kalagni

13
Aug
2011

Failure is the Sign of the Magickian


Failure a sign of a true magickian. Perhaps not by the literal meaning of the word, but more by my own ideals of what a magickian should embody. Some might wonder if an ideal magickian could fail, but to me the ideal magickian is not omnipotent or omniscient, meaning failure can and should be part of the picture.
To see why an ideal magickian fails, one must think about why a “flawed” magickian would not fail.
One reason why a magickian may never fail is a lack of critical or detached thinking. If one is too attached and/or lacks critical thinking, then one would be unable to view results as they are, or could convince themselves otherwise. This leads to another fault, the inability to be honest, perhaps with others, but more importantly the inability to be honest with the self.
Perhaps the most important reason for a lack of failure is a lack of ambition. The path of the magickian is one of change and growth. If a magickian attains a level of accomplishment where they no longer fail, it means they have stopped pushing their boundaries and abilities. A magickian without failure has stopped trying to climb the mountain, and merely enjoys their view.
The contrast to these faults makes up the ideal magickian; someone detached and critical enough to view the world and their results honestly; someone honest enough to admit their failures, even if only to themselves; and perhaps most importantly an ideal magickian does not stop trying to achieve more and attain higher and deeper levels of understanding.
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” ~Albert Einstein

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
26
Jul
2011

Sometimes You Need A Little Psychic In Your Reading


This weekend had an odd experience for me, trusting myself, doubting myself, repeating in fun circles. Normally when I do tarot or astrology sessions with someone I’m not there to be a psychic. I’m not Madame Gazonga who tells you many mysteries. No, I’m there to help you out and I can’t help you if I’m playing a guessing game with you while you are amazed (or not) by my psychic powers, I prefer to be practical and useful. If you want insight to a relationship, tell me that, tell me a bit about it as I ask, don’t expect me to deal the cards and manage to pull everything out of the aether for you. It’s not that it is impossible, but if I’m spending all my time getting information from ‘out there’ I don’t have the time to help you here.
That said, sometimes you have to put a little psychic in your reading. I met up with a repeat client this weekend, and she knows my policy, yet when I sat down with her I had this strange urge and told her “I don’t want to know what the problem is, just give me feedback when I ask for it.” I then proceeded to do the type of reading I hate where I’m there just going by the cards, getting next to nothing back from her. I’m not watching her, not having her talk, it’s just me, the cards, and whatever lies between us. It was a relationship issue (in this case that actually was surprising, it’s always been career advice), so I talked about the nature of the relationship and the breakup, before even getting confirmation and once I covered the basics I got her to confirm and correct the reading, as a few interpretations were a touch off.
I continued and after a few cards of “I’m not sure what this means” I had a light bulb go off, and I looked at her. I decided to ask and say something I’d never consider bringing up in a tarot reading. I had a moment of ethical hesitation wondering if I was crossing a line. After that disclaimer I asked her “Do you think he’s sociopathic?” Now, I have some background in social work, and she has a psychology degree, so we both have a grounding in what sociopathy is in a technical sense, not media portrayals. Also, knowing what I do of her and her background, I knew she’d be able to work with the question, regardless of if I was right or not, I can’t think of another client I’d bring up such an impression so clearly with. I felt so incredibly awkward asking such a question, but she nodded and said not only did she suspect it, but the ex’s mother and friend had suspected that if not sociopathic, he lacked empathy, boundaries, and social mores.
The entire thing was surreal; here I was playing the psychic and giving out what seemed to be very sketchy and dangerous information. After we were done our session I mulled over what possessed me to act this way. It dawned on me: despite knowing the situation she was still attached, or charmed, by this guy, trying to paint him in the best light even after saying the hell he put her and his family through. Despite what she suspected, his family and friend suspected and having me psychically pull it from the cards, she still wanted to make him a good guy, or a tragic hero. If she had told me any of that before I brought it up, she could have easily discounted it later, used my foreknowledge to rationalize herself back to “It can’t be true, he really is a good guy.” What she needed to hear, was a completely cold and upfront assessment with no room for her to think I was feeding off of what she told me. She needed that out of left field confirmation about the danger she could be in, and she wouldn’t have had that same sense of truth and urgency without me pulling the story and information from nowhere. If I had not flat-out said it, without prompting, she wouldn’t have taken the seriousness of the issue to heart.
I’m just letting this serve to remind me to trust my instinct, and understand that sometimes people actually do need me to be more psychic and less consultant.
(Note: I’m not trying to attack sociopaths here, they’re not all “bad” people, but this situation and her state did not make her a good pairing with him.)

