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 October 2015.

“can we change our physical gender by occultism” — First, a clarification: sex and gender are two separate things.  Sex is physical and involves the organs, bone structure, and hormones that your body has and produces; generally, this is male or female, but there are cases where someone is born intersexed with a mixture of the two sexual types.  Gender is a mental and social construct, and is a fluid gradient between masculine, feminine, agendered, and other genderqueer (hence the use of third person singular gender-neutral pronouns, i.e. neither “he/his/him” nor “she/her/her”).  Second, magic doesn’t work this way, not like how you asked.  I can no more change myself from a physical man into a woman any more than I can shoot fire from my palms or cause earthquakes by hitting the ground with my staff.  That’s the stuff of the gods and of myth.  Magic is a spiritual influence, not a physical one, and although it has physical effects, it goes through spiritual means to do so.  The Harry Potter stuff is just fantasy, and no more.  Now, you can certainly use magic to make transgender transition easier or more obtainable (easier access to hormone therapy, increased finances for physical reconstruction/plastic surgery, glamor to convince people easier that you’re a particular gender, persuasion to make bigots accept you easier, safety when alone at night or with friends), but there’s no ritual that will just up and change a man into a woman or a woman into a man.

“kybalion santeria” — Ugh. Ew. No. The two should never mix.  The Kybalion is New Thought trash; I know that many occultists read it as one of their first books, which acts as a gateway to bigger and better stuff.  I know.  I get it.  I do.  But the Kybalion is trash that causes more harm than good, and the fact that a lot of people read it doesn’t make it a good book.  It’s not Hermetic, certainly; heck, the name of the text itself is made up and supposed to recall “qabbalah”.  And, all that said, trying to mix the Kybalion with Santeria is…unpalatable.  Heck, Santeria is closer to actual Hermetic theurgy (complete with emanationist cosmogony and ensoulment of things) than the Kybalion could ever hope to be, and Santeria is a religion from slaves.  Slaves who had nothing but their ancestors and their gods and a crafty way of calling on them by a number of names unfamiliar to them.  Anyway….yeah, no.  Don’t mix the two, kiddo.

“how to consecrate a ring with the power of the sun” — Consecration of jewelry or talismans generally is an important part of my work.  How does one consecrate stuff?  Well, it depends on the force or god you’re consecrating it to.  With the planets, it depends on what tradition you want to work with, since there are dozens of cultures that have some sort of planetary magic, and hundreds or thousands of rituals between them all.  Originally, I got my start with a Christian-Hermetic angelic approach, which is still what I’ll pull out for really heavy-duty long-term projects, but I’ve experimented with many others.  For the Sun, specifically, I’d strongly recommend a ritual I recently came across from the PGM, which I’ve entitled the Consecration of the Twelve Faces of Helios.  Tweak it accordingly to receive the powers you want.

“is it cultural appropriation for magicians to work with saints” — No.  Spirits call whom they call; it’s not up to meatsuits to tell you “no, you can’t work with spirit X because you’re white”.  I’m very much of the opinion that when a god comes to you, regardless of where they come from, you pay attention.  I have no Greek ancestry, yet the Greek gods welcome me and Hermes especially calls to me; I have Jewish ancestry, but I feel less Jewish than a pig farmer in an oyster bar on Yom Kippur.  I’m getting involved with the ATR community, who’ve taken me in and with whom I hope to serve and pitch in as much as any black Cuban.  I’m not baptized, but the Christian saints have helped me out and continue to do so regularly.  Why is this?  Because spirits recognize color and ancestry and culture but (in general) they don’t care.  If you want to work with them, if you learn about them, if you encounter them how they ask and prefer to be encountered, if you fulfill your vows and keep your word to them, if you remember them and respect them, if you do your best to be a decent fucking human being, then you’re probably going to do better than many who are just “born into the culture” and don’t see it as any more than a thing their grandparents do.  However, respect is the key; that’s the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation.  There can and should be a two-way exchange between cultures, and we should never be binned into a box just because we were born into it.  That said, we shouldn’t loot, disrespect, or forget the origins of those whom we call on, and we shouldn’t transgress boundaries that even people of a particular culture wouldn’t transgress.  Consecrating elekes with your Wiccan pentacle or setting up an “Elegua protection altar” with hematite skulls and candy is not how you respect the gods.  You don’t just read a book written with half-assed, half-correct information by gods-only-know-what-hack and think you’re good to go as some sort of divine initiate.  Lineaged initiations, for instance, cultural mores, and purity laws are things to be respected.  For instance, even though I’m not Christian, I go to Catholic mass all the same when I need to get in touch more with a saint; that said, because I’m not baptized, I won’t take part in the Eucharist and receive communion.  Why?  Because I’m doing it for the same Power that the saint lived and died for.  It’s respect, and I apply that to all my spirits, be they gods, theoi, orisha, saints, angels, ancestors, kami, demons, or whatnot.

“the true table of practice” — There is no “true” Table of Practice, no more than there’s a “true” wand or “true” Triangle of Art.  Tables of Practice are tools used in conjuration as a basis for summoning a spirit, and there are different types of Tables used: there’s the one from the Ars Paulina, the one from Trithemius, the one from Dee, and I’m sure there are yet others that exist in the Western Hermetic tradition.  The Table you use is dependent on what text or tradition of magic you’re working with.  If it exists, by which I mean if you have a tangible version of it you can use in a ritual, regardless whether it’s gilded stone or engraved wood or Sharpie on a cereal box, then it’s true enough to work.

“cyprian of antioch vs st michael” — Why “versus” at all?  Cyprian of Antioch is a saint, and so honors God through His angels, including Michael the Archangel, the Prince of the Heavenly Host.  They work together, although Cyprian might prefer to call on a number of other powers before calling on Michael.  Now, while I strongly recommend developing a relationship with both Cyprian and Michael, and while they both tend to achieve the same end result when it comes to spiritual work, they achieve them in different ways.  Saint Michael the Archangel is the one who conquers and subdues wicked spirits, demons, and devils; think of the usual image of him where he’s impaled the Devil with his sword or spear and has him chained and underfoot; Michael helps you command the spirits as your servants.  Saint Cyprian of Antioch, on the other hand, is the one who ennobles and elevates wicked spirits, making them genteel and dignified so that one may work with them on an equal footing; Cyprian helps you collaborate with the spirits as your partners.  Sometimes it’s better to go with Michael than Cyprian, sometimes the other way, sometimes either way.  It depends on your style of interaction with the spirits, whether you prefer to be harsh or soft and whether you prefer slaves or partners, and it depends on the specific circumstances you’re working with spirits.  Sometimes you need force, and sometimes you need nobility.

“how to do things with quartz crystal” — Yes.  You do the things with the crystal by using it.  You might need to hold it differently or make sure it’s smooth enough for some particular means; you may not want those ridges on a Lemurian crystal (snerk) chafing your anus or vagina.  Not all crystals work as soup ladles.  Crystals generally do not work well as shampoo.  Horses tend to get you from place to place on the streets in rural Pennsylvania better than crystals.  One cannot make good coffee or tea with quartz crystals (or, for that matter, the crystallized powder of dehydrated coffee).  Smoothed crystals work well as back massagers.  Most crystals, except for the tiny ones, can help keep papers on your desk in the case of an unexpected tornado.  So many things!

“scorpio planetary hours” — There’s a bit of a semantic mismatch here.  Scorpio is a sign of the Zodiac, a 30° segment of the ecliptic in the eighth sphere of the fixed stars, beyond the spheres of the planets.  Planetary hours are segments of daytime or nighttime that are associated with the individual planets.  Scorpio is not a planet, and thus receives no planetary hour.  However, Scorpio is associated with the planet Mars in its negative/passive/feminine aspect, so we can say that certain hours of Mars (such as those at nighttime or during the waning Moon) can be associated with Scorpio, as I’ve experimented with before.  However, as my results from said experiment have indicated, there’s no real need to use planetary hours for the zodiac; rather, you’d want to time stuff so that the sign in question is rising (at the eastern horizon) or culminating (at the zenith/midheaven).

“witchcraft entity children summoning conjuration rituals” — I…what?  Are you wondering what spells witches use to summon children?  Is Hansel and Gretel a cautionary tale of “don’t let your children get bewitched”?  Do you think that those Satanic witches summon children to their stoops so that they can dismember them and use them in sacrifices to the Devil?  Pah!  Smart witches understand that one should use the most mundane, innocuous methods and stock up when children are in abundance.  On that note, have fun trick-or-treating this weekend, kids!

“angelic runes chart”, “planetary runes combinations” — Funnily enough, these are not what triggered my recent post on term clarification for different types of symbols, but it was a Reddit post on /r/occult.  Anyway, neither angels nor planets have runes (pace anonymous author of the Liber Runarum).  The word “rune” refers specifically to the letters of the alphabets used for Germanic and Scandinavian languages prior to the introduction of the Roman script in northwestern and northern Europe.  There are runiform scripts out there, like Old Hungarian and Old Turkish, which look kinda-sorta like futhark/futhorc runes, but they’re not themselves runes.  Angels have seals or sigils (such as those given in the Magical Calendar or the Heptameron or Agrippa), and planets just have glyphs.  In general, it’s better to just use the generic word “symbol” to refer to things.

“cassiel ritual for separation of lovers” — Cassiel is the angel associated with the planet Saturn, and is otherwise known as Castiel, Caffriel, Tzaphqiel, or some other mangled form of its original Hebrew name.  Saturn is not exactly the most emotional or sweetest of planets, and is also associated with the metal lead.  You know the story of Cupid?  He has two sets of arrows: gold-tipped ones to cause people to fall in love, and lead-tipped ones to cause people to fall in hate.  I don’t have a ritual handy under the angelic powers of Saturn to cause people to spurn each other, but it’s not hard to see how this might be done.  For instance, if I were to make up such a ritual…get a fishing weight made of lead and hammer it out into a flat disc.  Engrave one person’s name on the left of the disc and the other person’s name on the right, with the symbol of Saturn written three times down the middle of the disc.  On a Saturday night in the hour of Saturn, preferably with the Moon waning and placed antagonistically towards the planet, call on the angel of Saturn with myrrh and asafoetida incense.  Proclaim the love of so-and-so with thus-and-such null and void, that the powers of Saturn sullen and ensorrow their relationship, and that the two lovers be no more; break the disc down the three symbols of Saturn into two, such that the two names are no longer together on the same piece of lead.  Suffumigate the pieces in the incense and set a black candle to burn on each such that the black wax covers the two pieces of lead.  In the morning, instead of using the bathroom as normal, piss on the two pieces of wax-covered lead, and bury each piece where the person will step over it (so-and-so’s piece where so-and-so walks, thus-and-such’s piece where thus-and-such walks).  You’re done!  Go take a shower and enjoy your chaos.

“how to consecrate a 7 day candle”, “burning candle rituals in psalms”, “candle burning rituals psalms”, “burning candle rituals use of psalms”, “florida water and white candle rituals”, “psalms 23 white candle magic”, “how to burn candle to pray with psalm”, “candle burning ritual using the psalms”, “can you use florida water to consecrate a candle” — I’m not sure if I noticed it before or if it’s actually weird this month, but it seems like I’ve gotten a higher-than-normal rate of candle/psalm-related searches.  Chances are these are variants of something a single person was using and kept getting turned back to my blog, and given the inclusion of Florida water in a few of the searches, I’m going to guess they’re looking for something more American in style, like hoodoo or rootworking uses.  Honestly, while the usual all-purpose candle consecration ritual I use comes from the Key of Solomon (book II, chapter 12), that’s generally overkill for something like this.  Washing a candle off in fresh, clean water or holy water is more than enough; Florida water may make it a little “brighter” than you want, but it’s a good spiritual cleanser all the same.  You can anoint candles with olive oil that’s been prayed over or with a specific magical oil, but it’s not strictly needed unless you think it’ll help with your specific need better.  There’re whole books and styles of setting lights and burning candles, especially with Psalm magic, far more than I can describe here, but use candles in ways that make sense, generate spiritual power from the flame, and demonstrate through ritual motion of moving and placing candles according to the specific psalm and purpose of the ritual.

“can i invite pomba gira into my dreams” — Ahahahaha a̴͔͓̰͕̩h̸͙͙̱̲̝a̜̝̦͈̤̦ͅh̕a̝͍̟̯̹̠h̺à̙̖͕h̻̻͚͍͔̼͙a̖͔h͇͟a̛̬̗̥̞̦h̡̠ H̷̹̣̘͈͎̭͔͟À̵̲̖͍̪̱̘H̢͚͈Á̘̳̠̭̰ͅH̥̼̳͎̞̻̖̲A̵̳̗̜̫͍̬̬H̜͇̰̟̜͜A̵̸̳̙H̡̙̯̩͉̼̼̹̳̰̕A̫̬̻͇͖̝̫͜ͅH͖̞͡A̞̳͇̫̕ͅ Ｈ͔̞̜̣̟̀͟͟͢Ａ̭̯̹̥̼͙̪̤̩̤͔͟͢͠Ｈ̸̶̢̨̮̲͉͇̙̫͍̹̥͓̝͈̺̯͟Ａ̷̟̠̤̼̝̪̙͙͕͕̭̲͉̭́̀͜͢Ｈ̸̵̴̖͓̪͙̬̹͕̣͔̰̟̥͈̭́͝Ａ̧͙̟̘̞̠̼͍͠Ｈ̶̨̡̻͈͈̮͖̬̙̯̳̺̻͉̬̼̗̰̗̣͉̀͢Ａ̴̵̦͖̲̠̯͚̲̜̬͔̪͇̙͈̺̦̺͚ͅＨ̴͇̟̦̙̦̺̖̭̰̦͕͔́͟Ａ̸̨̪̲̝̯̥̤̲͖̪̥̲͖̗̗̕͜Ｈ̞͇̱͉̜̠͖͔̹͓̜̟͈̕͢ͅＡ̶̕҉̡̤̫͉̦̗̤Ａ̴҉̡͎͈̰͎̘͈̭͙͟Ａ͜҉̖̬͍͚̩̦̬̲̯Ａ͘҉̤̗̭͉̪͇̠Ａ̸̛̛̣̫̝͈̰͍͉͖̻̝̞̺̭̼̹̣̠̀͢Ａ̨̡̱͓̝̦̼͖̯̞̟̞̻̱̙̠̦̰͠ͅＡ̷̢͇̹̫̘̥͙̻͙̼̝͍̠̼͡ͅͅＡ̴҉̴͈͔̬̫͎͙̹̲̰͍͙̕͟ͅͅＡ̴̶̱̘͉͍͈́͘Ａ̗̻̯̲̪̟̯͚̠̠̭̥̬͓̻̙̙͢͝ͅ y͖̜o̷͘͏̺̮̭̮͇̪̰ù̧̩̖̪͖̬̀ͅ ̵͖̠̘̯̲͎̙̳͘f̘̮͖͙͝o̗̪̺͉̺̫̣͕o̥̖̳̹͢ĺ͉̥͍̥͇̥̹͞ 

And now, since I figure I may as well rejoice in it, here’s the list of all phallus-related searches from this month.  Because people obviously come to read the Digital Ambler for two things, magic and dicks, and I’m not sure which is more popular anymore.

• anal sex with big black cocks
• dick big kongo
• black huge dicks
• use method large cock
• egypt massive dick man image
• pompeii penis depictions
• ebony dicks
• huge dick

The other day, on an exceptionally slow Friday afternoon with little to do, my friend and I were bullshitting in my cube.  We were talking about things as varied as problems with Linux installation, Halloween plans, crude sexual humor, astrology, and on and on.  After all, we were bored, and half the office was out anyway.  Topic led into topic, and we were discussing some of the recent training courses and classes we had taken, including such droll ones as business communication and assertiveness strategies.  A staple of such communication-related classes is how different people communicate differently based on their personalities, and a particular favorite discussion involves something called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).  This is a classification based on Carl Jung’s understanding of different personalities and how they interact with the world around them based on four dichotomies:

• Direction of focus: Extroversion (E) or Introversion (I)
• Method of informing oneself: Sensing (S) or Intuition (N)
• Method of making decisions: Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)
• Method of living life: Judging (J) or Perceiving (P)

By taking a long, multiple-choice questionnaire, which gathers data on details of your life and how you view yourself, this data can be interpreted so as to whittle down your personality into sixteen different personality types based on the four dichotomies above.  These personality types are given in four-letter initialisms such as ENTJ, ISTP, ESTJ, and so forth.  The MBTI describes how each of the dichotomies function, and how each of the sixteen personalities differ from each other and how they can get along well.  Because of this, the MBTI is a favorite of managerial training, as it neatly bins people into a particular category that managers can use to better organize their offices.  Of course, this is an extraordinarily simplified version of the whole story; there are dozens of issues with using the MBTI as if it were actually a thing, as one’s type can change over time based on how and when they take the test, and most people tend to fluctuate between two or three types based on their emotional or mental state.  These difficulties are expected, however, according to the Myers & Briggs Foundation.

My friend and I were joking that, in the time it would take to take the full, official MBTI test, I could draw up someone’s horoscope by hand and interpret it for them, getting at least as good personality results.  We both heartily admit that the MBTI test is pseudoscience and, worse, time-consuming for not a lot of payback.  To demonstrate this, I went to one of my favorite astrological websites, asked for my friend’s birth info, and did an informal chart delineation and description for him.  He found it fascinating; he’s not particularly spiritual, woo, or religious in any sense, but he’s certainly open-minded enough to entertain and consider a few things.  It seemed like I was able to give him plenty of information about himself that seemed more-or-less on the money.  Granted, there’s the Forer effect to consider, but the MBTI has just as much an issue with that as astrology does, and I consider myself a little more specific than your regular newspaper horoscope.

Anyway, we were comparing the results from my hasty horoscope interpretation for my friend and the MBTI results he normally gets, and I was struck by something that should’ve been obvious to me.  There are 16 Myers-Briggs types, and each type is composed of four qualities, each of which can be expressed in one of two ways.  This is the same mathematical structure that underlies the 16 geomantic figures: each figure is composed of four elements, each of which can be expressed in one of two ways.  Because the day was wearing on and we were getting ready to leave soon, I made a note for myself to investigate a possible method of correlation between the geomantic figures and Myers-Briggs types later on.  Well, here I am, and I think this could be a useful bit of data for geomancers, especially when compared against older works that describe a connection between personalities and specific figures.

So, let’s try this in the simple, most obvious way first and see where we end up.  A geomantic figure has four elements, and a Myers-Briggs type has four dichotomies.  Is there a way to link the four dichotomies to the four elements?  Let’s take a look at the four dichotomies and see what they mean for us.

1. Extroversion (E) and Introversion (I).  This dichotomy indicates where people put their energy and how they get their energy.  Do they like to spend time in the outer world of people and things, or in the inner world of ideas and images?  Do others view them as outgoing or as reflective?  Are they more comfortable in groups or alone?  Do they rush into things without thinking, or do they think too much to start something new?  This relates to how one directs their energy, and whether they direct it upon people or have it directed upon themselves; Extroversion is the active, manipulating principle here, and Introversion the passive, manipulated principle.  This is connected to Fire; Extroversion is active, and Introversion is passive.
2. Sensing (S) and Intuition (N).  This dichotomy indicates how people get information about the outside world and the main means of accepting it.  Do they prefer to pay attention to the concrete/objective data their senses give them, or do they pay attention to the patterns and possibilities that can be extrapolated from them?  Do they consider “what is real” to be more important, or “what is meant”?  Do they prefer to start with facts to build up to a big picture, or start with a big picture and work down to the details?  This dichotomy relates to the method of obtaining data and filtering it for use later, with Sensing being more blunt and focused on the low and Intuition being ephemeral and focused on the high.  This dichotomy should be given to Air, with Sensing being passive and Intuition being active.
3. Thinking (T) and Feeling (F).  This dichotomy indicates what sort of information one relies upon to make decisions.  Do they put more emphasis on objective principles and facts, or on the personal concerns of those involved?  Do they prefer logical fields such as technology and science, or humanistic fields such as literature and art?  Is one more alarmed by something that is inconsistent, or by something that is inharmonious?  Do you prefer to be impersonal and consistent in dealing with others, or warm and sentimental?  This dichotomy discusses the meaning of data in their lives and what they value as information, with Thinking being emotionless and impersonal and Feeling being emotional and tactful.  This is related to the element of Water, with Thinking being passive and Feeling being active.
4. Judging (J) and Perceiving (P).  This dichotomy indicates how one structures their outer lives and how they deal with the world outside.  Do they focus on making decisions or having things decided before acting, or do they prefer to stay open to final decisions because they need more information?  Are they task-oriented with things planned out, or casual with minimal planning?  Do they work before play, or mix them together?  Do they work to avoid deadlines, or do they work only because of them?  Are they so goal-oriented that they miss new information that could change the goal, or are they so focused on getting information that they miss making decisions?  This dichotomy is about structure, with Judging being rigid and fixed for the sake of achievement and Perceiving fluid and flexible for the sake of investigation.  This dichotomy would best be given to the element Earth, with Judging being active and Perceiving being passive.

