Asking For Help Through Prayer

Assuming you understand something about yourself is not in alignment with your soul, praying to get rid of that trait is unlikely to work. Only the gods know how often I prayed to be relieved of my anger and the impact it had on others. There are a couple of reasons why I feel those prayers were not answered.

First of all, I asked the deities in question to do something for me. I put all the work on them. That is like asking for help cleaning your home before a big event and sipping tea while watching all your friends do the work, not wise behavior.

The second reason is a bit more subtle. My anger was not the problem but a symptom. Had the gods granted my petition, I’d still be saddled with the same problem in another form. Perhaps, that new form would be harder to identify.

A great deal of my problem was perspective or a lack thereof. To me, whatever issue I was going on about was obvious for all to see. While I never thought this, my attitude was that people were willfully doing wrong. After all, if you can see the problem, yet act to perpetuate the issue, you are twice as wrong!

Once my perspective changed to one where I believe most people are doing their best most of the time, my need to express my anger lessened a great deal. Instead, I was saddened, not enraged. Attacking my anger directly was precisely the wrong approach.

Had the gods granted my request and removed my anger, they would have removed my ability to see what is out of alignment with the divine flow. That would seriously harm my personal spiritual progress as noticing that allows me to remove that which interferes. It would also have harmed my ability to help people that ask for my assistance. “That is wrong,” is met with resistance. “How would you react to that if you were on the other side,” is met with contemplation. As is, “When you do that, what energy is manifesting?”

Solving the first issue is easy. When you pray, ask for help. Help me resolve my problem with anger, is much better than, take away my anger. The gods will give you clues to resolve the problem, that is the help. Your cooperation is spotting those clues and acting on them. You’d be surprise how easy it is to change when you follow the bread crumbs long enough to find the path. Change is as easy as putting one foot in front of the other.

Solving the second problem is just as easy. By not identifying precisely how you want the help to manifest, you leave room for the universe to provide you with the answer you need, not an answer you demand.

You may be given an extra boon. I have found that many of the things I and others have asked to be removed were simply misapplications of proper energy. For example, a person’s need to drink may be born of a need to relieve emotional pain, an understandable goal. Yet actually healing the wound resolves the problem in a much more substantive way.  The drinker applies the drive for healing in an improper way. The modality is the problem, not the need to feel better.

This is important so another example is warranted. The person that cheats on his spouse may be looking for acceptance from others, even though his spouse offers the same. The problem is that the person does not accept himself. No amount of acceptance from others will resolve that. Instead, he must learn that he is worthy of his own love. Seeking acceptance from others is an incorrect manifestation of the energy of love. Love sought directly from others is nearly always a slight miss. Love yourself fully and one has love to give. That love is joyfully returned.

Love yourself enough to ask for help. Love yourself enough to notice the universe’s reply. Love yourself enough to act on those messages. You will find the path.

Things Not to Do

Back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, before most of us had heard the term global warming and cell phones were relatively new, I told a friend of mine that my Holy Guardian Angel (HGA) often arrived in dreams in the form of a police officer. My friend, a policeman, was taken aback and asked why. At the time, I interpreted his response as a negative but never asked for clarification.

When the officer appeared, the instructions were always the same. Stop doing that! This is obviously a major role of police officers. Jay walking? Stop. Robbing a house? Stop. Selling drugs to children? Stop. Stop in the name of the law!

Here the law in question is not civil or moral. The law in personal and natural. The law is unique to the way an individual’s soul needs to manifest and cannot be projected onto others, a classic mistake of exoteric religion. The process is also part of the natural unfolding of one’s spiritual nature. Following this law is required of all spiritual seekers that wish to ascend and embody a higher nature than has currently manifested.

I write this today because I have been reading The Complete Book of Ceremonial Magick, shockingly available at The Open Eye and came across this tidbit in the writings of Sam Webster. “Socrates claimed to be guided by his personal daemon, mostly being told what not to do.” Sam goes on to claim this is an obvious reference to the HGA. This struck me as true.

When I looked back at my life, my HGA consistently told me to stop a few things in life. The better I was at not doing those things, the more progress I made.

Jumping to the conclusion that the HGA is a moral compass and is the same as our conscience is understandable but misguided. Our conscience is largely a construct of what we have been taught is right and wrong. This teaching is of social value as it keeps society under some sense of order.

