Five of Wands

Since I was so impressed with the results of skrying the Seven of Swords, I thought I'd see what happened with another issue in my life. One of my birth cards in of the tarot is the five of wands, strife.

I have lead a pretty decent life financially. Aside from a year or so, I have always had enough money to get buy. I have always had a car etc. The other areas of my life have been influenced by strife in the form of arguments and the like. It has driven me a bit batty.

So, I used the same technique as with the Seven of Swords. This time, I was a bit tired and it didn't go so well. The only thing I heard was a referral to the Six of Wands and told to do so in full ritual with the addition of some higher level preliminaries.

So I shall. So I shall.

Mastering Witchcraft Part Tres

Mastering Witchcraft posts part one and part deux generated some commentary and a posting that I noticed. These deserve some special attention. If you haven't read the comments section of those posts, you may want to. That I didn't include them here does not mean they are not worthy of review. People made some very good points for and against my point of view.

I am pulling out three of note. First is Jack's post on the issue, Love Philtres a Few Questions. Jack makes an excellent point of seeing the magickal technology and using it for purposes other than its originally reported use.

I have made this same argument after attending the darkest lecture on magick I have ever seen or heard of to some friends that were deeply offended. I saw very experienced people very nervous after that one. For me, I learned about the other viewpoints that are out there in the magickal community. Think of this quote, "Unfortunately, with this spell I can only get the person confined to a mental institution for three days."

I learned how to use a technique purported to do great harm and reversed engineered it as a method of healing a person so targeted. Most of spells shared could easily be reversed engineered. I learned a great deal from his lecture. He was a very studied fellow. I liked his personality. Normally, I'd hit up someone with the kind of talent he had for a conversation after the presentation. He was simply too dark for me.

The second coment came from Brother Christopher of Runeworker (my underline):

I like your approach to ethics and I agree with you. If something is unethical in doing it through ordinary means, then why is it ethical to do it with magic? I know people who would never pick up a gun or a knife and kill someone, but yet they seemed okay with doing magic that would bring about the same result. It's kind of like people who say they are pro-life and yet for the death penalty and encouraging killing terrorists. However, I think comparing a magical concoction made with edible herbs and spices which have very little physiological effects (unless your allergic) to a powerful narcotic that will put anyone out to where they cannot make their own decisions is not the same at all. If you did make a concoction that had powerful narcotic effects (which there are herbs that can be done with that) then yes, I do see a problem with that. I can also see a parallel with using an excess of alcohol to achieve the same effect. But a tea (barely even that using Huson's method) 

The rub here is what each of us feels the impact of magick can be. Christopher is quite correct in that the the physical ingredients are harmless. I fully understand his point and would agree with him had I not had some profound life experiences that lead me to the opposite conclusion.

Expertly done magick, can co-opt ones faculties in ways much more extensive than many would be comfortable knowing.

I was once at a public event. A speaker was just introduced. At that moment, I noticed a man thirty to fifty feet away. This man was part of a group that everyone assumed was evangelical Christian. They had been singing hymns around the event and picking up every piece of literature they could find. He had a very military bearing. The man took a deep breath as he was about  to vomit forth some Christian message to all the pagans.

I looked at the speaker and saw something I can only describe as a yellow snake-like being fly from the area of his head. It moved fast. For reasons I don't know, my eyes darted back to the speaker and then tried to find the snake and the man it was obviously moving toward. All this occured in the a space of a heartbeat.

The man was gone.

This was on an open plain in a park. There is no way this man could have physically hid himself. He did not shout his message. He wasn't there.

Was he suddenly made so uninteresting that even in looking for him I couldn't see him? Even if I couldn't see him, why did he not shout his message? Was he physically moved someplace else like on I Dream of Jeannie? That sounds far fetched to me but I will swear on a box full of kittens to what I saw and didn't see that day. I have no idea what happened to the man.

Magick can do much more than most of us realize. I stand by my assertion that in the right hands, the philters we discussed could get someone between the sheets that in any other circumstances would never have gone there. Most folks do not have that skill but I know it does exist in some of the most talented of our peers.

This is why my perspective is different from Brother Christopher's.

The final comment is Jason Miller.

