Its a sad state of affairs when folks hit rock bottom - one I've been hearing more and more about over the past few months. It seems the tax-time slowdown was more than a good chunk of society could handle, and now there are more than a few of you looking to pick yourself back up.

I hope to provide some guidance here, as that can feel like a pretty miserable place to be.

The image I've chosen above is a fair means of capturing the essence of descending to your nadir. When one achieves that state of being at the lowest point in their arc, its easy to get side-tracked by despair and feel like the whole world's against you and you'll never get out.

This state of mind is something of a trick, though.

I know, it sounds cliche, but think about it: When you finally hit that point where everything else has been stripped away, you're finally clean. You aren't clothed in finery that traps you, and you're not really bound to anyone or anything. You've given all there is to give and others have taken all there is to take.

From that point forward, you've got optionality. You can cultivate brand new means of generating wealth, making yourself happy, and choose to start over if the thought appeals to you.

So embrace the Fool when you seek to restart your journey. He's a pretty solid advisor when the going gets rough, as he's endured it all before. ;)

Be well,
​SE

In this time of need and financial desperation, I've been noticing that there's been a great deal of interest in getting out-from-under bad debts, vocational entrapment, and in finding better financial straits. Knowing this, I'd like to help.

In this post, I'll be providing several means of helping yourself to achieve success. Some of these things will be magical, whereas others will be somewhat more mundane. Many float somewhere in the middle of those two extremes, as magic is amazing at helping you to grease the wheels.

For those of you who are familiar with Geoff Gray-Cobb, Elubatel is something of an old hand at success rites. Whether E appears to you as male or female, it's essence is powerful and generally pretty positive.

I highly recommend printing this sigil out and lighting a daily offertory candle to Elubatel. It certainly can't hurt.

Jason Miller talks about this a lot in his work, and I feel similarly: offerings are very important. Its like giving thanks for the help you've gotten from others, only it can include spirits too.

To use an analogy, If you're living in a neighborhood and one of your neighbors is generous & friendly, and another is sort of a stingy jerk, you're more likely to help the nice guy out when he needs it. Offerings make you the nice neighbor, and so they really can't be overused in my experience.

Whether you decide to light incense for the spirits around you or pour booze out for them, take the time to do so. Over a few weeks you'll likely notice a substantial shift in your life.

Yep, I know. For some of you, this is the scourge of all that is holy. We frequently don't want to take physical actions to sort ourselves out, but this is an important one.

Take the time to dust off your home, clean your magical goods, reconsecrate them, and remove extraneous crap from your home.

Do you have a bunch of stuff you no longer use, or clothes you no longer wear? Time to take those things to Goodwill (or another such establishment) to donate them, as the very act of donating things can be seen as an offering too.

The less clutter and distraction you have, the better. You don't want to have more & more stuff getting in the way of your focus, as it screws up your energy flow and messes with your juju.

Once you've cleared out your home, its time to do the same thing with your mind.

As time allows, find yourself a comfortable place to relax, sit yourself down with some pleasant-smelling incense and retreat inwards. Close your eyes, stop moving your lips, and just watch what comes to the surface.

Don't try to interact with these things. Just take note of them and keep a journal.

Generate some good-will and aim it at yourself. This might seem like derpy new-age material, but you're a complex organism with a great deal going on. You need to take care of you, just as much as you're inclined to take care of others.

Put another way, generate some good vibes for yourself. Light candles with the intention of looking after yourself. It wouldn't be wrong to view blessings as offerings for the self. :)

If you believe in a higher power, work with Saints, or otherwise have a specific Divine avenue you'd like to use to better your life, backing your work up with prayer is a good way to go.

Pray for happiness, monetary success, and financial health. Those are good goals that most spirits aren't going to take issue with.

For those of you that are like me and secretly love sigil magic (well, not so secretly here), yep, I'm telling you to play around and have it.

In doing all of the above things, you'll have primed yourself for having the mental attitude necessary for magic, so sigils are a good way to go. Here are a few to get you started:

If you can't be positive, be neutral.

Its a simple enough statement, but take it to heart. The calmer you are about your situation, the more available you'll be when opportunity strikes.

