resonance with higher forces that, say, Greek or Hebrew tend to have.  Moreover, the Roman script bugs me in magical use for inscriptions on talismans and for other magical purposes, primarily for one reason: the letters of the Roman script were never used to mark numbers (and no, Roman numerals don’t count).  The Greek and Hebrew scripts, on the other hand, have isopsephy and gematria, respectively, which enable a word to be treated as a number, and as Pythagoras once taught, numbers rule the universe and effectively are the universe.  Plus, Hebrew has its associations with qabbalah and the paths on the Tree of Life, and more modernly with its associations with the 22 trumps of the Tarot; Greek, having 24 letters, is a divisor of 360, the degrees in a circle, and add up nicely to the sum of the 12 Zodiac signs, 7 planets, and 5 elements.  The Roman script, with its awkward 26 modern letters or 23 pre-modern letters (with J reduced into I and V and W reduced into U) has no such claim to occult fame, with no system of English or Roman gematria having worked well for me or for others.  Plus, the Roman script is really the only script of the three that has seen major and frequent changes in its alphabet over the millennia.  Of course, the Greek and Hebrew (and earlier Phoenician) scripts have had their changes, but those were already largely done with at an early date.  English writing, and the Roman script generally, just don’t seem to have magical oomph, so trying to use it magically to determine names with divination just doesn’t sit right with me from the get-go.  Then again, seeing how the Greek, Hebrew, and Celestial scripts provided equally bum results in name divination, it’s not just a problem with the Roman script in this instance.

I know that Arabic geomancy has a method to determine names, and I assume the methods are similar: associate different letters with different figures, and inspect certain houses for the letters of a name.  Still, I know little about the method in particular, nor how well it works for Arabic geomancers.  The fact that predicting names is common in “master” books of geomancy through its development and across several cultures suggests that this type of divination should work, else why would it be kept around when so much else has come and gone?  It might even be that such a method exists, but it’s not one passed down to us through Fludd, Heydon, Cattan, or Greer.  Still, at this point I’ve pretty much given up on trying to determine names with geomancy, and I’m consigning this to the trash heap until someone gives me something new and original to try.

And, yes, I have the same exact problem for determining numbers with geomancy as I do letters, and there are, again, several ways to determine numbers and several sets of associations between numbers and geomantic figures as offered by Cattan and Heydon.  Any hypothetical post about me consigning that technique to the trash, too, would pretty much be an exact duplicate of this post with letters replaced by numbers.  This means that a good chunk of the post on determining time with geomancy is also bunk, though I wrote about it as a hopefully useful technique.  Bah.

I get a lot of hits on my blog from across the realm of the Internet, many of which are from links on Facebook, Twitter, or RSS readers.  To you guys who follow me: thank you!  You give me many happies.  However, I also get a huge number of new visitors daily to my blog from people who search around the Internet for various search terms.  As part of a monthly project, here are some short replies to some of the search terms people have used to arrive here at the Digital Ambler.  This focuses on some search terms that caught my eye during the month of February 2014.

“+dearth spell magick on my self” — If you meant “dearth” as in famine and scarcity of resources, that’s fairly easy, though people tend to work prosperity magic for themselves rather than poverty magic; invoke Saturn to keep your means and resources restricted, banish all forces of Jupiter and Venus, and invoke Mercury to lead all good and providing things away from you.  If you meant “death” magic, well, dearth and death go hand in hand, so you could similarly invoke Saturn again for that, but really?  You want to use death magic on yourself?  You may want to read up on actual and reasonable necromancy first, hon.  Try giving Tomekeeper a good read, to start with; he’s working on his necromancy book, “Ars Falcis”, too.

“runes to supercharge labradorite” — Labradorite was discovered by European peoples in the late 18th century, long after runes had been used, and even longer after they had been used for magical purposes (except for the occasional astrological text).  Thus, there are no real runes to work with labradorite, though I’m sure associations could be made between runes and stones nowadays that are based off traditional lore.  If you meant “rune” in the broader magical sense of “a magical operational symbol”, then which symbol you’d want to use is entirely up to how you want to “supercharge” it.  Personally, for empowering things generally, I just like setting things out in the Sun and Moon for a lunar month or so, or praying over it, or using an astrological election to consecrate them, or so many other methods.  Symbols themselves are nice, but how are you going to use that symbol?

“the psalms and ‘planetary hours’” — This is actually a really interesting idea.  I don’t know of any system that corresponds the planetary hours to particular psalms; there are seven planets and seven days, so there are 49 distinct day-hour combinations, or 98 if you consider diurnality (e.g. day solar hour on Monday vs. night solar hour on Monday), while there are 150 psalms, so there’s no easily notable matchup between the two.  However, I do know that the Christian Books of Hours and breviaries often have sets of prayers, especially the psalms, to be used at different times during different days, following a set of canonical hours that are not unlike the calculation and setup of planetary hours.  Combining the two might be an interesting project for a Christian planetary magician.

“does criss angel consider planetary hours in his magic” — Criss Angel is not a magician.  It’s like, yeah, a person with a Ph.D. in Mongolian literature and the person who gives you medicine at the clinic are technically both called “doctors”, but they’re nothing the same; likewise, his “magic” and my magic are not the same thing, and he is not a “magician” like how I’m a magician.  Criss Angel is a performer and illusionist, and his stuff has nothing to do with the magic Hermeticists, ceremonialists, and other actual magicians do.  Thus, I strongly doubt he even knows about planetary hours, much less considers them in his “magic”.

“conjuring spirits within you” — Generally a poor idea, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing.  If you’re an expert in it, you might end up with something like the Santería ocha ritual, where you’re initiated and have a spirit share your headspace with you from then on.  At worst, you’ll end up performing Crowley’s Choronzon experiment, and with probably even worse results than he got.  It’s like if I wanted to get to know you better, I’d meet you out for coffee or something, not immediately say that I’m gonna share your bed with you for cuddles and conversation.  You’d be far better off conjuring spirits in a space set aside for them, like a Solomonic triangle or Table of Practice.

“how to properly bless a blade for satanic ritual” — This is contradictory on several levels.  Blessing indicates that you want to consecrate something and make it holy, which is the work of God.  Satanic rituals (if you’re taking this in a theological direction) indicate that you’re buying into the entire Judeo-Christian framework with the enmity and opposition between God and Satan, and then deliberately picking the losing side of the battle.  First, that’s stupid because it’s already been prophesied in the tradition that Satan comes from that he’s not gonna do too well in the end, nor for that matter any of his followers; second, Satan is by definition unholy in the Christian theme of things, so anything that’s blessed cannot be used for a satanic ritual, nor does Satan have the capacity to bless things.  You could desecrate something that was once made holy, sure, but that’s not the same thing.  Blessed things tend to hurt rather than help in such works, not to mention showing yourself to the spirits as a stupid whiny brat who’s probably still in high school who wants to be some spookeh dark warlock of uber powerz.  I’m not your guy for that kind of BS.  And while an argument could be made that Satan exists as a god alongside God, you’re suddenly straying into a weird dualist theology a la Zoroastrianism (where even that religion’s dark god fails in the final days) that is no longer Christian nor satanic, and you better have a lot of mythos and power built up for your new god to have the capacity to bless things in his own name, which is already empty without the backing of the Judeo-Christian mythos and religion behind it.

“sphere of the fixed stars symbol” — The various spheres of heaven have many symbols associated with themselves: the planetary symbols, symbols of their ruling angels, and the like.  However, the sphere of the fixed star is weird in that it doesn’t have a symbol, or rather, it doesn’t have any one symbol.  Using the symbols of the signs of the Zodiac together can work, and similarly those for the lunar mansions (the astrology program ZET has a set based on the Vedic mansions which I’ve heard work well); there are also .  In visualization exercises, I tend to just visualize the starry sky itself as a symbol, but I’ve also asked Iophiel, the angel ruling over the sphere of the fixed stars as a whole, for a seal for which I can conjure and commune with him.  There are also seals for a few of the fixed stars themselves, but that’s not for the whole sphere.  Qabbalistically, the sphere of the fixed stars is associated with the second sephirah Chokmah, so the number 2 and anything pertaining to it would work on a numerological standpoint.

“how do you drill a hole in orgonite” — Get a drill and some orgonite, then drill a hole into the orgonite using the drill.  The fact you have to ask shows that you might need something stronger for your mental and spiritual well-being than glittery congealed robot vomit, anyway.

“english sharthand” — Dear gods, I’m so sorry.  You may not want to scratch your ass next time you have indigestion.

“free geomancy readings” — While I don’t offer free readings often, I sometimes do if I’m doing a promotional deal or a devotional act for the gods.  In the meantime, I charge $30 for a normal geomancy reading.

“angelic symbol” — There are so many of them,  I don’t know where to begin.  You can even get original ones for your own use from the angels themselves, you know; this is how I developed my own set of seals for the elemental archangels (Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, Uriel) since no common symbols for them exist.  That said, the notion of a symbol is pretty wide-ranging, especially when this deals with spirits; the spoken or written name of the spirit, an image of them, their numbers, their colors, their elements or planets or celestial forces, the seal or graphical logo, all of these things are their symbols, and wherever those symbols are, so too is that spirit, and vice versa.  Y̹̖̰͖̥ͨ͛͘O̡͚͋̊ͬ͂͌̀̊U̢͎̲̲̟̼̭̥̤̅ͧ͘ ̸̛̺̻͚̺̠͎̰̘̽͞ͅA̜̩͎̣͔̅̊̑̌͟R̷̢̫̖̫̓̌͌̕E͗̈̈̂͂̍̌̏҉̠̗̣̟̪̺̭ ̤̟̟̼̳͈̖̃̅̓͐̌́̐͜N̨̩̖̘͈̽ͅE̩̺̱͓̥͍͐̽̔̽̽͑͠V̸͕̩̭̼̖̤̻̂̈́ͭ̀̾̚E̴̛̻̙̠̺̺̖̱̅̀͛̎̐ͫŖ̤̌̌̿͆̈́ͮ͒͟ ̶̼͊̇ͪ̄͋T̘̮ͯ̽̓̍̉ͣ̉͢͞R̜̞͒̓̆̋ͣ͜Ü̪̙̳͍̜̗̹͈͛̉͟L͗̋̿ͦ̓̄ͮ͢҉̝̻͎̮̻͙̞Y̪ͯͦ ̰͉̞̹̞̪ͫ͡A̛̳̥̘̠̭̥ͩ̍͌̍ͭͨ̌̌̀L͍͍̜͙͙͙̮͉̎͌͆̄̈̄̆̀̚Ő͍̗̩̝̼ͯ̀̑̏̅N̵̪̠̆ͫ̈́͑̋͊͋̀E͚͉̳̠̯̱̮ͯͨ̇̔͜

“badass calligraphy alphabet” — Why, thank you.