Your opinion is well noted, and speaking for myself have no problem with it. I also do not do, or endorse, all the things Huson talks about in his book. The difference is that you condemn the whole work for the bits you disagree with. I do not. You however are entitled to your opinion, and to express it. When I talk about malifica and curses, I talk about some rituals that I would never do. Still I talk about them because it IS part of magic AND it is important to know about. Huson was writing in an overly dramatic style, and leaning a bit towards the diabolical when he wrote his work, but do be it. Now as to philtres - I see no difference between a magical philtre for influence and an influencing spell of other kinds.


My response a was as follows. I have added a very disturbing question at the end.

It is true what you say. When I hear you speak, you clearly state what is within your ethical boundaries. This is why I trust you as a human being, buy your books and recommend your work to others. I do that because not only do you say it, I believe you when you say it. I have a very sensitive bullshit meter and while we disagree on some very emotional topics, my bullshit meter has never gone off with you.

Huson, on the other hand, while never saying so, seems to indicate that these methods are indeed acceptable. This, in my opinion, taints his teachings and people have to be very careful and thoughtful when reading him.

I think you are such a person that is more than capable of doing so. Of course, you are not the only one.  I think there are many young people out there, whose personalities may not be as well-formed as of yet, solely due to age, that may make serious errors after reading him. Hormones are powerful. There may be others that read his work at face value.

I have had more than one surprisingly young readers email privately asking for advice that are more  book-educated than I in the realms of magick. They tend to remind me of a young Jack Flash.

Therefore, I take a harsh stand against his work. If for no other reason, so others stop and think. Once they do that, my job as a public writer is done.

Here I have to add a bit that was not part of my original reply.

Jason also made me think of why I find this type of spell more disturbing than other influencing spells. It could be because the method looks too much like dropping a roofie. It may also be that Jason has taught me much about links and their effective use. To me this makes the magick done in this way much more powerful. I also wonder, if you feed someone a link like that and digestion makes it part of the body, do you have a link that lasts quite a long time? If so, what is the impact of such a thing?

I do not know the answer to that question but asking them gives me pause. I would not be happy if such a link was created within me. Nor, would I want to create that link with someone else. The resulting feedback may be very very difficult to deal with.

Reversing a Mental Habit

This post was written Tuesday night. I delayed posting it so that I did not send forth too many posts in a day.


Also, there have been some excellent comments regarding my Mastering Witchcraft posts. I am going to post them to the main page and discuss this a bit more. Then, I think I will be done with that. 

I have been a mess of late. Part of that is a lot of recent life shocks. Part of that, the by far larger part, was a past trauma. I mostly defeated the obsession, mostly, but never the underlying anger. The most recent hits, coming in an emotionally quick sequence, removed my ability to suppress those emotional reactions from past trauma. Those emotions are raging now. This is likely good because they tend to leak out inappropriately. I briefly dated a very very good psychic that stopped dating me because she read that I was violent. She missed. I am not now, nor have I ever been violent. She picked up on the anger within.

Along with that emotional rage is anxiety and depression. I am not about to work on the anxiety. It is nameless and displaced. That will take a while. The depression carries with it pessimistic logic. The logical train of thought is, well, logical. You can't beat it with logic unless the facts change. However, in my case, I turn into the 7 of Swords.

My definition of that card, is the frozen rancid logic. We use this on other people from time to time. When we don't like someone, no matter what happens, we can spin it to show someone is just as  bad or worse than we thought. Everyone does that from time to time. Further, my definition holds that when you do it to yourself, suicide is the only result.

There is something else I am doing though. I am applying that rancid logic, not to others (in  this case) and not to myself. My self-esteem over all is pretty good, mostly, sorta. I am applying that horrible logic to my environment and future. I am experiencing woe before I am facing it.

This is seventeen colors of stupid. However, it is a mental habit in times of emotional discord.

So tonight, I am going to scry the seven of swords but I am going to skry the reverse of the card to see if I can take myself out of this mindset 11:23 PM

I have returned twenty minutes later, exactly.

My technique was simple. I ran through the planetary hierarchy of Venus. The reason for that is that the sevens exist in the sephira of Netzach which relates to Venus. I then called upon the hierarchy of air as the swords relate to air. I could have done the names for Libra and Luna as they also relate to this card. Call me lazy, if you like. I then stared at the reversed card until I could close my eyes and see the card. I did no ritual whatsoever.

I entered an icy place. A harsh snow was falling. I asked how to overcome this mental/emotional habit. Everything sparkled with gold flecks. This ice and snow still fell. It was still very cold but the image was warmer.