Given the above analysis that links each dichotomy to one of the four elements, and each choice of the dichotomy to be either active or passive, we can associate each of the Myers-Briggs types to one of the sixteen geomantic figures:

Let’s take a look at my own Myers-Briggs type, ENTJ.  According to the M&B Foundation, ENTJ is described as a driving organizer, planner, vision-focused, decisive, initiating, conceptual, strategic, systematic, assertive, critical, logical, organized, and one who pursues improvement and achievement.  ENTJs are known as ambitious, efficient, outgoing, independent, and effective organizers of people and long-range planners.  The corresponding geomantic figure, according to my method of corresponding them to Myers-Briggs types, is Puer, the Boy, associated with the planet Mars direct.  Puer is known to be brash, rash, bold, and assertive, eager for love and war, fierce, easy to anger, and extraordinarily self-assertive.  ENTJ puts a prettier face on it than the other parts of Puer, but according to this only-kinda-not-really-joking Myers-Briggs Asshole Index, “scruples are alien to them…they have no compunctions about petty details like ruining someone else’s life, and if they can get away with it they will gladly stab you with the dagger themselves”.  So, all told, I think ENTJ is a good fit for Puer, both positively and negatively.  Taking a cursory look at the other Myers-Briggs types and the other figures, this correspondence appears to work more-or-less well.  I think it’d be good to do an in-depth analysis of these correspondences and match the positive and negative traits of each Myers-Briggs type with the personality descriptions of the geomantic figures throughout the Western corpus, but that’s a lengthy topic for another time.

However, there’s a few things that bug me.  When going through the dichotomies and picking out which dichotomy was related to which element, I got stuck several times.  It quite easily feels like two or three of the dichotomies can easily relate to multiple elements.  For instance, Judging/Perceiving is about how one approaches the external world and the structure in it.  Yes, I said this was Earth, and for good reason: how structured do you want your life, really?  At the same time, how one structures is how one plans, and how one plans is also quite related to Fire.  However, Fire was given to Extroversion/Introversion, which itself could be given to Water (with E being passive water and I being active).  The whole thing can loop back on itself, so it may be that the Myers-Briggs type dichotomies don’t always relate well to the individual elements.  I feel fairly confident in my correspondences here, but it’d still be good to see how they might be better refined.

I’ve noticed on some websites that there’s a sort of secondary or alternative personality type classifier with pretty names for each of the Myers-Briggs types, like Fieldmarshal for ENTJ, Inspector for ISTJ, Performer for ESFP, and so forth.  This is a closely-related instrument to determine personality types, but still fundamentally different: the Keirsey temperaments, which were developed based on the MBTI but went back to the theory of the four humours and how they influenced temperament.  While the MBTI focuses on how people think and feel, Kiersey focuses on behavior; MBTI focuses more on the E/I dichotomy, while Keirsey puts more importance on the S/N dichotomy.  There are other differences, too, but the two have a degree of mutual intelligibility, and they’ve been mapped to each other for some time.  So, in that method, we could add another descriptors to that table above: the Kiersey personality type based on its corresponding MBTI match:

However, this is still based on the MBTI correspondence of the geomantic figures.  What if we were to start over with corresponding the figures to the Kiersey temperaments directly, and see how they correspond through that to the MBTI?  Would they be the same, or would there only be a degree of overlap, or no overlap whatsoever?  The Kiersey temperaments were developed as 16 wholes on their own; Kiersey doesn’t divide this up into a four-by-four grid of personality types like how the MBTI does, but ultimately relies on one of four main temperaments: logistical Guardians, tactical Artisans, diplomatic Idealists, and strategic Rationals.  Kiersey himself associates these with the four classical temperaments of melancholic, sanguine, choleric, and phlegmatic.  However, Kiersey’s 16 types can be grouped together based on four “rings”, each of which can have one of two roles (this should sound familiar).  This gives us two ways to assign Kiersey’s personality types to the sixteen geomantic figures.

One starting point we can use involves starting with the four main temperaments (Guardians, Artisans, Idealists, and Rationals), each of which includes four specific roles to determine an overall geomantic element.  After all, the 16 geomantic figures can be grouped into four elemental groups of four figures each; for instance, the Fire figures are Laetitia, Fortuna Minor, Amissio, and Cauda Draconis.  Similarly, the Artisan temperament includes the four roles of Performer, Composer, Promoter, and Crafter.  By associating the four Kiersey temperaments with the four elements, we can use the third and fourth rings of Kiersey’s descriptions to whittle down and specify a specific role within an overall temperament using a fully elemental structure that relies on the geomantic elements and subelements.  In effect, what we’re doing is we’re splitting up the 16 Kiersey roles by element, then by temperature (hot/cold within an element), then by moisture (moist/dry within a temperature).

However, I have an issue with Kiersey’s association of his temperaments with the classical ones.  He assigns Guardians to melancholic, Artisans to sanguine, Idealists to choleric, and Rationals to phlegmatic.  I don’t feel like this is correct at all, and the Wikipedia correspondence table from the Kiersey article reads like a thoroughly-jumbled version of Agrippa’s Scale of Four.  After thinking about this, I’m going to innovate off Kiersey’s system and reassign his four temperaments so that they become melancholic Guardians, choleric Artisans, phlegmatic Idealists, and sanguine Rationals.  This makes much more sense to me, based on my understanding of the humours and classical temperaments combined with Kiersey’s methods.

Those “third and fourth rings of Kiersey’s descriptions” I mentioned above are two dichotomies that Kiersey uses to specify sets of roles within an overall temperament.  The “third ring” is directive versus informative, also known as proactive versus reactive.  These describe how one communicates, whether one informs others to information or one directs others to action.  The “fourth ring” is expressive versus attentive, and describes how one interacts with their environment: those who prefer more overt action (being chatty, verbose, talkative) to covert action or inactivity (being all-eyes-and-ears, aware, circumspect, wary, watchful).  Of these two rings, I’d say that the “third ring” (directive/informative) relates to the elemental quality of moisture, with directive being dry and informative being moist.  The “fourth ring” is more about temperature, such that those who are expressive are hot and those who are attentive are cold.  In other words, we use the two dichotomies of elemental qualities (hot/cold, moist/dry) to determine a subelement within a given elemental group; Fire is hot and dry, Air hot and moist, Water cold and moist, Earth cold and dry.

Putting this all together, the method we have to correspond the Kiersey personality types to the 16 geomantic figures looks like this:

1. The overall Kiersey temperament indicates a particular elemental group of geomantic figures.
2. The “third ring” (directive versus informative) indicates the moisture of the geomantic figure within that particular elemental group.  If the personality type is directive, look at the geomantic figures that have a subelement of Fire or Earth within that particular elemental group; if informative, look at the geomantic figures that have a subelement of Air or Water.
3. The “fourth ring” (expressive versus attentive) indicates the temperature of the geomantic figure within that particular elemental group.  If the personality type is expressive, look at the geomantic figures that have a subelement of Fire or Air within that particular elemental group; if attentive, look at the geomantic figures that have a subelement of Water or Earth.

Our resulting decision chart that assigns the 16 Kiersey personality types to the 16 geomantic figures, then, would look like this below:

How much does this method overlap with the MBTI method of correspondence, using Myers-Briggs type as a key?

There’s a surprising amount of overlap between the MBTI method given first and the Kiersey elemental method given second.  Six figures come out with the exact same MBTI key, another six that are almost the same with one dichotomy off, and two each that are off by two or three dichotomies.  Notably, we didn’t completely miss with any of these figures such that all dichotomies were missed, which is a little surprising to my mind.  The cause for the differences, where they exist, could be in an imperfect match between the Kiersey system and the MBTI system, the difference in method between using a strictly elemental-grouping method (Kiersey) versus elemental-dichotomy method (MBTI), or just dumb luck.  Still, I’d’ve expected at least two figures to get completely wrong answers (dichotomies differ = 4) if it were just chance, but apparently we might be onto something with this.

Now, the above is just one method of assigning the geomantic figures to the Kiersey personality types, where we use the geomantic system of element-subelement rulerships and associate them with the Kiersey temperaments.  This touches on the use of the four-rings model of the Kiersey system, but doesn’t use it in the same way as we used the dichotomies of the MBTI system.  The second way of assigning the geomantic figures to the Kiersey personality types uses the four rings explicitly in the same way as we used the four dichotomies of the MBTI, so let’s take a look at all four rings of the Kiersey system:

1. Abstract versus concrete.  This first/inner ring deals with where a person’s mind is and how they shape their worldviews based on this.  Those who are abstract have their heads in the clouds and are more interested in big-picture stuff rather than the details; they focus on global, general, or theoretical issues, and are introspective and look inwards.  Those who are concrete are the opposite: they’re down to earth, interested in facts and sensory details, and are focused on practical matters or objective facts in their life.  Jung and the MBTI suggest that abstract is related to Intuition (N) and concrete to Sensing (S), which would suggest that this ring would be associated with the element of Air, but its phrasing and place in the Kiersey system would suggest that this should be more about the element of Earth and how grounded one is.  Thus, abstract would be passive earth and concrete would be active earth.
2. Cooperative versus pragmatic (utilitarian).  This second ring deals with the level of importance one gives to opinions from different people.  Those who are cooperative give more attention to other people’s attentions and doing the right thing regardless of its effectiveness, while those who are pragmatic give more attention to their own opinions (if any) and to the facts of a situation, and are more concerned with doing what works regardless of how others feel about it.  There is no direct correlation between a single Jung/MBTI dichotomy and this particular ring, but this ring in combination with the inner ring gives a single temperament; abstract cooperative personalities are given to Idealists (NF), abstract pragmatic to Rationals (NT), concrete cooperative to Guardians (SJ), and concrete pragmatic to Artisans (SP).  With this and the third and fourth rings, the straightforward correlation between Kiersey rings and MBTI dichotomies falls apart.  However, when given to a particular element, since this is about opinion and depth of feeling, I’d associate this ring with the element of Water, with cooperative being active water and pragmatic being passive water.
3. Directive (proactive) versus informative (reactive).  As above, this third ring is about how people communicate with others.  However, “communication” here is a poor word; it’s about interaction, and whether one acts upon others or whether one is acted upon by them.  In that sense, this ring should be given to Fire, with directive types given to active fire and informative to passive fire.
4. Expressive versus attentive.  As above, this fourth ring is about how people interact with their environment, but it’s not interaction in the sense of action-action but actual communication (I feel like Kiersey had somewhat odd definitions for these things, as psychologists do).  If one is expressive, one is talking more than listening; if one is attentive, one is listening more than talking.  In that sense, this ring should be given to Air, with expressive types given to active air and attentive types to passive air.

In a mangled form of Kiersey’s personality chart, here’s how we end up with our second variation of Kiersey personality types associated with the geomantic figures by associating the individual rings with individual elements:

With that, let’s compare it to our previous two systems and see how it compares by matching it with the MBTI key using the MBTI dichotomy method and the Kiersey elemental method given above and seeing how many match up.

Well, with this third method (“Kiersey Ring”), we get far fewer matches with either with the MBTI or Kiersey Elemental methods than we did with just those latter two alone.  We get several completely wrong matches, and far fewer close-but-not-quite matches.  Additionally, taking a cursory glance at the descriptions of the Kiersey/MBTI personality interpretations and the descriptions of the geomantic figures, it seems like this method really doesn’t work as well as either the MBTI or Kiersey Elemental methods.  Ah well, science for science’s sake.

Personally, I think this sort of correspondence (especially as it can be used for Jungian analysis of personality) can do with more investigation, and I plan to do so in the near future as a new line of geomantic research.  For now, however, I’d be inclined to stick with the Kiersey Elemental method of associating the geomantic figures to personality types, both Kiersey and MBTI.  Try using it in your work, and see how it turns out!  If nothing else, you can try a single-figure or full chart reading to determine something like “what is person X like” or “what is the personality/character of so-and-so?”, looking at the figure you get, matching it to a personality type using one of the Kiersey/MBTI methods above, and mulling that over in addition to what the geomantic corpus says.  It’d likely be a much shorter way of figuring that out compared to taking a full test, and it’s got at least as much scientific validity behind it, after all.  It’s not like these correspondences give us any new information for the geomantic figures on their own, as they’re already described quite thoroughly in the Western corpus with respect to personality and temperament, but since there’s plenty written about MBTI and Kiersey types in modern literature, such a correspondence can still be useful for those who know how to apply them.

Edit: I realize now that I misspelled “Keirsey” (e before i) throughout this article.  Mea maxima culpa.  I’m currently without a way to find-replace-all and don’t care to go through this post and correct every one.  I am, however, acutely aware of the error.

So, I haven’t made a post in a while.  I apologize, guys, even though I’m not usually one to do so; this is my blog, after all, and I post when and how I feel like it.

No, I haven’t abandoned you, or my Work, or my spirits.  However, I’ve got a lot going on in my life and certain threads are being weaved in unexpected directions; I had my own designs for the warp and weft of this year, but clearly it’s not turning out the way I expected it to.  It’ll still be beautiful and awesome, though, trust me.  However, in the meantime, my plate is rather full and I’m having to shift my efforts away from the usual and expected to other things.  I may be able to make a post here and there, but don’t expect much and you won’t be disappointed.  Taking on crafting commissions for the foreseeable future is right out; regrettably, I’m unable to take on crafting commissions (including designing) from anyone at least through this summer.  I’m still available for divination readings and consultation sessions, either through Skype or through Etsy, although I’m declining to perform ritual work for others like I am for crafting.

Here’s hoping it’ll be a great 2016 for all of us, both according to our plans and those of the gods who look upon us!

It’s no secret that those of us who are into alternative religions, spiritual practices, magic, witchcraft, and the like aren’t exactly “normal”, according to the definitions of contemporary Western society.  Sure, we may put on nice masks and clean suits to at least quell any suspicion that we’re anything out of the ordinary, but we’re not the type of people whom most people would call sane or safe.  Heck, even among different types or traditions of magicians and pagans, we have people saying “I don’t do that weird stuff” or “this is too crazy for me”.  Eh, it happens.

I think, however, that most of us aren’t actually clinically unsound.  Sure, we’re not exactly the most conventional of people, but we’re not off-our-rockers unstable; we might be crazy, but we’re not insane.  If anything, we’re pushing the boundaries of what sanity means, but still able to operate in sound ways that relate theory and faith to experiences and actions down here in the world of matter and flesh, and even then, that’s only for a subset of the more exploratory, experimental magicians out there.  Many of us are content with getting that little extra boost towards achieving our goals, not world-shattering enlightenment and gods-gifted godhood (although I think everyone should reach for those latter two goals, it being our Hermetic birthright, and all).

Then again, the foregoing only goes for most of us.  As with any group of people, there are going to be a subset of people who aren’t as mentally sound, who aren’t as sane, who aren’t as stable as the rest.  And, like with any group of people, the hotter a mess you are, the louder and more visible you get.  And that’s a problem.

I’m sure you, dear reader, have heard of the stories that Enochian magic drives people insane, or that so-and-so got into this particular tradition and came out a complete loon, or other such anecdotal stories.  I don’t really believe any of them; it’s exceedingly rare that it’s a particular tradition or spirit or prophecy or what-have-you that drives people insane.  It’s much more frequent, not to mention plausible, that those problems were always already there, more latent in some than others, and that their experiences (intentionally or unintentionally, malefically or beneficially) exploited those small cracks into full-blown chasms.  This makes sense, after all; if you have anger problems but are generally well-composed enough to not let them show in the office, working with a lot of Fire or Mars will make it harder to keep your cool; if you have depression but get by on a day-to-day basis, working with Saturn or Water will make it harder to keep afloat; if you have issues with being overly prideful, working with the Sun will make it harder to recognize the achievements and contributions of others.  It’s not a hard stretch to see how working with particular forces can easily knock us off balance with our temperaments, emotions, thoughts, and actions, which is why part of the job is to healthfully and properly incorporate these powers in ourselves, regulating them instead of being overridden by them.

But for those who already have mental issues, magic can be outright dangerous, more than it is for most people.  If you’re emotionally unstable, adding emotionally powerful things to your life can wreck you.  If you’re impulsive, working with spirits who demand contracts (and often much more) can ruin your life by leaping before you look into a deep, deep pit.  Sure, magic can help lives, but it can just as easily hurt lives.  That’s why it’s often so important to have a community or a teacher with you, if for nothing else than to act as a magical spotter or as someone to point out “hey, you’re not acting right, when was the last time you cleaned off?”.  Teachers guide and help us through our mistakes or help us avoid them altogether; communities develop conventions and practices as a whole that keep everyone up and running in a healthful relationship.  That’s why, even in the more popular stories about witches and wizards, it’s always the loner that causes problems.  Not to pass moral judgment on loners out there or to say that the community is always right, but when it comes to the sanity and health of magicians, having people around you as contacts and support is usually a plus.

It doesn’t help that our contemporary Western society isn’t the greatest when it comes to dealing with mental health.  Sure, we’ve come a long, long way in the past few hundred years, but it’s still not adaptive, responsive, or holistic enough to go beyond “you have this syndrome, take this pill” for the vast majority of people.  There are lots of people out there whose problems intertwine the spiritual and mental, and since modern scientific approaches outright deny the spiritual, we end up with an institution that cannot well serve those who suffer.  As a result, many magical and spiritual practitioners find themselves to be the care providers for people, and this is…pretty shitty, to be honest.  So few of us have the proper training, expertise, or background knowledge to accurately assess or describe unsafe mental conditions, and yet we find people on our doorstep with “spiritual issues” that are making people literally insane.  We’re not qualified to help, but we’re the only ones in a position to even recognize some of the issues at hand.  It’s a terrible situation.

Guys, be warned, and take a few things to heart from this:

• If you’re just getting into magical practices, make a critical self-assessment of your health in all respects, and be aware of any problems that might arise when developing yourself.  You may not be able to practice mental health like a doctor would, but at least you can recognize when mental issues arise in the people around you and work with them to get them the help they need.
• If you’re generally sound of mind and body, consider augmenting your magical practice with psychology and mental health studies, especially if you plan to work with or on behalf of clients.
• Everyone could use an ear to listen, a shoulder to lean on, and a hand to hold.  Everyone needs a therapist at some point, whether they’re an official and licensed one or just a friend to guide them through a tough period.
• If you have problems, get help.  There are many resources available to you, both spiritual and otherwise.  Don’t assume your problems are purely spiritual or purely mental until proven otherwise; explore all avenues, and seek out help no matter the source.
• If you need help, don’t delay getting help.  There is no shame in reaching out for help, even if it’s just to a friend.  Don’t think that you need to improve on yourself first to be more responsive to getting help; don’t think that you’re so advanced that other people can’t give you a leg up.
• If you notice other people trying and then giving up trying to help you, especially if this forms a pattern, notice it and realize that you might actually have a problem.  It’s like the inverse of the situation where if you find yourself having to curse all these assholes around you, maybe it’s not them who’s the asshole, but you.  If you find that all these magical practitioners and spiritual guides can’t or are unwilling to help you, it might not be that they’re useless or spiteful of you, but that you have problems that they’re not able to tackle because you need more serious help than they’re able to provide.

Winter is rough.  Sure, some people like it, but even for those who do, it’s not the easiest season to survive.  Full of short days and long nights and temperatures lower than high school students’ ages, it gets pretty bleak at the best of times, and downright deadly when it gets really bad.  I know of several people whose houses don’t have heat due to shoddy contractor work or slummy sleazy landlords, not to mention other friends who’ve gotten into accidents from driving on icy roads.  Historically, winter is the whole point of having a giant harvest season, because if you didn’t put in the work earlier in the year, you were setting yourself up for starvation and death.  Hell, even in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, the phrase “winter is coming” is famous and ominous at the same time, and for good reason.  All told, winter isn’t exactly the gentlest of times.

This isn’t just a mere weather-based inconvenience thing, either.  In the winter, the Sun is so weak so as to be close to death or is only freshly reborn, far from being king over all during his summer solstice height.  Plants in general die or go into stasis and animals hibernate, depriving the world of motion and activity to keep things flowing properly.  The cold itself saps life away, and buries everything in a locked-down sense of malaise.  Even sound loses its echo after a snowfall, leaving words themselves drained of any power you put into them.  The long nights induce depression in those who are seasonally affected, and can even bring down the brightest of moods in those normally manic.  The unseelie court wields power, for those who’re into faerie lore; the strict Holly King rules.  We’re having to build ourselves up from scratch while living on so little.

It’s during this season that having Light in the home is most important, moreso than any other time of the year.  I’m not just talking about the usual Solar work, either, but I mean real, actual fire that you burn.  Whether it’s a fire in the hearth or a simple candle by your bedside, I’d urge you to follow through.  Keep the Light going, and it’ll make your life easier.