“spirit wife ritual” — I’m…not really sure.  I assume this means that you want to make a spirit your wife, so good luck with that.  I might suggest talking to an angel to assign you such-and-such a spirit who’s compatible with you in all regards, mentally and sexually and emotionally and etc., then perform some sort of bonding ritual between you and the spirit assuming that it’s amenable to such a thing.  I guess.

“how to summon hermes” — Hermes is a god, and one of the few gods given permission in Greek mythos to be given permission to go anywhere and everywhere; further, the Homeric Hymn to Hermes notes that he cannot be constrained by force or binding.  To that end, unless you’re the king of the gods Zeus himself, I don’t think you have permission or business to summon Hermes as you would other angels or demons.  You can invoke him and offer him sacrifice, performing a ritual to invite him down to a sacred or sanctified place, but that’s by no means a summons to the god.  Even I, as his priest and devotee, have no business saying “Yo, Hermes, get your wingy ass down here, I got shit for you to do”.  This is a clear case where invoking and evoking have different natures, and you want to invoke a god rather than evoke them.

“what symbol did gabriel put on solomon’s ring” — I don’t really know where the symbols on the Ring of Solomon came from. There are two major versions of this ring in Western magic: the one from the Lemegeton Goetia, and the one from John Dee.  The former has the names “Michael, Tetragrammaton,Anepheneton” (or “Michael, IHVH, Tzabaoth” if you use an interpretation from Greekish names to Hebrew like I did for my own ring).  The latter is commonly known as the PELE ring, so called because it has a circle with a V crossing the top and an L at the bottom, bisected by a horizontal lines, with the letters P, E, L, and E at the four corners clockwise from the upper left.  However, Dee’s books say that the angel Michael, not Gabriel, gave him such a design, and the Lemegeton remains silent on the matter as far as I can read.

“what does it mean when lighting a spritual candle and the wick lets out a poof” — I love how this was described, first of all.  As for “poof”, this could mean different things.  If you mean that it sparked or crackled, I might say that this means a spirit came by and inhabited the candle, and is set to work on the job; more materially, this might mean that there are impurities in the wick or pockets of gas or air that perturb the flame.  If you mean that a puff of smoke came out of the candle, I might say that this means there could be difficulties in getting the work done on your own; materially, that there are carbon impurities in the wick that create a sooty deposit.  Both of these can be avoided by trimming the wick down to a short length, say 1/4″.

Would you believe me if I said that one of the most powerful prayers, indeed the only true prayer we’re capable of, involves no words or speech at all?  Further, that this prayer is what undergirds every ritual, working, and sacrifice we make to the Source and to the world?

One of the things that Fr. Rufus Opus’ lessons in Hermetic magic teaches is how to get up and running as a Hermetic magician working with the spheres of the cosmos.  This process grounds the magician in working with the four elements that compose this sphere we live in, whether you call it Earth or Malkuth or whatever.  From there, you then begin to work with the forces of the heavens, indicated by the different planets: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.  By cycling through these forces, either in conjuration or astral exploration or qabbalistic pathworking or what-have-you, the magician begins to understand the relationship between the heavens and the earth, what is above versus what is below.  Each heaven feeds into the next, such that the forces that come from Saturn feed into Jupiter, which feeds into Mars, all the way down to Earth.  Ascending through the heavens gives the magician a solid footing in each of the forces that collectively build up the world, understanding how things on Earth come to be through the elements and how the elements come to be through the planets.

But the work doesn’t stop there, of course.  The planets themselves are collectively formed from even higher forces, which is sometimes termed “the sphere of the fixed stars”.  Ancient astrologers and astronomers only knew of the seven planets, and guessed at their relative distance from the Earth based on their speed.  Thus, the Moon, having the fastest speed around the Earth, would be the closest planet to Earth, and Saturn, with the slowest speed of the traditional naked-eye planets, would be the farthest.  From this, we get the terms “first heaven” relating to the sphere of the Moon, “second heaven” to Mercury, and so forth.  If Saturn is then the “seventh heaven”, then what lies beyond Saturn would be the “eighth heaven”, but there are no visible naked-eye planets to correspond to such a place.  The ancients then assigned all of the fixed stars, the lights in the sky that don’t move relative to each other like the planets do, to the eighth heaven; this includes all of the constellations of the Zodiac, all of the lunar mansions, and all other fixed stars, constellations, and the like.  This is the furthest boundary between what exists and what does not exist (God), whose membrane exists somewhere between the stars themselves and Saturn.

My first experience with the eighth sphere was something I looked forward to for some time, and I was finally able to attain during the consecration of my ebony Wand of Art last year.  I had done a week straight of conjuration, going through each element and planet in turn for seven days straight, reincorporating those forces within me to prepare me for the final conjuration of Iophiel of the Fixed Stars, the Eighth Heaven, and to call it a memorable experience would be a grievous understatement.  After a lot of conversation with the angel Iophiel, something had finally clicked that Fr. RO had mentioned time and time again on his blog that had enticed me to contact this angel in the first place, the Hymns of Silence:

In the Eighth sphere, we learn to Hymn in Silence. The Hymns are hymns of CREATION. We are creator gods, and the most holy form of worship is the creation of our world. Hymning in silence seems, from my experience, to mean that we get apply the forces of creation at will through methods such as imagining a shape or form, tensing a muscle, and paying attention (focusing awareness) to a certain thing happening. t’s an immediate thing that has a great deal of potential. (from “Seven Spheres in Seven Days: Phase II”, 11/4/2012)

But when you get to the Eighth Sphere, my God, it’s a whole new ball game! The Hymns of Silence are exactly that. In the rituals and rites of the Seven Planetary spheres and the lower realms, you speak and commune and direct, you mix and mingle and create talismans and tools and things. But in the Eighth, youintend and things happen. I’ve learned there are forces released when you make a physical movement with a specific intent empowered by teachings from certain spirits at certain times, and the world just bends a little bit. (from “Abramelin: Hermetic Rite or Hermetic Wrong?” 6/8/2010)

And it’s really weird for me because I’m used to being able to put things into words. But in the Eighth Sphere, you learn to sing hymns of silence in preparation for the Ninth. It’s a matter of directing your intent in worshipful observation, in celebration of the process of manifestation. You tune your observation-with-intent to harmonize with the manifestation current, and you find yourself as the conductor as well as a player in the orchestra. And see, there’s no limit to what can be accomplished. You name a thing, and it responds, and then it returns to where it used to be.  (from “Ch-ch-ch-changes”, 6/24/2010)

This morning in church, I took time during the worship service to pursue the silent hymns of the 8th Sphere. Doing so in the midst of vocal hymns was interesting, and I highly recommend anyone working with Iophial or the Archangels of the Zodiac to take the time on a Sunday morning to go to a church that sings. It doesn’t matter if it’s contemporary or traditional, but if you’ve forgotten the essence of what a hymn to the highest is all about, then you won’t have the context to understand what they can teach. If you’re a pagan, review the Orphic hymns, I’m pretty sure they’re around somewhere. The point is to worship, which is not a debasing or limiting thing at all. IT is freeing, and you can’t begin to understand the image you were made in until you are able to understand what you’re an image of. If that makes sense. My fingers are typing the wrong words lately. (from “The Silver Key”, 3/22/2009)

Each of the spheres has its own “tune”, it’s own note, with our lowest sphere of Earth composed of all of them.  However, Saturn has commonly been depicted as a sphere of silence, of the lowest possible note where only whispers are possible, if anything at all (especially in my own travels in that sphere, or say Alan Moore’s “Promethea” series).  If these seven spheres correspond to the seven basic pitches of Western music, then what exists beyond that?  Because that’s where the Eighth Sphere lies, and even beyond that the Ninth, which is the Source of all other things that exist.  It’s the beautiful music that comes from the Eighth Sphere without sound, the tone without pitch, the vibration with both all and no vibrations at once, that undergirds all other possible music that can be made below it, and this music is the Hymn of Silence.

This isn’t something that Fr. RO made up, either.  It goes all the way back to the beginning of Hermeticism in the Poemander (section 26):

And then, with all the energisings of the harmony stript from him, clothed in his proper Power, he cometh to that Nature which belongs unto the Eighth, and there with those-that-are hymneth the Father.

They who are there welcome his coming there with joy; and he, made like to them that sojourn there, doth further hear the Powers who are above the Nature that belongs unto the Eighth, singing their songs of praise to God in language of their own.

And then they, in a band, go to the Father home; of their own selves they make surrender of themselves to Powers, and [thus] becoming Powers they are in God. This the good end for those who have gained Gnosis – to be made one with God.

Why shouldst thou then delay? Must it not be, since thou hast all received, that thou shouldst to the worthy point the way, in order that through thee the race of mortal kind may by [thy] God be saved?

And the idea is talked about even more at length in Hermes’ Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth to Asclepius:

H: “Lord, grant us a wisdom from your power that reaches us, so that we may describe to ourselves the vision of the eighth and the ninth. We have already advanced to the seventh, since we are pious and walk in your law. And your will we fulfill always. For we have walked in your way, and we have renounced [...], so that your vision may come. Lord, grant us the truth in the image. Allow us through the spirit to see the form of the image that has no deficiency, and receive the reflection of the pleroma from us through our praise.  And acknowledge the spirit that is in us. For from you the universe received soul. For from you, the unbegotten one, the begotten one came into being. The birth of the self-begotten one is through you, the birth of all begotten things that exist. Receive from us these spiritual sacrifices, which we send to you with all our heart and our soul and all our strength. Save that which is in us and grant us the immortal wisdom.  Let us embrace each other affectionately, my son. Rejoice over this! For already from them the power, which is light, is coming to us. For I see! I see indescribable depths. How shall I tell you, my son? [...] from the [...] the places. How shall I describe the universe? I am Mind, and I see another Mind, the one that moves the soul! I see the one that moves me from pure forgetfulness. You give me power! I see myself! I want to speak! Fear restrains me. I have found the beginning of the power that is above all powers, the one that has no beginning. I see a fountain bubbling with life. I have said, my son, that I am Mind. I have seen! Language is not able to reveal this. For the entire eighth, my son, and the souls that are in it, and the angels, sing a hymn in silence. And I, Mind, understand.”

