I received an email some time ago questioning the potential pitfalls of walking the paths I laid out when talking about working with the Shadow and Luminous Selves, as well as reconciling the two. I've debated on what to write here, and even whether or not it should be posted, for quite some time. Its a sensitive bit of work, to be sure, and its something that people, as a general rule, have to sort out for themselves due to the nature of the beast.

Even still, it seems appropriate to talk in further detail.  That said, to start, this is the email I sent to the individual in question:

As indicated in my email, posted above, when you do this sort of work, you're effectively looking to face reality from two diametrically opposed perspectives, then trying to reconcile the two and find Truth. Consider, for a moment, what that actually means....

You're looking to effectively combine Fire and Ice and learn to make something from it.  This is no small feat. Its a hell of a lot like going for a magical Big Bang....and of course, work like that is going to attract attention; some of it'll be good, some of it'll be bad, but rest assured, if you want to make some waves, that's one way to get that done. This isn't just some casual, simple, clean cut line of work that you can light a candle for and be done with...that's not the way this works.

When you do start down this path, you're in it for the long haul.  There aren't any oaths to consider, really, or even any pacts, save for the one that you are making with yourself.  If you get stopped up and scared, you're going to be fucked until you decide to make a change and either regress or push through.

There are very real dangers of delusion and the use of magical workings that will befuddle you and cause you to do stupid things.  You're going to be setting the wheels of fate in motion, and you can't just exclaim "stop the world, I wanna get off!" and be done...it doesn't work like that.

Even still, the rewards are crazy, unthinkable, and sometimes downright strange in a happy sort of way.  Serendipitous events occur like crazy, you can start getting some really interesting and quickly-manifesting results, and you will look at things differently. You're not going to be seeing the world with the same eyes anymore, but that is a blessing and a curse.

You're not going to be the same old [insert your name here] anymore.  Your relationships will change, and you will be put on a different path. This isn't something for the faint of heart, so if this is something you're drawn towards, proceed carefully.  If the burden gets to be too much, you will need outside help to get you back up on your own two feet, but even then, it'll be a matter of things being your responsibility.  You can't be the king or queen of your domain and expect autonomy from the servants, and this gets to be strikingly true when you're managing the denizens of both heaven and hell.

Best of luck.

Cordially,

SE

Greetings, dear readers.

Recently, I had an incident that occurred with a client which prompted this post alongside a slight change to how I do things with clients. In short, this was a situation wherein there were too many hands in the cookie jar because the client in question decided that it was pertinent to hire three or four other workers alongside me, despite our conversations about how it was better to avoid complicating things.  It dawned on me, as this was occurring, that he had little to no idea of why this can be an issue, so I thought I'd talk about it here.

To start us off, think for a moment about working in a  kitchen with others, as that's something we've all done.  What happens when you add another person to the group working on cooking a meal? The room gets slightly more crowded with each addition of a new body.  Even when doing prep work, each person needs between a foot and a foot and a half of elbow room, not counting the counter space, to say nothing of the cook, whose likely wandering around the kitchen.  When you've only got 6 or 7 feet of counter space on each side of the kitchen, with an aisle that's ~3 feet across, that space gets damned crowded.  You've got people running around with knives, spices, meats, veggies, hot pots, boiling water, and Gods know what else; the area quickly becomes a hazardous sight.

Magic's really not all that different.  If your life is the stew and the sorcerer's the chef, its up to the chef to season the stew to provide you with what you ordered (the magical result).  If I am seasoning the stew, I have a pretty good idea of what spices I need to add, and what prep work I need to do. If you start adding other chefs to the mix, soon its going to become an incomprehensible mess, as I don't have the slightest idea what the hell the chef to my right is doing to the stew.  He's probably adding spices I'd never thought of with impunity, totally unaware of the fact that the meat in the stew is intentionally flavored a specific way.

To drop the metaphor and get down to brass tacks, in essence, when there are too many folks doing magical work at one time, the situation can get incredibly complicated.  The fact is that every working I do changes fate ever so slightly...when I'm the only one fiddling around, I can do this with a fair deal of control.  That's no longer the case when you have one other spirit worker doing work concurrently. Adding more to the mix only further complicates the problem.

That being the case, its not an issue if you hired someone to do the work prior to getting me involved, so long as they've already done their work.  Its also not an issue for you to hire someone a few months after I've done the work if the case is not, Heavens forbid, resolved.  But for the love of all that is holy, do not hire someone else while you're having me do the work. It'll likely become a convoluted mess and have really crappy repercussions in your life.

Granted, with that said, there's some flex to this "rule".  The fact is that some magical work is incredibly touchy, and other types are really rather cut and dry, for the most part.  Love work is naturally a pain, and everything's a balancing game, so that's a terrible time to add confusion to the mix.  Uncrossing and blessing work, however, is very direct...its simple, and generally, there's not a heck of a lot of confusion that can be caused.