Keeping a family unit together is of obvious value to society as a whole and therefore an extra-marital affair is deemed immoral. Interestingly, the French, ever practical when it comes to human sexual behavior, enter marriage with the near expectation of an affair as long as it is not thrown in the spouse’s face or otherwise embarrasses him or her. Again, this is an obvious practical way of keeping the family unit together. Morals are societally dependent and not divinely commanded.

A lot of Pagans and other spiritual people struggle with the challenges of the bodily demand for sexual activity. I have seen the gamut from abstinence to promiscuity of truly impressive proportions and everything in between. Absolutely none of that actually matters. What matters is what interferes with the connection between soul and manifest personality. That harm can occur anywhere on the spectrum and is totally unique to the individual. So, one’s HGA may issue a stop order basically demanding an end of abstinence, multiple partners, a given type of partner or even a thought that is never acted upon. Again, these orders are simply to further align one spiritually, nor moral judgement is made or implied.

Back in the day I struggled with expressions of anger. Thankfully, acts of violence were not part of my problem. I realized today that my HGA never once instructed me to get over my anger as so many humans did. I was not even told to adjust my behavior as far as expressing my anger. While curbing my anger had beneficial social applications, it did nothing to aid or hinder my spiritual growth. In looking back, I am wondering if the things I was angry at were primarily lessons in what not to do myself. If I am angry with X for doing Y, then I ought not to do X. That sounds like a reasonable interpretation to me.

The problem there was that anger also manifested in conversations that had nothing to do any behavior I would engage in. Such anger was obviously damaging socially. My thought is that my HGA was not concerned with social relationships in the least.

So, what is the purpose of obeying these edicts of the HGA? Unlike the assumptions of those that have not had what is called Knowledge and Conversation of the HGA, the process of the Great Work does not end there. Instead, this is the beginning of work toward Knowledge and Conversation with the soul. Which again is a beginning for the Great Action, which is behaving in accordance with the union of personality and soul.

To this end, the HGA does not normally tell one what to do. The things one does that fall into alignment with the soul are already being done at some level and simply need refinement. Those actions, at least for me, moved from ham-fisted to elegant. When I am not elegant in my interactions, I am slightly off. This is easily recognizable within. That recognition is the only correction really necessary.

Elegant actions give birth to obvious results.

So, what are you not supposed to do? That which does not align with your soul. How do you know what those things are? Well now, that is why it is called the Great Work. Learning what is and what is not in alignment with your soul takes hard work, introspection and observation. There is a reason why the Oracle at Delphi’s famous entreaty is still famous. “Know Thyself”. Stay tuned to this space on how to find out what not to do.

 

The Secret is a True Lie

I encounter a lot of folks that have read The Secret. I am always hit with the same analogy. If you go to the mail box expecting nothing but bills, you will find nothing but bills. What you think, manifests. This is true but the example makes it a lie.

The reason it is a lie is the analogy is reduced to ease understanding to such a degree that the analogy is untrue. Allow me to complicate things a bit.

The reason you have bills in your mailbox is not because you think there will be bills in your mailbox. The reason is that bills are often delivered via the mail. One receives bills because one spends money. One receives an unreasonable amount of bills because one spends an unreasonable amount of money or one’s income is too low to sustain oneself.

In the first case, the manifesting thought isn’t the one expecting bills. The manifesting thought is something more akin to I need all this stuff or I am successful because I have stuff or I can spend all this money. There are a thousand variations. Those are the thoughts that lead to manifestation of unreasonable amounts of bills. Changing those to something like, I only spend on necessities or I buy financial security not objects will manifest a different reality and thus less bills.

In the second case, there can be many reasons for poverty. Some of those are in a person’s control others are not. However, even those who have more control over poverty than they think tend to feel that they are victim of circumstance. Maybe a person makes just enough money to pay their necessary bills. They may think there are not any better jobs out there. This is obviously untrue as many people occupy those jobs. Maybe the thought should be changed to I will put in the effort to qualify for a better job. Maybe the thought is Weekends are mine. True enough but if that thought was changed to I will find a part time job that allows me to work Saturdays one may find such an opportunity. Since one is already paying one’s necessary expenses all that money can be saved for emergencies. That is a huge stress reducer, financial savings as you don’t have to borrow to cover an emergency and a step out of poverty. Maybe, saving that money leads to an educational opportunity that boosts one’s earning potential.

My point isn’t to bash people that are low-income. As I said, there can be a variety of reasons that one is in that position that are truly out of a person’s current ability to control or overcome. I am merely pointing out how a single change in thinking can manifest a different reality. This applies every area of life. 

Control your mind; control your life.