When I do a thorough house cleansing, like if someone’s having issues in their home due to spiritual malignancy or moving into a new place, one of the first things I do is I set up Light throughout the house.  I take a large white candle, either a pillar candle or a novena candle, and a number of white tealights, as many as there are rooms in the house.  After gathering them all together in the center of the home (central hearth, stove of the kitchen, whatever), with the large candle in the middle and the tealights around it, I inscribe or write on the symbols from the Key of Solomon (book II, chapter 12):

After this, I anoint each candle with holy oil, starting first with the large candle and going clockwise with all the other tealights.  I then light the large candle, and use my normal candle benediction, a slight variation on that of the Trithemius conjuration:

I conjure thee, oh thou creature of fire! by him who created all things both in heaven and earth, and in the sea, and in every other place whatever, that forthwith thou cast away every phantasm from thee, that no hurt whatsoever shall be done in any thing. Bless, oh Lord, this creature of fire, and sanctify it that it may be blessed, and that it may burn for your honor and glory; so neither the enemy, nor any false imagination, may enter into them; through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

From this central candle, I light each of the other candles in turn.  Once all the candles have been lit, I energetically link the primary candle to the smaller ones, so that the same blessing is set upon all of them at once.  Then, with all the tealights lit, I move them and set them in all of the rooms in the house, such that no matter where you are, you’re always within eyesight of one of these little flames.  This includes bathrooms, walk-in closets, sheds, and the like, so that literally every part of the property has light burning inside.  I leave the primary pillar candle at the center of the house, and return to it after moving all the tealights everywhere; there, I pray over it, and from it radiate Light and warmth and blessing throughout the entire place.  Whether it’s my own prayer of lightbringing or another prayer more focused on a particular problem at hand, by means of this central focus candle, I fill the entire house with the same prayer and the same oomph.  After this, I go through the house doing my thing, and leave all the candles to burn out on their own.  The remains are then collected together and disposed of respectfully.

This is a little ritual I developed on my own as part of a thorough house-cleansing and -blessing, as one of the first things I do.  Think about it: if a house is filled with gunk and filth, or if you have crusty crap stuck on your stove or sinks, you want to get rid of it.  However, some of the tougher gunk tends to be harder to remove, so what do you do?  You soak it in cleaning agent for a few minutes before actually scrubbing it off.  The candles set up above do a similar thing; the Light weakens any darkness and any filth that may have accumulated, so that when I go through and actually banish the place by suffumigations or prayer, the groundwork has already been established to weaken the filth and to further empower me as I go about my work.  In addition, the candles in each room act as a kind of warning-canary; if the flame of a particular candle gets weak, flickers a lot, or goes out on its own, then it’s a signal that there’s something especially rough in the vicinity of that particular candle.  If such a candle goes out, I relight it and pray over it specifically before re-linking it back to the focus candle in the home’s center; I focus on that room specifically before continuing on elsewhere, making sure it’s sufficiently emptied of gunk and filth before going on to another room.

That said, I’m also in the habit of just having a candle burning in the center of the house anyway all the time.  For me, it’s partially related to the small work I do with Hestia as overseer and mistress of the home, and the goddess of the hearth herself; with a fire burning under this goddess, it helps ensure my house and home and family that we always have fire to warm ourselves, power to strengthen ourselves, purity to cleanse ourselves, and protection to keep ourselves safe under her watch over the most sacred of all places, the οικος-domus-home.  In point of fact, for myself and my housemates, I’ve noticed our mental health levels decrease and malaise increase over time the longer we don’t have at least one fire going in the house; we tend to slack off, leave more messes behind us, and generally feel crappy.  This is essentially us starting to lose our own inner heat without an external heat to empower us; if we get too cool or go cold, we start on a slippery slope to nowhere good.  When spiritually-inclined friends come over, if we don’t have a candle burning, they tend to sleep rougher and with more active or disturbing dreams; sure, myself as houseowner may be used to it and shrug it off, but for people who’re used to their own levels of protection in their own environments of familiarity, it can be a jarring experience.

Keeping at least one fire burning, whether under the watchful eyes of Hestia or the Virgin Mary or God himself, in the home for the sake of the home is always something I’d recommend to everyone.  Heck, this would go for people traveling, too.  Whenever I’m in a new room I’m unaccustomed to sleeping in, especially hotels, I always bring a candle with me and keep it lit when I’m asleep.  Sure, the hotel may not exactly approve, but it’s something I prefer to do to bring some of that extra protection with me (in addition to the normal wards and protections I set up).  Some people insist on having a candle burning by their bedside no matter where they sleep; if I’m doing a particular working that demands light at all times, I’ll do this, too, but normally that’s just overkill for me when I keep my own stuff up and running.

Of course, never forget the usual warnings about keeping fires burning, especially unattended.  Make sure pets or children don’t reach them, make sure they’re stable enough to resist being knocked over, keep them enclosed, &c.  Don’t burn down your house for want of warmth, even if you do have a generous insurance plan.

To those who follow me on Twitter and Facebook, this will come as no surprise.  I’m finally working on my book on geomancy again.  It’s something that people have been dogging me about for years, and it’s been an on-again-off-again project since 2013.  However, since recently rebuilding my computer and getting all my files back together, I got the bug again to write that book, and good progress is being made again.  At this rate, it’ll be the size of a proper textbook, and my aim is to make it thorough and complete on a level not rivaled since Fludd or az-Zanati.  I’m not going to discount the extremely valuable books put out by John Michael Greer or Stephen Skinner, as I stand on the shoulders of those two living giants with regards to this art, but I aim to put out a text of a different kind.

And yet, despite that this book is (currently) estimated to come out at around 300pp., I can already hear a complaint off in the distance.  My goal is for this book to present a fundamental and thorough exploration of the art of geomancy in such a way that it will start from first principles (what is divination, what are the elements and planets and stars, what are the relationships between these forces and the figures, what are the relationships amongst the figures, how is geomantic “mathematical”, etc.) and go through every major technique I can document in Western geomancy, including variations and specifics of detailed things along the way.  In this sense, I’m following in the same steps as the geomantic authors of yore.  However, there is one major thing that my book does not and will not have that virtually every other book on geomancy has, and while it may frustrate people used to it, I find that it’s something that should never have been written by anyone ever to begin with.

If you haven’t guessed yet, dear reader, it’s lookup tables, those lists of premade answers to particular arrangements of Court figures, figures in the houses, and the like.  It’s these lookup tables (cf. Hartmann, Skinner’s “Oracle of Geomancy”, the Golden Dawn primer on geomancy, etc.) that I believe are a bane to the proper study of geomancy, and I refuse to include them in my work.

Now, I understand why they were written.  For the sake of completion, many authors have endeavored to provide a clear explanation and guide to interpreting each figure in each of the houses; since there are only 16 figures and 12 houses, this is only about 192 small entries.  After all, astrologers have done the same for the planets and parts in the houses for centuries, and they have a lot more to worry about in their texts.  And, for the sake of being reeeaaallly complete, many authors have also included premade interpretations for the different possible combinations of Witnesses and Judge; after all, if the Judge must be an even figure, then that cuts down all pairwise combinations of Witnesses to just 128 different combinations.  Again, not terrible.  For completeness’ sake, and to offer an illustrative guide to the gist of what figures mean for a query, sure, I can see why this was done.

The problem, however, is that many people are not as dedicated to the art when they claim to be its students, and would rather be lazy.  Mass-market publishers, additionally, want things that sell, and will happily cater to the many who would spend a few pence on a text that appeals to them rather than the extraordinary few who would spend more on a text that they need.  I mean, consider how much trash there is out there with the neopagan or pop magic literature; sure, it sells well, and it may very well be a good starting point for those who are serious about their studies.  Hell, even I admit to having a few of Scott Cunningham’s fluffier books somewhere in my library, and it did help me get started back in middle school with learning what magic is and how it works.  That said, if I were to stop there, I’d be putting myself at a great disservice and would never have gotten to where I am today; moreover, if I thought that Cunningham’s style of pop magic spells done on a beach or in the snow was all there was to magic, I’d insult all the magicians and occultists who came before him, not to say the field of magic as a whole.

The problem is that, as time went on in the Renaissance and more and more books were published on geomancy, all they really focused on was the lookup tables.  The techniques were discussed only inasmuch as they enabled you to use the lookup tables; for this, see Franz Hartmann’s book on geomancy as a prime example.  Geomancy became whittled down from this elaborate, profound system of divination that could elegantly answer any subject with extraordinary detail into this…well, the phrase “parlor game” comes to mind, something like Chi-Chi sticks or those little folded paper fortune-teller doodads we all used to make in elementary school.  Even though geomancy was more popular in Europe than Tarot is now, imagine if Tarot were reduced only to using its numbers and suits; it’s effectively playing cards, ignoring different spreads and the qabbalistic symbolism inherent in the art and structure of the Tarot.  That’s what basically became of geomancy towards the end of the Renaissance, and was one of the main contributors to geomancy effectively being lost once the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution came around.  No, geomancy was not completely forgotten, but it was all but regarded as useless and overly complicated for an answer that usually amounted to little more than “evil, except for bloodletting”.

So much for how the publishing and spread of lookup tables influenced the general perception of geomancy.  However, there’s another part of the problem with relying on these: lookup tables are inherently limited.  Sure, the small number of combinations of figures in houses or Witnesses and Judge is sufficiently limited to offer a good high-level summary in a single text; it’s not the fact that there are only so many combinations in geomancy, but it’s that these summaries cannot be helpful in all circumstances and for all queries.  These interpretations are very general, but also very isolated from other factors in a geomantic chart.  Yes, Fortuna Maior in house IV is a good thing for one’s personal life, but what if we’re asking a query about having an ex-lover move out of our house, and this figure is aspected by opposition, and it’s in company with a negative figure, and the querent has indicated that health issues may be at play?  Fortuna Maior, although a good figure, is sufficiently negated that it becomes stressful and harmful to the querent.  Yet, what can a lookup table say?  Not much, except that the querent will do well and strong in their personal life and home.  That’s all well and good, but the geomancer still has to link that to every other factor present to actually give a useful answer.  Without indicating how, books that stress the importance of lookup tables without teaching how to synthesize these factors gimp the geomancer.

Lookup tables, in effect, cheapen the art of geomancy; it reduces a synthetic, holistic, detailed divination system to a copy-and-paste, abbreviated, vague system of terse and snippy answers.  Because of this, geomancers who rely primarily on lookup tables aren’t really learning how to actually use geomancy beyond following page numbers like a “choose your path” story book.

That’s why my book will not have these lookup tables.  Tables of correspondence that indicate what figures mean in specific contexts?  Absolutely! Detailed interpretations of each figure as they are and how they relate to other figures to explore their own worlds?  You got ’em!  Case studies of geomantic readings that explore each individual factor and technique used for a particular chart, then synthesized together to form a coherent, cohesive narrative?  But of course!  These are all parts of understanding the principles of geomancy from a ground-up approach, so that lookup tables become useless anyway.  By enabling the geomancer to develop their own interpretations through a deep knowledge of each figure, understanding how the figures interact with each other ideally and in particular charts, and giving them the tools to synthesize different parts of a reading, the geomancer will never need to use lookup tables for answers on “will he obtain his love” or “how will the undertaking end”; at a glance, the geomancer will be able to answer these on their own anyway based on their own skill and intuition.

So, if the fact that my book is gonna be around 300 pages and remind you of college, dear reader, don’t worry.  This is not a book to flip through because you want to be lazy.  This is a book to absorb thoroughly because you want to be excellent.

A few years back, I made a post about a theory of divination, where methods of divination can range from the purely intuitive (e.g. clairvoyance) to the purely technical (e.g. meteorological forecasting as seen on the Weather Channel).  Most forms of divination fall somewhere in-between, that combine some aspect of intuition with some aspect of technique or technology (e.g. Tarot, runes, geomancy).  Anyway, in that post, I brought up a few points that I think all people involved in divination should bear in mind, but also a bit about how divination methods are like programming languages.  Being educated as a computer scientist and laboring as a software engineer, I’m prone to using metaphors about the things I’m most knowledgeable in, but I think it can be expanded about how I view divination methods and what they can overall achieve for us.

So, how are methods of divination like programming languages?  Well, what is a programming language?  It’s a system of symbols and a grammar that are used as input to a computer to make it do something.  Punching in numbers and symbols into a calculator, for instance, can be considered a very simple form of programming language: you tell the computer to add these two numbers, divided by this other number, save it to memory, start a new calculation, involve the value stored in memory, and display the output.  Most programming languages (PLs, for short) are much more complicated than this, but the idea is the same: you’re giving the computer a set of instructions that maybe take some input, do something, and maybe give some output.  Computers of any and all kinds exist to interpret some sort of PL, whether it’s just pure binary telling it to turn on or off some set of flashing lights, or whether it’s something elaborate and arcane to simulate intelligence; computers are essentially machines that take in PLs to do other things.  The study of PLs is, in effect, the study of cause and effect: tell the computer to do something, and the computer will do exactly that.  If the computer fails to do the thing, then either the commands given were incorrect (the computer understood them but you didn’t give it the right commands) or invalid (the computer couldn’t understand what you told it to do).

In computer science, there’s a thing called Turing completeness.  If we consider an idealized abstract computer stripped down to its most basic parts (a universal Turing machine), it can compute anything that is, well, computable; by definition, a universal Turing machine can simulate any computable algorithm, any computable programming language, and any computer.  Any computer you see or interact with, including your smartphone or laptop or video game console, is a concrete implementation of a Turing machine.  Turing completeness is a property that applies to computers and, by extension, PLs: if a concrete computer or programming language (let’s call it A) can simulate a universal Turing machine, then because a universal Turing machine can simulate any other type of computation or computation method , then the computer/programming language A can simulate any other computer/programming language.  This is called Turing completeness.

What this boils down to is saying that any Turing-complete programming language can do anything that any other Turing-complete language can do: C is functionally equivalent to ML, which is functionally equivalent to Lua, which is functionally equivalent to lambda calculus.  What this does not say, however, is that any given Turing-complete PL is as easy to use as any other Turing-complete PL.  Thus, what is easy to do in C is problematic in Lisp, which might be outright unwieldy and frightening in some other language.  It may not be impossible, just different; each PL is a different tool, and different tools are good for different ends.  It is totally possible to fix pipe plumbing issues with a hammer, but it’s easier with a wrench; it’s totally possible to just build a house with a wrench, but it’s easier with a hammer.

This is what brings me to divination methods.  I claim that, barring the direct influences of gods or cultural notions thereof, any divination method can answer the same questions that any other divination method can.  Call it a divinatory Turing-completeness if you will; if a divination method can account for and describe some set of circumstances, situations, events, and results, then other divination methods can, as well.  This is why you can go to a geomancer, a Tarot reader, a bone reader, a clairvoyant, or other types of readers and still walk away satisfied with good information despite the radical differences in style and method.  That said, each method is better at different types of queries or better at different types of answer deliveries than others.  Geomancy, for instance, excels at binary queries (“yes” or “no”), while Tarot is good for descriptions and feelings.  Geomancy answers exactly the question you ask, while Tarot answers the question you should be asking.  Geomancy gives you the answer up front and the details later, while Tarot gives you the details first and leaves the overall answer to be judged from them.  I’m not trying to shill for geomancy, I’m just giving examples of how geomancy does divination differently than Tarot; after all, I can answer with geomancy anything a Tarot reader can, but I may phrase certain queries differently, or develop an answer differently.  The overall result is the same, when all is said and done.

However, this metaphor of divination methods and PLs can show other things, too.  A geomancy student of mine recently came to me with an interesting question about a detail of a technique that I don’t personally use, but is documented in an old manuscript.  I don’t put any faith in that technique, so I won’t describe it here, but he wanted to know why I didn’t use it, and how we might find out more about it.  He asked me whether I’ve ever asked geomancy about itself before, like to do a reading to confirm or deny certain techniques.  I…honestly can’t see the point of doing so, but to explain why, it’s time to go back to computer science.

In addition to Turing completeness, there’s this other notion in mathematics that applies to computer science and PLs called Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.  It’s a little heady and obtuse, but here’s the gist: say you have some system of describing information, like arithmetic or physics.  This system has a logic that allows certain things to be proved true (“if P, then Q; P, therefore Q”), and can disprove things that are false (“if P, then Q; P, therefore not Q”).  Given any such system, you might want it to be the best possible system that can prove everything that is true while simultaneously disproving anything that is false.  However, there’s an issue with that: you can either have consistency or completeness, but not both.

• Consistency is showing that your logic is always sound; you never end up proving something that is false.  Thus, we can only prove true things.  However, this is too restrictive; if you have perfect consistency, you end up with things that are true that you cannot prove.  Your logic, if consistent, can never be complete.
• Completeness is showing that your logic is always full; you always end up proving everything that is true can be proved true.  The problem with this, however, is that it’s too permissive; sure, everything that is true can be proved true, but there are also things that are false that end up being proved even though they’re contradictions.  Your logic, if complete, can never be consistent.

When it comes to logical systems, of which there are many, we tend to strive for consistency over completeness.  While we’d love a system where everything that could be true is shown as true, we also lose faith in it if we have no means to differentiate the true stuff from the false stuff.  Thus, we sacrifice the totality of completeness in favor of the rigor of consistency.  After all, if such a system were inconsistent, you’d never be sure if 2 + 2 = 4 and 2 + 2 != 3, a computer would work one second or start an AI uprising the next, or whether browsing your favorite porn site would actually give you porn or videocall your mother on Skype.  Instead, with a consistent system, we can rest assured that 2 + 2 can never equal 3, that a computer will behave exactly as told, and that porn websites will only give you porn and not an awkward conversation with your mom.  However, the cost to this is that I have this thing that is true, but it can’t be proven to be true using that system you like.  Unfortunate, but we can make do.

As it turns out, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem applies to any system described in terms of itself; you cannot prove (which is a stronger, logical thing to do than simply giving examples) that a given computer, PL, or system of mathematics is consistent by using that selfsame system.  If you attempt to do so and end up with such a proof, you end up proving a contradiction; thus, your system of logic has an inconsistency within that system of logic.  In order to prove something on the system itself, then, you need something more expressive than that system itself.  For instance, to describe actions, you need sounds; in order to describe sounds, you need language, and in order to describe language, you need thought.  Each of these is less expressive than the next, and while you can describe things of less expressiveness, you cannot describe it in terms of itself.  So, if I have this thing that is true and you can’t prove it to be true using that system you like, then you need something more powerful than that system you like.

Okay, that’s enough heady stuff.  How does this apply to divination methods, again?  My student wanted to know why I didn’t ask geomancy about itself; the answer is that geomancy can’t answer about itself in terms of itself.  Like programming languages’ problem from Gödel, I don’t think a system of knowledge—any system, whether it’s Peano arithmetic or lambda calculus or geomancy—can accurately answer questions about its own internal mechanism and algorithms.  And, moreover, because whatever is divinable by one divination method is divinable by any of them, and whatever is not divinable by one isn’t divinable by any of them, if we can’t ask about how methods of divination work by means of a particular divination method (Tarot with Tarot, geomancy with geomancy, Tarot with geomancy, geomancy with Tarot), the question about how divinatory methods work cannot be divined.

So how do you learn more about techniques for a divination method?  Well, as above, if you have a particular system of knowledge and you want to describe it, you need something more powerful than that system.  What’s more powerful than, say, geomancy?  Something more inclusive and expressive than geomancy; like, say, human language.  If you have a question about geomantic techniques, you can’t really go to geomancy to ask about it; you go to a teacher, a mentor, an ancestor, a discussion group to figure it out by means of logic, rationality, and “looking out above” the system itself.  You have to inspect the system from the outside in order to see how it works inside, and generally, we need something to show us where to look.  That something is usually someone.

Programming languages are not, of course, divination methods.  Yes, dear reader who happens to know more about mathematics and the philosophy thereof than I do, I know I’m uncomfortably mixing different types of concepts in this post; divination methods are not instructions, nor are programming languages able to predict the future, barring some new innovation in quantum computing.  The point stands, and the concepts introduced in this post hold well and are generalizable enough for my ends here.  There are enough parallels between the two that give me a working theory of how divination works, and also of the limits of divination.  Just as with the relationship between regular expressions and context-free grammars, where the latter is strictly more expressive and powerful than the former, we need something more expressive and powerful than a divination system to learn how to divine with it.  Humans, for instance, fill that role quite nicely; all divination can do is “simulate” human situations, but it cannot simulate every possible situation uniquely.  There are human situations that cannot be accurately simulated by divination.  Divination, too, is inherently incomplete if we want to place certain faith in our techniques; if we allow, on the other hand, for divination to be complete, then we have to scrap the techniques which then become inconsistent and be more intuitive instead.  In that case, sure, you might be able to get insight on techniques, but it’s not by means of the techniques of the divination system itself; you sidestepped that matter completely.

Looking back, the years 2014 and 2015 were kinda awful.  I can only remember everyone saying that they’re glad those years are over and that, while surely some good stuff happened during them, we’re all better for having left them behind.  I think it’s fair to say that they were, by and large, years of stagnation and suffocation for many, if not outright sorrow.  I’m not just idly reminiscing and self-pitying here; what caught my attention is that this sort of feeling seems to be so widespread amongst my friends, both in-person and online.

2016 is shaping up to be a very different kind of year, but in the sense of the Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times”.  This is a year of change, but change is rarely peaceful or easy.  “Growing pains” is a phrase that doesn’t even do this sort of pain justice.  For me especially, this has already been and will continue to be a major year in my life full of huge events that will forever change certain aspects of my paths.  (More on that in later posts, if I choose to be generous.)

