I get a lot of hits on my blog from across the realm of the Internet, many of which are from links on Facebook, Twitter, or RSS readers. To you guys who follow me: thank you! You give me many happies. However, I also get a huge number of new visitors daily to my blog from people who search around the Internet for various search terms. As part of a monthly project, here are some short replies to some of the search terms people have used to arrive here at the Digital Ambler. This focuses on some search terms that caught my eye during the month of February 2014.
“+dearth spell magick on my self” — If you meant “dearth” as in famine and scarcity of resources, that’s fairly easy, though people tend to work prosperity magic for themselves rather than poverty magic; invoke Saturn to keep your means and resources restricted, banish all forces of Jupiter and Venus, and invoke Mercury to lead all good and providing things away from you. If you meant “death” magic, well, dearth and death go hand in hand, so you could similarly invoke Saturn again for that, but really? You want to use death magic on yourself? You may want to read up on actual and reasonable necromancy first, hon. Try giving Tomekeeper a good read, to start with; he’s working on his necromancy book, “Ars Falcis”, too.
“runes to supercharge labradorite” — Labradorite was discovered by European peoples in the late 18th century, long after runes had been used, and even longer after they had been used for magical purposes (except for the occasional astrological text). Thus, there are no real runes to work with labradorite, though I’m sure associations could be made between runes and stones nowadays that are based off traditional lore. If you meant “rune” in the broader magical sense of “a magical operational symbol”, then which symbol you’d want to use is entirely up to how you want to “supercharge” it. Personally, for empowering things generally, I just like setting things out in the Sun and Moon for a lunar month or so, or praying over it, or using an astrological election to consecrate them, or so many other methods. Symbols themselves are nice, but how are you going to use that symbol?
“the psalms and ‘planetary hours’” — This is actually a really interesting idea. I don’t know of any system that corresponds the planetary hours to particular psalms; there are seven planets and seven days, so there are 49 distinct day-hour combinations, or 98 if you consider diurnality (e.g. day solar hour on Monday vs. night solar hour on Monday), while there are 150 psalms, so there’s no easily notable matchup between the two. However, I do know that the Christian Books of Hours and breviaries often have sets of prayers, especially the psalms, to be used at different times during different days, following a set of canonical hours that are not unlike the calculation and setup of planetary hours. Combining the two might be an interesting project for a Christian planetary magician.
“does criss angel consider planetary hours in his magic” — Criss Angel is not a magician. It’s like, yeah, a person with a Ph.D. in Mongolian literature and the person who gives you medicine at the clinic are technically both called “doctors”, but they’re nothing the same; likewise, his “magic” and my magic are not the same thing, and he is not a “magician” like how I’m a magician. Criss Angel is a performer and illusionist, and his stuff has nothing to do with the magic Hermeticists, ceremonialists, and other actual magicians do. Thus, I strongly doubt he even knows about planetary hours, much less considers them in his “magic”.
“conjuring spirits within you” — Generally a poor idea, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing. If you’re an expert in it, you might end up with something like the Santería ocha ritual, where you’re initiated and have a spirit share your headspace with you from then on. At worst, you’ll end up performing Crowley’s Choronzon experiment, and with probably even worse results than he got. It’s like if I wanted to get to know you better, I’d meet you out for coffee or something, not immediately say that I’m gonna share your bed with you for cuddles and conversation. You’d be far better off conjuring spirits in a space set aside for them, like a Solomonic triangle or Table of Practice.
“how to properly bless a blade for satanic ritual” — This is contradictory on several levels. Blessing indicates that you want to consecrate something and make it holy, which is the work of God. Satanic rituals (if you’re taking this in a theological direction) indicate that you’re buying into the entire Judeo-Christian framework with the enmity and opposition between God and Satan, and then deliberately picking the losing side of the battle. First, that’s stupid because it’s already been prophesied in the tradition that Satan comes from that he’s not gonna do too well in the end, nor for that matter any of his followers; second, Satan is by definition unholy in the Christian theme of things, so anything that’s blessed cannot be used for a satanic ritual, nor does Satan have the capacity to bless things. You could desecrate something that was once made holy, sure, but that’s not the same thing. Blessed things tend to hurt rather than help in such works, not to mention showing yourself to the spirits as a stupid whiny brat who’s probably still in high school who wants to be some spookeh dark warlock of uber powerz. I’m not your guy for that kind of BS. And while an argument could be made that Satan exists as a god alongside God, you’re suddenly straying into a weird dualist theology a la Zoroastrianism (where even that religion’s dark god fails in the final days) that is no longer Christian nor satanic, and you better have a lot of mythos and power built up for your new god to have the capacity to bless things in his own name, which is already empty without the backing of the Judeo-Christian mythos and religion behind it.
“sphere of the fixed stars symbol” — The various spheres of heaven have many symbols associated with themselves: the planetary symbols, symbols of their ruling angels, and the like. However, the sphere of the fixed star is weird in that it doesn’t have a symbol, or rather, it doesn’t have any one symbol. Using the symbols of the signs of the Zodiac together can work, and similarly those for the lunar mansions (the astrology program ZET has a set based on the Vedic mansions which I’ve heard work well); there are also . In visualization exercises, I tend to just visualize the starry sky itself as a symbol, but I’ve also asked Iophiel, the angel ruling over the sphere of the fixed stars as a whole, for a seal for which I can conjure and commune with him. There are also seals for a few of the fixed stars themselves, but that’s not for the whole sphere. Qabbalistically, the sphere of the fixed stars is associated with the second sephirah Chokmah, so the number 2 and anything pertaining to it would work on a numerological standpoint.