 

Power

 

Power is a strange thing. People often seek power while having no idea what power actually is. All they know is they are not satisfied with their life or some situation(s). The seek power over those problems but since they do not know spiritual power, they take a clue from mundane power.

Mundane power is the ability to control people and situations. For example, being in a position to hire and fire people, have access to money making opportunities that others do not or being in control of social perceptions or groups. While magickal power can be used in these ways, those are not examples of spiritual power. This is true even though spiritual forces, in the broadest sense of the term  (i.e. spirits themselves or life force energy), can be employed.

One can use a road opener spell to open a path to a new job, bind a stalker or open up communications. Those are examples of magickal power but not spiritual power as I define the terms. While you can open a path to a new job as a charity worker or mafia enforcer, intent does not factor into these definitions of power. Magickal power is the ability to impact the mundane world directly using non-mundane methods. To use it, one must make specific decisions. One must decide one wants a job or that a stalker must be stopped. There is nothing wrong with using magickal power in this way.

I have met practitioners of hoodoo that do not look at their practice as spiritual in anyway at all. I have met some say the traditional prayers that go with some hoodoo practices that do not really believe what they are saying. They simply acknowledge that a formula works. They do not claim any particular spiritual insight or self-improvement has resulted from working their tradition.

Spiritual power is different. There is nothing overtly to do once one possesses spiritual power. There is no one to control. There is no situation to manipulate. One simply lives within one’s own space.

Spiritual work is basically finding out what that space is, locating the center point and residing there. When I first began my magical track, my circle and home position within that circle look like this.

The circle encompassed all the events and interactions in my life. The red area indicates my then insecurities both valid and invalid. The black dot represents my home position at the time. Obviously, that is a very difficult place from which to navigate one’s life. Some people would choose to magically lash out at anyone who challenged this position. I did not do that. I did verbally argue my position and pushed people back. Yet, at the same time, I was constantly trying to fix myself. I believe refusing to do magick to control those past situations benefited me in the long term. In the short term, some people cleaned my clock!

As I began to have some healing abilities, I convinced myself I was operating from a new place. This new place was mercy and caregiving for those that “needed my help”. Not only is that a place of ego but again a recapitulation of insecurity in a different form. It was as if I was saying to myself, I must have improved because now I can help some people. There were times where I bought into that line of thinking. There were other times when I knew it was bull shit.

The image below shows a shift in my home position within my circle. I was still out of balance and operating from a place of ego, albeit a kinder one.

At this point, I was always taken aback when somebody I helped revealed themselves not to be my friend. I had conflated being kind and healing towards others with earning their friendship. That was an error on my part.

I could go through a lot of similar iterations moving both the point and perspective within that circle. Yet, the story would not change much. Life was always a struggle.

Only very rarely, when somebody was being particularly troublesome, did I use magic to push people outside of my circle. Some might call that controlling others. I called that creating a reasonable space within which I could work. I’m sure it is pretty easy to see both sides of that discussion.

My point is, that when working magic to exercise control (power), one pretty much stays in the same place. If that place is a position of insecurity, an emotional need to control and dominate others, an emotional need to help others or any other unbalanced place, working magic does the practitioner little good in the long term. In fact, it becomes a cement keeping one stuck in an out of balance or uncentered place.

The practice of spiritual magic or theurgy, is to keep moving out of imbalanced places until one finds the center point within one’s circle. At this point, the circle self-balances. So, people that seek to do you harm have a very difficult time doing so. Those little mistakes we make also are self-correcting before they become big mistakes. And the more we recognize things that need correcting or have self corrected for us the less mistakes we make.

Standing in that center point is such a strong place that one is nearly unassailable. Yes, it is possible for the random person to shoot you or rob you or for somebody else in your life to do nefarious things. If that happens while you are centered and balanced, at some level it becomes your own life lesson on a much larger scale than average. Or, it was simply your time to go. While dying might be agony, death really doesn’t matter.

When you are at that point of balance within your circle it looks like this.

If that looks like the symbol of the sun to you, in that you can find a clue to the first level of spiritual work. If that looks like an eye to you, that can be a hint for you about what it is like to be in this place.

When you are in a position like this, there is very little magic for you to do that has any impact on anybody else. Your sphere does that for you. Because those who enter that sphere very often automatically adjust themselves to a point where they either become participants, allow themselves to heal, or move elsewhere. The work at this point is simply expanding the boundaries of the circle.

Spiritual power is not exercising the need to control. Spiritual power is simply expansion.