But…honestly, it’s tiring.  Yes, I’m glad that these things are happening; after all that stagnation, this sort of break-out year is much-needed, but it hurts.  It’ll be a year that even my bones will remember, to quote the God-Emperor of Dune, but that sort of lesson is one hard-won and harder-learned.  It feels like I’m living through a phase of Cauda Draconis, where everything seems to be ending by falling apart, like the meat from the bones of an overly-cooked fish or siding from a dilapidated house.  I’m glad to be shedding myself of all the gunk, cruft, and needless hangers-on from the past few years, but it’s stressful, painful, and outright damaging at times in the process.  It’s all for the better; thus do I keep reminding myself, because it’s easy to lose sight and perspective when you’re down in the trenches like this.

For myself, I’m grateful that I’m able to withstand all the crap going on right now in my life, videlicet: I hate my new job and am waiting for someone somewhere else to retire so I can get a different place, I’m having to move out of my place within a month and a half, I’m undergoing the house-buying rigmarole for the first time, I’m headed out of the country later this year for an intensive week-long initiation, I need to save up more money than I can budget for in order to make all the foregoing happen, and I’m preparing for multiple lengthy and hardcore rituals throughout this spring and summer.  Yet, all told, I’m able to stand on my own two feet and take each thing day by day, breath by breath, bite by bite and work towards it all done.  If God has given me any grace or charisma, it’s that of patience and stability to weather these sorts of storms.

With sorrow, I cannot say the same for many of my friends, including those closest to me who are undergoing many of the same things I am.  They’re falling apart at the seams, on the verge of breakdowns, and it’s all I can do to simply stand there for them.  I’ve never been afflicted with serious mental illness, so I can’t truly empathize with the dark depths they’re going through; it’s all I can do to stand there, hold them, and reassure them that things will get better.  If I could, I would swallow every anxious breath, every suicidal tear, every stressed headache, every sleepless night and take it all on myself so that they wouldn’t have to.  I can’t, because the human condition can’t be alleviated in such a fairy-tale way, but I’d do it in a heartbeat all the same.

Yet, simply being there is all I can do, and what I can do has to be enough.  It has to be enough for both me and for them, and especially for me.  I can only take on so much before I start breaking down, too, and I can’t afford that.  Not for myself, and especially not for those for whom I stand.  They need me as much as I need them, and if I’m the only support left for us, then I’ve no choice but to be the support.  I will do this.

I know that many of you are going through similar stages in your life, either on the part of being the support or needing support.  What you do, whatever you can do, is enough.  Sit satis; let that be sufficient.  I know it’s hard; to know what you can do is sufficient is the hardest part about knowing and loving yourselves.  All the same, it’s true.  It is enough, and I love you for it.  I love that you have taken on this most difficult of incarnations, in this most “interesting” of times, in this most trying of trials, in this most blighted of storms, and have survived thus far.  I love that you haven’t given up and realize that you can’t give up, not now, not yet, not until it’s done.  I love that you know, at least in some small way, that you have support and recourse to help, even if it’s no more than a message sent in the quiet hours of the early morning when only that one friend across the world is online.  We will get through this together, because we’re all in this together.

If you are the support for others, don’t neglect yourself.  Know your limits; don’t push yourself more than you absolutely must, and know when it gets too much before you start needing support yourself.  Know what’s possible, and know what’s achievable; set your expectations accordingly, and aim for what is best.  Keep your perspective, no matter how hard it is, and always keep one eye on your targets, with the other on your friends and allies.  Breathe.  Drink enough water.  And, yes, for you too, know that what you do is enough.

Sit satis.  Let it be enough.

So, I know I haven’t exactly been the most active with blogging lately for a number of reasons, but lately things are gearing up and other mundane (yet crucially important) things have to take priority for me.  While I regret this, I’m temporarily suspending all crafting, divination, and consultation services until I’m able to take care of other matters.  Don’t worry, I’m fine, it’s just that the stress of paperwork and moving demands quite a lot of me for the time being.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to resume my services and commissions again starting late May or early June.

Here’s hoping you’re doing well, dear reader, and that I’ll see you on the other side sooner rather than later!

It’s been a hell of a time, guys.  But I survived and now I’m back in the game, though it took me a bit to get rolling again.  Commissions and requests for readings are still closed for the time being, but I hope to get going again with those in July; I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, after nearly going homeless, finishing closing on a house at the knife-edge nick of time, and dealing with internet connection issues for a month, I’ve been getting myself back in order with my life.  Yeah, I’m definitely relishing in the ability to sink some time back into online gaming now that I’m not stuck on half-available mobile internet, but I’m also talking about the Work and all.  Though…honestly, after several months of stress and letting things shift under my feet, a lot is different than where I was a year, or even half a year ago.  My life seems to be picking up around me and taking me for the ride, which is awesome but a challenge to keep up with.  At least, now that I don’t have the threat of homelessness positioned at my neck anymore, my stress levels have dropped precipitously and I can focus on shit again with renewed clarity.

So, yeah.  I bought a house (rather, me and the boy and our friend did).  I have my shrines set up, some already made permanent and some still waiting permanent relocation; I have my altars set up; and I finally, thank heaven and hell, have my computers in an office with no shrines or altars or holy images in it so I can finally look at porn without giving my People a lewd show.  Now that everything’s set up again, I’ve been easing myself back into practice here and there, making offerings to the ancestors and gods, meditation and energy work, and the like.  But…these are all really tiny bits and pieces of things, maintenance-level stuff, without any real initiative.  These aren’t projects, they’re upkeep.  So I decided to get back into the groove with my mathesis work again after dropping the ball, but…

Jesus, do I feel bad for anyone who has to dig through my blog.  I wrote a lot more back in 2014 than I thought.  At least my notes are copious, and they’re helping me to remember who I was and what I was doing back then.  It’s pleasant, though, and long overdue.  Mathesis is something I’ve wanted to keep up, given its novelty and promise that it holds to afford a new way to proceed in theurgy in addition to or instead of the Hermetic Qabbalah.

So, where was I with this mathesis stuff?

1. I developed a “cosmic map” using the Tetractys of Pythagoras, augmented with alchemical and astrological concepts to form a set of 10 sphairai and 24 odoi, one for each of the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet, based on their stoicheic principles.
2. I developed the Gnostic and Agnostic Schemata to act as two ways one can live life theurgically or atheurgically.
3. I developed a method for self-initiation onto the Gnostic Schema, and did it.  (The process left a faint but permanent stain on the ceiling of the room in my old house from all the incense.)
4. I developed a set of protocols for purification, making offerings, and simple meditations on the letters of the Greek alphabet and the Tetractys.
5. I developed a set of daily practices, but this needs review badly to see what works and how it can be made to work better.

It’s certainly a good start, and it being my baby, it’s what I’m proud of.  But it’s just only a start, and it’s time to get back into the review of everything I wrote before and see how well it stands now, and how well it can continue to stand.

First things first.  What’s the point of using this map of the Tetractys?  What did it get me?  Well, it got me the Gnosis and Agnosis Schemata, the ways of traversing the cosmos in a way that, respectively, provides intimate knowledge of all things in a dangerous but constantly evolving way, or locks one into a cyclical existence that holds one apart and isolated from true knowledge.

Moreso than the Lightning Path of the Tree of Life, the Gnosis Schema of the Tetractys suggests that exploration and constant return is a crucial aspect to this mathesis work.  Sure, there are plenty of ways you can make a one-shot path starting at one sphaira and ending at another while passing through all the others along the way, but the Gnosis Path with its Mitsubishi-logo-esque shape is something of a different beast entirely.  We start at the central sphaira, given to Mercury, and proceed outwards in three loops: the Hot System of Mercury → Jupiter  → Mars → Sun → Mercury, the Cold System of Mercury → Moon → Saturn → Venus → Mercury, and the Cosmic System of Mercury → Fixed Stars → The One → Earth.  The Hot System leads into the Cold System, the Cold into the Cosmic, and the Cosmic into the Hot.  In this way, a full traversal of the Tetractys takes twelve steps, since we arrive in the sphaira of Mercury three times, once at the beginning of each system before we take our thirteenth and final step back into the sphaira of Mercury after the Cosmic System.  A full traversal of a single system takes five steps across four sphairai, starting and ending at the same sphaira of Mercury.

Thus does this Tetractys divide up the whole of the universe into three “realms”, one hot and light and transformative, one cold and dark and preserving, and one balanced and cumulative and whole.  Within each system, we undergo a process of analysis (literally “loosening up”) and synthesis (“putting together”), as we begin at the sphaira of Mercury, work our way out to the extreme sphaira, then work our way back inward to Mercury once more.  Each system reflects a complete alchemical process, and the three systems combined reflect the entire Great Work, the Magnum Opus.  That said, just because we complete one full loop around the Tetractys doesn’t mean we’re done with the whole thing; it’s an explicitly iterative, repetitive process, but each time around is never the same.

Consider this another way: to go from the Monad to the Decad, we simply count the numbers from 1 to 10.  Trivial, right?  So it is in Greek numerals, where we go from Α (alpha = 1) to Ι (iota = 10).  What comes next?  the next letter is Κ (kappa), which is given the value of 20.  Thus, to use the Greek alphabet as numerals, we go from 1 to 9, then from 10 to 90, then from 100 to 900.  Even using numerology, though, 100 and 10 are simply higher “registers” with a core “heart” of 1.  In other words, even if we go from 1 to 9, 10 to 90, 100 to 900, 1000 to 9000, or however many more powers of ten we want to use, we’re still going around the same cycle over and over.  That cycle is the progression from the Monad to the Decad, but since the Decad is just a higher register of the Monad, we’re starting the process anew each time we complete it.

The Gnosis Schema suggests…nay, demands that we constantly keep in motion around the Tetractys in this way.  We never stop, except to process according to analysis and synthesis (or, to use the more standard alchemical phrase, solve et coagula), which themselves take place along the path.  As the philosopher Heraclitus says, παντα ρει, “everything flows“.  Moreover, as energy in the body or waters in a river, it is good for us to flow ever onward, directly and smoothly, never breaking course or getting stopped or split.  This is why the Gnosis Schema is preferred to the Agnosis Schema; not only does the Agnosis Schema cut one off from the three extreme and one central sphairai, but the paths in this schema cycle around in multiple, chaotic, and confusing ways.  Sure, you might always be in motion, but you’d be in erratic motion, bumping into sphairai randomly without guidance, swept along by the whimsy of fate and the gods with no say in your own growth.

I may have performed the work to open the gate to cross into the sphaira of Mercury, but this is only one step along the path, and it itself is not without its dangers.  The sphaira of Mercury can act as a bridge, but it can also act as island, and the process of getting to even this sphaira can be akin to crossing an abyss of sorts.  Maybe the whole string of nonsense that’s gone on since that self-initiation has been following the path of the Gnosis Schema and the resulting BS in my life my own analysis and synthesis among the sphairai, maybe not (which is the more likely of the two).  Either way, it’s about time for me to revisit my place in the Tetractys, and to get back to that center sphaira and start taking the steps I should’ve been taking this whole time.

Also, perhaps in the process of all this, maybe it’s good to come up with names for the sphairai besides saying things like “sphaira of Mercury” or “the Tetrad” or whatnot.  It’s a little odd to refer to them specifically as astrological spheres or alchemical states of being, despite that they work for now.  Perhaps it’s time for me to revisit the meanings of each of the numbers from the Monad to the Decad, and see where that leads me.

I didn’t expect to write this post so soon after the last one.  After months of nothing new happening, suddenly I write two posts on mathesis and Iamblichean number theory on the Tetractys?  It’s good to be back, that’s for sure.  I suppose this downtime since last year has done me good and given me time to internally process a lot more than I expected.  Get a drink, dear reader, because I’m gonna go on at length for a bit here.

Okay, so, last time, I started (again) contemplating this mathesis stuff I started developing back in 2014.  Mathesis literally means “teaching”, and is the style of theurgy and ritual I’m developing as an exploration of Neo-Pythagorean, Neoplatonic spirituality based more on Hellenic philosophy than the Jewish philosophy inherent in Kabbala, mangled beyond recognition into Hermetic Qabbalah, and which has unfortunately formed a procrustean bed of occultism to which so much (maybe even too much) has been chained down by.  To be fair, there’s a decent amount of Pythagoras in QBLH (regardless of whether it’s Jewish Kabbala, Christian Cabala, or Hermetic Qabbalah), but nobody really knows what Pythagoras actually taught.  We know he was A Thing, but we don’t know which Things he was.  And…well, I find lots of issues that’ve collectively poisoned the well for me in Hermetic Qabbalah, and I find it hard for me to go back to it anymore.  Yeah, I still use the stuff when it’s called for in Western Hermetic ritual, but I want to find something better, hence my exploration of this system I’m (slowly) developing.  A crucial aspect of it is focusing on the Tetractys, the sacred triangle of ten points that represent the fundamental ideal for all things in the cosmos.  Yes, this path involves a lot of meditation on Pythagorean number theory, handed down to us by the Neoplatonists such as Iamblichus, so let’s go back to the basics and recall what we’ve discussed before about the numbers themselves.

In this sort of Pythagorean Tetractyan math, there are ten numbers plus a special “zero” non-number liminal amount that we should concern ourselves with.  Each of these numbers has a special attribute given to it:

0. Mēden: Emptiness
1. Monad: Individuation
2. Dyad: Relation
3. Triad: Harmony
4. Tetrad: Form
5. Pentad: Growth
6. Hexad: Order
7. Heptad: Essence
8. Octad: Mixture
9. Ennead: Realization
10. Decad: Wholeness

Moreover, we noted before that there are special relationships between pairs of these numbers if you take the whole Tetractys and reflect it around a central horizontal axis:

• Being: Mēden/Decad
• Becoming: Monad/Ennead
• Variation: Dyad/Octad
• Accordance: Triad/Heptad
• Structure: Tetrad/Hexad
• Growth: Pentad

These relationships are, in a sense, a more “ideal” version of each of their correspondent numbers, and form a sort of meta-Tetractys.  For instance, the Monad has the secret of individuation (a thing in the process of becoming a single thing), while the Ennead has that of realization (a thing in the process of becoming real); both reveal the secret of becoming, but do so in different ways.  The numbers after the Pentad are reflections of the numbers going before, both reflecting off an ideal numerical concept.

As a sort of exercise, let’s now take another look at that picture above.  If you take the lower inverted Tetractys, it implies the existence of two boundary “hidden” tetractyes, such that the Hexad is really just a tetrad plus two monads, the Heptad a triad plus two dyads, and so forth.  If we were to keep this all truly reflective, and if there are two “upright but hidden” tetractyes bounding the lower tetractys, then we should also envision two “inverse but hidden” tetractyes bounding the upper tetractys.  Thus, the Monad is just an ennead minus two tetrads, the Dyad an octad minus two triads, and so forth.

This can then imply another set of mutual relationships between the numbers:

• Monad and Tetrad
  • Upper Monad/Lower Tetrad = Monad and Hexad
  • Lower Monad/Upper Tetrad = Ennead and Tetrad
• Dyad and Triad
  • Upper Dyad/Lower Triad = Dyad and Heptad
  • Lower Dyad/Upper Triad = Octad and Triad
• Pentad

I list the Pentad here as well, but it has no relationship to anything else, as it is not properly part of the Tetractys (either one, upper or lower, upright or inverse), and also because it is “hidden” as something apart, a balance around which the other two tetractyes stand.  That said, if anything, the Pentad is part of a relationship with the Decad, being exactly half of it, and also thus in a relationship with the Mēden, nothingness and emptiness which is nothing more than the flip side of the same coin as the Decad.

However, this all implies that the Monad is not truly just the Monad that is built with nothing before it, but that it is formed from subtracting from the Ennead.  If we treat all numbers as equally and c0-eternally present, then sure, that would work, but that’s not how the ancients thought about these numbers.  To them, the Monad was first, and underlies all other numbers without relying on them for existence.  Thus, it is the Ennead that relies upon the existence of the Monad and not vice versa, so perhaps we shouldn’t rely on this way of conceiving relationships between the numbers.  Alternatively, we might say that the “ideal” concepts of Becoming, Variation, Accordance, and Structure are identical to those of Individuation, Relation, Harmony, and Form in all ways, simply being another set of terms for the same exact things.  This would mean then that the other four ideas of Realization, Mixture, Essence, and Order are reflections of the “pure” or “true” upright Tetractys, and not that they are on the same level being reflected from the “ideal” concepts.  We might then conceive of Mixture being a higher “register” of Relation, that the Octad is a higher “evolution” of the Dyad, much as people claim Uranus is a higher “octave” of the forces of Mercury, or how 20 is a higher base of the number 2.

Thinking of the numbers in this sense means that, every time we proceed from the concept of Monadic Becoming to Tetradic Structure, we then hit the concept of Pentadic Growth, then proceed back up from the Tetrad to the Monad to…well, the Mēden or Decad, take your pick, depending on how you want to conceive of it.  Then you bounce back down from the Monad through the Tetrad, grow upon the Pentad, then back up, then back down, and so forth.  If we use an expanded version of the Tetractys, going from the Monad to the fifteenth rank, we can see this in action, as below:

We first proceed from the Monad to the Dyad to the Triad to the Tetrad, then hit the Pentad.  Then, upon reaching the Hexad (really the first higher register of the Tetrad), we go to the Heptad (higher register of the Triad), then the Octad (higher register of the Dyad), then the Ennead (higher register of the Monad), and then we hit the Decad, which you might consider to be a higher register of the Mēden.  After that, we hit the eleventh rank (the Hendecad if you want to be fancy about it), which as we see is an even higher register of the Monad.  Thus, the Dodecad (rank 12) is an equally-high register of the Dyad, the Tridecad (rank 13) of the Triad, and so on.  Note, though, that just as the lower tetractys has two hidden upright tetractyes supporting it on either side, the tetractys of the ranks higher than twelve has four hidden tetractyes, two on each side of each type.

Every time we finish one Tetractys of evolution (Becoming through Structure), we bring all of that with us each step of the way along the next time.  And, every time we finish the next Tetractys, we also bring that one with us, too; note how the third Tetractys in the picture above, ranks 11 through 14, is nestled between both upright and inverse tetractyes, one of each on each side of the central tetractys that we’re developing.  Each time we progress, we build upon and bring with ourselves all that we have done before, again another way to describe the “everything eternally flows” concept of the Gnosis Schema mentioned last time.

So, consider the Hendecad, rank 11.  This row is composed of the Monad, plus two hidden upright monads and two hidden lower tetrads.  The upper monad (rank 1) is associated with the pure concept of Becoming, i.e. Individualization, and the lower tetrad is really another way to describe the Hexad (rank 6), which is associated with Order.  We know that Order is a higher register of the same concept as Form, i.e. Structure, and since we now have both Structure and Becoming together, we now have joined the Monad and Tetrad again in the same relationship we foresaw with our little mental exercise above.  So the relationship between the Monad and Tetrad still stands, as does that of the Dyad and Triad.  Good to know I didn’t have that little mental exercise or Adobe Illustrator use go to waste after all.

So, let’s revisit the relationship between the Monad/Tetrad and Dyad/Triad and flesh those out a bit more.  If we combine the numbers of these relationships and take the median of the sum, we can tease out some finer points of the relationships these numbers have amongst themselves.

• Monad and Tetrad.  This pairing overall combines the concepts of Becoming with Structure, the formative beginning and end of all things that allow us to discern why we come into being, and as what we come into being.
  • Upper Monad/Lower Tetrad = Monad and Hexad= 1 + 6 = 7, whose median is 4.  Individuation and Order, with Form as the balance.  As a thing comes into being for the first time, it focuses on its place in the overall order of the cosmos and universe into which it finds itself becoming.  However, being initially without form, it thus requires one; the first thing anything requires in order to begin to achieve its goal is a form conducive to its goal and purpose.
  • Lower Monad/Upper Tetrad = Ennead and Tetrad = 9 + 4 = 13, whose median is 7.  Realization and Form, with Essence as the balance.  As a thing becomes manifested and completed, it focuses on its form and how it will help it achieve its goal.  With a form and a manifestation, what becomes the focus of investigation is now purpose, our essence, our telos within the overall cosmos.  We reflect upon ourselves and our forms, having come into being, to question why and for what we come into being.
• Dyad and Triad.  This pairing overall combines the concepts of Variation with Accordance, the principles of difference and similarity that relate to all things so as to learn what and how to achieve our desired ends.
  • Upper Dyad/Lower Triad = Dyad and Heptad = 2 + 7 = 9, whose median is 5.  Relation and Essence, with Growth as the balance.  As a thing comes into being and realizes what is around it and, moreover, what things are not itself, it learns to discern the essences of things, including its own, by means of comparison.  This is not for idle sophistry; this very act of “know thyself” is a way of growing into ones own essence.  We cannot escape our essence, but we can learn how to grow into it in a way conducive to its purpose.
  • Lower Dyad/Upper Triad = Octad and Triad = 8 + 3 = 11, whose median is 6.  Mixture and Harmony, with Order as the balance.  As we fall into place and amongst our peers and all the other things in the cosmos, we learn how to get along with them.  The sheer power of being mixed among things is the catalyst for attaining harmony, for the overall sake of creating an overall order so as to help us and all other things achieve all our purposes.