Blessings,
SE

As mentioned previously in my post about Timing, astrological happenings can have a major impact on everyone.  How much of an impact and what sort of impact any heavenly changes and transits have upon an individual depends largely upon their personal natal chart, so some folks are bound to be more heavily swayed by an event than others.

Before I proceed further, its worth acknowledging the facts that by & large, astrology is a divisive concept: some love it and swear by it, others hate it and call it silly nonsense. Some fall right in between, and are admittedly rather agnostic where such concepts are concerned. Let there be no mistake: astrology and the associated changes are crucial to understand.  Like it or not, you're at the butt end of a giant cosmic joke where the aforementioned are concerned, and you can either acknowledge and use it or simply be used by those changes. You're never going to free yourself from their influence entirely, as its going to mess with you even if you don't want it to.

Modern science may well say its junk "science", but the reality is that Police Stations staff more officers during the full moon because they've seen this in action. Same goes for Emergency Rooms. If you think this is nonsense, pull up a lunar calendar and watch just how nuts people go during the Full and New moons. Observation trumps "science", in my experience, as there are plenty of things that we simply do not understand at this juncture. Give it another 30 years and we may then have a bead on why these events effect us so.

Having called as much into the limelight, the reason for my post today is that we are currently undergoing a Mercury retrograde. It started as of September 17th and will end on October 9th. Between now and about two weeks from the end date on the 9th of October, you're going to be dealing with the effects thereof.

We're also dealing with a Pluto, Uranus, Chiron, and Neptune retrogrades at this time. That's why things have been uniquely unhinged for the past while.

What that means is relatively simple: when a planet goes retrograde the darker side of its influence comes out to play and the positives get put on the backburner.  The Universe is in a constant balance of woeful and wealful influences, so right now we're dealing with the wealful influences of Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn. We're dealing with the woeful influences of Mercury, Neptune, Uranus, Pluto and Chiron. 

Taking a break from the recent discussions on energy work, it feels appropriate to discuss timing from a magical perspective. It seems its a subject of little discussion.

All things in life have their rhythms, and each of them is cyclical.  Sometimes observing those rotations is crucial to being successful, and others its not all that useful.

In martial arts, one frequently performs drills to get in the habit of observing how another person moves and reacts. One such drill I've used in the past involves staying in contact with a sparring partner as he moves his arms and attempts to attack using short movements. A simple version of this can be found in this video below:

It might look a bit silly, but the purpose of the drill is to get into a flow that speeds up or slows down according to the movements of your training partner. This is one of many such drills, as I've seen the same sort of thing used in Tai Chi, Kenpo, Brazillian Jiu Jitsu, Karate, Kali, and several other arts.

On a spiritual level, it works the same way. One can learn to observe how others flow in order to better help them, for example.  When healing a target, understanding when they sleep, how long they sleep, when they eat, how they respond to those things, and how their internal clocks tick can be used to time work more effectively. Setting a healing rite to occur at the same moment a person eats a tonic-filled meal can be an incredibly potent practice that takes a great deal of work out of the arrangement long-term.

The same concept can be applied to the external rhythms seen in nature through astrology. Understanding lunar phases, the movement of the Behenian Stars, and the transits of the planets can be incredibly potent when applied to workings.  On a simple level, the Moon's status can be used to cause an effect to grow (while the Moon is waxing) or to decrease (when the Moon is waning). This logic applies to any and all states within the Universe so long as they effect what you are attempting to work with.

Keeping this in mind, becoming aware of how those transits and changes affect you is very important as well.  I can't tell you how many times a client has done something harmful as a result of being impacted by a retrograde they didn't know about. Less frequently, sometimes folks get crazy lucky as a result of making a business decision at the right moment, and it catapults them ahead.

Just like watching the stock market, using those energy fields appropriately is a matter of observation and wisdom, so I suggest you start paying attention.

So too, when performing magical work for yourself, this can be useful. If you know what's coming around the mountain in a social situation, you can use it to your advantage. Let's say, for example, a woman you're interested in is going to be at a party and you know you're going to try to ask her out later on in the evening. Blessing her day and then glamouring yourself such that she's more inclined to lower her guard around you can be just enough to make her more likely to pay attention to you and want to make her day even better by acquiescing to your request for a date. Someone's going to be more likely to say yes when the opportunity is seen as positive and they've been having a good day.