Protecting Yourself from Magickal Attack

People that hang out with those that do magick, risk falling under magickal attack from time to time. I do not know if the risk is more or less if you don’t hang out with magick users. In a previous post, I mentioned smacking some people around that threatened my job. Those folks were not magick users. They still wound up on the other side of my magick.

So, how do you protect yourself. Stones? Herbs? Protective spells or spirits? Perhaps.

There is something else. Magickal attacks hit your weak points. If someone wants to steal your mate, their first magickal attack will be to create a rift in your relationship. To prevent that, treat your mate with respect. Help your partner as much as your partner helps you. Do not cheat. Communicate well. Keep your finances in order. There is no place for the attack to hit.

If someone wants to impact your job, that spell will seek out a weak point. If you have treated your bosses well, done your job to the best of your ability, have not stolen from your employer, been on time and treated coworkers and customers professionally, your job is pretty safe. In order for you to lose your job, the attack would have to take out your employer’s business.

Similarly, if you eat right, exercise, abstain from heavy drinking, drug use and the like, a spell that attacks your health is going to have to work pretty hard to find an avenue into your body.

In order to make this work, you have to take an honest self-inventory. Denial is a killer. You have to list every fault and everything above that you are doing that you shouldn’t be. Then, fix each problem. Some of these issues can be solved magickally. Others solutions are more mundane. Still like all such efforts, using magick and mundane methods together might yield the best results.

Obviously, these things must be done before the attack itself. Magickal defense is a life-style.

If you make a habit of self-assessing your weak points and fixing them, magick worked against you is unlikely to be effective. The upside is you are living a pretty nice life as well. There is another upside as well. When you make magick to improve your life, it has all sorts of positive ‘weak points’ to work through.

Need a raise? Well, you’ve been working hard, treating your bosses well, showing up on time, being professional with customers and coworkers. A little magick to push towards a raise will find a lot of help because of what you’ve built.

There is no need to go through the list but you get the idea. Living a positive life of self-examination goes a long way to protecting yourself from the negativity of others. And, it puts you in a position to realize even greater benefits through your magickal efforts.

Offerings

Offerings are an important but often neglected portion of magick and developing relationships with those that abide in the spiritual world. The Qabalists have a saying, “As above, so below.” In this world, we give gifts to show our appreciation to each other flowers to lovers or sick friends, small gifts to say thank you for some nicety and let us not forget exchanging gifts during winter celebrations. Things cement relationships, show love and respect. Those that abide in the lesser seen realms appreciate them in the same way and have the same effect.

That said, this is a portion of practice I have long neglected but with reason. I am a hard core theurgist. I have made offerings to the gods in front of human witnesses. The deities in question have glanced at them and paid them no mind. What I hear during these moments, is ‘your work is your offering’. I believe that is because most of the deities I have reached out to are known, in at least one of their aspects, to be theurgic by nature. Therefore, they respected the work I was doing and viewed that which I was giving up, the part of me that infers with full manifestation of my soul, as my offering to them.

The offerings that I have made successfully of a more substantial nature have been a quid pro quo. I give you this, so you will do that. Those have worked or at the very least, not been viewed with indifference. Many such beings understand the concept of payment for service rendered. Some, like any good merchant, will try to cultivate a relationship.

My late friend Chris Greenwood had a saying, “Know who you are hanging out with because it is the innocent by stander that gets shot!” He was right. Some of these beings you do not want to hang out with. And, just like any commercial relationship, you can close the door on the salesman trying to sell you something you do not need.

Last night, my angel or my intuition kept pestering me to read Jason Miller’s fine book The Elements of Spell Crafting. At first, I couldn’t find it and gave up. Prompted again, I looked and still nothing. One more time and my eyes went straight to it. When I saw page 80 with the title, Embrace the Power of Offerings, I knew why I was there.

During the day, I had been asking a new deity that has proved immediately useful how to form a better relationship with him. Offerings. So, I followed the instructions in Jason’s book this morning. I didn’t just offer to that deity but all the classes of beings and used Jason’s formula with a slight personal alteration.

When this ended, I turned as advised and looked around my backyard. I saw something that I didn’t see that said thank you. He introduced himself by a common name and said that he had never lived in my home but was attracted by the offering. He felt friendly. I also noticed that one of the swings on our broken swing set was moving. This was not a subtle thing. The chain lone chain and the board that hung from it were not just moving in a slight breeze. The movement was significant. There was no breeze.

I felt different. I felt as if the universe responded in more ways that I was aware of. This practice will continue.