All this leaves the issue of the relationship between the Pentad, Decad, and the Mēden.  We see that, just as the Hendecad is a higher register of the Monad, and that the Hexad is a higher register of the Tetrad, we can say that the Decad is a higher register of the Pentad.  But…this is a little weird.  I mean, yeah, it logically follows, but we also know that the Decad is also a higher register of the Mēden, as both reflect a different state of Being.  I mean, right?  The Mēden is Being by Emptiness, where a thing that exists is empty of independent existence and relies entirely on all other things to exist; the Decad is Being by Wholeness, where a thing that exists is full of all things that exist, containing everything else.  And yet, the Decad is nothing more than the liminal point between one iteration of the full Tetractys counted out and another; just as we started with the Mēden before the Monad, we start with the Decad before the Hendecad.  In a sense, the Decad and Mēden are equals in their own relationship.

What of the Pentad, then?  The Pentad is the balance point between the Mēden and the Decad, and we associate the Pentad with the idea of Growth.  Growth is a distinct concept from any of Becoming, Variation, Accordance, and Structure, as it builds upon and enhances them all.  Consider that the Pentad is the only one of the numbers that can be formed in two distinct ways using distinct numbers in the sum: the Pentad can be formed by adding either the Monad with the Tetrad or the Dyad with the Triad.  All the other numbers in the Decad have only one way to use distinct numbers to form the sum (9 = 4 + 3 + 2, 6 = 4 + 2, etc.)  Even the Decad itself cannot lay claim to this little fact.  The only other number that can be considered as special is the Mēden, which isn’t even a number according to the Greeks; it has no sum because it has no value, because it is nothing.  Thus, in a sense, the Decad is conceptually equal to the Mēden, even if not arithmetically equal, because they are both Being in contraparallel ways.

The Pentad represents growth because it affords the cosmos a power of balance, reciprocity, distribution and flow in a way utterly unlike any other number.  It is neither static nor dynamic, neither oppositional nor reinforcing, neither varying nor assimilating, neither complete unto itself nor utterly and only part of everything else.  In a way, it is Growth (Pentad) and Being (Decad/Mēden) that are also part of their own relationship, and if we’re to be proper about it, we would say that the Decad is a higher register of the Pentad, and not that the Decad is a higher register of the Mēden, because the Mēden doesn’t actually exist except as everything else (being completely empty of independent existence, like a kind of hypostasis or substratum of all numbers, as it were).

So, let’s put this all together in a table for clarification, shall we?  As above, we can identify Individuation with Becoming, Relation with Accordance, Harmony with Accordance, and Form with Structure; thus, all these concepts have the same number.  However, we can distinguish between Individuation and Realization by saying that the former is “manifesting” and the latter “manifested”, like with our geomantic mental exploration of the Tetractys from before.

All this is well and good, but how do we think of this in terms of a more practical manner?  I mean, it’s good to understand the numbers and their relationships for their own sake, but where does it get us?  Well, consider again the Gnosis Schema:

Every time we traverse one of the three systems on this schema (Hot, Cold, or Cosmic), although there are four distinct paths and four distinct sphairai, there are actually five different steps.  Consider the Hot System: we begin at Mercury, proceed to Jupiter/Air, then to Mars/Fire, then to Sun/Sulfur, and then back to Mercury.  We proceed from the Monad to the Dyad to the Triad to the Tetrad to the Pentad…which then becomes the Monad for the next system.  As we proceed from our starting point, we undergo a process of analysis and synthesis; as we return to our starting point, we complete this process and prepare ourselves for the next process.  This completion/initiation point is the liminal sphaira of Growth, the Pentad, which is hidden from but implied by the numerical structure of the Tetractys itself.

Okay, but then this leaves two issues.  The first is that the process of the Gnosis Schema doesn’t take four steps, nor does it take ten steps; it takes twelve.  To use the astrological correspondences of the sphairai:

1. Mercury → Jupiter
2. Jupiter → Mars
3. Mars → Sun
4. Sun → Mercury
5. Mercury → Moon
6. Moon → Saturn
7. Saturn → Venus
8. Venus → Mercury
9. Mercury → Fixed Stars
10. Fixed Stars → The One
11. The One → Earth
12. Earth → Mercury

The fourth, eighth, and twelfth steps are where we leave one system to return back to Mercury so as to proceed to the next system on the Gnosis Schema.  If we elide the first two of these steps by considering that we only “pass through” Mercury, we can get down to ten:

1. Mercury → Jupiter
2. Jupiter → Mars
3. Mars → Sun
4. Sun → (Mercury) → Moon
5. Moon → Saturn
6. Saturn → Venus
7. Venus → (Mercury) → Fixed Stars
8. Fixed Stars → The One
9. The One → Earth
10. Earth → Mercury

This way of reckoning the transitions between one system and the next as seamless might be considered ideal, thinking of the whole process of traversing the Tetractys as a Decad unto itself, although a bit forced in my opinion.  Yes, if we start at Mercury, then we may not need to consider it as a distinct sphaira that we need to reckon again.  However, this thought leaves a funny taste in my mouth.  If we undergo the process of analysis and synthesis within one system after leaving Mercury, then when we return, we’re not the same person anymore, and Mercury will have new lessons to teach us before we proceed on to the next system.  As we change, so do the lessons we must learn.  After all, παντα ρει.  Besides this, having twelve distinct steps to traverse the Tetractys is a pleasant echo of the twelve signs that the Sun passes through during the course of the year (and, additionally, is the fundamental thought behind associating these paths with the signs of the Zodiac and the rest of the letters of the Greek alphabet onto the paths of the Tetractys).

So much for that issue, which turned out to be moot in the end.  The other is actually more notable, and goes back to our analysis of the first four numbers of the Decad before the Pentad (Monad through Tetrad) as “manifesting” and the second set after the Pentad (Hexad through Ennead) as “manifested”, the Upper and Lower Tetractyes, respectively, and how they relate to the three systems.  Say that we start at Mercury, and proceed around the Gnosis Schema along the twelve paths.  We know that every time we complete a system, we have gone through five sphairai, beginning with and ending at Mercury.

1. Hot System
   1. Mercury
   2. Jupiter
   3. Mars
   4. Sun
   5. Mercury
2. Cold System
   6. Mercury
   7. Moon
   8. Saturn
   9. Venus
   10. Mercury
3. Cosmic System
   11. Mercury
   12. Fixed Stars
   13. The One
   14. Earth
   15. Mercury

Note how we attain the Decad, the Wholeness of Being, after only having completed the second Cold System without having gotten to the third Cosmic System.  When we come back to Mercury after the Cosmic System, we end up at the Pendedecad, rank 15, which is not a completed decad.  This is awkward, since it means that one trip around the Gnosis Schema is not enough.  Additionally, if we consider that the upper “manifesting” tetractys numbers (Monad through Tetrad) and the lower “manifested” numbers (Hexad through Ennead) are different experiences, then it means that we’ve only experienced half of each system by going through it only once.  So, to be a completionist and perfectionist about this, we’d need to go through the Gnosis Schema twice:

1. Manifesting Hot System
   1. Mercury
   2. Jupiter
   3. Mars
   4. Sun
   5. Mercury
2. Manifested Cold System
   6. Mercury
   7. Moon
   8. Saturn
   9. Venus
   10. Mercury
3. Manifesting Cosmic System
   11. Mercury
   12. Fixed Stars
   13. The One
   14. Earth
   15. Mercury
4. Manifested Hot System
   16. Mercury
   17. Jupiter
   18. Mars
   19. Sun
   20. Mercury
5. Manifesting Cold System
   21. Mercury
   22. Moon
   23. Saturn
   24. Venus
   25. Mercury
6. Manifested Cosmic System
   26. Mercury
   27. Fixed Stars
   28. The One
   29. Earth
   30. Mercury

In this way, we get to experience both a manifesting and manifested version of each system, going through both the yin/yang, masculine/feminine, active/passive aspects of each force in turn.  The first pass through the Gnosis Schema has us go through the manifesting/yang/masculine/active Hot system, composed of active and hot sphairai, then through the manifested/yin/feminine/passive Cold system, composed of passive and cold sphairai, and then through the manifesting Cosmic system so as to bring about divinity in our lives and worlds.  However, this is only half the equation for a complete experience of everything.  We would then need to undergo, maybe even “undo”, what we’ve done by continuing on the paths: we’d then undergo the manifested Hot system, then the manifesting Cold system, then the manifested Cosmic system so as to complete the process, and allow the divinity we’ve accomplished to become fully realized both within, through, and by us.

I make this sound like going through the Gnosis Path once is pointless until you do it a second time, but it’s not.  As we complete one iteration of the Gnosis Schema, we have gone through the ten states of the cosmos, the ten sphairai of the Tetractys, and have brought about completion.  However, in doing so, we prepare ourselves by this very completion to continue along this path in another, more natural, more intuitive way.  It’s akin to what’s said about one attaining K&CHGA in modern Western traditions: once you are under the tutelage of your Holy Guardian Angel, you complete your initiatory phase and begin your actual Work, since your HGA would lead you henceforth as teacher and tutor.  What happens after that is continuing along the Lightning Path of the Tree of Life, but in different ways above the Veil of Paroketh that mimic what was done below it but in a greater, grander magnitude.

To offer a parallel about this, I propose to think that that the first iteration of one’s trip around the Tetractys on the Gnosis Schema is meant to intentionally manifest one’s paredos or Agathodaimon by undergoing initiation in the three Systems, and the whole cosmos generally.  It is only after that, under the direction of the Agathodaimon, that one allows what was intentionally manifested before outside oneself to naturally manifest within oneself, and vice versa, to the cumulative effect that one not only brings God down into this world (first iteration), but that we become God ourselves in all worlds (second iteration).  I mean, I only propose to think this; I don’t yet claim that that’s what would actually happen, but it’s a useful way to think about it.  If true Gnosis is to be attained, then one must experience both sides of all coins, not just the shinier side; the darker, more hidden side would be impossible to experience without the aid of the divinity we’ve worked to manifest, and to become manifested as divinity ourselves would be even less likely.  If the manifesting and manifested aspects of the Tetractys are different, then going through each of the systems in its different aspect is as important as returning to Mercury after each individual system, since we are ourselves different after each individual process of analysis and synthesis.

Alright, time to actually talk practice again.  The past few posts were heavy on number theory, but the end of the last post touched on how it impacts our traversal of the Tetractys and how we can start thinking of numbers in terms of how we can actually use them for our spiritual progression.

So, disclaimer, guys: although this post is going to be on pathworking, astral/clairvoyant exploration, and similar topics, I make no claims to being an expert on this.  Although pathworking is not something foreign to me, it’s something that I underutilize in my work, if not outright ignore, even though I recognize the usefulness of it.  I’m geared more towards physical ritual, but astral exploration is something I’d like to get more into.  To that end, Tetractyean pathworking, yay!

The idea behind pathworking is actually fairly simple, and I’ve employed it before when doing meditations on the geomantic figures waaaay back in the day, but also more recently when meditating on the letters of the Greek alphabet.  The technique I use for “astral contemplation” is straightforward:

1. Sit or lie in a comfortable position.  Clear the mind and regulate the breath.
2. Visualize the symbol to be contemplated as clearly as you can.  Focus on the symbol becoming as real as possible in the mind.
3. Vizualize a door, gate, veil, or curtain on which the symbol is written, engraved, embroidered, or whatever.  Let the symbol to be contemplated mark the gate as the entry to the “world” of that symbol.  You might picture the same door each time, or let the door form on its own around the symbol.
4. Once both the symbol and the gate are fully realized in the mind, open the gate (or have it open) and step through it.
5. Explore the world of the symbol.  Take note of all you perceive, and interact with the world as desired.
6. When ready to leave, exit the world by taking the same path backwards, passing by each thing that was encountered on the way in until you reach the gate.
7. Exit through the gate back into your own headspace, and close the gate.
8. Visualize the gate dissolving into the symbol itself so that only the symbol remains.
9. Visualize the symbol disseminating into one’s own sphere to as to retain the power and lessons learned from the contemplation.

You can use this with any set of symbols, from the seals of spirits to the geomantic figures to the planetary sigils from Agrippa to Greek letter or Tarot cards.  It’s a very malleable process that doesn’t rely much on ritual, if at all, though it can certainly be augmented by it through the use of mind-enhancing incenses, consecrated candles or oils, preliminary chants, and the like.

However, what this process best benefits from is preliminary study of the symbol.  What is the symbol’s name?  What spirits is it associated with?  What planets, elements, animals, plants, stones, forces, stars, and numbers is it associated with?  What mythic figures from different religions does it connect to?  In other words, it’s a vital, crucial part of the process to understand the correspondences of the symbol first.  You don’t need to see how they all interact with each other; I can hardly tell you how or why the twelve tribes of Israel are associated with the Zodiac signs the way they are, but they’re there for a reason.  It’s the astral exploration and contemplation that help with understanding the subtle interactions of everything, and give one a deeper knowledge of the symbol by means of experience.

So, let’s review our map, the Tetractys with the paths of letters.  As before, there are two main sets of paths, the Gnosis Schema with its Mitsubishi-like turns, and the Agnosis Schema with its hexagram-hexagon set.

The difference between the Gnosis and Agnosis Schemata involve the kind of force associated with each schema, as well as what sphairai they reach.  The Gnosis Schema is based on the twelve signs of the Zodiac, one step for every sign, as the student travels around the Tetractys.  The Agnosis Schema, on the other hand, contains the non-zodiacal forces: the seven planets and the four elements plus the quintessence of Spirit.  This is where one can get trapped in the cycles of this world, buffeted around by the archons and cruel fate; the Gnosis Schema, on the other hand, indicates the natural, fluid, smooth passage through all aspects of the cosmos up to and including purest Divinity, where we take the reins of our chariot and proceed on our true path to accomplish our One Thing.

Let’s focus first on the twelve paths of the Gnosis Schema.  Each path has an associated letter, and each letter with a sign of the Zodiac.  If we use Agrippa’s Orphic Scale of Twelve, we already have a wealth of symbolic knowledge on each path, to say nothing of what Liber 777 or other books of correspondence can get us.  However, the number 12 isn’t strictly given to the Zodiac, even in Hellenic reckoning.   There’s also the notion of the Twelve Labors of Heracles (of which the Thelemites have a fascinating view), and some medieval alchemists considered the Great Work to be composed of twelve stages, such as the Gates of George Ripley or the Keys of Basil Valentine.  All these can be considered as a single group, quest, set of paths, tasks, or transformations required to traverse the entirety of the Tetractys by means of the Gnosis Schema.

What of the Agnosis Schema, then?  The Agnosis Schema isn’t just one set of forces; in fact, according to how things are set up on the Tetractys, we can divvy these twelve forces up into three groups of four.  The first set, known as the Ideal forces, are the four elements themselves: Fire, Air, Water, and Earth.  The second set, the Empyrean set, are the two luminaries, the planet Mercury, and the quasi-element quasi-planet quasi-force Quintessence, aka Spirit.  The third set, the Ouranic forces, are the other four non-luminary planets of Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.  The four elements and the seven planets all have their usual correspondences (cf. Agrippa’s Scale of Four and Scale of Seven plus, like, literally everything else written in the Western and Near Eastern occult corpus for 5000 years, give or take a millennium), but it’s that last force of Spirit that kinda confuses things a bit.  Spirit wasn’t really considered a separate force way back when; sure, as there are five Platonic solids mentioned in Plato’s Timaeus, there was a notion of a fifth…something out there, but it wasn’t considered to be an element like how Fire or Water was.  Nor was it a visible object in the night sky like the planets or stars, however Plato claims that this force decorated the entire cosmos.  I claim that Spirit is best seen as a median between the elements and planets, or a substrate underlying any other force out there, a type of non-materialized metaforce required for the materialization of anything else.  It’s like how, in order for an object to exist, there must exist a space for it to be present.  That kind of thing.  You can figure out the rest.

However, in addition to the zodiacal, planetary, and elemental forces, each path on the Tetractys is given one of the 24 Greek letters (indeed, this was really the whole impetus for having the paths to begin with).  Each Greek letter can be viewed in different ways.  The first three of these are fairly mundane: the name, the glyph, and the sound of the specific letter, all of which are given on a post way back when I first started considering the Greek letters as a vehicle for theurgy.

• Name: alpha
• Glyph: Α
• Sound: /aː/
• Isopsephic number: 1 (see this page on isopsephy, aka Greek gematria)
• Stoicheion: Moon (see this page on associating the Greek letters with the forces)
• Grammatomantic oracle: “The god says that you will do everything well” (see this post on this divination method, also buy my ebook!)
• Sacred name: ΑΚΡΑΜΜΑΧΑΜΑΡΕΙ (see this post on the abacedarian words of power)
• Other symbolism, some of which are given to the letters in this post

Okay, so.  At this point, I’d normally provide a table listing all the correspondences I’ve just mentioned to recap them all, but…the format of my blog would have this table run off the column of this text into the wild unknown, and gods only know what havoc it’d wreak on any number of RSS feeds, so I’m going to refrain from doing so this once.  I mean, if you wanted a table of correspondences that big, just get a copy of Skinner’s Complete Magician’s Tables.  Maybe, one day, I’ll publish my own focusing more on the Greek letters than Hebrew, but that’s not now.  Instead, go ahead and take a gander at all the links I’ve posted above and feed your hungry mind on the connections of the paths to the letters and to the forces and to everything else.

Why study all this?  Because the more information that is accessible to us in our minds, the more tools we’re providing our spirits for when we begin astral exploration and contemplation of these symbols.  It’s a commonly-heard refrain in some circles that “the limits of my language are the limits of my world” (cf. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis); if you don’t have an appropriate symbol set to work with, you can’t communicate, hold onto, or receive information that could use those symbols.  The more symbols we become familiar with, the more our minds and spirits have to work with, which expands the possibilities of vision and clairvoyance.  After all, it’s as my favorite comic seer Dominic Deegan says:

When a seer looks into a crystal ball and spouts some cryptic message, it’s not because second sight is inherently mysterious.  It’s because the seer doesn’t know what he’s looking at and he’s probably disguising his ignorance with cliché mysticism.  To master second sight you must have knowledge, which is found in books, which is why we have so much required reading for this class. (January 5, 2007)

Second sight is hard.  It requires a solid knowledge of history, politics, religion, arcane theory and even geography to really be of any use.  Otherwise it’s just looking at pictures. (January 11, 2007)

Study hard, kids. That’s important, no matter what you do in the occult.

Okay, so, say you’ve got a good grasp of the symbols, correspondences, associations, and affiliations of the letters with everything else.  What now?  We tap into that with pathworking, which is ritualized contemplation within a specific theurgical context.  Taking into account what’s commonly done in Golden Dawn and related orders, we would first mentally place ourselves within a particular sphaira as its own separate “temple”, envisioning a path leading to it (the one we used to enter) and other paths leading away from it (the possibilities of egress from the temple along the other paths).  Taking Alex Sumner’s brief discourse on qabbalistic pathworking, there are several steps to this process (rephrased from Sumner’s approach):

1. Preparation of the physical temple and the pathworker.
2. Visualization of the origin of the pathworking.
3. Invocation of the forces of the path to be worked.
4. The departure onto the path from the origin.
5. The vision of the path.
6. The arrival from the path unto the destination.
7. The return to the world and normal consciousness.

Now, we can’t simply replace all the qabbalistic elements with mathetic ones; in many cases, I simply haven’t developed all the same things, and in others, I have no need to.  However, the underlying idea is the same, and many of the same methods can be adapted to this.  The important part that needs to be figured out first, however, is…where exactly do we start?

The whole point of undergoing initiation into the Gnosis Schema is to bring us from wherever we might be on the Agnosis Schema to the central sphaira on the Gnosis Schema.  Before that point, we don’t know where we are or how we got there; we need to be brought to a point of balance so as to be able to grow from that point, rather than trying to catch our bearings while we’re lost adrift on stormy seas.  After initiation, we find ourselves at the central sphaira, which has six paths leading to it all, all equally spread apart.  Thus, we begin at the sphaira of Mercury, and thence proceed onward to the path of Beta, which leads us down to the sphaira of Jupiter/Air.  We repeat the process time and again, periodically returning to Mercury, and continue along our paths.

So, if we begin at Mercury, how do we envision a “temple” or world for this sphaira?  That…well, I don’t really know what it would look like.  I do not know whether I can slip in my own visions of the planetary sphere of Mercury, and I doubt I could very easily, though it might make sense.  I do not know if the image I already have in mind can work, since I haven’t actually gone and explored what this sphaira looks like yet (to my own great shame).  But, if I were pressed to come up with a simple (if not simplistic) view based on what we already know and what we’ve already developed, I suppose we could always go with this little imagining I came up with:

Around you is a forum, a marketplace, filled with stalls and tents and shops all around you.  For some, these stalls are each manned and staffed with heaps of all sorts of foods, spices, riches, and goods; for others, the marketplace is deserted and dilapidated, with it looking more like a shantytown full of ghosts.  In either case, you stand at the center of three roads crossing each other in six directions.  The sky has the usual weather, the air balmy and breezy, and the road is full of dust sweeping in from each of the roads to the center where you now stand.  At the very center of the marketplace, in the exact middle of this six-way crossroads, stands a tall brazier atop a round altar.  This brazier has a fire lit of pure white gold flame, gently warming but weak.  Each road is lined with stalls and shops, though they start becoming fewer and farther between the further you look down each road.  Looking down one of the roads in the direction of the morning sun, you see at the far end of it, where the shops and buildings and tents give way to grass and rocks and dirt roads, a tall stone arch glittering in the light of the sky.