…

What he had finished praising, [Asclepius] shouted, “Father Trismegistus! What shall I say? We have received this light. And I myself see this same vision in you. And I see the eighth, and the souls that are in it, and the angels singing a hymn to the ninth and its powers. And I see him who has the power of them all, creating those in the spirit.”

…

H: “I am singing a hymn within myself. While you rest yourself, be active in praise. For you have found what you seek.”

…

A: “I will offer up the praise in my heart, as I pray to the end of the universe and the beginning of the beginning, to the object of man’s quest, the immortal discovery, the begetter of light and truth, the sower of reason, the love of immortal life. No hidden word will be able to speak about you, Lord. Therefore, my mind wants to sing a hymn to you daily. I am the instrument of your spirit; Mind is your plectrum. And your counsel plucks me. I see myself! I have received power from you. For your love has reached us…Grace! After these things, I give thanks by singing a hymn to you. For I have received life from you, when you made me wise…”

The closest way I can describe the Hymns are something like a combination of recognizing our True Will, joining intentfully into the Pleroma, and the injunction from 1 Thessalonians to “pray without ceasing”.  The experience of singing the Hymns is ecstasy in the deepest meaning of the word, making us stand apart from ourselves in rapture.  The act of singing the Hymns is the act of dwelling in the Eighth, no matter where else we might be in mind or body, and to hear the Hymns even once leaves a mark on your own self that can never be erased.  It’s one of those milestones in Hermetic practice that, much like getting contact with the HGA, can never be forgotten nor ignored.  The sound, or thought, or vibration, or whatever-word-to-best-describe-it-that-I-can’t-find always lingers in the mind, like the currents under the surface of water or the bones supporting the body.  It never goes away, even in sleep or meditation, even above earworms that get stuck in the head, even above the most dire worries and concerns we have in this life.  This Hymn is the presence and awakening of Nous within ourselves.

This Hymn is the true and only Hymn we can ever possibly sing.  Any words put to music or used in religious service are ultimately empty without this Hymn, and any ritual done without this Hymn being sung is worthless and ineffective without it.   The good news is that this Hymn is already with us and coming from us, whether we’ve reached the Eighth Sphere or not, though we may never realize it without our eyes being opened.  We may be able to sing snatches of the Hymn, or pick out the tuneless tunes that match it for a particular purpose, but these Hymns are always within us, always being sung.  It’s obtaining access to the Eighth Sphere, however, and really learning about these Hymns that allows us to always be aware of them being sung within and without and around ourselves, and which allows us to intently and willfully sing it whenever we want.

In fact, if we want to be minimalist about it, singing the Hymn is the only ritual action we ever need to do.  The Hymn is the accumulated powers of the Eighth Sphere, the source of all things below it; it is the foundation of the planets, elements, and all that exists.  The only thing more primordial than the Eighth Sphere is God itself, and singing the Hymns not only prepares us for working with God directly as God but also prepares us to work with any other force in the cosmos.  Instead of using elemental magic to change things down here on Earth as they already are, or using planetary magic to change things as they come down to Earth through the planets, the magic of the fixed stars allows us to rig the game before it ever even starts.  You don’t work with a single part or multiple parts of the system, but the system as a whole; you get a broader picture of the harmony of the cosmos and what really needs working on and what’s really in discord rather than what we think is discord.  In singing the Hymns with our entire body, soul, spirit, and mind, we effectively become magic itself, capable of feats unimaginable even to ourselves, since the Hymns allow us to all but tap into Mind directly.

Of course, like anything else in magic, it’s not simply a one-time thing; you don’t just waltz up to Iophiel in the highest discrete sphere possible, get initiated into the Hymns, and be done with it.  Like any meditative or spiritual practice, it takes practice and effort to really get the Hymns to flow through you without discord coming from you; just like your True Will, it takes some work to align and fine-tune ourselves to sing the Hymns of Silence in Silence, with or without words.  We have a lot going on down here with ourselves, and a lot to use reason for, but not all reason is truly reasonable; we may justify what isn’t reasonable to look like reason, and we may happen upon reasonable acts without reason and without knowing why we should really keep doing reasonable things.  Singing the Hymns takes Work, and is another “key” to performing good ritual of any kind, but especially that of Hermeticism.

If any of the foregoing is confusing, I apologize, but this is hard to put into words to begin with, and even my talent for vocalization falls short when I try to describe something that is essentially unspeakable.  The only real advice I have for further clarification is for you to go and do the Work yourselves for this.  Go conjure the angels of the elements and learn their “instruments”, go conjure the angels of the planets and learn their “pitches”.  Understand the principles of the music of the spheres, the harmony that builds up to the crescendo creation of  our world, and with all those understood and incorporated into your own sphere that makes you your own orchestral symphony, go forth into the Eighth Sphere and learn the Music behind the music.  It’s not that hard; you’re born for this.  Go and Sing.

As much as I harp on about setting up a daily practice, I have to admit that I’m kinda terrible at maintaining my own.  Then again, mistakes, lapses, and unexpected events are often the case, and with an already-packed schedule, sometimes prayers or meditations or offerings get pushed back or forgotten entirely (and made up later with profuse apologies).  It happens to everyone, unless you’re one of those die-hard devotees with good time management and enough free time to allow for it all (confound you, lucky/hardened bastards).  I try my best, all the same, and I try to keep myself on the ball when I can.  After all, what good is a daily practice if it’s not kept daily?

Lately I’ve been experimenting with different routines and different ways to set my routines up, from spending less time in the mornings and more time in the evenings to changing when I sleep and how much I (can stand to or get by on) sleep.  Some things have worked, and some things haven’t, and it all informs what my ideal practice would look like given my current situation.  However, that doesn’t take into account what my actual practice is, and whether aspects of my daily practice are worth it or should stand to be continued as daily as they are, or whether they should be cut back to weekly or even less frequent practices.  For instance, it used to be the case that I would spend time every day doing the Headless Rite before attaining contact with my HGA; now that I have contact, I don’t do the Headless Rite except when I really need the extra oomph for a ritual.

To that end, I decided to come up with five major questions that helped guide me to clarify my own thoughts, desires, and necessities when formulating a daily practice, each of which deal with time constraints and necessities:

1. What are your worldly obligations?  While it may be nice for some of us to daydream about becoming full-time spiritual, devoting every second of every day to prayer and magic, that’s quite out of the realm of possibility for many of us.  Hell, even monks of various traditions have to spend some of their time farming, taking inventory of goods, doing chores, and the like.  For the majority of us, we’re obligated to interact with the world in ways that can easily take over most of our time, especially when it comes to school and work.  Classwork and studying, or preparing lessons and teaching, as well as meetings and overtime work are all important things that must be given highest priority, as well as all the attendant time-sinks like commuting, lunch breaks, and the like.  Making yourself presentable and livable, too, also counts as worldly priorities, so getting enough sleep at night, taking care of your body and hygiene, and taking care of chores and errands also count here.  Without fulfilling our worldly obligations to the extent that is proper for ourselves, we neglect to build a solid worldly foundation upon which we can build our spiritual lives.
2. What are your personal priorities?  As human beings, we have human needs such as intoxication, being social, supporting families, enjoying hobbies, being productive, and just generally being happy.  Working in the world and Working in the cosmos both lead to happiness, sure, but chances are you’re going to desire other things besides these that can help you be a well-rounded human being.  Unless you’re a die-hard OCD schedule-master, you’re going to have at least one hour a day where you’re relaxing and enjoying some sort of pastime.  Sports, martial arts, hobbies, craftwork, being social, going partying, writing, and anything “extracurricular” can be considered something personal, and these should also be given important weight.
3. What are the crucial aspects of your daily practice? Everyone has a different notion of what they consider to be their daily practice, and more than that what they consider essential to it.  Some people have no need for any type of daily ritual, only interfacing with their spirits and the like as needed; other people like doing a bit of daily meditation or prayer, while others insist on doing a LBRP-type ritual every day.  It’s up to you to determine what exactly you find yourself doing every day and what you need to be doing every day, and no two magicians or priests will have exactly the same schedule.
4. What do you have time for?  Once you have an idea for what you want to do for your daily practice, it helps to figure out what you absolutely need to do to have a core minimum practice that you can elaborate for when you have time.  When you have little time, you can only do a little; when you have more time, you can do more.  It’s that simple.  Within the time you can afford to spiritual practice, what is it you absolutely need to do that you can fit within your time constraints?  What practices can be combined or smooshed into a single practice, or what practices can be eliminated from daily practice entirely?  As we grow, we may find that our needs may evolve over time, working more on this thing that we before never encountered and working less on that other thing now that we’ve gained some more knowledge or initiation.
5. When are you most comfortable Working?  Even considering one’s obligations and priorities, not everyone is going to enjoy carrying out one’s practice at the same time in the same way.  Many of my friends prefer to do their spiritual work at night when they’re relaxing after work, while I’ve always been a morning person and get my best work done before I leave my house.  Biasing your practice towards a particular time of day can benefit your practice substantially, but if you don’t have such a preference, using any available time works just as well.

For instance, consider my own situation.  My primary worldly obligation is my job: I work roughly 40 hours Monday through Fridays with mandated half-hour lunch break at an office that takes me an hour to commute to in one direction, so already I spend about 53 hours each week at a place where I can’t really do much in the way of spiritual growth or ritual.  Plus, I tend to spend about three hours a week taking care of errands and chores, get about seven hours of sleep a night, work out for about half an hour each day, and my major hygiene routine takes about half an hour each day. Among my major personal priorities are going to a 2-hour aikido 20 minutes from my house class three times a week, divination readings and classes on Sundays for six-ish hours at the local new age store, and going out to eat with friends for about three hours a week total.  Plus, to factor in where I’m decompressing and don’t need to be doing anything else, we can factor in another hour per day of just downtime.