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
12
Jul
2011

Languages and Magick: Angels, Demons, and Drunken Scribes


So last time I rambled on the importance of specific languages in calculating the name of an angel. It had a lot of open-ended and circular problems. Are languages important, why, and which ones? It led to some interesting discussion in comments, twitter, and an email. (At first I was confused how this person got my email, until I remembered I put it on my About page, just so people could get in contact with me without having to post a comment. I guess my brain is too full remembering The Raven and Pi to 23 digits to pay attention to what I do with my blog.) This is more of me working out my thoughts in writing, and hoping for some good ideas.
Now the process of calculating an angels name surely complicates matter and if you just stick with already named angels and demons that will make it much better. I remember when I first got into spirit work I had this strong instinct that by knowing the name of a spirit I had influence over it, by knowing their Name I could control them. Over years I found this idea represented in Babylonian/Akkadian/Sumerian magick, in Egyptian magick, western Ceremonial Magick, even in Vedic and Buddhist magick. Names have Power. Along with this is the parallel idea that Sigils/Seals have the same control/influence. Simply I’d say a name is auditory and a sigil is visual but they are the same thing.
Traditions may argue how much power and influence the name or symbol gives you, but they largely agree that they do. So that makes this a lot simpler than calculating a name, here you have the name provided for you, and a seal, and that makes it simple… as long as you never look at another text. When I received my Goetia of Dr. Rudd I was surprised by how many of the names and seals were close but not the same as my Mathers version. I had come to understand a lot of this magick through the doctrine of names. But what did it mean when Halphas/Malthus and Raum have their names and seals rendered differently? If my power over Malthus or at least my ability to contact or communicate with em is based upon my possession of eir seal and name how did I accomplish anything if I had it wrong? I can’t reach you if I dial the wrong number, can you reach a spirit with the wrong name/seal? This preoccupied me more than some people’s focus and questioning of the inclusion/absence of the Shem ha’mephorash angels.
I was able to wrap myself around this, and that became less of a concern until I realized it wasn’t just names and seals changing, but spirits were being stolen, or split, and combined. This opens up a magickal can of worms on its own, but I want to focus on names here. If the name is the connection and control of a spirit, what happens when a name of one spirit gets applied to another apparently unrelated entity? Or more curious to me, when a spirit’s name and existence was completely a mistake? Halphas above is a good example, Halphas is the 38th spirit of the Goetia and Malphas is the 39th and they share similar abilities and may have been a scribal error initially. Or Berith the 28th spirit of the Goetia whose name is actually the Hebrew term for the covenant between YHWH and the people of Israel (Belanger 70) and was probably included in Christian occult texts because they knew this “Berith” had power, but didn’t know who (or what) it was, so obviously a demon.
So where do these entities and power come from? Is there something inherent in the word and what it represents? While not a demon the covenant between YHWH and the Israelites is arguably a powerful thing (if you believe it) and maybe the name taps into that? Maybe it’s the collective attention (fear) of generations of priests and magickians that give these names and seals form and force, even if they’re drifting off of the original. But how does that apply when the name of someone gets applied to someone else, or a name from nothing but a mistake? Is this an issue that transcends the language issue? Absolutely but it is the naming that has me wonder, because if names and seals matter, then how come they work when they’re wrong?
Again I have no answers to offer, but in traditions that value the power of names and seals, how can we reconcile the fact that these change, or are added, misappropriated, or scribal errors? I’ve been leaning toward the idea that it isn’t what you use, but the process, but I’m still working some of that out in my life and in my head.
Source:
Belanger, Michelle. Dictionary of Demons. Llewellyn, 2010. Print.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
04
Jul
2011