Likewise, doing things before their time can sometimes be harmful.  Doing work to get a promotion when none exists, for example, can get you a bunch of attention from your superiors during a financial pinch point. If you get that attention and then don't rise to the occasion, you could well find your job in jeapardy.  

Just some musings to consider.

Be well folks,
SE

Since I've been asked a number of times about vampirism and its application, etc., I thought I'd talk about it here. I've discussed it some on StudioArcanis in the past, and it seems that its brought up a fair deal of interest.

For those who are unaware of what vampirism is, it is essentially the practice of feeding off of the energy of others.  What one does with that energy is a matter of personal choice and one's needs. 

Traditionally, one stricken with vampirism requires the energy to survive.  The use of another's life force is a means of prolonging their own existence. Most folks don't work that way, but there's exceptions to any ruke.

Vampires can be born, made, or the traits can be adopted.  Those are listed in order of respective rarity, with those who are born into it being the most rare.

Those who are born into it, either with some defect or simply some internal need to feed for the sake of internal growth, work differently than those who have been made or who've simply adopted the practice. Their bodies function differently, both on a physical and spiritual level. The energy they're required/programmed to siphon works as an internal mechanism that can automatically cause their bodies to heal more quickly, or can be funneled towards spirital or emotional growth. Its an automatic process that can be changed through will. Usually, those born into it become aware of their tendecies and can choose to modify them in a way that works for them.

Made vampires are usually turned into a sort of parasite through trauma.  Sexual assualt, severe bodily harm, or emotional breakdowns can cause such a thing to occur. They are generally broken individuals who have immense difficulty getting by, so instead of functioning in a normal or healthy way, they intentionally or unintentionally cause harm to others as a means of illicting a negative response. The energy of that negative response is siphoned from and then used to make the offending party feel better for a short while. These folks are often literal drains on society, be it financially, emotionally, or spiritually.  These guys are like the Westboro Baptist Church of the vampire world. They're basically trolls (no offense to the land spirit) who get off on being jerks.

My experiences with those sort of folks has been nothing other than unpleasant.

The third kind are those who make themselves into vamps.  Most techniques for it involve willfully siphoning energy from other targets, as if it were some sort of predatory game.  It can be used to help and heal others or hurt them, depending on the psychological needs and desires of the the vamp in question.

Moralizing aside, each of the three sorts can be harmful or helpful depending on their level of training, their skillsets, and the intentions they decide to adopt. Any of the above can learn to take the pain from others, for example, and then that energy can be transmuted such that it inspires healing and recuperation from whatever damage they've suffered from.

On the flip side, its possible to simply drain a target of their life force. Done long enough by someone with enough skill, one could potentially kill a target.

There are benefits and drawbacks to those who choose to utilize such practices.  While the siphoned energy can be used for personal growth, healing, glamours, protections, and other forms of magic,  there are quite a few risks.  The biggest potential sources of trouble manifest in the form of spiritual diseases. If you were to choose to siphon from the wrong person, you could take on their illnesses - for example, working on a cancer patient could cause you to wind up getting cancer. The same could be said for STDs, chakra issues, emotional problems, spiritual damage, and so on and so forth.

Its an incredibly risky set of practices, especially if you don't know what you're doing. It highlights the need for self control, as most vamps who come to me for help do so because in the process of draining others they've hurt themselves. When things get to that point, they can't heal on their own.

That risk is the reason why I don't teach others how to use such techniques.  The cost is frequently too high for them in the end.

Regards,
SE

Yesterday, I discussed some of the potential uses of energy work. Went over its flexibility and a few applications. I also alluded to the fact that there are some risks. I intend to discuss those here.

When mulling over the particulars of any sort of magic, it's always wise to consider the pros and cons. By factoring in both sides of the coin and weighing the benefits and the drawbacks, you can come to a decision worth acting on (or, potentially, discarding a plan of action should the risks prove to be too great).

Bearing this in mind, as any form of magic has its benefits, energy work, too, has its potential drawbacks.