A woman appeared in a fur coat. She was smiling. I asked her why and she said that it is cold but she has a coat and a warm cave. She took me to the cave. I immediately recognized what she did to calm the drafts. She had created wood screens and placed them in staggered manner to trap the wind. The where joined by skins that could be pushed aside for access to the next chamber. She had created a series of small wind breaks that trapped the air. It looked like this:

SKIN---------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------SKIN
SKIN----------------------------------------------------

The interior was warm, dry and inviting but very simple. I then asked her how to look at the situation with my former coven in a different way. The answer was that it was a gift. Had I stayed I would have accumulated the karma of being associated with people whose ethics are seriously different from my own. The pain of the events that occurred was burning off the karma that attracted me to that group in the first place.

Is any of that true? Well. Who the heck knows?

I asked about my health situation and I was shown that if I can get back to work for a while. I have the opportunity to change some life style habits that have the potential to help.

I asked about my attitude for magick helping and I was shown what I was doing. Easily accessing a form of wisdom that I didn't even know I wanted to access ten minutes prior. You can't really argue with that.

So, maybe there is some hope for my mood and everything else. Frankly, that is a big habit to change but I was also given a way for my friends to help. I am afraid to ask them. Not because they wouldn't do it but because they would. Looking in the mirror is getting tough. I am willing and able to do it but I am so tired of every thing I think and feel being challenged over the last ten years of the Great Work. I am getting exactly what I asked for but emotionally it feels as if I am constantly under attack.

Mastering Witchcraft Part Deux

For the most part, I have stayed away from issuing opinions on things here. Mostly, because such posts just start an argument. For instance, my ideas about Mastering Witchcraft received this comment from Harold Roth of The Alchemists Garden.

"Nor does this kind of condemnation seem conducive to any exchange of ideas" See the comments section of the Mastering Witchcraft post previously linked for the full text of his comments.

Now, let me get this straight. I brought up a topic making its way around the blogs that some of my readers may have missed, thus exposing them to the book. I linked to a post that was full of links to the participants in the discussions, thus exposing them to opinions counter to my own. Then, I issued an opinion of my own. An idea, it appears, that Mr. Roth would wish that I  didn't express. May I politely ask which one of us  is not being conducive to the exchange of ideas?

Mr. Roth writes very well and I recommend his space if you are interested in the topic(s) he presents. His comments to my posts make some good points. If you haven't read them, you may want to.

That said, my take on magick is that it is a spiritual exercise. It isn't about raw power or control of other humans. Though, it can be used for those things. In my opinion, dropping a "philter" into someone's drink is damaging spiritually to the operator as well as the 'target'.

My definition of magick is a rip off of Crowley's "Magick is the art and science of causing change in conformity with the will." The definition I use for my personal magick is "Magick is the willed art and science of unfolding the soul." When we do things not in alignment with the nature of our souls, we close down, not open up. I call this stepping away from our virtue.

Your virtue is very different that mine because your soul encompasses different things than mine. Your life lessons come from that which you are. The fully negative lessons come from exploring that which you are not.

Most people, would come to regret dropping a philter in someone's drink because we chose to incarnate within the moral structure of this society and thereby have difficulties in violating those shared mores.  Those regrets weigh down the petals of our soul and cause us to close up.

A closed soul isn't doing magick in accordance with the definition I use. Since I assume my readers either a) do their magick in some way that is marginally related to my point of view or b) at least understand my point of view enough to keep reading, I feel free to issue the opinion of that work in the context of what is expressed here.

This to me is the free expression of ideas. I plan on continuing to do that.

Mastering Witchcraft

It seems this meme is going around the blogosphere again. You can find a post here on Jason Miller's blog that explains why it is a topic and the various bloggers asked to comment. You can find more here on Into the Mound. Most people I know fully support this book. This includes people I respect. Jason Miller knows this guy and greatly values this book. I like Jason but I will always disagree with him on this issue.

Huson talks about targeting a sex partner. Most of what he says is simply the grand art of seduction. No harm no foul. He then moves on to putting "philters" in the "target's" drinks. This is nothing other than a magickal roofie.

Apologists make three arguments  that I can remember. Frankly, reading about this guy just irritates me. So, I haven't read much of the recent writings on the topic. The first apology is that he is merely showing us how the magick can work, not advocating it. The second is that this  book is great because no one else would dare publish that stuff. The third is that he was trying to reclaim witchcraft from the fluffy types and therefore included harsher things.