Languages and Magick: Alphabets, Orders, and the Naming of Angels


Language and magick; there is so much I could write and ramble about this combination that it will take several posts. Names, linguistic drift, spoken languages, dead languages, when languages have power and why; every time I sit down to write or think about this I come up with more ideas.
For now I’m going to focus on alphabets and names. I recently finished updating my Genius Name Calculator (more on it in an upcoming post) and I know what you’re thinking “Kalagni, you’re already a genius and you already have a name, what do you need this calculator for?” That’s not what you were thinking? Could have humoured me at least…
What I’m referring to is what gets called the Angel of the Nativity and is often connected to the idea of your Genius or Daemon. Renaissance magick has a method of calculating the name of this spirit from your birth chart. If you’re interested you can find it in Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book III Chapter 26, or wait for my post with the calculator. Traditionally this is done in Hebrew, so I made my calculator in Hebrew. After all, it’s a magickal language isn’t it? I shared the calculator in this early form on an elist and people were appreciative, but asked for other languages. While Hebrew is traditional it isn’t uncommon to see this done in Greek and two different methods of doing it in English are popular too. Now for the rest of this post to matter you’re required to assume this method works, that you can find out a valid and workable Angel name from this process, so at least keep that idea in mind for now, if you assume the method has no validity than this is just a moot ramble.
So now you have one method, which you can substitute four different languages for and you end up with four different names. Using the time of this writing as an example the name of our Angel is Kavatzalah in Hebrew, Gochochopa in Greek, Xaqedije in English, or Majihats in another way of doing it in English. Which is correct? Are they all correct? Xaqedije sounds Enochian almost.Will any language work? I had someone ask for this in Sanskrit, which while representing a totally different culture, philosophy, and magickal system, I can’t give a reason why Sanskrit isn’t just as valid as Greek, Hebrew, or English. Especially as Sanskrit is also seen as a very magickal language.
Now one theory is that all of these are correct, loosely it is like brother, frère, frater, bruder, four words/names but one meaning. If that’s the case I can stop wondering, go home, and sleep soundly, it just means Kavatzalah is the Hebrew from of Majihats, simple. While I don’t deny the possibility of this answer it does seem a bit too easy to me and I don’t like that. (I tend to make life difficult by rejecting the simple initially)
Do we make languages magickal? I’ll touch on this in a later post, but the two most common languages for this process are Hebrew and Greek, languages that the magickians who used this system didn’t speak natively and associated with the magickal traditions they studied. Is it their investment in the magickal tradition of the Jews and Greeks that make these the languages magickal to use rather than English, German, or French? So is it the case that Greek and Hebrew aren’t inherently magickal, but the amount of time, both personally and historically, spent investing the languages with magick give them power?
With both Hebrew and Greek the alphabets are used in order when doing the calculations, yet both English methods don’t use the alphabetical order. Is that because English is too mundane and everyday to us as it is and requires some mystery added to it to become workable? (While the 26 letters of English and the order we have now is actually from the last two-hundred years most of the alphabet existed in roughly the same order before then, so I doubt that’s a factor) Perhaps it is something about our religious upbringing or ancestors, the languages important to our religion (in the Christian age of Europe that would be Greek, Hebrew, and Latin) or what our ancestors (however you view that) spoke, that this connection gave them the magick.
I don’t know, sorry if folks reading thought I might have a conclusion. I alternate between all languages are valid and there is something that makes one language more valid than the rest, but I don’t know if that language is always more valid or if it is personal. Perhaps Tibetan would work best for me, but Greek better for a friend and Enochian for another? Maybe the language doesn’t matter, but it is the process and effort that gives strength and reality to the Angel of the Nativity? The effort and process matters more than the tools? I don’t know, but I’d love to get thoughts on this. Hopefully in time I’ll have a follow up, as I’m strongly suspecting some friends are going to get roped into an experiment with this. I see myself distributing a bunch of Angel Names (and fake names) in my future.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
20
Jun
2011