There's a phrase I've heard time & time again when learning from spirits: "what can harm can also heal". Logically, what can heal can also harm, so the equivocation goes both ways. This night not seem terribly important, but not considering this fact is a good way to get yourself in hot water.

When dealing with any magic, you're channeling forces that potentially may be outside of your control or aptitude. As with anything you eat, anything you draw through yourself changes you all the same. That's why those exercises I wrote about previously are so damned crucial.

Knowing this, consider what you're doing when you cultivate ill-intentioned energy.  If you are what you eat or channel, the reality is tha tyou're basically putting liquid decay in your spiritual, emotional, and physical bodies.  That malice will wear on you, and most folks aren't able to sort themselves out very easily after working with such things. That's why demonic magic, vampirism, blood magic, or other sorts of baneful work tends to cause problems on both ends of the equation.

To make matters worse, its addictive.  If you're emotionally invested in doing the deed, you're going to obsess, focus on, and bathe in that muck.  As Buddha once said, holding on to anger to hurt another is like carrying a hot coal for the same reason.  Bear this in mind, as it will mess with you.

How much will depend on how good you are at letting go and cleansing.  Some things will never wash out of your soul - that may sound melodramatic, but its true nonetheless. Keep it up long enough and you'll require the services of a sin eater like myself to begin to feel better. Sometimes its worth it, sometimes its not - up to you to make the decision. Remember, this isn't an ethical decision, so much as one that has everything to do with your well-being and long-term survival.

I've seen plenty go from magically predating upon others to harming themselves. Many develop psych issues that seriously hamper their ability to be happy or "normal".

Regards,
Chris

As discussed in my previous post on the subject of energy work (Henceforth EW), it can be an incredibly useful tool. As with all tools, however, its use depends on the skill of the one wielding it.  One doesn't need to be a plumber to use a wrench, but they do need a bit of know-how to use it appropriately. Put another way, any person can use a knife, but a delivery man is going to use a blade differently from a chef.  Becoming well-learned in the art of using said knife is one of the many pieces of learning to use this art effectively. Like being a chef, magic through EW is more of an art than it is a science.

The applications are largely endless, but getting to the point where you're able to successfully apply this tool appropriately requires a great deal of development. Some will have a better knack for it than others too, so learning to take stock of your skillsets so you know what to work on is crucial.


Following is a brief overview of the faculties you'll need to develop to effectively utilize energy work:

• Cultivate internal and external awareness. What you feel and see and the intersection of those two types of awareness will drive what you do. What you perceive is key, as perception drives response.
  
  Ideally, you'll want to get to the point where you can shift your focus with ease, as being aware of what's going on within you, being able to become aware of what's up in someone else, and learning to notice what happens as a result of the interaction between yourself and someone else will be incredibly useful.
  
  
• Cultivate the ability to focus intently without being easily swayed by distractions. This is hard, but it is one of the most important skills to learn here.
  
  
• Develop your physical body. As you do so, you'll be better able to manipulate the energies inside of you. Once you've learned how to do that, you'll be better able to work the flows outside of you.
  
  
• Read incessantly.  The more you know about a variety of things, the better able you'll be to apply the aforementioned points in a useful way down the road.
  

This will not be an easy road to follow.  You're going to be training a whole set of muscles that haven't been used all that much. Its easy to make a great deal of progress with a little bit of effort, but you can expect to be mentally "sore" after working through this.

Regards,
SE

For those of you who have followed along the set of posts written recently, by now you should have some idea of how deep the magical rabbit hole can go. If you followed along, you'll have more of an idea of how you can mix and match various magical techs in to get a result.

Protection is an easy subject to start with as its all a matter of how you handle your business.  If things go wrong or you didn't do enough work, or you didn't handle the work properly, the effects are pretty obvious. If you handled the workings appropriately and all went well, life should improve for you.  The proof is in the pudding...or, in this case, the proof is in the response.

Having said as much, now that we've covered herbs, prayers, spirits, etc. and their uses with regard to defensive magic, we can now get into the subject of protection through the use of stones and metals that are amiable to that end.