My counter argument is as follows: Bullshit

Yup that is about it.

These are all cover up arguments. This is the equivalent of someone asking, "Is water boarding torture," as if there is any doubt on the issue. The point is to get people talking about some question thus defusing any opposition as another side of a legitimate debate. There is no debate. Water boarding is torture. It is clear.

So is giving anyone a magickal roofie. That is called rape. None of these people would argue that it is okay to drop a roofie in some woman's drink or any other foreign substance. Yet, the last time this book was brought up some people are actually said it is acceptable if it is a magickal foreign substance. No. it. is. not. ok. This is not using a glamour to make yourself more attractive. This is putting something in someone's drink they are unaware of. Would these people say this is okay if it was done to their daughter? I think not.

Referring to a potential sleeping partner as a target is dehumanizing and wrong. There should be no debate over that. I call potential sexual partners women. Which do you feel should be used? That isn't political correctness. That is having respect for all human beings.

There may be some good stuff in that book but the outright evil of slipping things into people's drinks negates all of that.

Yup, I will get hammered for this opinion, if any of those that advocate that book still read this space. I don't care. Wrong is wrong and every once in a while, you have to stand up and say it.

Faith and Magick

How deeply does faith play into magick?

There are some things I know are happening. For instance, I can work ritual and be so focused, so invoked upon that I can hear nothing with my ears. So, that when I 'come down' it is just like waking up at dawn on a camping trip when all the birds let loose with their song. This is mental focus not magic that impacts anything else.

I once did thought form magick to have a discussion on baseball at work. A man moved into our building and noticed my glance at his San Francisco Giant's banner. He looked at me and said, "Dodger fan?" I said yes and we had a brief talk on baseball. Just after lunch, he was told that his instructions were wrong. He'd been told to move to the wrong building. Immediately, he moved out. That coincidence defies my belief in coincidence. This is magick to me but it can be explained away.

I have invoked gods, learned things about them from doing so only to have what I did learned confirmed academically. This to me is much harder to explain.

In an initiatory ritual when I was on the dais, an officer was mailing in her lines. One burst of my energy to her dropped her back into her chair. It took her a few minutes to recover before going on. Given her back was to me, there is no way that she could have had an indication that I was passing a current. The effect was also absolutely immediate. No way it was coincidence. I've done such things more than once. I can see no other explanation other than magick.

Yet most magick, I think, seems to be explainable by the first two items. Initiatory lessons seem to fit in the pattern of the egregore and initiation. Yet, the events can be explained away by pointing out they only appear meaningful when looked at through an initiatory perspective.

Right now, I have little faith in a system that has more or less brought me back to the same place. Those who knew me ten years ago when I started tell me how much I have changed from working the system. I have no doubt I have changed, grown and matured in ten years. I am sure most people can say that. Is that magick or do I just want to believe it works. So, I attach meaning to the meaningless?

I am sure magick exists due to the above examples but I am not sure it has really created a more spiritual me. I am not sure of its usefulness to aid my life or those of others. Will my style of 'magick' work if I have no faith in it anymore?

Without magick, what am I? How would I define my sense of self? Is this just an ego trip?

Nine of Swords

This is where I am right now.

Anxiety, note quite panic attacks, depression, fear (non-specific). Yesterday I had a good day and a rotten evening. Despite OTC sleeping pills couldn't sleep until after 2 AM.

This is some serious deconstruction.

I've been through this before but always found a point in it. I said to myself I will be a better person after this. Now, my response is fuck that. How fucking 'better' does the universe want me to be?  After all this work, I am HERE? W.T.F.

Am I supposed to be fucking Ghandi before it gives me a break?

I am working hard on being present in the moment but only because if I can get there I get a break from my own head once in a while.

I am losing faith that one can grow with occultism. How much of my growth over the years would have happened anyway with just getting older? Why do all this work if you just wind up here?

You can say all the nice things you want. I will just twist them into negatives.

To answer comments from yesterday:

No, I don't give myself much of a break. My mentor says I work at this like a monk. I add "minus the studying part." I am not sure how to rest my mind and heart from my own world-view. I understand the concept of rest of body and mind but I really don't know how.

To Nutty, I am like that all the time now. Your light did not make anything worse.