Webshare Wait-It's-Monday: Enochic and Enochian Galore


Baraquiel- The Hanged Man

Baraquiel- The Hanged Man


Sorry for the lack of posting recently, I decided to run for an unplanned holiday on the family farm. I was going to share these links/stories later, but as one of them is time sensitive I’ll do so a little early and with that said it might as well be the link I start with.
My friends Michelle and Jackie have been working on a tarot deck. Michelle’s been scheming it for about a decade and if I remember my timelines right Jackie’s been painting for about five years. The Watcher Angel Tarot is a reinterpretation of the themes of the tarot through the legend of the Watcher Angels as told in the Book of Enoch. The deck is finally done and presales start this Tuesday (June 21st). Currently you can pre-order the deck as collector and supporter decks on Jackie’s art site to help foot the start-up cost, and the deck will be released October 21st, just in time for the end of the world, and that’s not a coincidence. On Monday and Tuesday at 1830 (EST) Michelle and Jackie will be doing a twitter to youtube question answer session about the deck, so if you’re interesting and/or want to learn more go to Jackie’s site or participate in the chat to hear about the deck from the people driving it.
Damon Albarn (Gorillaz) has written an opera ‘Doctor Dee’ on the life of the historic occultist John Dee, founder of Enochian magick. I’m actually really amused and intrigued with the idea. He says he will focus on the occult practices of the good doctor, as he feels that part of his life has been hidden from history. No mention if wife-swapping for YHWH will be in the opera as of yet.
While totally different, this just couldn’t help but remind me of The Enochian Keys Opera by Valentin Dubovskoy from several years back, which I had interesting results with.
Next month sees the release of El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, a video game loosely based on the Book of Enoch (I’m seeing a theme in my links, this wasn’t planned). The game has you taking the role of Enoch the Prophet trying to stop seven fallen angels and the flood that will destroy mankind if they are not stopped. I have neither of the platforms it is on (PS3 or 360) but I’ve been debating a PS3 for a while (I don’t really play video games) and I think this might be a good inspiration. A PS3 for my spiritual research, that’s reasonable, right?
Edit: I just found a video trailer of the game. It looks good to me, and has an interesting artistic style.

An Orthodox Jewish Court has condemned a dog to death by stoning. The belief is the dog that invaded the court room was the reincarnation of a secular lawyer the judges had previously cursed to be reborn as a dog for insulting them. What I found most interesting is that it is a public admission of the belief in reincarnation (which while it has some historical basis in Judaism is a fringe belief currently) but also the belief that the judges have the capacity to use a curse to direct someone’s next incarnation and that it could include animals such a dogs. I was under the impression that Jewish beliefs in reincarnation was limited to humans, but animals and cursing incarnations, both are new tricks to me.
Lastly, and really really not least is Rob’s Basic Laws, Rules, and Rights of Magic an absolutely brilliant article on…well just that, the laws, rules, and rights of magick. It’s a long read, and you definitely need to take some time to work through it but it is worth it. I probably only disagreed with one or two points, and not in horribly strong ways, I really recommend you give it a read if you haven’t seen it yet. It matched up with some of my own conceptions on the laws/rules and made me question and debate others.
That being said I leave these links with you, and hopefully return to blogging proper soon.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
29
May
2011