Just do bear this in mind when you're either doing work for other people or having work done for you, as I'd hate to see your result get dorked up because of impatience or indecisiveness on your part.

Cordially,

SE

Greetings folks.

Over the past few days, I've found myself deep in thought after going about my usual client work, personal practice, and devotional work.

It's occurred to me that spiritual work is often a cosmic game of "Telephone".  "Telephone", for those of you caught unawares, is a childhood game wherein the party at the front of the line comes up with a sentence or phrase, tells it to the person next to them, then the recipient does the same and so on and so forth down the line.

Those of you whom have played the game I speak of know that the sentence or phrases starts out as something as simple as "Johnny's mom is also the doctor" and ends up as "Mom's Johnny is also the proctor" at the final person of the game. So too is this the case with client work, I find.

I am frequently approached by folks who either do not speak English or speak it as a second, third, or fourth language; frequently, they encounter the same troubles shared by their brethren from English-speaking countries - they are unsure how to put their concerns and wants into words which will then be clearly understood by someone like myself.

This brings us to a rather awkward point in a relationship, as its difficult to understand just what it is that we're being asked to do when we miss important contextual clues.  This is doubly true when it comes to interacting with spiritual entities, as not only do they not speak our language, but they also tend to sense our emotions, our sense of purpose or lack thereof, our thoughts, our confusion, and so on.  With this truth being as present as it is, we encounter a new difficulty; not only must we understand the goal of our friend, client, partner, spouse, or ourselves, but we also must be able to communicate those goals and intentions effectively to the spirits we conjure.

Language, being a finicky beast at the best of times, is something we must strive to understand intimately if we are to do this effectively; furthermore, we must also understand the language of the spirits we intend to work with.  Sometimes the language is verbal and literal or it can be written and symbolic or any means and methodology in-between.  Each of us is different in how we best perceive and understand the world around us and the spirits we work with, command, and/or serve are no different.

Not only we must understand how to communicate ourselves effectively, but we also must learn to listen to the people and the world around us.  Perception is the key to greater and deeper understandings, and that starts at home with the ones we love.  We must hear them out first if we wish to understand what the Gods and spirits tell us through speech, song, dreams, movies, games, situations, and so on.

With that said, happy hunting and blessed learning.

SE

Greetings, ladies and gents.

I've got some exciting (to me) news to convey: I am, as of this date, going to be doing magical work full-time for a while. If this works out, it'll probably be permanent, as I rather enjoy the Work.

That being the case, if you're in need of dedicated assistance, please let me know.  During the holiday, when possible, I will avail myself to attend your needs and wants.

With that said, thank you for reading this blog, for your continued trust, and your continued support.

Blessings!

SE

Greetings dear friends.

I'd ask that you pay careful attention and bend a knee in respect of the kingly sphere, for we've reached the last of the Planetary Keys.  Where we of the "Seven Spheres in Seven Days" crew started is where the Keys, in their current renditions, end.

Finally, we've reached Jupiter, the sphere of Kings, rulership, management, and prowess.  It is the regal Lion of our Universe and reigns supreme amongst the firmament.  With that, I give you its key:

With this key, you are both empowered and armed with the ability to manage your sphere as you see fit, but know now that this has its perils.  Should you lose control, your kingdom will rise up against you.  Proceed carefully and with sincerity, take up these keys I've given you, learn them well, and then use them.

Warm regards,

SE

Good morning ladies and gents.

For those of you who are involved in the Group Working I posted here  I thought I'd provide an update on our status and my game plan.

For those of you who are not yet involved, I'd suggest that you pay attention and get involved post-haste, as the more people we can get involved in this, the better.  I'm looking to bring down the forces of the Arbatel in each one of the participant's lives to revamp them and shape them for the better.

The game plan, up until E-Day (Evocation Day, not something illicit ;) ), is simple: I am gathering excess energy that each of the participants are putting out.  As I write this, 10 people are deciding to get involved, so after 24 hours, we've already gotten a pretty substantial amount of energy stored.  This holding pattern will continue for the next 8 days, and on the night of Wednesday, 11/21, I will be proceeding to the second and final step.

The Work, upon that date, is no longer simple or gentle.  When the hour of Mercury is upon us, I will lock myself in my study and proceed to conjure, concurrently, each of the spirits from the Ars Arbatel (also known as the Arbatel de Magia Veterum) in the following order:

1. Phul
2. Ophiel
3. Hagith
4. Och
5. Phaleg
6. Bethor
7. Aratron

The aforementioned spirits will then be set upon the task of getting involved in the lives of each of the participants, setting them on the path that they need to be on, clearing obstacles, etc. etc. ad nauseam.