All told, this yields about 135 hours a week where I’m given to be doing other human things.  A week only has 168 hours, so I only (“only”?) have 33-ish hours a week for spiritual work.  Taking into account my obligations for each day, this leaves about 9 hours on Sunday and Saturday, 1.5 hours on Monday, 4.5 hours on Tuesday and Thursday, and 2 hours on Wednesday and Friday.  On paper, these time amounts hover between “eh, it’s enough” and “mildly stressed for time”, so it doesn’t look terrible from the outset, but when I factor other things such as potential emergencies, delays at work, spending time with my boyfriend or family, and so forth, those 33 hours can quickly dwindle down even further.

When it comes to daily routine, I find that the things I feel compelled to do for my practice are meditation, energy work, prayer, and offerings.  Meditation is a must for any spiritual activity, as I and many other occultists see it, and I spend about 20 to 30 minutes in meditation a day, usually in the mornings after I work out and shower but before I do anything else.  Energy work comes after all my other daily spiritual work in the mornings before I get out into the world for work or pleasure, and my ritual takes anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes depending on what I need (anointing with oils, weekly banishing, extra ki training, realigning my magician’s altar, etc.).  Prayer is a wide and varied thing for me, but I generally break it down into morning prayers (recognizing and praising the Divine and the World, aligning myself with virtue and divine will, singing the Hymns of Silence, requesting the aid and company of my Holy Guardian Angel) and evening prayers (reflection and contrition, thanksgiving, singing the Hymns of Silence); without other prayers, each set of prayers takes about 30 minutes to do.  Offerings, on the other hand, are even more varied, and can take forms such as praying the rosary to the Virgin Mary, making a planetary observation with the Orphic Hymn for the day, reciting a chaplet for a particular saint, offering wine to the gods, or spending time with my ancestors; while prayers are for the Divine, offerings (which are also prayers) are for other, lower spirits.  I spread my offerings through the week, and usually spend between 10 and 60 minutes a day in offerings to the spirits and forces I work with, especially if I have multiple offerings to do.  Some offerings I do in the morning and some in the evening, depending on the spirit and my time, but generally it’s half-and-half.  Between all this, I spend about 1.5 hours (one hour in the morning and half an hour at night) to 3 hours (two hours in the morning and one hour at night) a day in daily practice alone.

Clearly, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are days where I can’t do my lengthened daily routine schedule, since I’d only just barely cut it on Wednesdays and Fridays (and that’s with an already full day with my aikido practice!), and Monday simply doesn’t have the time (since I reserve that for chores and errands).  Sundays and Saturdays, with the most amount of time, would be best for my extended daily routine, given that I have the most time available for them generally, as well as other ritual work or simply relaxing.  Of course, even this schedule can be variable; if I work from home on a particular day, I can overlap my work with chores or Work and do away with commuting entirely, especially if I have a day off from work.  Plus, I often have downtime at work, where I do my general internetting and a good amount of my writing, which saves me time at home for more ritual work; my own work schedule is somewhat variable within certain boundaries, too, so I can take off early one day and leave later another day to make up for the time.  If I take a trip out of town (as I’m wont to do once every month or so), then my free time might not be free at all depending on where I’m going, how far it is, and whom I’m visiting.

Since I work best in the mornings, I try to allot as much time for myself as I can within my boundaries.  I take the last available train to work, so I have to leave my house around 7:50am; since I don’t like going to bed super-early but need to get enough sleep, I go to bed around 11pm and wake up around 5am or 6am (usually the former, but sometimes the latter if I really need the extra hour).  That way I have almost two or three hours in the morning to exercise, shower, get my morning routine done, and get ready for work before leaving.  After work, when I get home usually around 6:30pm or 7pm, I have about four hours to decompress, run whatever chores or do whatever rituals I want, and then wind down for my evening practice before heading to bed at 11pm.  Some nights I have plenty of time, even with aikido class; some nights I have only enough time for a quick prayer and heading off to bed after errands and chores.

Of course, my daily practice itself might be changed up a bit depending on what other rituals I do on a given day.  For instance, if I do a conjuration in the evening after work, a lot of the introductory prayers I make are the same as the ones I do in my morning prayer set, so I might elide those out of the morning routine or the preliminary ritual.  Offerings one day might be delayed a day or so to coincide with a better astrological timing for it, or I might forsake something like energy work entirely (arguably my lowest priority daily practice) if I don’t have the time in the morning and make up for it the next day.  Offerings can be more tricky, since they might be made as a gesture of appreciation or as part of a vow, and broken vows are never fun to deal with; I might double an offering to make up for a previously missed one, or simply ask forgiveness and forbearance from the spirit being made offerings.  If nothing else, offerings are the one thing I make my highest priority, but even they can get missed from time to time due to scheduling conflicts (like a Saturday offering at my altars when I’m out of town).

After all that, I think I have a good idea of what my daily practice should be like.  I’ve looked at my time constraints and time sinks with a critical eye, as well as what my practice consists of and what it should consist of; I’ve figured out what practices can be done on which days and to what extent, as well as my other general free time that I can use for (gasp) more practice, other rituals, other obligations (commissions, readings, studying, drinking, etc.) or other non-spiritual acts entirely (luncheon, video games, aikido, drinking, etc.).  The only thing left at this point is to actually implement my practice, and now that the first Mercury retrograde of 2014 is over, it’s a good time to do just that.

Do you have a daily practice you stick to, or try to stick to?  What are some of your biggest time sinks in terms of obligation, desire, and vice?  What do you consider necessary for your daily work, if anything at all?  Feel free to share in the comments!

Recently I was browsing the good Sannion’s blog, and he mentioned something about a polytheist meme that one of his colleagues had posted. Turns out, Galina Krasskova over at Gangleri’s Grove had posted a type of questionnaire to help with interfaith and cross-tradition discussion, specifically to “get the ball rolling” on discussing our own paths and practice. I thought it was a fascinating set of questions, so I decided to try my hand at answering them for myself. These types of probing questionnaires are nearly always helpful to clarify one’s own situation and view thereof, and this was no exception. While Galina is writing a full post for each answer to her 24 questions, I contented myself by condensing them to simple paragraphs unless necessary.

As I read it, Galina’s questionnaire was probably intended more for people in traditions with set names, such as “Asatru” or “Hellenismos”. I don’t really fall into any one category; I work with the Greek gods and am a priest of Hermes, and I work with the saints and angels of God and perform devotion to God as well as the Logos and the Pneuma. My work as a ceremonial Hermetic magician only complicates matters further, so I’m really sorta winging it in my life on my own amalgamating Hermetic path. That said, this gives me all the more reason to try to answer these questions for myself.