Planetary Balancing Ritual Set



Our body/mind/spirit is maintained by a delicate and unique balance of forces; too little is just as bad as too much, and one imbalance leads to another. While this is a philosophy I gleaned from the notion of lüng (rlung) in Tibetan Buddhism I find it applies to other forces in our lives.
This philosophy bleeds a lot into my magickal work, which led me to “create” a ritual of Planetary Balancing, which is really just a sequence of existing planetary rituals for a specific end. I just sent this over to a friend who needed it and decided I’d post about it here. Our psyche and our lives are composed of a balancing act of planetary forces, we might not be aware of it all the time, but it’s always at play. The problem is –like the lüng in Tibetan Buddhism– these forces can become unbalanced, too much Saturn, not enough Venus, and this spirals your internal and external world out of control. It may start with one force, but it spreads, too little of one force leaves an “energy surplus” that has to then go elsewhere, then you continue trying to compensate for having too much or too little in certain areas and it just gets worse. It seems everything starts going wrong; your desires/impulses seem off, your focus is wrong, and the world around you just doesn’t want to cooperate, it has the same appearance as bad luck or a curse in many cases. This ritual is relatively easy to perform requiring time and a willingness to wake up early more than anything. It’s nothing star-shattering, but it’s useful.
Now I suppose if you were focused and astute you could simply work on the specific problem force, but I find most of the time if it is getting bad it is best to start fresh. Sometimes when your diet is out of whack and your body isn’t reacting well and it can be tricky to get your diet and body back to normal while your body is still struggling with whatever is wrong. What do you do? You fast, you detox. Eliminate everything, and slowly reintroduce it back into your life. This is the basic idea behind my Planetary Balancing. In regards to the process of the various rituals of the pentagrams and hexagrams I won’t give instructions on them, if you don’t know them, they’re everywhere online and in books.
I personally start this ritual on Saturday. Any day of the week would work, but I find the order of Saturn – Sun – Moon very effective to get things moving, this is related to my personal symbol set of the layers of Self. Dawn brings about the same planetary hour as the force of the day, in this case Day of Saturn, Hour of Saturn. At dawn perform the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram and then the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Hexagram for the force of the day. The LBRP helps clear you out internally while the LBRH clears out the force of Saturn (in this case) in your life. The idea is to remove your internal mental/magickal detritus and the planetary detritus from you and your sphere/life. You’re flushing yourself and your world of these forces that may be unbalanced. Repeat this process for the entire week, obviously changing the planetary attribute with the day.
On the following Saturday (or whatever date you started on) wake up well before dawn and perform, in the same order as the week, all seven LBRP/LBRH. I haven’t tested this part to see if it is strictly necessary (which is unlike me I admit), but logistically to me it makes sense. Over the course of the week even though you’ve banished a force parts of it can begin to flow into your life again (nature abhors a vacuum), and the balance/compensation issues appear again. So I feel it is wise to give yourself and your sphere one final banishing of all the planetary forces.
Once dawn has arrived perform the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram followed by the appropriate Lesser Invoking Ritual of the Hexagram. I tested this and feel this is a better combination than two invoking rituals; the focus should be on invoking and reuniting with the planetary forces so the only invocation should be regarding these attributes. Again the LBRP clears out your internal detritus and establishes a baseline, a blank slate, or a vacuum even. Then you invoke the appropriate planetary force and since you are blank there is nothing to interfere with it flowing into you properly, nothing to disturb it or set it out of balance. Repeat this process for the entire week, again obviously changing the planetary attribute with the day.
On the following Saturday (or whenever) wake up for dawn and perform all seven LBRP/LIRH. Same as before, haven’t tried the ritual without it, but it makes logical sense to me. A week, in my experience, isn’t enough to totally unbalance a force, so your Saturn won’t be off-kilter by Sunday, but it is enough that things can warp a little and a little warp down the line can lead to a bigger instability. I think it’s helpful to give the planetary forces one last boost to balance them all out.
So over the course of two weeks you zero-out the planetary influences and slowly reintroduce them into your life, bringing them into balance. Now I’m sure you could achieve all this in less than two weeks, so why do I do it this way? For me at least, it is intense. I can’t say why it’s not like this when I do either LBRP-LBRH or LBRP-LIRH for other purposes, but this hits my life hard. Counter-intuitively the days I banish a planetary force are filled with those influences in positive active ways. I think it is as though my life is “using up” that last little bit of planetary fuel to clear it out. On the other hand the days I invoke a planetary force are filled with all sorts of little annoying mishaps related to the influences, like a series of retrogrades, even though the Sun and Moon don’t have retrogrades. It is as though the forces are kind of “clunky” when restarting from scratch. So you could try shortening it, but I find two weeks is a good processing period and spreads out the highs and lows that accompany this for me.
Flush out all the imbalanced forces introduce them back without the imbalance and instability and your mind and your life tend to reorganize. Personally I don’t do this often, maybe once a year, twice at absolute most, when I feel things are going wrong and there is no reason I can find for it. I perform this and by the end my life is back on track.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
18
May
2011