The last time I did something like this, I didn't sleep for a week; the energy was THAT intense, and I was just doing the work for me.  So sign up, get involved, and reap the benefits! 

To sign up, click the "Buy Now" button below and provide me with your name and location. The cost to get involved is 25$, so its a small price to pay for work like this. :)

Be sure to keep an eye out on the blog for updates!

SE

Ave.

Here we are again, and it is Tuesday.  As with the previous entries, this is a follow-up of sorts spawned by my work with the "Seven Planets in Seven Days" crew.

Today's entry, as its astrologically-fitting, is for Mars, the planet closely associated with Dominance and War.  Below you'll find a key to use in tapping these energies.

As with the previous keys provided, when you stick this on your spiritual keyring, you'll need to learn how to use it, and use it well.  Consider this to be akin to a weapon of war, such as a knife or a pistol.  Poor aim and poor handling can cause you harm, so bear it in mind.

Good luck.

SE

'lo my friends.

I hope this post finds you well.  As of late, I've had a few thoughts percolating about in my brain, and this one seems to be most urgent; in this post, I will be speaking on the subject of a meditation technique I learned recently.  This particular meditation comes from the Vajrayana school of Tibeten Tantra, and is geared towards helping us to understand ourselves on a deeper level, thereby allowing us to cultivate a sort of situational awareness.  This particular form of situational awareness centers around detached attachment and attached detachment.

To preface this entry, we, as human beings, tend to be ruled by emotions, so we don't usually put ourselves in the other person's shoes and endeavor to understand where they're coming from or see their other motivations.  We get lost in the moment, and then react on impulse, and this tends to get us into some really rough situations. The following meditation can be used to help cultivate the ability to interact with others without getting too terribly worked up about it.

That said, to understand the intention of this meditation, you must first understand and accept that every one of us is a multiplicity.  We are made up of different selves who are all interacting on the day to day, each of which are interconnected but different.  For some of us, there are wrathful selves, overly sexual selves, impish ones, and so on and so forth; these parts of ourselves, when uncontrolled and unrecognized can cause some major issues.

To do this, you will wish to get comfortable in a room where you won't be disturbed.  You're welcome to change into a robe, perform this naked, light incense, play music....do whatever it is that gets you comfortable and ready for extended periods of meditation.  When ready, close your eyes and focus on relaxing your body's muscles, piece by piece, bit by bit, so that when your muscles have unwound, you will be ready.

Begin to contemplate the different things you feel, and listen for the parts of you that cry out for attention and acknowledgement as you detach your focus from your earthly body.  Don't fight the meditation; just let those entities come forth, and as they do, acknowledge them.  If they seem unusually troubled, you can try talking to them and see what they say.  If you'd like, you can negotiate with them or find out what will help level them out, but do not get too attached to any one side of you.

This may be difficult at first, but eventually you will learn how to let this come easily.

With that said, do NOT attempt this meditation if you are not of sound mental and emotional health! This may exacerbate those issues, as this meditation has been known to cause some emotional discomfort; this is normal, but those who aren't mentally prepared could be damaged.  This serves as an initiation of sorts, and is the basis for more advanced forms of magical praxis.

Enjoy!

SE

'lo ladies and gents. hope this post finds you well.

As some of you are aware, over the past few months I have been in the midst of a less-than-amicable divorce.  While, ultimately, the end-result would be a good thing for me, being caught in the thick of things really didn't do me any favors.

The stress caused by the proceedings was severe enough that I lost control of most of the things directly pertaining to my own sphere.  I was still able to do plenty of work for clients, to impressive effects, but still I was left holding the proverbial bag until I got my $%*# together. As a result, for a time, things got more than a little crazy and chaotic in my sphere....I'd have bouts of bad luck, strange emotional problems, and various irritating minor frustrations cropping up. It was never anything particularly severe, but each of those "bricks" built up a rather impressive wall that was becoming difficult to break down. 

The act of getting my $%*# together involved working with Cassiel, in fact, as He's an angelic force associated with the sphere of Saturn.  Saturn being known for its ability to remove obstacles and set barriers, I've learned that the spirits therein are often uniquely skilled at making you own and take control of your mess....

..Well, that was just what I needed, and its exactly what happened.  In doing so, I learned something that I thought I'd share here.  My work made me realize where things had gone wrong: I had lost control of myself and my sphere by and through my own loss of faith in my abilities and skills. For a time, I questioned everything about me, everything that had happened between myself and my ex, was filled with doubt, and, perhaps most importantly, filled with a great deal of anger.

This period of internal dissolution and aimlessness had me so focused on trying to regain control by dealing with the little nonsense that I didn't realize, for a time, that all I needed to do was take up the wand and sword, so to speak.

