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 November 2014.
“wicks for middle eastern oil lamp” — Honestly, for those little clay, metal, or terracotta lamps you find from the Middle East, the best type of wicks are those you make yourself from a cotton ball. Every cotton ball is actually a tiny roll of cotton; simply unroll it into a flat-ish sheet, then roll it again tightly lengthwise like a dreadlock. Stick it into the spout of the lamp, soak in oil for five minutes before lighting, and boom, you have yourself a perfectly good wick. Follow the rest of the rules for oil lamps here.
“seven sphere rufus opus”, “‘seven spheres’ opus”, “seven spheres rufus opus”, “rufus opus seven spheres”, “seven spheres by rufus opus” — Yes, Fr. Rufus Opus (my instructor, who is not me) released a book this month, “Seven Spheres” by Nephilim Press. It is an awesome book (that I did not write). You should totally buy it from him (who is not me). I have my copy that I’m working through, and it’s truly an awesome text.
“cinnamon powder spell benefits to sprinkle in four corners” — I don’t know of any, myself, but cinnamon is used to sweeten things up, as well as bring prosperity and joy into one’s life; given its connections to the Sun (cassia and Saigon cinnamon are a little spicier and given to Mars), it also has some mildly protective benefits in magic. Some ideas for sprinkling cinnamon in this fashion would be to do so in an hour of Jupiter in the day of the Sun, praying for prosperity and happiness to fill up your home, hearth, and house, that all rooms in the house and all places on the property be blessed with the grace of the Lord. Simple stuff like that, perhaps also setting a white candle dressed in cinnamon oil in each room.
“how to relate question to geomancy houses” — The twelve houses of geomancy are the same twelve houses in astrology. You, as the querent, have a query to ask. That query has a topic. Find the house that best relates to that topic: e.g., if marriage then house VII, if children then house V, if job then house X, if curses then house XII, etc. It really doesn’t get any simpler than that. If your query doesn’t have a topic, then you don’t have a query. If your query can be associated with several houses equally, then inspect each of those houses. Take your time. There is no rush to ask a question of geomancy. Make sure your query is clear, concise, and concrete enough for you to handle instead of being vague, complicated, and abstract.
“tetractys divination” — This is an idea I’ve been experimenting with, using the Tetractys (especially in mathesis) for divination. I haven’t yet found a suitable way to do so, but there are opportunities here I may not be looking at yet. My idea would be to use two ten-sided dice (2d10) from a tabletop gaming set, with the 0-9 die given to “answer #1″ (where you’re coming from, where you’re based out of, past experiences) and the 00-90 die given to “answer #2″ (where you’re headed to, what you need to become, future experiences). The number on each die could be associated with one of the ten sphairai on the Tetractys, such that if I rolled a 3 and a 50, that’d indicate the sphairai of Fire and of Salt, respectively, indicating that it’s time for me to reduce myself from pure action in the world to a base of nothing, to burn out completely, to focus on the substance that keeps me burning rather than focusing on the results of acting. That kind of thing. It’s a side project, but one that could be useful.
“penis growth curse” — …is this really a curse? I mean, usually you’d want to shrink or remove the penis as an effective curse, which is actually a cultural phenomenon in Africa known as koro. People actually get killed for being accused as wizards or witches there who shrink or disappear away men’s penises, so this is a pretty big thing, but cursing a penis to get bigger? Dude, that’s like a fetish of everyone who likes penises, especially their own, unless you’re talking about something so big that it’d crush cars. Even then, there’s a fetish for that, too (hyper and/or macro).
“huge dick images.” — You won’t find any of those on this blog, sadly; I may be a little colorful with my vocabulary, but nothing here is generally NSFW. I do make the “big anointed wand” joke occasionally, though.
“how to use elohim gibor in prayer” — Technically, you don’t. From my point of view, you let him use you. Elohim Gibor (lit. “Strong God”) is one of the names of God, associated in Western qabbalistic practice to the sephirah of Geburah and thus to the planet Mars. I’ve used this name when working with a martial aspect of God or when working with martial spirits who respond to this name of God. However, the process is the same otherwise as with any other name of God: you seek the aid of God for his blessing, grace, guidance, and protection that his will be done and not your own lest it be in accordance with his, that you work with the authority of God that God may work through you, etc. etc. So, really, the answer to this turns out like that Soviet Russia joke, with Elohim Gibor using you. Beyond that, gematrialize it, intone it, contemplate it, meditate on it, calligraphy it, and whatever else you want to use to figure the name out.
“rufus opus review” — Dude’s cute but in a relationship, also straight, so I typically don’t have my eye out for him like that. He’s charismatic, for sure, especially once he’s got a few whiskeys in him.