As you walk down this path, the bustle and business of the marketplace (or, alternatively, the whispers of wind and loose tentcloth) die down to silence, almost in anticipation of you reaching the arch.  As you get closer to the arch and further from the tents, you see that the arch leads onto a bridge crossing a deep chasm, heading off around you to both the left and the right.  The whole marketplace is on a large island, cut off from the surrounding lands yet connected by means of these six arches and their bridges wide enough to carry travelers, merchants, pilgrims, warlords, princes, paupers, and others of all kinds and nations.  Yet, these bridges are all but empty.  Beyond, however, you can see a whole new world through the arch, hearing all sorts of new voices and sounds, yet somehow it was not apparent to you until you looked through the arch itself.

The arch is elaborate, delicately engraved with repetitive motifs echoing long-lost languages that yet look familiar to you, mixed in with baroque depictions of cities, wars, crops, livestock, wildlands, gods above and below, and so many other scenes that could never be descried except at close distance, and at a close enough distance, you see all these patterns forming an infinitely-detailed fractal building upon and within itself endlessly.  At the very top of the arch, you see that the whole arch has been engraved with the ancient Greek letter Β; under it, suspended by gilded iron chains, is a brightly-gleaming lantern.  It has not been lit, though you can tell from the slow way it sways that it is full of oil and ready to be ignited at a moment’s notice.  Just above where the flame would be is a rope, tied to both columns supporting the arch, and from that rope a gate that, although fine and delicately-wrought, prevents you from passing through the arch proper.

Light the lamp and let its light beckon to those who would seek to enter, guided and amplified by the white gold flame in the crossroads.  Burn the rope, and bring down the gate.  Open the path to this new road and to this new world.  Leave the town as you are, and return when you are not.

…a bit of fancy prose, sure, but why not?  I don’t have much else to go on at the moment.  Besides, when I do get around to actually exploring the central sphaira, I’ll be able to get a better vision of the place and use that as the preliminary setup for a “mathetic temple”.  The use of the “gate blocking the arch” bit was to show that one cannot simply proceed immediately without doing work to earn the right of passage upon the path; in the Golden Dawn style of pathworking, each path had its own guard that needed to be appeased or tested first before one could go along the path.  Similar things should apply here, I figure, though the methods of testing would likely be different.  Plus, I might actually become inspired enough to give the damn thing its own proper name and title, as opposed to just calling it the “central sphaira” or “sphaira of Mercury”.

For me, physical motions in ritual are hugely important.  Tools, incenses, oils, candles, and all the rest are heavily used in most of my rituals, but the biggest thing is what I’m physically doing with my body.  I’m not the greatest fan of using astral-only rituals, and I’m a firm believer in that if you want your magic to have worldly effects, you need to do stuff in this world to effect it, both inside and outside ritual scenes.  The body is perhaps our greatest tool we have, from our breath and voice to our dances and our hands, and with it we can accomplish the greatest of things.

I make a special case for the movements, motions, and gestures of the hands, which I find to be among the most crucial of all ritual acts.  Just as we write with the hands, we can make gestures with the hands in a way to create a symbol that’s halfway between spoken sound and written letter.  I’ve discussed this before when I developed a system of geomantic gestures or mudras, where each of the sixteen figures of geomancy are associated with a particular extension or reflex of the fingers on the hand.  If I’m working with the powers of a particular geomantic figure, I’ll use the corresponding mudra in whatever ritual I’m doing.

When I recently started investigating mathetic ritual, I started wondering about motions and gestures one could use for this work.  I mean, the Golden Dawn and OTO have their signs of their grades, and I’m sure they have other signs besides those.  What sorts of mudras could I use or adapt for mathetic work?  Sure, given my geomantic musings on the Tetractys, I could borrow those mudras over again, but I didn’t feel it proper to do so.  (Depending on the ritual, of course, since I’ve been using the mudras for Laetitia, Rubeus, Albus, and Tristitia as pure elemental mudras quite well.)  If the main symbols of mathesis are the Greek letters, what could I…

Oh.  Duh.  Of course there exists a set of mudras for the letters of the Greek alphabet.  It’s called fingerspelling (alternatively dactylology, lit. “words of the fingers”), and it’s been done for centuries now.  Sure, there’s one such chart recorded by the Venerable Bede from the 1400s that gives distinct signs for the numbers (and, thus, the letters of Greek), but it seems in bad shape and I can’t clearly make out what it is.  Besides, Wikipedia says that such finger alphabets were likely “only a bookish game” and not seriously used.  What is seriously used?  Greek Sign Language, the official language of the Deaf Community in Greece as of 2000, with up to 60,000 native speakers of it at last recording.  That’s actually kinda big, when you think about it, and their method of fingerspelling gives us a readily available alphabet of mudras to work with for mathesis.  (My deaf and hard-of-hearing friends, and my hearing friends with deaf/HOH families would be facepalming at my density right now, Jim.)

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of written material on Greek sign language that I can easily scan for, especially in English where most of what I find are technological white papers on automated GSL synthesis, but I did find one excellently clear guide to Greek fingerspelling with clear pictures on this website, but another source that I’m more inclined to follow has somewhat different letter forms for a few of them.  The former seems to be a remapping of American Sign Language fingerspelling to Greek sounds, while the latter seems to be more authentically Greek.  As a bonus, the latter doesn’t involve any motion of the hands, so we can use them and hold them indefinitely, a good benefit for mudras.

To describe each of these signs for the Greek alphabet, or more properly, δακτυλογοι (daktylogoi):

1. Α: a fist facing away from the signer upright, with the thumb pressed against the side of the fist pointing upwards
2. Β: a palm facing away from the signer upright, with the thumb curled over the palm and the four fingers extending upward together
3. Γ: a fist facing down, with the index finger extended downwards and the thumb extended out to the side
4. Δ: a palm facing to the side upright, with the index finger extended upward, the thumb connected to the middle finger, and the other two fingers curled in an O-shape
5. Ε: a palm facing away from the signer upright, with the thumb curled over the palm and the four fingers curled to connect to the length of the thumb
6. Ζ: a fist facing toward the signer sideways, with the index and little fingers extended outward and the thumb curled over the fist
7. Η: a fist facing away from the signer upright, with the index and little fingers extended outward and the thumb curled over the fist
8. Θ: a fist facing toward the signer sideways, with the index and middle fingers extended outward and the thumb curled over the fist
9. Ι: a fist facing away from the signer upright, with the little finger extended upwards
10. Κ: a fist facing to the side upright, with the index finger extended upwards, the middle finger extended to the side, and the thumb pressed against the side of the fist
11. Λ: a fist facing down, with the index and middle fingers extended outward and apart from each other
12. Μ: a fist facing away from the signer upright, with the index, middle, and ring fingers extended downwards
13. Ν: a fist facing away from the signer upright, with the index and middle fingers extended downwards
14. Ξ: a fist facing toward the signer sideways, with the index, middle, and ring fingers extended outward and apart from each other
15. Ο: a palm facing sideways, with all the fingers bent to connect to the thumb together curled in an O-shape
16. Π: a fist facing downwards, with the index and little fingers extended downwards
17. Ρ: a fist facing away from the signer upright, with the index and middle fingers extended upward, both fingers crossed
18. Σ: a fist facing away from the signer upright, with the thumb held over the fingers
19. Τ: a fist facing downwards, with the index finger extended downwards
20. Υ: a fist facing away from the signer upright, with the little finger and thumb extended outwards
21. Φ: a palm facing away from the signer upright, with the thumb and index finger connected in a O-shape and the middle, ring, and little fingers extended upward together
22. Χ: a palm facing away from the signer upright, with the index and middle fingers extended upward and hooked down, and with the thumb curled over the ring and little fingers
23. Ψ: a palm facing away from the signer upright, with the index, middle, and ring fingers extended upward and apart from each other, and with the thumb connected to the little finger
24. Ω: a palm facing upwards, with all the fingers coming together at a peak above the palm

I suppose, if I really wanted to be completionist about it, I could develop three more signs for the obsolete letters Digamma, Qoppa, and Sampi, but…they wouldn’t be used in ritual, since the letters themselves go unused in ritual and on the Tetractys, so there’s really no point.

Okay, so, at this point, we have a system of mudras for the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet.  Excellent!  As a matter of protocol, I’d use my right hand for signing these in ritual, primarily because my right hand is my dominant hand, but also because of the classical taboo on using the left hand.  That said, if you’re left-handed, screw the taboo and switch the sides.  How would I go about using these mudras?  Say I’m sitting down to meditate on a Greek letter.  In addition to intoning the name of the letter, I could also simultaneously hold the mudra while intoning the name, and use the mudra mentally as a way to open the gate of the letter before entering its world when pathworking.  It’s a useful idea, to be sure.  If I’m using a tool for a given ritual, I’d probably use the tool with the dominant hand and make the corresponding mudra needed with the submissive hand…though I’m not entirely sure yet when such a situation would apply.  After all, the dominant hand is the one you write with; it’s the one that should, correspondingly, make the gestures for the letters, but in a ritual, you’d be “writing” an effect with another tool, but perhaps they can be combined in some manner.

So, if I’d be signing the letter with my dominant hand, what would my left hand be doing?  For now, lacking other ideas, I’d be holding it under the letter; if I’m signing the letter at chest height, I’d have my left hand at my center, palm facing upwards, as if radiating light to the mudra or collecting light from it.  That said, perhaps there are other possibilities for other mudras to be used in tandem with the letter of the dominant hand.  For instance, perhaps a system of ten mudras to describe the ten forces on the alchemical Tetractys could be developed; four of them are already known to me, the elemental mudras borrowed from geomancy, so there’d be six to go there.  Alternatively, perhaps a “grade” mudra could be made, according to one’s station within mathesis as hypognostes, epignostes, or gnostes.  This would be a later addition, however, and not strictly necessary.

An open letter to the Honorable Rob J. Wittman, Representative of the First District of Virginia in the United States House of Representatives, sent to him individually on June 13, 2016 in response to the Orlando attack on the queer community and shared for all to see.  Modified to remove my own personal details, but…this needs to be said and stated aloud on all forums I belong to.  This past weekend has not been kind, and I will not be silent.  If you’re a US resident, lease visit http://whoismyvoice.com/ and see who your congressional representatives are, and send them a message of your own.  What happened in Orlando cannot happen again, because each day we do nothing is one more that I could be killed for being gay, and you wouldn’t want your favorite occult blogger to be killed, would you?  I hope not.  Read and share, my friends, and please help me and help each other in this time of crisis for the LGBTQ and Latinx communities.  Normally I wouldn’t post such explicitly political stuff on this blog, but this is not a normal time for us.

I am a resident of Prince William County for three years, and a lifelong Virginian. I am privileged to be a member of your constituency, and to live in the beautiful forested foothills of the Appalachians alongside my family, my friends, and my colleagues. I would live in no other place on this green earth, and each day I wake up and breathe this air is one I cherish with joy and love for Virginia and for Virginians. As we say, Virginia is for lovers.

I am also gay, and this past weekend has left me reeling in sorrow and anguish. As you know, early in the morning this past Sunday, June 12, a mentally unstable, homophobic, radicalized madman rushed into the gay club Pulse in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 people and injuring another 53 before he was killed in a gun fight. These people, though I have never met them, are part of my extended family in the LGBTQ community. Although me and mine are blessed that none of my direct contacts were there that night, many of my friends and colleagues did, and we are all in mourning. Not only is this a grievous attack on the queer community that I call family, but that night was also Latin Night at Pulse, and the vast majority were people of color, largely those of Hispanic and Latin descent; yes, this was a direct attack on the queer community merely for being who they are and loving whom they will, but this was also a painful loss for the Latino community of Florida and for the United States of America.

I know that, according to your website and your voting record in the House of Representatives, you stand for a pro-family stance. Yes, I know that you likely disagree with the 2014 Virginia Supreme Court decision on Bostic v. Schaefer, and the 2015 United States Supreme Court decision on Obergefell v. Hodges that both guarantee a right for two people of the same sex to marry in Virginia and the United States as a whole, respectively. Yes, I know you likely find my marriage to my husband “wrong” in some sense and that it goes against some of your religious commitments. But, if you have the time, please spare a minute not for prayers and thoughts and heartfelt outreach to the communities of those impacted by the attack in Orlando, but give some thought to the notion of “family” today. My husband and I have formed our own family; while we do not have children, many same-sex couples do, either through adoption, earnest conception, or in vitro fertilization. Regardless what types of families individuals of the queer community choose to raise, we all come from families, men and women such as you and your wife. The loss of any child is uniformly painful to an ineffable degree, much more so if they were innocently slain on a night of celebration of life and love.

Like any guy in his late 20s, I enjoy a good drink and a good night out on the town. However, I find that many places do not accept me because I love and have married another man, and so I turn to specifically gay clubs and bars for nights out. These places are sanctuaries for my community, where we can dance, talk, and meet others without the threat of being judged, insulted, attacked, or killed. Many queer youth have never felt that sort of safety before stepping into a gay club; it is hard to understand, if you’ve been straight all your life, that we cannot take a cute peck on the cheek or the simple pleasure of holding hands in the park for granted. Art, music, stories, and lifelong friendships form in these places of partying and drinking, and their power as social centers in the queer community cannot be understated. However, Sunday’s shooting in Orlando shattered the safety we feel, even given security guards and police protections, and no one escapes that sense of complete and utter faith-shattering despair when we realize that “…by God, it could have been me”. Any night I go out, whether to a gay club or to the Irish pub down the road, whether to the park or to a museum, is one that I could be killed and cut down merely for talking the “wrong” way, walking the “wrong” way, holding hands with the “wrong” person, or any other number of homophobic criteria that make me a scumbag target worthy of being killed, and not a human being with rights and dignity that I deserve as a citizen of the United States of America.

Representative Wittman, please understand that I am not writing to you for the sake of turning you liberal, undoing your pro-family work, or joining the next Pride parade (although you are more than welcome to participate to learn more about me and my community). In fact, I too am very pro-family; the family is sacrosanct and never to be belittled. However, my understanding of the word “family” is somewhat different than yours; I consider ties of love as strongly and as worthy as ties of blood. Understand, Representative Wittman, that any night I go out, or even any day I wake up, is one that I can be killed because I’m queer. Not because I stole from another, not because I insulted another, not because I violated any laws, but because my mere existence is considered detestable and an abomination by those who disregard the law for the sake of killing and murder.

I do not want to be murdered. I do not want my husband, my friends, my colleagues, my allies, or my family to be murdered. I do not want anyone on this planet to be murdered, especially not for the sake and endeavor of love and the pursuit of happiness, and I would hope you would agree and would work to prevent the slaying of your constituents. For us, prayers and thoughts after a shooting may help us through the process of mourning, but they do not prevent any single one of us from being killed.

We need action. Representative Wittman, I need your action. I plead to you as your constituent that you help stand for all families in Virginia, not just those with a man and a woman at the head; that you defend our rights and our dignity as you would for any individual seeking a modicum of joy and solace in this world of violence and terror; that you help prevent mass shootings, both against the queer community and for all communities of all races, religions, nationalities, ages, sexual orientations, gender identifications, and all other identities not by post facto moments of silence but preemptive laws and stances that keep weapons of mass destruction and weapons of assault out of the hands of anyone who would use them against their fellow man.

I know that you value input on legislation from the National Rifle Association, but please consider the possibility that they stand for a minority viewpoint that often leads to error and folly, such as those that lead to the saddest of outcomes. I fully admit and cherish the right for us to bear arms for our defense and the defense of liberty against tyranny; my own household makes use of this right and we take pride in our ability and preparedness to stand our own against those who would harm us. That said, this man who was clearly mentally unstable legally bought his weapons of death, and killed near fifty people, some as young as 18 years old. This is not a case of “things happen”; this does not happen in other parts of the world, and we can see that they have taken action that many here refuse to take. We can take that same action while still holding true to our constitutional American principles. Please, Representative, stand for these principles, and also stand for our right to live free from the threat of being murdered.

I know that you take your faith very seriously, but please consider all of what Christ taught, foremost of which was to support and love all of your fellow man, to act first and to judge never. Rhetoric that led to the shooter slaying my community is frequently heard across the world in places dominated by radicalized and extremist governments, but it is also heard in the hallowed halls of the Capitol from your own colleagues. When Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick of Texas shared Galatians 6:7 shortly after news of the attack spread, when Georgia Representative Rick Allen read Romans 1:18-32 and Revelations 22:18-19, when any of us use Christ’s Word as a battering tool to injure and constrain, we implicitly condone a religious excuse to harm, maim, and slay those whom we pass judgment on. Representative, I urge you to repudiate and condemn in no uncertain terms that bigotry of this kind, to heinously use a religion of peace for the purposes of murder, is thoroughly un-American and has no place in our culture, our nation, or our century.

Please, Representative, hear me and the anguished cries of those fallen and slain in my community. We do not want prayers and thoughts; they do not ease the pain of losing a brother, a teacher, a father, or a husband. We want to ensure that this never happens again for anyone in the United States ever again. Nobody should have to live through the pain of knowing our safe spaces are no longer safe; nobody should have to live through the pain of losing our family to a murderous, bloody rampage. I know you don’t for your family, but I want you to make me feel at home in Virginia so that I can feel as safe as you do.

I thank you for your time in reading this letter, and I hope you and yours are doing well.

Many of my readers come to my blog for geomancy and related information.  This post isn’t really going to give them much on that, but there’s something I can proffer to sate you all the same.  I would like to bring your attention to an online class, Geomancy for Astrologers by Dr. Alexander Cummins:

Considered a “daughter” to astrology, the system of divination known as geomancy was an incredibly popular and well-regarded form of divination in early modern Europe. It applied what occult philosopher Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa called the “use and rules of astrology” (which is to say, the symbolism but none of the astronomy of astrology) to create answers using a process both apparently simple and deceptively subtle.

Geomancy as a system consists of only sixteen figures, each attributed an astrological identity. These figures are combined in specific charts (known as shields) to render very particular answers, often using versions of the Houses of the Heavens. These shields are set by various means of generating random numbers and developing them using mathematical operations.

Dr. Alexander Cummins – a historian of magic and a practicing geomancer – will introduce the history, practice and magic of this art. Whether you are a professional astrologer, a seasoned card-reader, or a newcomer to divination tools and techniques, this class will offer you further useful skills and resources for your own practice and understanding.

I’ve personally met Dr. Cummins, and have deep respect for his research and work in the history of British and Western occultism, as well as his work in geomancy, which he’s finally getting around to sharing through online classes and informative videos.  I’m planning on sitting in on the class, myself, because no matter how much you might know, you always stand to gain from another person teaching.  Besides, if I were to trust anyone to put the obnoxiously sesquipedalian and floridly overwrought language of John Heydon into something intelligible and palatable, it’d be Al (who, for some reason, adores Heydon), so I’m excited for that alone.

The class is US$29 per seat, and is held this Saturday, June 18 from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. EDT.  You can register online through Kepler College through this link, which I highly suggest you do so.  If you’re on the Facebook, you could do worse than participate in the event page for the same thing, where there’s a bit of discussion and resource sharing already going on.  Hurry up and get your tickets today!

I was settling down this past Monday thinking of how to better explore the paths of the Tetractys.  Pathworking is fine and all, and I will never swear against it; it’s a powerful method in its own right, and when tweaked for the purposes of mathesis, will provide valuable experience in developing oneself theurgically.  The thing is that…well, I hate pathworking.  It’s a personal opinion of mine that physical, enacted ritual is superior for initiations and transformation compared to pathworking, which is more meditative and exploratory but also too mental and ungrounded to achieve the same ends.  Any physical addition to pathworking, such as using gestures or chanting, can definitely help empower the pathworking, but in the end it’s still primarily pathworking.  I tried coming up with different kinds of chants or seed syllable-type intonations to focus oneself on a manifesting or manifested version of a path to little result (I’ll keep those notes as a draft post for future reference just in case), but something kept nagging at me to think of something better.

Looking through my old drafts I had saved, I noticed that I started an idea a while back but never really fleshed it out any.  The idea was to have a stellar type of ritual, not focused on the planets or elements themselves but on the passage of the Sun as it travels from one sign of the Zodiac to the next.  After all, the whole point of the Gnosis Schema is to develop the self theurgically by using a set of twelve paths to traverse the ten sphairai of the Tetractys, and these twelve paths are given to the signs of the Zodiac.  If we consider ourselves as Suns, then the passage of the Sun through the Zodiac represents our own passage through Gnosis.  By celebrating the ingress of the Sun into each sign of the Zodiac, we celebrate and open ourselves up to a whole new stage of our development, formally opening up new gates and roads for us to travel.  This is an idea I wanted to develop, but I had little idea back then of how to actually go about building or thinking about such a ritual.  I think it’s time now to do just that.  Thus, at the beginning of Cancer 2017 and close to the start of a new mathetic year, let us now discuss αι Τελεται των Ηλιεισοδων (hai Teletai tōn Hēlieisodōn), the Rituals of the Solar Ingresses.