Kalagni's Tree of Life


Or: Let’s not sqabalah about the details.
Why hello there synchronicity, I suppose you want me to write about my attributions for the Tree of Life and why I redesigned parts. I say this because I was away at a convention for the weekend and when discussing tarot and the Tree of Life I ended up explaining to someone that I use a different model of my own creation. Part of it I’ve debated may have to do with blinds, and when catching up on my blogs saw a link to an old post by Ananael Qaa about blinds and a post by Robert (referencing Ananael Qaa in another circumstance) about his model of the Tree and worlds. So since I lacked my Tree to show my friend this weekend I thought I might post about it and then various things have cropped up so I’ll take that as a sign to post about.
This entry will won’t be super-complicated but a basic interest/understanding of the Qabalah, especially with the Golden Dawn model, would definitely make this easier to process.
Now in order to discuss my Tree I should probably mention some other tweaks that relate to it. As a disclaimer I am not now nor have I been a member of the Golden Dawn, I may use a Golden Dawn inspired system of magick, but not the Golden Dawn system. So what I put forth admits the possibility that ideas were changed due to a lack of knowledge achieved in initiation.
I like the notion of the Golden Dawn colour system, I have a highly structured mind that likes systems. Unfortunately you can’t just toss a correspondence system at me because unless there is a logical system underneath it that I can recognize, I can’t make use of the system. “I was asked to memorise what I did not understand; and, my memory being so good, it refused to be insulted in that manner.” So saith Uncle Al. The Golden Dawn Qabalah has a logic underneath it which allows the basic framework to be expanded upon, this I like, but there are a few things I don’t like/understand.
I work with the Queen Colour scale, just to put the following discussion in context. The colour attributions of the Astrological signs make a great deal of sense. Starting with red in Aries you follow the colour wheel hitting the primary, secondary, and tertiary colours in the order of the spectrum, simple, and logical. The colour attributions of the Spheres on the Tree make sense. First triangle is shades, second triangle is primary colours, third triangle is secondary colour, makes sense, the which goes where makes sense too, but more in-depth than I need here. Then you get the planetary colours and…wait…what?
Now I know planetary forces shouldn’t be confused with the forces of the Sephiroth but if they’re associated why should they be different? Why should the colours of the planets and spheres of Sun and Mercury be reversed, or Jupiter and the Moon, and why is Saturn a fake colour? Perhaps there is a reason, perhaps it was overlooked, perhaps it’s a blind, I dislike it, and I find it useless. I know it follows the colour spectrum order when you put the planets in order of apparent motion, but I don’t think that’s enough for me to have it counter the colours of the Sephiroth. Not to de-power the GD colour system, but I view it as process of psychological training, you teach your mind to associate and categorize different forces. What happens when you try to get your brain to process and integrate illogical information? Any sci-fi fan can give you the answer, and while we may not be computers I don’t think it is useful to try to get this to integrate. Let me clearly state this is different than trying to integrate a paradox.
So to me the planets are the same colours as the spheres. The fact they match makes logical sense and when you look at the ruling planets of the astrological signs you get several of the signs to match up where they didn’t before (Mercury is orange and so is Gemini, Sun is yellow and so is Leo) and you get no new times where sign/planet do not match. Saturn is the only exception being black, but there is no black zodiac sign. This is simpler, requires your mind not to memorize a bunch of exceptions, and makes a lot of the associations match up better. If your mind is holding conflicting associations neither will be held to the conviction it could be held without that conflict. This means if your mind is holding conflicting views (especially within the same system) you can’t get the full force of your belief/understanding behind them, and this limits the focus/force you can put into your magick.
That being said moving onto the Tree I gave that disclaimer so people aren’t confused when they look at the colours of the Paths/Letters on the Tree. The layout of the letters on the Tree doesn’t make sense to me. Well it does, I get it, it is alphabetical, which makes sense with a language like English, where the letter C is the letter C is the letter C and there is nothing hidden/extra about it. Hebrew doesn’t work like that. There are three classes of letter: Mothers, Doubles, and Singles, of which there are three, seven, and twelve respectively. Qabalistically these letters are the three elements (no Earth), seven planets, and twelve astrological signs. There are three directions of Paths on the Tree: horizontal, vertical, and diagonal, of which there are three, seven, and twelve respectively.
This is the basis of my version of the Tree. Alphabetically makes little sense, it reveals nothing, seems lazy, and a touch unaware of the letters and their division/meanings. So why not make use of the way the structure of the Hebrew alphabet matches the structure of the Tree? I did, which leads me to this image.