1. What wealth have the divinities brought into your life?
   Oh jeez. The love of my life, a stable job with good pay, continued health, safe travels and journeys, abundant knowledge, good friends, an understanding and loving family that knows to give me space and distance, protection and safety, skill in crafting and engineering (software and otherwise)…it’s hard to list them all. I attribute what successes I have to the gods or to my talent (itself given by the gods) or to my friends (themselves led to me and I to them by the gods). What poverty and paucity I have is from not living my life right according to the gods, or misusing my talents in ways that the gods never intended me to.
2. What does your tradition do to increase the power and flow of blessings?
   Prayer, right living and right mindsets, ritual to come to know the gods, sacrifice to please the gods, vows and offerings to exchange work with the gods, meditation to know what’s truly a blessing and what’s not or to know what I should ask for and what I shouldn’t ask for, and the like.
3. How have the divinities helped you in times of adversity and violent upheaval?
   I can’t really say that they have, only because my life has been blessedly free of upheaval. What troubles I have, the gods preserve me with consolation, comfort, and talking things through; they give me aid and luck when I need it, and direction and strength if I call upon it. They’re kind to me, and I honor them for that. My life has been exceedingly lucky at just the right times, just when I need the help, and I thank them by living my life well and making good and proper use of the help they give me. In doing so, this keeps my life free from adversity and upheaval as much as possible, living the life I’m supposed to live and how I’m supposed to live it. The trials they give me are never more than I can bear, and they either exhort me to action or offer me the advice I need to surpass them. I have not yet been through a time when the gods have forsaken me, and I pray I never do.
4. What are some of the ways that you communicate with the divinities?
   Divination, oracular media, watching for omens, prayer, and simply chatting with them as I would any dear and respected friend. Sometimes they’re always with me and able to communicate; sometimes I have to go to an altar or a shrine where their power is focused enough to communicate clearly. Sometimes I have to go through ritual in order to access them; sometimes I can ping them with a mere thought and they reply. Depends on the spirit.
5. If you could travel anywhere on pilgrimage where would it be and what would you do?
   Probably Mt. Kyllini in Western Corinth, Greece, birthplace of Hermes, son of Zeus and Maia. I’d like to go mountain climbing there, perhaps find a cave where I can make some offerings in privacy, take some dirt or vines for the place for use in devotional tools and offerings back home, and get a good meal from local restaurants.
6. What does it feel like when one receives inspiration from the divinities?
   It may not feel like much at all, really. Physically it might be felt like an uncharacteristic gleam in the eye, a sudden temperature change in the body, or a short blackout when suddenly you’re buying something you had no plans to purchase. Mentally, it might feel like a thought or good idea popping into the head, or a dim recollection of something you never knew you witnessed.
7. What offerings do you make in your tradition and why?
   Depends on the spirit being offered something, really. I always light at least one candle, no matter who I’m offering something to, and almost always burn incense pleasing to the spirit (heather for Dionysus, frankincense for the angels, patchouli for the ancestors, etc.). Burnt offerings have always been held in high esteem, and it takes something firmly out of this world and gives it entirely to the spirits; it’s an efficient way to do sacrifice. Beyond that, I generally make offerings of alcohol, such as wine to the gods or rum to the ancestors, since these are volatile substances with a good spiritual kick in them (in several senses of the word). Devotional acts are also common, such as helping to pick up litter when performing a devotion to land spirit or acts of charity in the name of the saints, since it helps me make a change in the world using my own power and means when material offerings aren’t as needed. Whatever’s asked of me that I can give, I give; generally the spirits don’t ask for anything that would put me in too dire of harm, but when they say “jump”, it’s extraordinarily rare for me to ask anything else besides “how high”.
8. What methods of inducing altered states of conscious does your tradition have?
   Hm…the two main sources for this in my practice are the Christian-Hermetic tradition and the more blatantly pagan one. In the former, choices are limited: fasting, meditation, and prayer can help build up to a state of ecstasy, though it can be slow-going at times. In the latter, pretty much anything goes, though a loosening of the mind is most easily achieved with wine or rum (or gin). There’s really nothing stopping me here from using drugs or states of trance obtained through relaxation, so anything goes so long as it works. I personally prefer a light buzz from wine or rum along with good-tasting tobacco. I’ve also noticed that drumming has a more powerful effect on me than I thought it would, so anything with a good and steady and (most importantly) loud beat can get me up and out easily, including a 4/4 timed dance song heavy on the bass.
9. How does your tradition handle wrathful, savage and destructive divinities?
   My first inclination is to reply “carefully”, but who am I kidding? The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was straight-up known for being a volcano unfortunately-underendowed Canaanite plains storm god who made a habit out of flooding the world and cursing those who dared eat a banana the wrong way. The apple didn’t far fall from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, either, with his son Jesus, who threw fits in public spaces and chased after economists with whips (which I find kinda endearing) and publicly mocked his followers for being dimwitted idiots (which didn’t change much after the Transfiguration and sending upon of the Holy Spirit). Dionysus, the good cousin to Jesus, had his epithets and images of the bull for a reason, and being the son of another thunder-god definitely knew how to cause chaos and turmoil where he went (and not in the orgiastic and ecstatic way, either). Honestly, the best way to deal with these types of divinities is to either not work with them at all and treat them as facts of life that must be worked with respectfully and honorably instead of conquered, or to placate them when possible and give them restraint and discipline. Mars in Orphic and Roman religion, after all, was both a god of war and a god of agriculture, using steel for swords as well as plows, and by propitiating him with good times (Venus and Bacchus, who could turn that down with sexy-strong Mars?), he would lay down the spear to aim for “gentle works” instead. Wrathful gods abound; they have their place, especially when wrath and “tough love” is needed. I’m not opposed to letting wrathful gods have free rein when it’s called for, but once their objective is attained, it’s time to let the wrath go by propitiation and sacrifice and thanksgiving.
10. Have you encountered any obstacles as a result of your religion?
    Socially, no. I pass as pagan enough in pagan circles, magicky enough in magic circles, and Christian enough in Christian circles. One of my friends has commented that I have a type of personality and energy behind me that “delightfully meshes with but not of any particular force or religion”. When it comes to devotion, it’s all a matter of fulfilling my duties to my gods and my calling; sometimes it can be difficult, but they’re never insurmountable. Mostly these things involve me going out of my way to show them my devotion, doing something extra besides the usual offering of wine and honor. Of course, wine and candles and incense and altar gifts add up over time financially, but I make enough money where it’s just another expense that I live with contentedly like I would rent or a phone bill.
11. What blocks to devotion have you had to overcome?
    Time constraints, primarily. Faith is easy, and experimentation too. I don’t need massive funds to maintain my work; a cup of wine here and there, a candle lit, and incense sweetening the airs is all I need to buy, and I can do my devotions on my bed as well as I can any full temple.
12. What sort of festivals, memorials or seasonal observances do you keep throughout the year?
    Plenty. Primarily, the monthly ritual to Hermes I do on the fourth of the lunar month. I try to do a lunar ritual on the night of the Full Moon if the sky is clear, and a star ritual on the night of the New Moon likewise, but if the weather is bad, I skip it and wait for the weather to be clear on the following month. A few feast days here and there I hold extra prayers or offerings on, but nothing really tied much to the seasons.
13. Have you ever found it difficult to uphold your end of a bargain with the divinities?
    Not really. What bargains I make, I make sure I can pay off, and I work out my terms of payment with the gods ahead of time before I agree to anything. The only issues I have are with timing, such as vowing to offer a bottle of wine on the day of my return from a trip but being too tired to actually do so; in these cases, I simply pay off the vow when I can and ask if there’s anything I can do to make up for the lost time. Beyond that, though, the gods haven’t asked me (yet?) for anything not in my reach or ability.
14. What role does mystery play in your tradition?
    Many magicians follow the four rules of the Sphinx: to know, to dare, to will, to keep silent. that final part is about mysteries, things that one has to be initiated into in order to fully understand and reap the benefits of. Most of what I do would, technically, be considered a mystery: the initiations of the planets and elements and the stars, K&CHGA, knowing the abodes of the gods, and the like. Anything that is not apparent, anything esoteric is a mystery, and must be worked towards and into. To simply read or be told of something is just to know about it, but to live and experience it is to be initiated into the mystery. Some things I cannot know or do since I am not initiated into these things; if I’m to know or do them, I seek the initiation, like being baptized first before taking Christian communion or receiving an empowerment before reciting a particular Vajrayana mantra. Initiations and mysteries go hand-in-hand, if not the same hand itself, so it’s pretty important. Plus, if one doesn’t respect initiations and tries to go ahead and do something in the mystery anyway, that only leads to bad, at best cultural appropriation and at worst utter ruin due to hubris.
15. What methods does your tradition employ for protection and the warding off of malign influences?
    The general rule I’ve found, no matter what tradition I look at, is that no matter how big something coming at you may be, always call on something bigger to come at it. Whether it’s calling on the Almighty to protect one from demons, Typhon-Set to bully the gods into a certain action, or a powerful angel to keep one safe at night, asking for the help of those you work with is the first thing you do. Having an extra set of eyes and hands to watch and guard your back in a world and life where everything is both seen and unseen, front-facing and backwards, is the most useful thing you can do. Building up power on your own and exercising it (daily energy work and physical training), relying on the world around us to protect ourselves (secure locks and strong oils), and the like are also vital to one’s protection. Banishing and cleansing are regular things I do for my living and work area, and I frequently keep up on my offerings to sweeten and propitiate the spirits I work with to keeping me and mine safe, as well as to put a good word in with the other spirits of the cosmos that I’m a cool guy and other spirits should be cool with me.
16. What devotional goals have you set for yourself?
    Speaking abstractly, more work and action. I’m here to do my work, to do the magic, so to do anything else unrelated to that is me not doing my job. More specifically, I try to learn more about the gods I work with and engage in a deep, ecstatic relationship with those that are proper, or learn about the arts and skills and dedications of their crafts, or facilitate their influences and powers where they’re needed in the world. Even more specifically, this boils down to listening to the gods more, studying more about practices to them both ancient and new, and involving them in every aspect of my life where they’re called for. The converse of this is to get off my ass more, stop dicking around so much on the computer, and using my time more efficiently and effectively.
17. What qualities should a leader in your tradition possess?
    Spiritually cool (clear-headed, not impulsive, unbiased, respectful, humble), able to communicate effectively (well-spoken and well-written), learned and educated in a wide variety of subjects both spiritual and material, experienced in ritual and crafting, able to improvise, possessing a strong memory, compassionate and empathic (able to deescalate tense situations, crisis manager, understanding of personal issues, perceptive). Just a few things I’d consider important.
18. What does fertility mean to you?
    Being able to produce anything from oneself. Being a gay man with absolutely no interest in childbearing or childrearing (I would like a child one day, deep-fried), I don’t really have much to contribute to humanity or my family in means of bringing in new humans to the world, the mass of which I’m not a fan of generally. However, there’s a lot more to creation than mere procreation, and Venus (the planet of both) runs very strong in me. Writing, drawing, painting, woodcrafts, smithing, jewelry making, carving, engineering, code development, calligraphy, and the like are all things that require innovation and power to bring into the world; in each case, you’re making something new where there was nothing before. This is the true meaning of being a creator, just as Hermes Trismegistus has prayed: “o light of mind…o life of life…of womb of every creature…o womb pregnant with the Father’s nature…o eternal permanence of the begetting Father”. We all are capable of creating, and we all are capable of being filled with creation; even the most barren and infertile earth can be used to make clay. How we express that fertility, however, depends on our own inclinations, and not everyone is meant for human children.
19. How do you incorporate movement into your worship?
    Not much. I might make some ritual gestures here and there, such as those for the elements or the planets, or kneel with arms orans before an altar. For other rituals, I might acknowledge the four corners by turning and greeting them, or draw out circles in the around. At free-standing shrines or monuments, I like to circumambulate them clockwise in respect several times before proceeding with anything more. Dancing doesn’t have a large part in my spiritual work, or at least not yet.
20. Does your religion help you to be a better human being?
    Yes, but how depends on your notion of “human being”. To me, a true human (in the vein of Herbert’s Bene Gesserit) is someone who is fully aware of where they come from, where they’re going, and the divinity within them and in all other things; you can call this a bodhisattva, a prophet, a sanctus/a/um, Ipsissimus, whatever. This requires gnosis and full self-divinity that can only be realized through the Logos and the spiritual transformation that it delivers, but whether that Logos is given through Dionysus or Hermes or Christ or Buddha Shakyamuni is irrelevant, since they all give Logos in their own logoi. Being a “better human being” (kinder, more compassionate, more self-aware, more peaceful, etc.) follows as a result from that.
21. Have you ever had dreams or visions sent by the divinities?
    Very rarely. Dreams are usually not my thing, and between having shoddy dream memory to begin with as well as not having enough time to sleep comfortably regularly, dreams are generally a poor way to contact me. Visions, on the other hand, are another thing; I’ll often be taken on vision-walks or impromptu scrying sessions when I’m at the altars of the gods or saints, and they’ll show me fascinating things that are often highly pertinent to what I’m doing in my life. Something out-of-the-blue that overwhelms me, though, hasn’t occurred yet.
22. What customs are associated with the home and family in your tradition?
    Not much. I was raised in a mostly areligious household with very faint Jewish leanings, and we celebrated Chanukkah and Christmas (the latter more for family with no mention of religion). We didn’t do anything else in my family.
23. When did it first dawn on you that the divinities are real?
    I can’t remember time when I didn’t think they were real. I’ve always had a magical perspective on the world, and the existence of spirits was just a piece to the puzzle that fit in quite nicely early on. As for my own divinities, I pretty much accepted their existence as a truth and fact as I studied the old myths and stories, just as the ancients might’ve. There was plenty of discovery once I really opened myself up to them, but their existence and reality was pretty much never in question.
24. What have you inherited from your ancestors?
    Besides a bunch of antiques and hand-me-down knickknacks (I can hear them getting all huffy as I call them that, nyeh nyeh), my own life. I literally would not exist without my ancestors, their lives, and their works, so I owe my life and existence to my ancestors. This isn’t just those of my blood and kin, but also of my faith and traditions, so I consider my ancestors all those upon whom my life is based: my blood lineage; Hermeticists, Christians, Jews, pagans; Egyptians, Palestinians, Ukrainians, Russians, Greeks, Romans, Italians, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Native Americans; computer scientists, mathematicians, astronomers, astrologers, geomancers, engineers, and so very, very many more. All of my blood in my veins comes from my family; all of my Works come from my traditions; all of my crafts come from my teachers; all of my thoughts come from my philosophies. More than any single ritual, possession, name, or title, the ability and knowledge of the things I do and can do are the most important and valued possessions I have from my ancestors.