So, first, just because we like things in Greek, let’s list what the names of the Zodiac signs are in Greek for reference’s sake:

1. Aries: Κριος (Krios)
2. Taurus: Ταυρος (Tauros)
3. Gemini: Διδυμοι (Didymoi)
4. Cancer: Καρκινος (Karkinos)
5. Leo: Λεων (Leōn)
6. Virgo: Παρθενος (Parthenos)
7. Libra: Ζυγος (Zygos)
8. Scorpio: Σκορπιος (Skorpios)
9. Sagittarius: Τοχοτης (Tokhotēs)
10. Capricorn: Αιγοκερως (Aigokerōs)
11. Aquarius: Υδροχοος (Hydrokhoos)
12. Pisces: Ιχθυες (Ikhthyes)

When might we celebrate this kind of event?  As I reckon it, there are three options for us, each with their own pros and cons:

• The first day after the Sun has astrologically entered the sign proper.  This is probably the most straightforward and obvious option, but we’d be careful to note that we’d mark this as the first sunrise coinciding with or falling immediately after the Sun’s entry to the sign.  Thus, if the Sun enters Taurus sometime on a Monday night after sunset, even though Monday is the first day of Taurus according to the modern Western sense, we’d only celebrate this starting at Tuesday morning, at the start of the first full day of Taurus.  The drawback is that such an ingress could occur at any time of the lunar month, which much of the rest of mathesis relies upon for its ritual timing.  After all, the solar year and lunar year are not easily synced and need constant corrections to keep roughly together.
• The first Noumenia (start of the lunar month) while the Sun is in the sign.  This makes sense from a grammatomantic calendar standpoint, as we could then dedicate the whole rest of the month to works relating to the specific sign that the Sun has entered into.  However, this has a bit of a problem; the Noumenia could occur several weeks into the solar month of the zodiac sign, so we’d lose the “freshness” of the previous option.  Additionally, with lunar months being shorter than a solar month, there is the possibility of having two Noumenias within a single solar month.  In such a case, we’d only use the first one for our ingress ritual, but we’d know then that, if there’s another Noumenia just before the Sun changes sign, then the next one after the Sun enters the next sign would be late indeed.
• The day of the letter of the sign while the Sun is in the sign.  For instance, if we’re celebrating the entry of the Sun into the sign of Taurus, we’d wait until the day of Γ, the letter associated with Taurus.  Just as with the Noumenia, there is the possibility that there might be two such days with the same letter while the Sun is in the same sign due to the fact that the lunar month is shorter than a solar twelfth of a year.  Further, just as with the Noumenia, this might position the day of the ritual rather late into the Sun’s travel into the sign.  However, this has the benefit of associating the natural power of the lunar day of the month with the sign of the Sun itself, and with the “offset” this would introduce since each sign has a different letter, and thus a different day of the month, we could sidestep some of the issues introduced by using a fixed date of the lunar month viz. the Noumenia.

To compare these options, here are the dates of the first sunrise of the solar ingresses into the signs of the Zodiac starting with Aries 2017, and the corresponding dates of celebration according to each of the three methods above, along with a comparison of how much of the lunar month has elapsed since it last began or how much of the Zodiac sign has already been traveled through by the Sun:

This is just a small sample, but indicative of how close or far these lunar methods of reckoning a ritual date for the Sun’s ingress can vary compared to the exact solar date.  Given these three methods, I’m most inclined to go with the first option, with the third a close contender.  It would be nice to have this set of rituals synced to our already-established lunar calendar, but there’s too much variance with the lunar calendar to make it stick right.  Plus, according to even the most basic of principles of astrological magic, the most powerful time for a zodiacal-solar ritual is (barring a proper solar election) at the first degree of the sign, considered its strongest, with its last few degrees considered its weakest.  On these days of ingress, the ritual should be performed at sunrise, or as early in the day as possible; barring that, as close to the day of ingress as possible.  I’d suppose that, so long as the ritual is performed sometime in the first ten or so days of the Sun’s ingress into the sign, the ritual can be considered valid, though it is best to do it ASAP.

So, we have a set of twelve “holidays”, as it were, or high ritual days for those on the Gnosis schema.  It would be excellent, then, to celebrate all twelve, but if we were constrained for time or resources, could we rank them or group them together in terms of importance?  Absolutely, and this is based all on how we think about the groups of paths on the Gnosis Schema:

• Of all these twelve days, it’s the day of the Ingress into Aries that is the most important.  This day celebrates the Sun’s rebirth, and our own renewal into a new cycle of the Gnosis Schema from an old one.  If only one ingress could be celebrated, it is this one.
• With a little more resources and time, the days of the Ingress into Aries, into Leo, and into Sagittarius are as important as each other and should be celebrated if all twelve cannot.  Each of these ingresses marks the departure of the Sun from one set of four signs of the Zodiac into the next four after completing a whole elemental cycle; for us on the Gnosis schema, these ingresses mark our transition from one cycle to the next (Hot to Cold, Cold to Cosmic, Cosmic to Hot).
• With enough resources and time, each ingress day could be celebrated on its own as they arrive, each ingress marking the transition of the Sun from one sign to the next, and our own transition from one path to the next on the Gnosis Schema.

Thus, to offer a kind of neopagany parallel, the Ingress into Aries would be as important to mathesis as Samhain is to neopagans, the ingress into fire signs as a group as important as the cross-quarter days including Samhain, and the ingress into all twelve signs as a group as important as monthly sabbaths of the cross-quarter days, solstices, and equinoxes.  (I can’t believe I just used that sort of reference, since I’m about as far from neopagan as you can get, but I suppose it works for getting the point across.)

Like with my self-initiation ritual into mathesis I discussed a while back, I’ll refrain from posting the specifics of what the ritual of solar ingress would specifically contain.  I’ve got my reasons for doing so: this is all still highly experimental, this is still a mystery path, and…well, I’m far from done designing a complete ritual for such an event.  However, I’ve got my ideas, and I’ll definitely detail those at a high level for the sake of discussion and thinking out things aloud.  Unlike the solar rituals of the Egyptian priests who guided the Sun through the underworld, and unlike the harvest festivals of the old pagans and heathens, and unlike the celebration of neopagans who reflect on the story of the God and Goddess throughout the year, these rituals of solar ingress use the outer world as a symbol for internal development, and will be used to link one’s self to the cosmic forces at play as the Sun travels through the skies.  In other words, by bringing ourselves into stronger alignment with the natural flow and rhythm of the cosmos, we take on the same development and live in a spiritually natural, balanced way that follows the course the gods themselves take.  We do this by, yes, celebrating the entry of the Sun into a new zodiac sign every month to mark the passage of time, but this is just the external aspect of it; we emulate and, eventually, become the Sun itself as it opens each new gate and takes its first steps along each new path.  By sharing in the work of the gods, new possibilities are opened unto us, granting us new power and responsibilities each step of the way.

As the Sun ages through one sign of the Zodiac, the power of the Sun is generally seen to decrease slightly; the final degrees of a sign are the weakest and darkest, and generally bode no good things.  As the Sun enters a new sign, the Sun’s light is strengthened and renewed each and every time; further, this whole process is repeated on a grander scale of the whole year as the Sun shines brightest in summer, diminishes in autumn, becomes darkest and feeblest in winter, and becomes renewed in the spring.  Just as Apollo is pulled ahead by the horses of his chariot, so too are we pulled forward by the powers of time and growth; just as Apollo is led by Hermes to his destinations hither and fro, so too are we pulled ahead by Hermes as guide and protector.  It is these two gods that mathesis works intensely with, and we can already see roles for them appearing in these rituals of solar ingress: Apollo to cleanse and renew us for entering a new gate, and Hermes to guide and lead us as we take our first steps on a new path.  Thus, each ritual of solar ingress must be preceded by a purification, either by khernimma or katharmos, so that we can enter a new stage of our lives clean and proper.  We must then call on Hermes to open the gate itself and set us on the right path so that we do not get waylaid, lost, or trapped by the darkness that surrounds us.

What I don’t yet know about including, and this is where pathworking will come in help, is the notion of a guardian or gatekeeper for each of these gates.  After all, all gates have some sort of protection for themselves, and the notion of a being or god dwelling within each path against which one must pass a test is not precisely new; yes, the idea is common in Golden Dawn practices, but the idea of a Sphinx posing riddles is old.  We do know that each of the twelve signs of the Zodiac is given to one of the twelve gods of Olympus, saith Cornelius Agrippa in his Orphic Scale of Twelve, but I’m not sure if these would be the same thing.  Additionally, I’m uncertain of what specific offerings should be made as part of the ritual besides the usual ones.  This is all for future development, planning, and pathworking to see what I can see and find out what can be found out and pieced together.  After all, while I may experiment with different ritual layouts, I’d like to start doing these in earnest starting at the spring equinox next year for Aries.  This gives me more than half a year’s time to try things out, which sounds like a lot of time, but…we’ll see.

These rituals of solar ingress are intended to open the gates and let flow the power along the channels indicated by the paths on the Tetractys.  What they allow us to do is to help guide us along the Gnosis Schema around the Tetractys, but they do not open up each of the sphairai to us.  These rituals can open the gate to a new path, and can bring us to the gate at the end of the path to a new sphaira, but without us unlocking that final gate, we are not able to continue along the Gnosis Schema.  Merely celebrating the rituals of solar ingress is not enough to deliver us to gnosis; these rituals are monthly rites of passage, but like any rite of passage, they only give us license to do more things without specifying how or in what timeframe.  Anyone in a culture who undergoes the rite of passage into adulthood does not have their entire lives mapped out for them from that moment on; it only gives them the ability and recognition of adulthood, with all its privileges and responsibilities.  Over the course of the year, as we celebrate the rituals of solar ingress, we open the ways for us to travel to each sphaira in turn, but we must still walk the path and, moreover, undergo the process of unlocking and experiencing each sphaira on the Tetractys, each of these ten stages of life and development.  This would be a separate ritual, which I’ve not quite yet had plans for, but it makes sense.

In addition to the usual pathworking and astral crap that goes along with all of this, of course.

After a bit of preliminary research and a bit of reflection on my own works and studies up to this point, I felt like the last post on mathetic rituals for solar ingresses into the signs of the Zodiac was needed for two main reasons.  For one, my mathesis work has been mostly contemplative and meditative without any real ritual, and since I’m a stickler for actually having and doing rituals to get Work done, I need to start building up the ritual repertoire more for this project I’m doing.  The other reason is because I can’t find any significant ritual body to celebrate or mark the ingress of the Sun into different zodiac signs, which is odd.  The Western tradition is filled with rituals that mark the change of the seasons, or different celebrations of the planets, or certain elections that call on specific planets or stars or houses or lunar mansions or faces or whatnot within the context of astrological magic.  Elections, however, are far too specific for this and don’t accomplish exactly what I’m looking for.  Yet, besides those, I can’t find anything in the publicly available corpus in my library or online that celebrates or ritually marks the passage of the Sun from one sign to the next.  Maybe I’m not looking hard enough or not asking the right people, but the case is the same.

So I’m making my own.  That’s cool.  So why would I decline to share all but the most superficial, broadest thoughts on these rituals, rather than posting the full rubrics and process on my blog?  The same goes for my ritual of self-initiation into mathesis; why would I hide that?  Well, I have a few reasons:

• Mathesis is designed to be a mystery tradition in the vein of Neopythagorean and Neoplatonic theurgy.  As such, it is going to have mysteries, rites that are kept secret from exoteric knowledge or use.  This is by design, since I don’t think the specific transformations here are for public consumption except those that I think are worthy to work it and, by extension, work with me on this.
• I simply haven’t finished some of these rituals, and I’m not one to give out unfinished or unpolished product except in some experimental or philosophical cases.  I may wax academic and mystic on many topics, but when it comes to rituals, I only want to share what I’ve refined and completed, if I share them at all.
• If you use a ritual of my own creation, then even if I say that it’s at your own risk, I am still responsible for those who use my specific rituals in some small way.  I cannot yet vouch for the efficacy or safety or expected results of these things except in some limited circumstances.  If you were to use a ritual of my own design and get seriously fucked in the process, then I may not have the time or resources to help you out as I’d be obligated to do.  To avoid this, I prevent giving out my specific ritual knowledge to all except my students.  I don’t have many students for a reason: I can’t look after them all and the effects of the rituals I prescribe for their benefit or development.
• For a very few cases, it’s “not the right time” to release some of these rituals.  As the explorer and scout of some of these things I research and work, I also have to decide how, when, and to whom to release these rituals.  If the gods or spirits have expressed discouragement from making something public, and if I make sure that’s the case and there’s a good case for it, then their word goes over mine.  Sometimes rituals are prescribed for a particular person in one state of their life, but not at another; sometimes rituals are released to the world only after certain current events have resolved; sometimes rituals are kept secret until death for posthumous release; sometimes rituals are kept secret forever with only me to know these things.  It depends, and as open as I’d like to be about my work, it’s not guaranteed that I am able to do so for ritual and spiritual reasons.  (This, thankfully, is the minority case with my work, or at least it has been up until this point.)

I write a lot on this blog, and I share plenty on my thoughts and experiences in working with this god or that force or this entity, and I share many rituals and frameworks for ritual, both theurgic and thaumaturgic.  Why do I share these and not others?  In many cases, the rituals have been out there forever (maybe not forever, but sometimes 2000 years, give or take a century or two), and all I do is offer a refinement or different take on them.  In other cases, I share rituals of my own creation that anyone of any level can pick up and use, with varying results that any spiritual worker worth their salt can manage or amplify or diminish.  Other times, I provide ritual frameworks that can be adapted or manipulated for various ends, and I just synthesize the overall technique for others to use.  When I release or publish a ritual on this blog, it’s because it’s for the greater good in a way that can actually become and expected to be good.  In other words, while all this stuff I write about may be occult, it’s not necessarily esoteric in the sense that they’re guarded secrets; much of this is exoteric, or could very easily become exoteric with a bit of thought and action on the part of my diligent and excellent readers regardless of how little or how much I say.

Even when it comes to my publishing rituals and stuff, I don’t really talk about what I’ve currently got going on.  I may have at one point, but I’ve since stopped talking about the nitty-gritty of my current projects and traditions.  I do talk about my experiences and impressions, and I may talk about improvements to things I’ve done, but I’ve since come to terms with the fact that the whole “to keep silent” rule people love to repeat is pretty valid stuff.  Why?  Well, to take a bit of a paranoid stance, I don’t want people to know what I’ve got going on so that I can practice in relative isolation and security; the more people know about what I’m doing and how I’m doing it, the more means the more malicious out there can have to confound and ruin my projects.  To take a scientific bent to it, I can’t abide contamination of my experiments, so I keep my stuff under wraps so that I can have good, stable, and clear results.  While I like the idea of crowdsourcing my magic so that I can tap on the blessed wellspring of potency that the Internet provides, I don’t like the cost of doing so, because I don’t have control over things that I should in my own rituals.

Plus, in the case I need to work against another person?  The less they know about me, the fewer ways they have to defend or stymie me.  I have a theory that it’s best to fight fire with fire; when someone is working against you in a particular tradition or method, oftentimes the most effective way to fight back involves those same traditions and methods.  Someone laying a hoodoo trick on you?  Use hoodoo to clean yourself and fight back.  Someone sending a saint to restrain you?  Work with the same saint to subvert their efforts.  Someone calling on their dead to make your life hell?  Call on your dead to make your life heaven and turn the tables.  Someone using an astrological talisman to injure your life?  Use astrological magic to negate the presence of the talisman until you can destroy it.  But, if you don’t know what methods a person is inclined to use, you may not know the most effective way to fight back; certain spiritual traditions may have blind spots that other traditions can exploit to devastating success.  No one tradition is truly universal or perfect, and the cultural and mythic biases in any given tradition should be balanced out with other worldviews and practices to produce a truly well-rounded, balanced individual practice.  I’m involved with a number of traditions and practices, but I only bring those up rarely and in the company of people I trust; this blog, though notable in its wordiness and content, is still only a slice of what I know and do.

I swear that I won’t be one of those wizened curmudgeons who jealously hoard their knowledge, swatting people away from my notes with a flaming brand and threatening them with annihilation should they dare get on my lawn.  I do feel like I should be posting and sharing more than I do, if only for the sake of getting me out of laziness and back in the game.  That said, I equally feel as entitled to my own knowledge and secrecy, when called for and for legitimate reasons, that I don’t share out freely.  It’s just a constant fight to get the balance right.

I am becoming increasingly familiar with the smell of rot.

The husband and I were on a small road-trip to a friend’s birthday the other day, and we were driving up and down some lovely backwoods roads in the Appalachians to get there.  It was nice to get a breath of somewhat cleaner air than we’re normally treated to, and the sight of mountains covered in verdant green and carbon-tinted shade under blue skies always fills my heart with a quiet joy.  Smells of crab shacks, flowers, cow dung, corn fields, and daytime mountain winds mingled with the cologne we wore and the menthols we smoked along the way.  And, yes, at several points during the drive, my nose would unfailingly twitch as we’d drive past the occasional roadkilled raccoon or hunted deer or whatnot.

“Mmmm. Rot.”  “Yup.” <drags on cigarette>

To clarify: I use the word “rot” to mean the smell of a once-living animal that has died or been killed.  Yes, plants and fungus and other organic matter can decay in their own ways, and perhaps there’s a better word for the smell I’m describing besides something dead-animalian.  Though it’s certainly not what I’d consider pleasant, it’s not so offensive that I can’t stand to be around it.  Sure, I’d rather avoid smelling it, but it won’t stop me from the Work at hand.

I’ve always heard that rot smells sickeningly sweet, but…maybe I have a different notion of sweetness than those who made up that timeworn phrase.  I try to take out the trash regularly enough, keep the fridge cleaned out, and wipe down the showers, but those tend to have the smells of food gone bad, mold in the tupperware, or mildew on the tiles.  These are not the smells of rot as I’d consider it; these are the smells of things going sour or sickening, but not of rot.  Rot has a distinct profile to the smell, and one that’s surprisingly difficult for me to describe.  It’s something totally different than anything else I’ve smelled: something like a mixture of pink cotton candy, overly ripe fruit on the edge of fermentation, old steel, dirt after the rain, and the idea itself of revolting (lit. “turning away”).  Sure, the specific thing that’s rotting will color the smell differently, whether it’s skin or feather or fur or leaves or wood, but that core smell in the middle of it is unmistakable.

The way the smell seems to travel feels different than other smells, too.  While foods or pheromones or perfumes seem to waft like ribbons of invisible smoke in the air, rot crawls and seeps like a slow, glacial flood that is just as hard to get rid of once it’s there.  It lurks behind other smells, making it difficult to mask or suffumigate or sweep under the carpet; there’s always some tiny, faintly pungent hint of it always reminding you that something there has died.  Some people would even say that the smell is capital-w Wrong, like something is trying to force you out of the room, or something is setting off alarm bells to make your hair stand on end in the lizard brain we humans’ve got.

And yet, despite all this, I cannot bring myself to call rot a “smell of death” as I’ve also heard it described.  Yes, it is a smell of things that are dead, but it is not the smell of death.  When an animal dies, that is not the end of the story.  Sure, the soul or spirit or mind of the thing might dissipate or go elsewhere, depending on which cosmology you’re following, but the body continues to exist in the physical world, and the body is nowhere near done.  It becomes a breeding ground for bacteria, parasites, fungus, and even insects.  It becomes a food and a host, and the toxic smell that humans have innately, instinctively evolved to reject is the olfactory evidence that everything continues in the world.  Call it the “circle of life”, if you will; just because a thing dies does not mean that’s the end of the story for the thing.  It continues to exist to nourish, to fertilize, to disintegrate, to return to its base elements for the repurposing and recycling of all things in this world as constituent parts into new and more exciting forms.

Our world is predicated on the Idea of life and living things; the only things that are truly absent of life are those bodies, viewed as distinct and separate from their surroundings, that never had life to begin with (and even then, that idea is suspicious on its own).  Everything else is alive, in one form or another.  And yet, all that lives must one day die, right?  So our world must therefore be as much death as it is life, right?  I mean, we’ve all seen this adorable and saccharine little comic about the interplay between life and death at some point on our Facebook feeds:

I’m not so certain anymore.  Things that are dead are not death itself.  Much as nature abhors a vacuum, I claim that our world does not abide death.  Life exists to beget more life, and if death weren’t a limiting constraint on these things, life would always and only serve to beget more life in one way or another.  Death is…unwelcome, in many ways, though a necessary law in the world.  But, to me, it feels increasingly like death is something Other, something Else, something Different than anything else in the world.  It does not feel part of this world in the same way that conception, flirting, hate, offices, rituals, or fruit feels like a part of this world.  Death is like a vacuum; if this world is composed of Life, then what place does Death have?

The Japanese language has an interesting idea that makes English students a little distressed: there is no way to say “I’m dying” in Japanese. In Japanese, gerundive forms (sometimes called the “-te form” of a verb) are what’s used to make a progressive action when used with the supplemental verb iru; for instance, taberu means “to eat”, while tabete iru means “to be eating”.  However, in Japanese, shinu “to die” has the progressive form shinde iru, which isn’t “to be dying” but rather “to be dead”.  For speakers of Japanese, the act of dying is something that can only happen in a single moment; it is not something that can be prolonged, continued, or stretched out temporally.  One is going to die at some point in the future, one dies is in this very moment, one died at some point in the past, or one is in the state of being dead.  There is no “one is dying across time” in Japanese; it is a transition from one state to another, and there is no grey area between the two.  Either you are animated or you are inanimate, you breathe or you cease to draw breath, you live or you are dead.

