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 August 2013.
“magic orgone” — I wouldn’t call orgone “magic”, per se, but it is basically the quintessence, akasha, ether, or spiritual force underling the energy model of magic; orgone can be said to be the same thing as odic force, qi/chi/ki, or prana, depending on your tradition or viewpoint. Orgone technology was developed as a kind of fringe science using the principles of magnetism, electricity, and polarity extrapolated towards human energy/subtle-body models of working with the body. There are ways to work with orgone in a magical way, as my own experiments with orgone have shown, but it can be used outside of a magical framework just as easily, just as radionics or reiki aren’t necessarily considered “magical” (though basically are, anyway).
“planetary hours for july” — Planetary hours are calculated for individual days, based on the location and date of the observer. Trying to form a generalized calendar independent of location won’t work, since planetary hours rely on the sunrise and sunset times for a particular place (which change depending on latitude, time zones, and the like). Lots of free planetary hour calculators abound on the internet, however, so look instead for “planetary hour calculator”.
“sex sigil” — Yes please.
“ikea altar” — It’s true, my altar furniture is pretty much just from IKEA, or to a lesser extent, Target. IKEA is fantastic for cheap but sturdy stuff, so long as you don’t mind the appearance of it; if you use an altar cloth, you’ll be set. The small LACK side tables are perfect for corner altars or working tables in conjuration, I’ve found, and their price can’t be beat, especially if you want something disposable (a la Enochian Tables of Practice) or if you want something to engrave or woodburn without too much cost going into the thing.
“the kybalion homosexuality” — This probably references my post from before on the comparatively recent book Kybalion, gender, and sexuality. I wish I could talk about this more, and I probably should one of these days, but my thoughts on the matter haven’t much evolved past the point of “I don’t know”. Everyone has their own dynamic within themselves to work with, and even though the Kybalion is great at simplifying the world down into a few rules and laws of occult motion, they’re also sufficiently broad to gloss over the minute subtleties involved with actual experience in the world around us. Plus, the interplay between the laws isn’t well developed in that short text as much as we might like, and the cultural and personal bias of the original author(s) may have had something to do with the laws as they apply to homosexuality or queerness more generally. I’m going to appeal to authority here and say that Crowley had it probably more correct and concise when he said “do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”. In the end, it’s really only you yourself who can figure out who you are/Are, understand what you can and should do/Do, what’s good/Good and bad/Bad, and judge your own progress/Progress. Nobody else has that right; nobody else can judge you or tell you what it is you need to do, or what’s a beautiful thing for you to preserve or maintain. In this light, especially if you have any respect for Thelema or Crowley, to use any text, occult or otherwise, to justify judging, discriminating, controlling, or maligning others because of personal bias is revolting, and I advise all my readers to cut that shit out.
“strongest geomancy figures in order” — It depends on what you mean by “strongest”, and even then which author you read, since geomancy is an old tradition of divination going back a thousand years across multiple continents. If you mean favorability and fortune, i.e. how good a figure is, you might use a general rule such as that of Robert Fludd’s or an older Arabic system, but this is pretty broad and doesn’t take into account specific situations or context. If you mean positions in the houses of the astro-geomantic chart, you might use the directional correspondences of the figures or their planetary joys, but this isn’t used by all geomancers. At the risk of making my dear readers do a bit of goddamn research and study, I suggest you review my De Geomanteia posts on the figures to get a full grasp of what they mean and how they relate to any arbitrary situation.
“yes no meaning to six sided dice” — I suggest looking at Balthazar Black’s post on using six-sided dice for this. I use a set of RPG dice for my divinations, specifically the 2d10 dice for yes/no questions. Simple methods can be made, however: high numbers indicate high likelihoods of “yes”, while low numbers indicate low likelihoods, or odd means “yes” and even means “no”, or other combinations. Dice are an ancient tool and game, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you found any number of traditions from different cultures or ages indicating different methods of cleromancy with dice.
“quick divination” — Tomorrow you’ll wake up, do a bunch of stuff, and then go back to sleep.
“is sprinkling salt in bath water and praying to god” — This was, in fact, the entire search term; it seems like something got cut off, but who can say? Assuming the searcher in question ended the query with something like “evil”, “damnable”, “wicked”, or “sinful”, I can say that the answer is very firmly no. Salt has long been used across cultures and ages as a cleansing, purifying, or protective agent; spiritual baths are a longstanding tradition in pretty much every occult and religious tradition, from misogi in Shinto to wudu in Islam to baptism in Christianity. Prayer is, of course, a good thing in magic and religion, and any action whatsoever can always use that heavenly or divine boost from having the hand of God or hands of gods involved. I should take full spiritual baths with prayers more often, honestly, but I content myself with a regular sprinkling of holy water every day with prayer; before any significant working, however, I’ll definitely cast some salt I’ve prayed over into a clean tub of tepid clean water, immerse myself completely, and pray a number of psalms while in the tub.
“tojil strategic ffxi” — er…I don’t play Final Fantasy XI, though my boyfriend does. Tojil in FFXI is a pretty nasty boss mob, and from what I’ve seen over my boyfriend’s shoulder and from what I’ve heard him say about it, learning how to time attacks with Tojil’s changes in aura is key; you’d be able to take down this beast in fairly short time if you have a decent linkshell group with you. However, this entity has its origins in Mayan mythology and religion; Tohil was a fire, sun, and rain deity, with some qualities similar to the more popularly-known Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. One of my friends works with these pantheons, but I don’t myself, though they’re very cool guys and very powerful in their ways. Then again, it takes a powerful practitioner to actually get any good work done with them, so caveat orator. I’m pretty sure, since none of these terms actually appear on my blog, that it was grabbed by a Google spider from my twitterfeed on the right.