Give the questions a try, yourself. Depending on your path (so much use of that word, “depend”), you might need to write more than me or less than me. I’d be excited to see what you guys say about your own work!

Thanksgiving is more than just a day of gluttony in the US; it’s a powerful ritual and act in its own right.  At its core, thanksgiving is just that: giving thanks, or being grateful.  We feel gratitude for a lot of things: gifts received, favors obtained, good work done on our behalf, and the like.  Many religions place a high emphasis on being grateful towards divinity, especially since so much of our work and our lives in general depend upon divinity for continuing and continuing support.  Offering our thanks for, or at the bare minimum recognizing, the help and spiritual substance we receive, often forms a crucial center of worship and devotion, which enables us to further recognize the aid and presence of divinity in our lives, which enables us to always treat the things we receive (our food, our homes, our work, our families, our lives, etc.) with respect just as we respect divinity, which further enables us to live better lives.  This is especially true for magicians, where we not only have divinity to work with but often innumerable spirits, angels, demons, saints, gods, and the like to tend to.  For any work done, payment and thanks should always be given in return; this not only sweetens the deal and solidifies the relationship between magician and entity, but also makes the magician more receptive to that spirit’s aid and presence in their lives.

One of my favorite thanksgiving rituals is elegantly simple; I’ve adapted it from Draja Mickaharic’s book Magical Spells of the Minor Prophets, a collection of rituals and spells based on verses selected from the Minor Prophetical books of the Old Testament.  This is a fantastic book to pick up with plenty to offer.  The following is one I’ve added onto slightly by adding some more prayers, but it’s very simple and takes all of five minutes to do.  Mickaharic says that this type of ritual is best performed often, since it not only makes one more receptive to divinity in their lives but also strengthens the connection with divinity and helps their ritual strength the more they give thanks.  It makes sense; by recognizing the source of the power we work with as magicians, we honor it, and by honoring the source of the power we work with, we enable ourselves to receive more of it.  Given the source of this ritual, it leans heavily to the Abrahamic/Judeo-Christian side with its prayers, but it’s still a good one to use for any who are open to it.

1. Light three white candles set up in a triangle pointing away from you, preferably towards the east or to some image of the Divine.
2. For each of the three candles, do the following:
   1. Recite aloud Jonah 2:9, “But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed.  Salvation is of the Lord.”
   2. Silently pray the Lord’s Prayer three times.
   3. Silently pray the Trisagion three times.
   4. Silently pray the following prayer three times: “Thank you very much for everything; I have no complaints whatsoever.”
   5. Silently focus gratitude on the candle flame for a brief moment.
3. Recite aloud the Prayer of Thanksgiving.
4. In your own words, offer your thanks and gratitude for all the things in your life: the people you know, the work you do, the luxuries you enjoy, the provisions you use, the home you inhabit, and the like.  Especially give thanks for any ritual, spiritual, or divine work that has been done in the recent past.

I like to perform this thanksgiving ritual once a week, on Sundays after my meditation, act of contrition, and usual prayers, but before any other ritual work such as energy work or banishing or offerings.  It helps focus myself for the rest of my magical work, giving my thanks for all the work I’ve done so far and preparing myself for the work I’ve yet to do.  Different spirits or gods get different types of thanksgiving rituals, depending on the spirit in question, but since this is directed to the Source and the All itself, it’s a very general and broad thing.

Divination is the art and practice of obtaining knowledge about unknown things, and every culture in every area in every era has developed their own forms for it.  As I’ve mentioned before, divination relies on both intuition and technique, though the amounts of each varies between different styles of divination.  On the purely intuitive side, we have prophecy, being possessed by spiritual beings to communicate, and straight-up clairvoyance and clairsentience, things that just happen through purely spiritual means with no tools or symbols necessary.  Somewhere in the middle, we have methods that interpret omens that are collected through a methodical way, such as the shuffling and setting out of Tarot cards, analysis of the motions of the planets in astrology, and the generation of charts of geomantic figures.  Generally, divination is considered a spiritual practice, so we often consider intuition (the spiritual component of this method of obtaining knowledge) to be a necessary component of divination, with technique helping us to focus and sharpen our intuition.

However, this doesn’t preclude us from using purely technique-based methods to learn about the unknown, either, and this is where entirely nonspiritual people will happily join in on prediction.  Methods that use mathematical or physical models, rely on extrapolation from historical data, and guessing at the interplay of different factors based on likelihood are all purely technique-based methods of “divination”, such as economic forecasts or the prediction of planetary motion based on astronomical models.  This type of prediction is the most commonly accepted nowadays, given the general lack of spirituality in our modern culture, and one of the most common things we use to predict with these technique-only prediction methods is the weather through meteorological models and forecasting.  Sure, it can be vague at times, and distant meteorological events can be near impossible to predict, but it has a pretty high rate of success especially in the short term.

Of course, you don’t need to be a meteorologist to predict the weather, and proper divination systems have their own means to determine the weather of future time periods.  This makes sense, since the weather is among the most important factors shaping our daily lives for years at a time.  Farmers rely on weather to grow their crops; sailors rely on weather to sail safely; commuters rely on weather to know to bring an umbrella or just take the subway.  The weather is a vital part of our lives, and divination can step up to the plate quite nicely to predict the weather just as any Weather Channel or NOAA forecast can, and can be even more useful to get a good picture of the weather months in advance when meteorological models are essentially useless.

Geomancy, especially, is quite nice at predicting weather.  In the astrological house of a geomantic reading, the weather is assigned to house X, the house of the midheaven.  This house spatially represents the zenith of the Sun in the sky, and the sky generally, so it makes sense that the weather is given to this house.  To figure out what the weather will be on a given day, or more generally for a week or any other timeframe, simply inspect the figure in house X.  The two main qualities of the figure to check for are element and stability.  The elements within the figure, and the overall element of the figure generally, indicate the general type of weather; the stability of the figure (stable or mobile) indicate whether the weather will stay the same throughout the day or whether it will change.

Generally speaking the figures indicate the following types of weather:

• Populus: Very rainy, cool
• Via: Good, but rain likely
• Albus: Wholesome, little to no rain, cool and calm
• Coniunctio: Unwholesome due to rain, little to no wind
• Puella: Fair but rainy at times, warmer than otherwise
• Amissio: No rain, clear and breezy, temperate
• Fortuna Maior: Excellent, wholesome
• Fortuna Minor: Fair and hot turning to bad
• Puer: Fair, clear, wholesome, tending to hot
• Rubeus: Windy, unwholesome, tending to coolness
• Acquisitio: Clear, fair
• Laetitia: Clear and bright, calm, hot
• Tristitia: Cold, dark, shadowy, dry
• Carcer: Not good, unwholesome, dry
• Caput Draconis: Clear, wholesome, cool
• Cauda Draconis: Bad, wet, stormy, unwholesome

Of course, you’d need to take in the time of year and climate into account depending on the timeframe and location of the weather forecast.  For instance, a cold day in Seattle is different from a cold day in Houston, just as a cold day in January is different from a cold day in July.  Precipitation, too, should be factored in as different types depending on location and climate; rain in a place where subfreezing temperatures are common can be well-expected to fall as snow rather than showers.  Weather is not the same as climate, of course, and climate is generally known ahead of time.  The climate and location of the place to be forecasted will help provide a context that can help whittle down the general types of weather indicated by the figures.

A note about the list above: some of the figures are mentioned as “wholesome” or “unwholesome”, and this goes back to an older idea that the weather and airs generally have substantial effects on our health and well-being.  Wholesome weather is that which is good and healthy for us: neither too dry to suck the moisture from our lungs, nor too wet to weigh us down with extra moisture, nor too hot to burn and overly excite us, nor too cold to freeze us and keep us hunkered down.  Unwholesome weather has a higher chance of making us feel unwell, out of breath, slow in mind and body, and the like.  It goes back to the system of humours, where the human body is dominated by the four bodily fluids of yellow bile or choler (Fire), blood (Air), phlegm (Water), and black bile or melancholy (Earth).  Keeping ourselves healthy requires keeping a balance of these humours, which can be influenced by food, drink, music, and the weather, amongst other things.  Unwholesome weather has a higher chance of something extreme happening or provide conditions for us to get too wrapped up in one element or another that can cause us to be unwell.

Asking what the weather will be like is a simple enough question, but asking how and whether it will affect parts of our lives is quite another.  This is where other rules of geomancy come into play, such as that of perfection.  For instance, if you want to know whether the weather will impede your progress on a long-distance road trip, throw a chart and see whether houses X (weather) and IX (long-distance travel) perfect.  If they do, the weather will cause problems; if they don’t, the weather won’t be an issue no matter what it is.  Further, in charts like this, if the figure in house I (the querent) as well as that of house X perfect with house IX, then the weather will impede the journey but the querent will make the trip anyway; if house X perfects with house IX and house I but house I doesn’t perfect with house IX, then the weather will impede the journey so much that the querent won’t make the trip at all because of the weather.  If none of the houses perfect, then the weather won’t affect the journey, but the querent won’t make the journey anyway.