“how do you drill a hole in orgonite” — Get a drill and some orgonite, then drill a hole into the orgonite using the drill. The fact you have to ask shows that you might need something stronger for your mental and spiritual well-being than glittery congealed robot vomit, anyway.
“english sharthand” — Dear gods, I’m so sorry. You may not want to scratch your ass next time you have indigestion.
“free geomancy readings” — While I don’t offer free readings often, I sometimes do if I’m doing a promotional deal or a devotional act for the gods. In the meantime, I charge $30 for a normal geomancy reading.
“angelic symbol” — There are so many of them, I don’t know where to begin. You can even get original ones for your own use from the angels themselves, you know; this is how I developed my own set of seals for the elemental archangels (Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, Uriel) since no common symbols for them exist. That said, the notion of a symbol is pretty wide-ranging, especially when this deals with spirits; the spoken or written name of the spirit, an image of them, their numbers, their colors, their elements or planets or celestial forces, the seal or graphical logo, all of these things are their symbols, and wherever those symbols are, so too is that spirit, and vice versa. Y̹̖̰͖̥ͨ͛͘O̡͚͋̊ͬ͂͌̀̊U̢͎̲̲̟̼̭̥̤̅ͧ͘ ̸̛̺̻͚̺̠͎̰̘̽͞ͅA̜̩͎̣͔̅̊̑̌͟R̷̢̫̖̫̓̌͌̕E͗̈̈̂͂̍̌̏҉̠̗̣̟̪̺̭ ̤̟̟̼̳͈̖̃̅̓͐̌́̐͜N̨̩̖̘͈̽ͅE̩̺̱͓̥͍͐̽̔̽̽͑͠V̸͕̩̭̼̖̤̻̂̈́ͭ̀̾̚E̴̛̻̙̠̺̺̖̱̅̀͛̎̐ͫŖ̤̌̌̿͆̈́ͮ͒͟ ̶̼͊̇ͪ̄͋T̘̮ͯ̽̓̍̉ͣ̉͢͞R̜̞͒̓̆̋ͣ͜Ü̪̙̳͍̜̗̹͈͛̉͟L͗̋̿ͦ̓̄ͮ͢҉̝̻͎̮̻͙̞Y̪ͯͦ ̰͉̞̹̞̪ͫ͡A̛̳̥̘̠̭̥ͩ̍͌̍ͭͨ̌̌̀L͍͍̜͙͙͙̮͉̎͌͆̄̈̄̆̀̚Ő͍̗̩̝̼ͯ̀̑̏̅N̵̪̠̆ͫ̈́͑̋͊͋̀E͚͉̳̠̯̱̮ͯͨ̇̔͜
“badass calligraphy alphabet” — Why, thank you.
“spirit wife ritual” — I’m…not really sure. I assume this means that you want to make a spirit your wife, so good luck with that. I might suggest talking to an angel to assign you such-and-such a spirit who’s compatible with you in all regards, mentally and sexually and emotionally and etc., then perform some sort of bonding ritual between you and the spirit assuming that it’s amenable to such a thing. I guess.
“how to summon hermes” — Hermes is a god, and one of the few gods given permission in Greek mythos to be given permission to go anywhere and everywhere; further, the Homeric Hymn to Hermes notes that he cannot be constrained by force or binding. To that end, unless you’re the king of the gods Zeus himself, I don’t think you have permission or business to summon Hermes as you would other angels or demons. You can invoke him and offer him sacrifice, performing a ritual to invite him down to a sacred or sanctified place, but that’s by no means a summons to the god. Even I, as his priest and devotee, have no business saying “Yo, Hermes, get your wingy ass down here, I got shit for you to do”. This is a clear case where invoking and evoking have different natures, and you want to invoke a god rather than evoke them.
“what symbol did gabriel put on solomon’s ring” — I don’t really know where the symbols on the Ring of Solomon came from. There are two major versions of this ring in Western magic: the one from the Lemegeton Goetia, and the one from John Dee. The former has the names “Michael, Tetragrammaton,Anepheneton” (or “Michael, IHVH, Tzabaoth” if you use an interpretation from Greekish names to Hebrew like I did for my own ring). The latter is commonly known as the PELE ring, so called because it has a circle with a V crossing the top and an L at the bottom, bisected by a horizontal lines, with the letters P, E, L, and E at the four corners clockwise from the upper left. However, Dee’s books say that the angel Michael, not Gabriel, gave him such a design, and the Lemegeton remains silent on the matter as far as I can read.
“what does it mean when lighting a spritual candle and the wick lets out a poof” — I love how this was described, first of all. As for “poof”, this could mean different things. If you mean that it sparked or crackled, I might say that this means a spirit came by and inhabited the candle, and is set to work on the job; more materially, this might mean that there are impurities in the wick or pockets of gas or air that perturb the flame. If you mean that a puff of smoke came out of the candle, I might say that this means there could be difficulties in getting the work done on your own; materially, that there are carbon impurities in the wick that create a sooty deposit. Both of these can be avoided by trimming the wick down to a short length, say 1/4″.