The long and short of it is this: for "regular humans" (ie, folks who don't attempt to control the manifestations in their lives), losing control can lead to bills piling up, additional stress, problems at work, relationship issues, so on and so forth. The thing is, magical folk aren't really that different; our issues just happen to be compounded by our magical praxis.

Up until the point at which we lose control, we are spending inordinate amounts of time working with spirits who become participants in our kingdom.  As they gain our respect, so too do we gain their's, and as a result, like any friend, many like to try to help out.  Directing that help is important, as otherwise they don't really have a means of understanding what we want. Nevermind the influences of those less-than-savory spiritual forces who've been waiting for our loss of control to do what they want to do.

In essence, your spiritual kingdom becomes anarchy because everyone's rowing the boat and nobody's steering.  The act of taking up the wheel and being a taskmaster where necessary helps set our course aright, so its something that really cannot be overlooked.

Just my 2 cents.

Regards,

SE

Greetings and happy Monday, ladies and gents. I hope this posting finds you well, or at the very least, awake and functioning.

In my wanderings, ramblings, gnosis, and the latent digestion of such things, I've come to a greater realization with regard to how our folk affect us.  We often spend a great deal of time interacting with others and we often take more than we'd like from people.  This function is something that's programmed into us at a biological level, as evidence by the fact that we even respond to how other people's hearts are beating.  The links for such studies escape me at the moment, but sufficed to say, we are much more intimately linked than we like to admit.

We end up mirroring people we respect as a result of our focus on what they represent to us.  We instinctually try to live up to the ideal they tout in order to become better in their eyes, and that can be a dangerous tendency.  When someone is sufficiently strong-willed, they can project a great deal onto others and do a ridiculous amount of damage to that individual.

Its not at all uncommon for a mental patient, for example, to project his or her disease/disorder onto the doctor or that individual's spouse.  I saw and experienced this firsthand as a child, when my mother's erratic behavior and lack of moral limitation "infected" my father.  Not only did I witness him changing over the years, but I confirmed these changes with my family after the fact. Apparently, before he married my mother, he had a slight "bad streak", but it was never particularly volatile or violent.

We see the same tendency in schools, as noted by my significant other (she's a teacher); when a smart kid hangs out with the would-be thugs, the smart kid's test scores and schoolwork suffers.  If that same student suddenly starts hanging out with a bunch of nerds, his scores improve.

In short, our values are ultimately set by the clan we interact with. If your friends, wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, or some other such individual or group is intensely negative, you will behave the same way as a result of your interactions.  This may not be true initially, but eventually your Will will break down and you will fall in line with your pack.

The same interactions and changes occur with those of us who are religious, spiritually inclined, or to those of us who practice some form of magic involving interacting with spiritual forces.  Our very interactions with those spirits, for weal or woe, changes us on some level.  They, very literally, become a part of  our life and our worldview, changing us from within even if we don't expect it.  Its not particularly abnormal for a practicing mage's IQ to be raised as a result of working with planetary intelligences, for example.

I've personally experienced this over the years, as working with Zazel, for example, has helped me to become better at discerning limitations, exposing them, or strengthening weaknesses, even if this wasn't the goal of the work.  It fits perfectly with His Saturnine nature.

That being the case, we can respond to this external stimuli in a couple of different ways; we can either use this to our benefit, or we can try to run from it and become a hermit. I would suggest that we should use this tendency to our benefit rather than pursue the goal of shielding ourselves from influences from others.  It is, ultimately, futile to do so, as we're trying to escape biologically-programmed functions which help us to interact.

I would recommend that you surround yourself with successful folk that you can look up to and interact.  I'd also recommend that you take it a step further and actually work with spirits that will benefit you in such a way.  If you're looking to cultivate a sense of inner peace, either work with Shiva and Ayra-Tara-Ma or have someone else do the work for you. Just bringing an entity into your sphere can have far-reaching effects for the same reasons listed above.

Furthermore, cut the bad apples off the tree.  Make the sacrifice and move on with your life if someone isn't benefiting you.  Don't sit their and stew; it WILL come back to bite you if you don't heed this advice.  Compassion is great until it drags you down; if it does, it needs to be managed like any other emotion or instinct.

The TL:DR version of this is illustrated pretty well by Hopsin in the following music video:

The long and short of it is that in order to grow, we have to cut loose the anchors that hold us down.  If you want to get somewhere in life, make whatever sacrifices you need to, so long as they'll actually get you somewhere.  If that means that you need to ask for help, realize this and then make it happen.

There are plenty of resources, spiritual teachers, spirit workers, teachers, therapists, business contacts, and potential friends who can help you to change your life for the better.  All you need to do is reach out and work to make that occur.

If you should desire such assistance, contact me and we'll talk. If you're not sure what to do about your situation, but just want to do something general to help fix it, I can probably assist.

Take care and thank you for reading.

Regards,

SE