Because we often want to know about how the weather will affect our plans in our lives rather than just what the weather is itself, weather predictions are some of the most common to use multiple significators in the chart besides house I and house X.  Other houses for geomantically forecasting the weather include:

• House III: Local events, short-distance travel
• House IV: agriculture, land, crops and harvests
• House V: rivers, parties, growth of biennial/perennial plants (and plants generally)
• House IX: long-distance travel, seas, ships, planes
• House XI: get-togethers, work outings, well-being of friends or social groups, annual plants

John Michael Greer notes in The Art and Practice of Geomancy that house V should be inspected for rain, though the logic for this confuses me.  Perhaps it’s just to confirm the likelihood of rain as described by house X, but I’ve never needed such a confirmation.  His rule is that you check to see whether one or both of the figures in house X and house V are moist (Air and Water); if both are, rain is certain; if only one is, rain is uncertain but possible; if neither are, rain is not predicted.

Probably the most memorable experience I had using weather forecasting with geomancy was to predict the weather on my college graduation day.  For years before my own graduation, graduation day was always marked by rain, oftentimes heavy enough to move ceremonies indoors, and when my college campus was already packed to capacity, this was a hard thing to coordinate at the last minute!  Several months before my graduation, I ran a chart to determine what the weather would be like on my own graduation day, and the figure I got was Fortuna Minor.  The interpretation I got would be that the day would start off good but turn bad later on, so yes, it would rain, but after graduation itself was over with (which was scheduled in the late morning, anyway).  Graduation day came around, and the forecast from NOAA was to be clear for the whole day, and it started of bright, clear, and also exceptionally warm for a late May morning; we were thankful for our mortarboards and the orientation of the events to keep the sun out of our faces.  Later on during the program-specific ceremonies, however, it began to cloud up, and it began to rain just as I finally took off my cap and gown and headed home to drop off my diploma.  Exactly as I expected: it started off good and ended with rain after graduation itself was done.  Not bad for a few dots.

As you can guess, I have a good number of magical colleagues and friends all across the blogosphere (because I’m just so popular, obvi), as well as in my local and not-so-local area.  It’s been uncommon for me to do much with them magically, though; occasionally I’ll participate from afar in a group working, but beyond that, I’m pretty solitary when it comes to my Work.  That has officially changed, and now I belong to a spiritual consulting and services group known as Bones and Stars.  Together with my colleagues Ahmadi Riverwolf, Jhada (Rogue) Addams, Vincent Huckle, Michelle Lacoste, Adam Boersen, and Raven Orthaevelve (yes, my crafty silversmith friend!), we’ve banded together to form a spiritual consulting and paranormal investigation group to serve the world using teamwork and legendary friendship superpowers.  After all, while we’re all reasonable magicians and priests in our own rights, together we’re quite effective and have already taken on some cases in the southern Pennsylvania and Maryland areas.  We’re excited to start this project, since we’ve been talking about it forever and have already basically been working as a group anyway.  It’s just now that we’re all official-like and stuff.

Of course, none of this means I’ll drop what I’m doing in my own life.  Bones and Stars is something to augment my work, putting to practice my own theories and research and personal Work, and though I’ll write an occasional post or recycle one of my older owes for its blog (which you should totally add to your blogfeed), I won’t be distracted or detracted from continuing my work here on the Digital Ambler.  By all means, look to Bones and Stars for spiritual consulting, paranormal investigation, and the like, but don’t forget I’m able to take personal commissions, rituals, readings, and writing for clients, too!  On that note, if you haven’t yet, check out my Etsy page, where you can help fund my own projects as well as those of Bones and Stars (like, you know, webhosting).

So, by all means, add Bones and Stars to your blogfeed and bookmarks, check us out, and spread the word!  We’d love to hear from you, and help you in whatever spiritual needs you might have.

One of the most difficult problems I had in starting my career as a magician was speaking.  I mean, I’ve always had a way with words; writing has always been my forte, and was one of the things that saved my ass in college when other projects didn’t go so well.  Speaking, however, was another story; I often speak too quickly for many people to follow, and according to my parents (though I have no memories of this) I had a speech therapist help me when I was really young.  Public speaking has always given me a minor case of stage fright, and I used some herbs now and then to calm the shaking of my knees and slow me down when presenting a topic to a class.  It’s gotten better over time, but the written word was always better than my spoken word for years.

In magic, of course, one can’t always get by with writing things out, despite the inherent magic in the written word (a la Thoth-Hermes).  Prayer, for instance, nearly mandates speaking things out loud, especially in a Hellenistic or pagan context, and making my prayers “feel” powerful wasn’t a matter of my word choice.  It was a matter of speaking things willfully, intentfully, and powerfully on their own using the here-and-now voice rather than preserving and enduring ink.  Saying a consecration of fire over my altar candles never really “felt” like it took effect, and though the angels came when I conjured them, it still felt like my words were empty though I was using the proper channels and ritual to back them up.  Speaking out loud is something that has been a weak point in my magical practice, though it’s gotten better with practice.  This practice is more than just focusing on the words.  This rings too close to contemplation and meditation, and that’s not always the proper thing to do in a conjuration or a quick blessing of something, especially if you’re pressed for time, and ultimately isn’t helpful if you’re already in a meditative or focused state.  Focusing on the words is important, of course; any ritual action can benefit from increased or single-minded focus, since having the mouth talk in one direction while the mind is running in the other never helps to complete a ritual successfully.  Still, focus wasn’t really the issue.

Recent studies of mine have pointed out where this practice really took off for me, though I’m thinking about it in a new way than I did before.  In my style of aikido, there are five disciplines, one of which is called sokushin no gyō, or bell purification.  You sit down and clear the breath, then ring a bell in tune while performing a simple but loud chant.  This is usually done for a substantial amount of time, often forty minutes or more, and chanting anything loudly for forty minutes can wreak havoc on the vocal chords.  That is, unless you chant in the proper way.  Aikido teachers call it “speaking from the one-point”, or the center of the body, which is energetically the same as speaking from the navel/svadisthana chakra or the lower dantian in Chinese medicine.  Although we speak using our vocal chords, if we merely chant “from” there, we end up stressing them and causing damage; if we speak “from” our center, the vocal chords are more relaxed and aren’t stressed out from the chanting.

This is an important part of aikido in any of its disciplines; one moves or pushes the individual parts of the body to change things, but always moves with the one point and letting the rest of the body follow with it.  Walking, for instance, involves moving the one point forward and letting the legs carry it in that direction, rather than just moving the legs one in front of the other.  It’s weird to think about, but it’s an important point in aikido.  By acting from the center, we end up acting with our whole body as well as our whole mind, since the center is both the energetic center of the body as well as its physical center of mass.  If we chant or speak from the center, then, we speak with our whole body and mind unified as one, which can be done for much longer and with less strain than if we spoke or moved from any other part of the body.  The kiai, or force shout that martial artists often use, is done in the same way; instead of shouting it from the vocal chords or lungs, one shouts it from the center which helps to coordinate the body better when executing a particular technique.  Moving and acting from the center projects energy and strength in a way that uses our entire being more than if we used an individual part of the body, which uses just the strength of that part alone.

This aikido-centric way of thinking about speaking from the center is what’s really being meant when other magicians talk about vibrating or intoning words or sounds.  Some magicians talk about this from a physical standpoint, where you feel your body reverberate or feel the words reverberate in your head.  What’s really being meant here is that you’re using your entire being to speak the word, not just the body with the lungs nor the thought with the mind.  By all means, of course, vibrate your godnames until the Sun sets for the last time; it helps, and producing these sounds in the world is enough to cause changes in it and in yourself!  It’s just like me speaking the prayers of conjuration without really saying them, as it were, since the prayers still worked when I merely spoke them.  But it’s the unification of the mind and body that really puts these prayers and names and sounds and chants on a whole different level than just saying them mentally or just saying them physically with no such unification.

Unifying the mind and body feels different, too, when speaking in this way.  Physically, it doesn’t feel like much, save for something much stronger than a simple reverberation in the head; it feels like everything goes comfortably fuzzy and fizzy, or like you’re entering a trance state.  Mentally, however, it’s a lot more noticeable.  You’ll probably be aware that the thoughts in your head “feel” different depending on who’s saying them and how; for instance, your own thoughts about something you’re actively thinking about “feel” different from the chatter going on in the back of your head about monkey-mind concerns, just as the thoughts that you think “feel” different from those that spirits speak in conjuration or communion.  Likewise, thoughts that are spoken with a unified and directed mind “feel” different from thoughts with a non-unified mind.  To me, it feels like these unified-mind thoughts are “higher up”, or clearer in some way that’s hard to put into words.  It’s really similar to how the Hymns of Silence feel, now that I have experience with those.  Speaking in this way, in a sense, is applying the Hymns of Silence to back up any prayer or speech you have, which can cause far more change in the world than merely spoken words, since you have the force of the cosmos backing up your own vocal chords at that point.

When you get this feeling even once, it’s easy to keep going with it, and soon it becomes second nature to speak with this.  Spirits come to your call more often and with less delay; blessings feel more assured and secure; people snap to attention and hear you out for longer.  It still requires practice, of course, and a lack of focus can easily take away from this style of speaking, but this is a strength of voice that rivals even what Dune’s Bene Gesserit can muster.  Channeling the sacred words and names, the sounds of the vowels, and prayers takes getting used to, and it’s important to build up a familiarity with the words themselves first so the mind can easily recognize them just as so the body can easily pronounce them.  Again, it’s like aikido: it’s important to learn what the name and ideas are of the technique as well as the proper hand, arm, foot, and body motions are before one can properly apply them from the center rather than from individual body parts.  In order to unify the actions of the body and the thoughts of the mind, it’s important to have the actions and thoughts known ahead of time; you can’t unify things without anything to unify together.