Like plants, minerals have their uses too.  Each has their own properties and associations, both elemental and planetary. As such, they too are building blocks that can be used to spin your spells.

Protection is all a matter of preparation and awareness.  Being certain that you're covered is foolish, so keeping your head on a swivel is important. When you're aware, you can be proactive and be sure to do the needful long before its ever actually needed.  Tends to let life work out a bit better that way.

We covered preparation in the last post, so this one is all about awareness, which is something of a dirty word to "modern occultists" in that its connected to meditation.  Its a simple tool, but so few people feel that they can actually do it.  I think its difficulty is centered in the fact that it isn't a complicated tool, and for whatever reason, humans love to overcomplicate things.

I've realized I've been a bit lax in sharing pertinent ideas and practices here, over the past few months, so I thought it time to post a bit.  With that in mind, I've been contemplating & experimenting with the idea of using magical grids, mandalas, and so forth when doing work for quite some time now. The idea first struck me many years ago, and I lazily pursued it at the time, only to have my interest rekindled by Gordon over at Rune Soup when he talked about Sigil Shoaling. This pattern of pursuing the idea, then losing sight of it, then pursuing it again has repeated on and on for many years now, and so I am making a conscious effort to put it into practice once again.

As I do so, I am finding that several things happen. Firstly, the vibrational feel of the working picks up considerably.  Secondly, this causes results to manifest more quickly.  And thirdly, it just feels right; something clicks into place and suddenly the individual workings that felt very much alive to start rapidly develops palpable depth and breadth. The workings begin to dance with each other, develop their own music, and then go on to live as if they're villagers that have shuffled out into the world.

Incidentally, since I started doing this, I now get asked if I'm a musician every other day or so.  I love and adore music, but lack the aptitude to create it outside of the creation of sung or whispered charms and such.

Getting back to it, grids, as I'll call them here, can be crafted and shaped in any number of ways with whatever materials you so choose.  You can use numerology, sacred geometry, aesthetic balance, elemental associations, astrological meanings, tarot cards, playing cards, bones, runes, psephoi, colors, and so on and so forth until you've built up a truly impressive and massive magical grid (how's that for a tongue twister, eh?).

Above is one such grid that I use in my home alongside other workings.  When inclined to do so, I often elect to branch out from what you see above and connect this grid to smaller gridded workings like you see below.

The possibilities, potentialities, and arrangements are pretty much limitless in theory.  In reality, they are limited by space and materials. In my case, I limit the size of the workings to 2 altar tops' worth for the sake of not making too much of a mess. :)

When setting up such a system, its useful to take the intention, available materials, and available space into account.  Don't go above and beyond what you can feasibly control, lest it bite you on the rear end at a later date.

I suggest starting small, first by considering the numerical value you want to utilize.  I am partial to letter-based systems of divination a la psephoi (aka the Greek Alphabet Oracle) and the runic Futharks, planetary, and elemental magic, so I tend to arrange grids around those ideas.

If I were to make a fire-related grid for spiritual illumination, I would utilize the numbers 3 and 7, as they strike me as being active and relatively fiery in nature.  I'd utilize 7 different types of materials, be they sigils (Fire symbols from various books, the tattva for fire, picture of a salamander), oils (Fire From Heaven, Bend Over, Commanding), vegetebilia (Cinquefoil, ash, Blessed Thistle, Devil's Claw) mineralia (obsidian, glass, tempered metal, or fire agate), candles (red, orange, jet blue), charms (against Evil Eye, dragon pendant, all seeing eye), animalia (lawfully and humanely harvested bones, sinew, misc. viscera from salamanders, geckos, fire-bellied toads, coyotes, rattlesnakes, vultures, scorpions, mountain lions), uttered or written prayers, energy work, and so forth. I tend to use whatever is available to me - you may or may not have certain limitations, so use whatever you're comfortable with.

Were I to utilize Lunar magic, I'd do the same thing with the numbers 5 and 8. For Jupiter work, I'd use 4 and 7, and so on and so forth, mixing and matching to my heart's content.

With any luck, this post will have provided you with plenty of ideas for magical workings that you could do in the future.

Enjoy your Saturday, folks!

SE