Click for full size


This is one of the revisions I’ve made, and I’ve been working with it for quite a while now and enjoy it, more importantly I find it fruitful. Sometimes I worry it may be too balanced, or out of balance, you’ll notice red colours predominate on one side, and blue on the other.
The three horizontal paths become the three Mother letters, the three elementals, and also serve as the divider between Qabalistic worlds. Granted I’m not a fan of the model that the worlds are divided on the Tree, I much prefer a Jacob’s Ladder model (which I don’t see as much so maybe I’ll write on that at some point), but if I were to divide the Tree with the worlds, then the elemental/mother/horizontal paths lend themselves to it quite well. Atziluth (associated with Fire) is comprised of the upper three Spheres, with the Path of Shin (Fire) as the boundary. Briah (associated with Water) is comprised of the middle three Spheres with the Path of Mem (Water) and Tiphereth as the boundary. Yetzirah (associated with Air) is the bottom three Sphere with the Path of Aleph (Air) and Yesod as the boundary. Lastly Assiah is Malkuth.
For the seven vertical paths there are the seven double letters, the seven planets. In each case the planetary letter rises up from the sphere it is associated with, with the exception of Saturn/Tau which rises out of Malkuth instead of Binah. Two reasons: Binah has no vertical path above it, and Saturn/Tau plays double-duty in many systems also representing Earth, so rising out of Malkuth the Earth-Plane.
The twelve diagonal paths were the hardest to work on, and have been through the most revisions. After trying a lot of planetary and astrological juggling I got a lay out I like. It was a process of elimination. I started off by having the colour-matched sign descend from the Sphere that the planetary path ascended to. So the Path of Mars/Peh rises into Binah, the Path of Aries (the red Martial astrological sign, while Scorpio is blue-green martial) descends on the diagonal from Binah for example. When I couldn’t do that I used to the colour/sphere associations. So Cancer, which is Yellow/Orange is placed on the Path connecting Tiphareth (Yellow) and Hod (Orange), this wasn’t my first choice and seems superficial (and might be) but I find it actually works rather well. The two signs that are half purple rise diagonally from Yesod (purple) toward the side their colour is mixed with. The Path of Ayin/Capricorn is Purple/Blue, so it rises to the right toward the side of Chesed as an example.
This leaves four letters/Paths unassigned. Heh/Taurus, Tet/Leo, Nun/Scorpio, and Tzaddi/Aquarius. These just happen to be the four Fixed signs, and where we get the surrounding image on the World and Wheel of Fortune cards of the Bull, Lion, Eagle, and Human. Appropriately they become the four “framing” diagonal paths. They were the hardest to assign. I originally tried their layout from the zodiac and above tarot cards, but didn’t like it. I decided to have Tet/Leo descend into Binah rather than Tzaddi/Aquarius. No Sphere had a sign they rule descending into them, so I figured Binah should not be the exception. As they are ruled by the Sun and Saturn, and are Yellow and Purple, they are balanced, so they became the top two paths. Heh/Taurus, and Nun/Scorprio descend into Malkuth on the side of their colour predominance.
So that is the Tree of Life model I use, for meditation, magick, and understanding. I find it far easier and effective to work with the standard Golden Dawn model, or any of the other Trees of modern or classic origin with the Paths on a different arrangement. Hopefully I made sense, feel free to ask questions, comment, or throw the standard ceremonial “You changed something!” hissy-fit.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
25
Apr
2011