If you’re not in such a martial art that puts a focus like this on its motions, never fear!  I got the hang of speaking with unified mind and body without taking aikido, too, though aikido has certainly already helped me in that regard, as well.  When you pray, don’t just rattle the words out from a book; study the prayer, feel how each word feels in the mouth, understand what feelings are triggered in the heart and what thoughts come from the mind, and then put them all together praying, essentially, from the heart.  When you vibrate the vowels of the planets, don’t just sing them loftily; feel the energies of the planets within you being directed outwards in all directions from you just as your voice can be heard in all directions, unifying you with the planetary energies already around you and strengthening yourself as well as your environment.  When you intone sacred names in the LBRP or similar rituals, don’t just shout them out; connect, commune, and open yourself up to the beings and forces behind and within those words and bring themselves to you just as you bring yourself to them.  It takes practice, but then, no strength can be developed without a good and repeated workout.

Ah, beautiful Charlottesville, Virginia.  Beloved town of Thomas Jefferson, one of the great Founding Fathers of the United States of America, and home of my alma mater, the University of Virginia, where I spent several years in academic, emotional, and spiritual upheaval and chaos which had a significant impact on my life today.  It’s also where an amazing conference is being held on my patron god, titled Tracking Hermes/Mercury, put on by the Department of Classics at the University of Virginia.  If you’re not here, you’re missing out; there are 21 presentations being made over three days talking about the role of Hermes-Mercury in many of his forms in myth, religion, magic, and daily life throughout the antique to late classical periods of European history.  I’m more than pleased to be here, and it’s an amazing group with equally amazing speakers from around the world presenting here on this awesome topic.  Besides the fact that I get to roam around my old stomping grounds again and do a bit of exploration that I couldn’t or wouldn’t do when I was younger, I get to study and learn more about my own patron from some of the brightest and sharpest (though sometimes oddly-accented) experts in the field of classics.  While I’m here, I may as well write up some of my notes and things to think on that I’m picking up at this little conference.

Today was the first day of three, a short day that started in the evening with three speakers: Henk Versnel (Leiden), Nicola Reggiani (Parma/Heidelberg), and Jennifer Larson (Kent State).  Below are some of the talking points and thoughts from their discussions.

• Hermes was, mythologically, a latecomer to the Olympian gods, being one of the younger sons of Zeus, yet is often held in many inscriptions as a great and powerful god, sometimes omnipotent (pankrator or pantokrator).  This is partially because Hermes never had any one field of expertise, but was a jack of all trades, able to help in any sphere of influence.  That said, many devotional or praise texts of the gods call them omnipotent in only a temporary sense; partially this is because the author wants to flatter and honor the gods in deference to them, and sometimes because the gods they write to are all-powerful for a particular need at that moment and at that time.  Further, many local gods (land spirits, local variants of bigger gods) were similarly held to be exceptionally mighty or omnipotent in their area, perhaps due to their closeness and relevancy to activities that went on in that place.
• Hymns to the gods (aretalogies) can be divided roughly into two sets: devotional and magical, the former seeking only to praise and worship the gods, the latter seeking to fulfill a request.  (Yes, I know this is a highly modern and artificial distinction.)  In either case, Hermes is described as all-powerful or all-seeing or whatever, and this may be because he’s riding on the epithetical coat-tails of other gods in hymns within the same collections (especially the Orphic Hymns and those in the Greek Magical Papyri).
• Some katadesmoi or curse tablets use a threefold description of Hermes: khthonios, dolios, and katokos (terrestrial, deceiver, and binding).  This echoes the threefold nature of other wrathful or chthonic deities, like the Erinyes, Moirai, and especially Hekate.
• Many curse tablets and supplications for justice, of which Hermes is a common target later on in classical history, refer to him as friend or beloved, often in conjunction with terms of rulership like lord, ruler, and the like.  These are highly deferential terms, which are uncommon to be applied to Hermes, especially given his gopher-like nature among the Olympians.  Still, they imply a relationship of closeness and connectedness, similar to like how one grabs the knees of a magistrate begging for legal or justice-related works in our world.
• In addition to Pan, Hermes and Asclepius (?!) are the two most-common leaders or companions of the nymphs in many cave and dedicatory inscriptions.
• Hermes was, of course, a god of communication, but principally this was through his role as herald of the gods.  As herald (kēryx), he had the herald’s wand of authority (kērykeion, or caduceus), which gives the power of speech to one bestowed with it.  Compare this to the scene in the Iliad where Agamemnon gives his scepter to Odysseus, giving him license to speak before the tribes of Greece.
• The caduceus itself is a scepter, and scepters give one divine authority to rule.  Agamemnon, king of Argos, obtained his scepter from Thyestes, who got it from Atreus, who got it from Pelops (origin of the name “Peloponnese”, i.e. the southern half of Greece), who was given it by Hermes from Zeus after having it made by Hephaistos (described in the Iliad).  Hermes always has his own scepter, bearing his message and authority as given to him by Zeus.
• Likewise, when the herald’s wand was taken away, Hermes is also the god who takes away speech, and thus the god of silence.  Hermes defeated Argos by lulling him to sleep and slaying him after he ceased his talking, and silenced all the dogs and animals on his way back from stealing Apollo’s cattle.  According to Plutarch in “De Garrulitate”, “when in some meeting silence occurs, it is said that Hermes has come in”.
• Hermes is known also for his associations with stones, specifically those used in heaps as primitive hermai as well as those used in divination and judgment (psephoi).  These associations were ultimately given by Apollo in exchange for the lyre and in substitute for oracular divination.  Further, in other myths, Hermes turns mortals to stone in retribution for speaking out against Hermes or ratting him out, thereby taking away their speech.  One such explanation comes after his up-close-and-personal killing of Argos, which incurred an act of pollution on Hermes, not to mention having gone against Hera who wanted Argos to guard Io; to purify Hermes, the gods threw their voting pebbles (psephoi) onto him.  This is an act of removing sin or pollution, and might be one reason made heaps of stones at crossroads to honor Hermes.
• Relatedly, Hermes is said (by Aesop) to have written down the crimes and sins of people on potsherds by Zeus and to pile them in a container, so that Zeus to could go through them and exact a penalty from each criminal or sinner.  In this sense, Hermes is now seen as a dispenser of justice, acting as reporter and investigator to Zeus in addition to his messenger and herald.
• It’s strange to see Hermes as a dispenser of justice, especially given his status as primordial trickster from the get-go as well as someone who had to undergo the first divine purification (involving showering one with judgment pebbles).  Still, it makes sense, as Hermes is one who both delivers judgment and justice as given by Zeus from on high, as well as being one who has already made the transition from criminal to civilian.  He brings people from one state to another, so from lawlessness to lawfulness, from sin to purity.
• Hermes is a dispenser of far more than just justice, of course.  Another fable from Aesop says that Zeus told Hermes to instill a dose of deceitfulness in every craftsman, so Hermes made up a recipe for deceit and poured it into the mold of each craftsman.  Likewise, he was told to dispense lies and dishonesty to all the peoples of the world.  However, in the former case, Hermes had an overabundance of deceitfulness at the end of his work, and poured the rest of the mixture into the mold for cobblers (those who make shoes); thus, “all craftsmen are liars, but cobblers are the worst of all”.  Cobblers make shoes, like sandals, like the sandals Hermes himself made to steal Apollo’s cattle.  With the latter myth, Hermes had a wagon that he used to dispense lies and dishonesty to the world, but the cart broke down in the lands of the Arabs, who plundered the cart as if it were full of riches; thus, “Arabs are liars and charlatans[;] there is not a word of truth that springs from their lips”.  Arabs, like the Phoenicians, were known as world-crossing traders who sold and bought wares all across the known and unknown world, linking them especially to Hermes (doubly so since they stole from the cart of the godly thief, himself).
• In stealing the cattle of Apollo, not to mention being born as a new god whose Olympian status was in doubt, Hermes essentially upset the cosmic order of things.  Big claim to make, sure, but in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, he steals the cattle of Apollo because he wants to plunder the riches and powers of Apollo, and this is only a start to the whole thing.  Plus, he prefaces this by making the lyre and singing out about the history of the gods, but the language used to describe this really implies that Hermes creates a theogony and cosmology from whole cloth, creating a new order.
• Hermes institutes this order later on by the sacrifice of Apollo’s cattle and proportioning out the meat into twelve parts, not only setting a banquet for the gods (another job as herald) but also setting in place a new method of distributing honor and works to the gods.  He does this by lot, i.e. dice.  Not only does he dice up the cows, he does this by dice.  In this view, Hermes is the god of distributions of fate and what’s due to each person.  This ties into his associations with divination, especially cleromancy or “divination by lot” or sortilege, which then leads naturally to his associations with astrology.
• Going further with this, Hermes is then linked to the goddesses of fate, usually seen as three in number.  An old Mycenean tablet has the disputed epithet “Areias” for his name, along with three goddesses of unknown importance (at least to me): Peresa, Iphimedeia, and Diwia.  It may be possible (though admittedly a stretch) that Areias is somehow connected to the Areopagus, the Hill of Ares in Athens, where the Erinyes were worshiped (again, a set of three goddesses associated with divine fate and retribution).
• The similarities between Hermes’ theft of Apollo’s cattle in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes and Heracles’ theft of the tripod from Delphi are striking enough to bear some interesting investigation.  Both concern an Olympian god of no repute at the beginning of the story who seek to upset the cosmic order by stealing from and struggling with their older brother Apollo, in both cases mediated by their father Zeus.  Hermes wanted to take Apollo’s rites of prophecy for himself, and Heracles wanted to obtain a prophecy from Apollo’s priestess, and in either case to get what they wanted they stole from Apollo; Hermes got sortilege, and Heracles set up his own oracle, both with the blessing of Zeus.  In both cases, their struggles with the gods (their older siblings, no less!) was seen not as an act of impiety but as proof of their divinity.  Although we don’t have an original myth written down for the Struggle of the Tripod, it’s likely that it preceded the Homeric Hymn, which may have borrowed both the core idea and some phrases from the Heracles myth (e.g. “strong son of Zeus” to refer to Hermes when this is commonly given to Heracles).