“do males born on a leo/virgo cusp have big dicks” and also “do guys born on a leo/virgo cusp have big penises like greek god hermes” — I’m not surprised I got these searches (again), though I am surprised that they came apart several days away from each other. Either this is one very concerned searcher, or two separate searchers who have similar tastes and problems. Hermes, if you look at his Homeric Hymn, would actually be born sometime around the end of Pisces or the start of Aries (a few days after the third New Moon after the winter solstice), and he’s not generally the most sexualized of the gods (though he has his own thing going on), and isn’t exactly a god of giant endowments. Then again, he might be totally the god to go to if you have a koro curse to enact on someone, which would be hilarious for everyone except those who’d get killed in Africa for it, so I dunno.
“geomancy blog” — While this blog covers many topics, I do occasionally write about geomancy. A while ago, I wrote a 20-post series on geomancy that covers each of the 16 figures in depth and at length along with four aspects of geomantic technique. the I even wrote a translation of a medieval text on geomancy, which is available on my Etsy that you should check out! Spread the word, check it out, and I hope it helps.
“congo men biggest cocks” — Since I’ve never slept with someone from the Congo region of Africa, I can’t say whether this is true or not. Also, seriously, I know the US had two federal holidays this past month, but if having two extra days off (for only a percentage of the population here, mind you) gets you that hot and bothered that I’m getting a higher than average hit count for people looking for giant pictures of dicks or for people with giant dicks, I seriously question why you’re using Google and WordPress and not Grindr or Scruff. Tumblr’s where I go to get my porn, generally speaking, so you might also check that out.
“material used in summoning a spirit” — Technically speaking, you don’t need anything material to summon a spirit; intent, prayer, and a mental connection are all you strictly need. Some people do a bit of centering prayer to contact a spirit, some people go to their astral temples, and other people just see them, flag them down, and have a conversation with them. That said, many people (including myself) find it extraordinarily useful to have material tools, for which I suggest a scrying medium (e.g. crystal ball, glass of water, mirror), a summoning platform (e.g. Triangle of Art, Table of Practice), a tool of will (wand or knife or dominant index finger), a few candles, some appropriate incense, and the usual stuff. Again, none of it is strictly needed, but it helps.
“books on loan from australian libraries about hinese and japanese astrology specifically nine star ki” — I know literally nothing about any of these these things. I am definitely not an Australian library, nor have I ever been to one nor gotten a book out on loan from one. I’ve talked about these things exactly zero times on my blog or my Twitter. Why did Google lead you here. I apologize.
“adherent bandage and jelq” — For those who don’t know, jelqing is a method some men use to increase their penis size (both length and girth) by forcing more blood than normal into it with an extra-firm grip, using an almost udder-milking technique. The jury’s out on whether this works, but I’ve heard good things with it, so long as you keep at it regularly like any workout; the idea is that you’ll slowly stretch the blood cavities in the soft tissue of the shaft, which allows it to hold more blood when you get an erection, which means getting a bigger hardon. It’s not recommended for everyone, and there are definitely unsafe ways to do this. Since you’re forcing more blood into the cock than normally goes in, if you have a cut or scrape or other wound on it that requires a bandage, you really really shouldn’t be handling it that roughly, if at all. But then, who am I kidding, if you’re already into jelqing then you’re probably not looking to play by all the rules.
“do quadrivium.oils work” — Absolutely! Some of my favorite oils comes from Quadrivium Supplies, and I’m a big fan of her work. She charges a pretty reasonable amount for pretty powerful magical oils, and occasionally stocks some other useful and interesting supplies. By all means, take a look; this time of the year, she has some good sales going on, so have at!
“san lazaro bead pattern” — San Lazaro, more commonly known in English as Saint Lazarus, can be a bit confusing for some people, since there are two Lazaruses in the Bible. One is Saint Lazarus of Bethany, the brother of Mary and Martha and the one who was raised by Jesus Christ from the dead after being in his tomb for four days. The other is…well, he has no formal appellation, just “Lazarus” from the parable of Jesus known as “The Rich Man and Lazarus”, from the Gospel of Luke. San Lazaro kinda merges these two Lazari, mostly from the second, and is often depicted as a beggar covered in sores, walking on crutches, and licked upon by dogs. He’s syncretized with the orisha Babaluaye, the orisha of illness, poverty, death, and the like. However, there are many paths or aspects to San Lazaro, each possessing their own name, focus, and bead pattern for their elekes. While you should always go to your local olorisha or Santero/a for real information, you can find some information online that may not be as trustworthy.
“hermes/mercury and legba” — They’re all pretty cool guys who don’t afraid of anything. However, they are not the same entity, and you’d do well to take heed of that. Hermes is Greek, Mercury is Roman; these two basically grew up together, with Mercury being solidly based on Hermes (the name “Mercurius” literally means “god of the merchants” and isn’t a native Roman god). Legba is one of the variants of the name Eleggua, the childlike trickster and messenger of the crossroads who opens the ways. Yes, they both preside over crossroads, messages, pranks, children, medicines, and many other things, but there are also important differences, too. Legba, specifically, indicates more of a Haitian variant from Vodou, which has its own means of contacting Legba than Santería does Eleggua. I highly suggest against conflating Legba with another crossroads gods, especially from a white or European culture.