It still seems like Death is something so distinctly different, so Other, that it does not belong to this world.  And yet, that doesn’t seem like a right claim to make; even I think I sound like some willful child raging against having to flush their expired goldfish down the toilet because “it’s not right” or “this shouldn’t happen”.  I do not mean to say in the least that Death is something unnecessary, forced upon us, or wrong; far from it!  Life here on this planet would be a Malthusian hellscape without death to regulate us and keep us in check.  Death is the rightful end of life, and the (generally, hopefully) rightful point at which our spirits shake off their physical forms and go their separate ways.  We all know and have heard from innumerable traditions that Death belongs to this world just as much as Life does.

Yet, what is Death, then?  We know of the dead; they’re “here” as much as any spirit, but then, they’re not “here” in the same sense as you or me, since we’re incarnate and they’re not.  It’s like they’re just beyond the chiffon curtain in the room, on a slightly different frequency a half-kHz up on the radio.  They’re not part of this world of physical forms and bodies, barring any attachments or grounding to bones or artifacts of the dead, so we can leave them out of the picture for the time being.  What is Death, then, if Death can be considered a spirit, one of the very few able to directly interact with the living processes of this world strong enough to quell them?  Is it truly some specter or shade, skeletal and robed in black-white-red with a scythe and an owl on their shoulder, swooping in to catch her prey?  Is it some king of a hell-realm with four eyes and wide nostrils and two dogs, chasing people down and bringing them to his doorstep as prisoners?  Is it a radiant angel, taking people by the hand and elevating them from their bodies for the last time?  Is it an ancient woman, one of three sisters, who cuts the thread of light at its right proportion and length?

None of those, either, seem right.  Sure, they’re ways we can personify and interact with Death as a spirit, but they are themselves not Death.  After all, even gods themselves die, some more permanently than others, and there is some precedent (even if I’ve only come across it in games like Neverwinter Nights) that Death is a non-entity apart from any spirit or god, even those related to or administering the sacrament of death.  Plus, what sort of crazy exception of a spirit would Death then have to be, to be so powerful as to directly interfere with living creatures on a level totally unseen and unheard of when compared to literally every other deity and spirit, save for those religious texts where miracles happen de rigueur?

It does not seem right to claim that Death is a spirit, any more than Life itself is a spirit.  It is a phenomenon that happens in our world naturally, and therefore must be a natural part of this world, too.  It is the exact moment of transition from animacy to inanimacy, and therefore is not an action in the same way “eating” is an action, both because it is a state transition and because it is…probably? difficult to impossible for a living body to intentionally, intentfully die without causing its own death.  Like, a body can continue breathing, pumping blood, digesting, wiggling in the dirt, and so on, but dying is not something the body can just do.  Dying happens as a result of other natural processes: the failure of parts of the body (from the organ scale to the cellular scale) to function together concordantly, trauma inducing failure of the body, disease inducing failure of the body, or so forth.  When Life cannot continue, Death occurs.  When Life fails to proceed “normally”, Death occurs.  And yet, Death is as needed, as necessary, and as natural as Life; it’s not that Death is inimical to Life, or Death is something “wrong”, but that the one picks up where the other leaves off.  And Death then becomes the endpoint for physical incarnation, after which, the story of that spirit that once animated a body, which existed only once for a short while and in a limited location in such a form in all of infinite time and boundless space, continues outside this world of physical forms.  The body begins its own dissolution, the spirit continues its own analysis, but the story ends for the two of them together.

Rot is the smell of the world reclaiming its due and collecting its own spare resources for other purposes.  Sure, it smells toxic and wrong to us, not only because we’ve evolved to avoid it for health and survival reasons, but because it reminds us that, as living bodies, that is something that we’re not yet ready for, and something that we won’t necessarily be around to witness once it happens to ourselves.  Rot is something that happens when you’re already shinde iru; it is not the smell of shinu, although it may be a reminder of it.

Yet, look what happens when rot is not allowed to happen.  Consider the Red Forest in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone; the leaves from the trees there do not rot, due to the toxic radiation they’ve all been exposed to.  Things there persist long after they have any right to, just as bodies preserved with formaldehyde or encased in glacial ice for millennia.  These are things that cannot return to the world; they may as well be ejected by rockets from the Earth as space junk, lost and unusable to the world forever, except they linger on posing a space-wasting and ecological threat of disaster to everything around it, like a cancer in the body unwilling to be flushed out by its neighboring cells.  They cannot undergo the total process of life.  See, also, why zombies and the undead generally cannot be permitted in the world, as they take something already in the process of life-after-death (rot) and hijack it.  Either the zombie in question continues to rot, leaving its new consciousness to die a new death, or the zombie is preserved against rot and cannot continue the process of life proper; unnatural, to be sure.

The smell of rot tells me (besides the fact that I need to air out my basement more) that death is always around me.  Rot is a necessary and natural part of all these physical bodies: things that are made (created) to die that are also things that are made (forced) to die.  Rot is the “Kilroy Was Here” graffiti that Death leaves behind; it is the trash collector routine of the CPU of the world we inhabit.  Yet rot does not show me what Death is.

Recently, I was confronted by someone who thought I was crazy for charging for geomancy readings.*  He himself is a diviner, but finds it displeasing that I insist on being paid for divination.  I won’t get into why (it’s ultimately a matter of culture and tradition), and suffice it to say that it’s not a debate I want to continue here.

My rule here is simple: if you do work, you deserve to get paid for the work.  Yes, I know it’s a recurring issue in Western occultism, especially in the New Age community, where I see different versions of the same thing:

• “It’s a divine gift, and so you shouldn’t charge for it.”  It’s a divine gift I have the capability for logic, speaking, and writing, and I get paid for those all the same.  It’s a divine gift that I have an able body that can carry heavy loads, and I get paid for that all the same.  It’s a divine gift that I have a talent for understanding and working with computers, and I get paid for those all the same.  Divination and ritual are no different.
• “You shouldn’t get the mundane mixed up in the spiritual.”  There’s no fundamental distinction between the spiritual and mundane; they’re all part of the world we live in, and my spiritual work is fully invested in my mundane life and vice versa.
• “People won’t value it if they pay for it.” They value the help of doctors and lawyers who get paid, yes?  They value the roads and buildings made by engineers who get paid, yes?  Conversely, I see people tossing pirated PDFs around and disparaging bootleg copies of music and movies; they’re not paying the creators, and I see a lot more disrespect and a lot more devaluing when people get stuff for free than when they pay for it.    Getting stuff for free very nearly always leads to people taking you for granted, and even just outright ignoring you because “oh, this dude was free, and I can get more and other free opinions anyway”.
• “People won’t know if you’re telling the truth if they pay you.” Trust is a thing that has to be built and earned, I agree, but I hope that I’ve done that enough by this point.  If you can’t trust me, then why are you even bothering coming to me?  It’s part of my own schpiel that I am committed to telling you whatever I see, good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, and I commonly remark on how down-to-earth geomancy is with its oft-dire, sometimes-heavy news.

Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.  Each ritual act I do is informed and based on a decade of study; when you ask me for something, you call on my expertise.  Each ritual act I do takes time, supplies, and energy; when you ask me for something, you take up my resources.  Each ritual act I do is done with the intent of good success, good strength, and good character; when you ask me for something, I am beholden to carry out my charge to you.  For these reasons, I request payment.  If you do not pay, I’m giving you things that I have rightfully earned to keep and am under no obligation to share with you, and I have no guarantee that you’ll value what I give you, which is doubly a waste from my point of view.

Now, I’m not so stone-hearted that I cannot make exceptions.  I do!  For those who are truly destitute, for those who have nothing to give, for those who can barter or trade in other ways, I’m more than willing to reconsider my terms, but in the end, it has to be an equal exchange.  We live in a culture where buy-one-get-one-free deals are a common thing, where we’re accustomed to getting stuff for free, where we can just slide by on pirated PDFs instead of buying actual books, where we take for granted the thousands of years and generations that went before us to get us to where we are today; in some ways, we’re taught that money or trade in any form (χαιρε Ερμη!) is evil and inherently unspiritual, but that’s so far from the truth that it’s ridiculous.  I don’t stand for that, and I urge you to do the same.

Additionally, I am not so greedy that I overcharge.  I have my own standards and rates, and I know where my limitations lie.  I know my peers, what my skill level is among them, and what they charge for the same amount of work.  I will gladly direct you to someone who can help if I know that I cannot or will not.  I try to be as fair as I can to both you and to myself, so that you’re not overpaying for what I give to you, and I’m not overcharging for what you get from me.  In general, I charge less for things I’m not great at, and I charge more for things I am great at, though I still try to make it fair.  If it’s not equal in both directions, then it’s not equal, period.

* Just to let you know, yes, I am still doing geomancy readings!  Please contact me for more information; I may not have the listings up on my Etsy anymore for readings, but I still do them through September this year.  Once October comes, I’ll be taking an extended break from doing readings for people that will last for some time, so if you have any questions you’d like clarified, you only have a few months left from me to get them out of the way!  Otherwise, I can direct you to a number of other excellent geomancers and diviners who can help you out at least as much as I can.  As always, I charge US$20.00 per query, but we can hash out what you need during our consultation.  I’m also free for Skype/Google Chat consultations, too!

Tonight begins the third Mercury retrograde period of 2016.  It entered its shadow on August 10, and entered into retrograde tonight on August 30; it will pause again to go direct on September 22, and will be back to its proper speed on October 6.  All this happens within its own domicile sign of Virgo.  The next time Mercury goes retrograde is after entering into its shadow on December 1, then hitting its retrograde station on December 19, going direct again on January 8, 2017, and getting out of its shadow on January 27; this begins when Mercury is in Capricorn, and ends when Mercury is back in Sagittarius.  As many of my readers already know, when a planet goes into retrograde motion, the things associated with that planet tend to go backwards, awry, or wonky in some way.  Given that Mercury governs all things associated with travel, commuting, divination, communication, study, memory, speech, trade, technology, and planning, expect difficulties, delays, repeats, and do-overs aplenty during this time.  Because this specific Mercury retrograde period is all within the mercurial sign of Virgo, expect this to be a double whammy for many people.  It’s not all that bad; for most people, you just need to do your three-point tap before you leave the house, leave ample time to get to work, and always read through any and all documentation twice before making a decision and you’ll be fine.  For Hermetic magicians and those who work closely with Hermes, or for those who have Mercury as a particular strong planet in their natal horoscope, you may want to step more carefully, given our strong connections to this kind of energy.  Take this time to review your life, trace your steps, and reflect on all the things that compose you and your life before the retrograde period is over; use this time well, and don’t freak out about it.

For the nights that Mercury goes retrograde, I prescribe an offering to Hermes much as the usual: candles, incense, libation, and prayer, preceded by the usual honors to Hestia and Zeus.  I do this because I recognize the physical planet of Mercury, or Stilb­­­­­ōn, as the body of the god, however distinct or connected as it may be from his divine presence, and because I recognize the change in motion of the planet as a change in energy and action of the god.  However, I do things a little differently for these particular nights to mark the occasion.  For this, instead of using the usual Orphic Hymn for Hermes (number 27), I recite the one for Hermes Chthonios, the terrestrial and underworld aspect (number 56), which goes like this:

Hermes I call, whom Fate decrees to dwell
In the dire path which leads to deepest hell;
O Bacchic Hermes, progeny divine
Of Dionysius, parent of the vine
And of celestial Venus, Paphian queen,
Dark eye-lashed Goddess of a lovely mien;
Who constant wanderest through the sacred feats
Where hell’s dread empress, Proserpine, retreats;
To wretched souls the leader of the way
When Fate decrees to regions void of day;
Thine is the wand which causes sleep to fly,
Or lulls to slumberous rest the weary eye;
For Proserpine through Tartarus dark and wide
Gave thee forever flowing souls to guide.
Come, blessed power, the sacrifice attend,
And grant our mystic works a happy end.

For the libation, instead of my usual wine mixed with olive oil, I only offer clean, pure water, and that only after thoroughly cleaning and polishing out his offering vessel.  Normally, I’d give it a good rinse to get any of the remains from the previous offering and wipe out any remaining residue, but I take this opportunity to thoroughly clean and polish the whole thing until it shines like new.  Similarly, I also remove all old offerings and clean his shrine.

Additionally, and most distinctly, I wrap my image of Hermes in a black shroud, so that the entire body and form is occluded.  The shroud remains until the planet leaves retrograde, at which point I remove the shroud and make the usual offerings of wine and ouranic prayer.  Between these two dates, however, I make no further offerings or direct interaction with the god.

Why the unusual ritual offering of water, chthonic prayers, and the shroud?  This is all because Mercury goes into retrograde.  In a sense, this is the unusual time where Hermes is a little more trickstery, a little more baneful than at other times, and…honestly, while it’s not a bad thing, I don’t want that influence in my life more than is absolutely necessary.  To that end, I cover Hermes in a shroud to insulate him from the outside world so that he can focus on his own work, and in a way, insulate me from him so that I’m not affected by his backwards-looking gaze.  This ritual period is where I work with Hermes in an apotropaic manner only, turning away the difficulties posed by Mercury retrograde and keeping me insulated and blocked off from them.  For a similar reason, I only offer water that is clean and pure, rather than dark wine.  I want to give Hermes that which is clean and clear so that I can obtain the same, keeping my eyes and my ears clean and clear from confusion, my path and my travels from obstacles, my mind and my heart from illusion, my hands and my feet from difficulty.  Offering only water to clean the ways helps me and helps Hermes to help me keep my life open and free during the retrograde; wine would obscure it in too dark a way during too dark a time, oil beslickens it in too unpredictable a way during too unpredictable a time.  To me and for my work with the god, when Mercury goes retrograde, Hermes stops flying across the skies and seas and travels primarily between our world and the underworld.  Previously, Hermes instructed me to only recite his chthonic hymn during nighttime, while the ouranic one could be done at any time; during retrograde periods, if I ever feel a need to use a hymn, it will only ever be the chthonic one.

When a planet goes retrograde, it is only an apparent illusion that the planet goes backwards through the skies and the stars.  In reality, due to the mechanics of our heliocentric solar system, retrograde periods are caused when the planet in question is closest to our own planet.  In a sense, that’s what causes all these weird happenings involving the things that planet governs; rather than being at a healthy objective distance for us to interact with, the energies of that planet suddenly become too close for comfort, hidden right under our nose, and befuddled all up in our mind as subjective rather than objective and distant.  Mercury is no exception, and in fact is the poster child for retrograde energies, even if only because it’s the planet that goes into retrograde motion the most often.  It’s the time when all these energies and influences turn inward instead of outward, which would be fine if we didn’t have all these pesky civilized things we have to deal with on a day-to-day basis, like jobs and commuting and business and whatnot.  Rather than posting melodramatic memes on Facebook fuming about Mercury retrograde, I try to go with the flow, respecting it and accepting it in a way that helps me deal with the resulting chaos, and changing my habits and works accordingly.

So, for someone like me who’s so entrenched in mercurial energies in both the religious sense (priest of Hermes), the magical sense (Hermetic magician), and the career sense (software engineer), and for someone whose own natal Mercury is already retrograde and dignified, what’s the best way for me to spend this retrograde period?  For that matter, what’s the best way we can all spend this time?  Mercury, the planet of thought and memory and learning, is going backwards, so it behooves us all to go backwards in the same way: spend this month in a time of reflection, reminding, recollection, and remembrance.  Think of your whole life and how you got here, even to the physical place you are.  Think of all the people, from teachers and parents to friends and enemies, who had even the smallest influence on your character.  Think of all the lessons you’ve learned, sitting down at a desk or running around in your life, which helped shape how you think and how you act.  Think of all your ancestors, from those who passed away in your lifetime to the countless generations back before you, who lived and fought and rejoiced and died so that you too can share in this incarnation of flesh and blood and breath and bone.

Reflect on yourself, and see who you are both inside and out.  Remind yourself, and re-mind yourself. Recollect yourself, and re-collect yourself.  Remember yourself, and re-member yourself.  By these, you will come to know yourself, and that’s really the whole goal here for any of us, isn’t it?

For myself…gods, how did I get here?  Back in middle school, I dabbled with my brother’s hand-me-downs from his short voyage into neopaganism, and learned the basics of divination from my Tarot-reading sister.  In high school, I kept alive a healthy imagination for new worlds and poetry and the power of the written word in personal journals to explore my own internal landscape.  In college, I began my studies of geomancy and medieval astrology, and started this blog on Blogspot as a devotional for XaTuring, the Great Worm of the Internet.  I met so many people, so few of whom I have in my life anymore because I was only barely developing a social life after intense bullying in elementary school, and I recently turned down the invitation for my high school’s ten-year reunion because screw those people and the awkwardness and the lack of connections I never care to suffer through again.  I dated and fucked up and made it better and repeated the process so many times, and showed me my own capabilities, my own culpabilities, and my own tendencies to virtue and to vice.

After college, I pined and loathed and laughed and fucked around and fucked with others and fucked others and been fucked by others.  I began my own Great Work, and built up my own geomantic practice and social presence both online and offline.  I developed my own style of working under Fr. Rufus Opus, and met people of varying paths both light and dark, both right-handed and left-handed, both brilliantly alive and gloriously dead.  I met the love of my life through magic on both our ends, and we began to build ourselves together, only to get cut down together by misplaced trust and found it again with allies and colleagues.  We married, on accident for us and by divine provenance from the gods.  We bought a house.  I changed jobs to one that I was encouraged by multiple spirits to take, only to suffer and discover my own limits but which allowed me the means to grow privately even more.  I changed jobs back once more, solidifying my career path into one that I am fundamentally comfortable and safe within among colleagues and coworkers I know and trust and love.

I have gone from having neither shrines nor altars to one, then two, then four, all the way to having a house full of them and beginning what is truly a temple to recognize all the powers, and moreover, all our powers and deities.  I have gone from having a journal to a notebook to a blog to several ebooks and a full book on the way.  I have gone from school to college to federal job, within each from hell to heaven and back and again.  I have gone from single to committed to broken down to broken up and back again, and now to marriage and partnership on all levels of human existence.  I have gone from having friends to enemies, and enemies to friends.  I have gone from one computer to the next, one operating system to the next, shifting data and programs around and finding new and better ways to do what I need to do.  I have gone from no debt to student debt to low debt to car debt to credit debt to mortgage.  I have gone from hair to skinhead and back.  I have gone from pristine to consecrated tattoos, from whole to pierced to whole again.  I have gone from spiritually fearful to excited to exasperated, both towards people and to spirit alike.  I have gone from repulsed by even the notion of rot to almost enjoying the smell as it passes by me in the forest or in the basement.  I have gone from despising emotion to recognizing it to manifesting it to using it and being used by it.  I have gone from one place to another in every way and in every sense.  Just as all motion is change, then truly, in so many ways, as I have gone, so have I changed.

And yet, underlying all that, there’s so much that has never changed.  I still hunger, like a crazed man starved for years, for knowledge and power and glory and wisdom.  I still rejoice with friends around me.  I still love, and I still love to create and to build and to fortify and to defend.  I still make mistakes.  I still make successes.  I still write, privately for myself and publicly for others, sometimes for free and sometimes for pay.  I still code and woodburn and bead and craft and cook.  I still love the wind through my hair and the rain on my palms.  No matter how much I change from past-me to present-me, I am still me.  I still move with the world, and that when I move the world, the world moves me.  No matter how much I move, I am still.  Just as all motion is change, then truly, in so many ways, as I have remained still, so have I remained the same.

I see my hands, and how they have maintained the same bone structure, and yet have grown and have touched and used so many things.  I see my eyes, and how the irises still have their intricate patterns, and yet gleam differently than they ever did, both brighter and dimmer than ever before.  I see my body, and how the flesh is still recognizably mine, and yet have so many scars and additions and subtractions.  By remembering all the things I have done, I re-member myself, and make my body whole from parts.  By reflecting my emotions I have felt, I re-flex myself, and make my soul whole from parts.  By recollecting all the things I have said, I re-collect myself, and make my spirit whole from parts.  By reminding all my thoughts I have thought, I re-mind myself, and make my mind whole from parts.  And, in doing so, by remembering and reflecting and recollecting and reminding, I am become a sum of the parts, and become a whole, and become greater than the sum of the parts.  There is no one thing of, in, or about me that is me, and yet it all comes together to make me.

Retrogression is for retrospection; we go backwards to look backwards.  Use this time well; as Hermes descends among us and below us, he goes to find the lost and bring them to their proper place.  Whether these are lost items, lost tasks, lost souls, or lost goals, it serves us well to go back and find ourselves in this chaos so that we can once more bring order to ourselves and, thus, to our worlds.  This is not a time for tools, except for the pen and paper in the study; this is not a time for communication, except for our own thoughts echoing in our heads; this is not a time for action, except for acting within ourselves in our own internal spaces; this is not a time for learning, except to relearn what we already forgot.  Turn back, dear reader, not for fear for your life to stop, but for faith for your life to continue.