Sex, Angels, Bones, and Books


Easter Monday, time for a Judeo-Christian post I think. This is mainly more links and connecting data, but I have a few relevant articles off on the wings I thought I’d bring together.
Over at Remnant of Giants a post just went live “How Do You Know When You’re Having Sex with a Fallen Angel: Some Handy Hints from a Biblical Scholar“. The site is a mix of funny responses to relevant events and scholarly study related to the Biblical and extra-Biblical giants, and occasionally more generic Biblical/extra-Biblical study. As a fan of the Enochic literature (meaning related to the Book of Enoch, not Enochian in the Dee-Kelly sense) I find it is both an entertaining and informative site.
Of course there are a few mistakes. With number one, the Angels you could sleep with, humanoid ones, didn’t have wings Biblically it was the non-humanoid Angels that had wings. I’m actually writing a personal article on that now which may or may not make it up here in the future. Number two, should have stuck with naming fallen angels, Metatron (either one of them) is an odd choice of name for a fallen angel to assume. Other than that, it is a handy (silly) guide, of course I’d rather use guides not to avoid but to pursue, but to each their own.
The University of Wyoming shared the news that the trial/investigation of the James Ossuary box may finally be wrapping up. It’s only been about a decade. In fact since then the box has dropped off most people’s radar. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it is an ossuary box that is about 2000 years old (that part isn’t questioned) which reads “Ya’akov bar-Yosef akhui diYeshua.” For those without their Aramaic 101, that translates as “Jacob, son of Joseph, brother of Joshua.” Or when rendered out of Aramaic into Biblical English “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” So apparently we have the bone box of James, Jesus’s younger brother. But so far most of the evidence points to it being a fraud. “Ya’akov bar-Yosef” is generally believed to be authentic, but the bit about Jesus looks like it may be a modern addition, the trial is trying to figure out how modern, as some experts say it is more recent than the box, but still from the first millennium.
Speaking of Biblical forgeries it looks like Indiana Jones’s David Elkington’s codices are not standing up will to investigation. Rather than link to any individual story I want to link to this great resource here which is both a collection of relevant links and articles and a pretty solid analysis of the flaws of the codices. Included at the bottom of the article, the very last link is a collection of all the images of the codices that have been released, for those of us who like to take a look for ourselves. Just a sidenote since I brought it up the first time I posted about it, this man actually has degrees, a BA in Near Eastern Studies and a Masters in Jewish studies, and is working on more. Credentials aren’t the end-all be-all, but by Baal they’re useful.
Now in the spirit of Easter Monday, I’m off to buy discount chocolate.

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
19
Apr
2011

Mercury Retrograde: Background



My Mercury Retrograde post got a surprising amount of attention, even though I was really just babbling about it not being a big deal to me, but it and the conversations it inspired made me realize how unfamiliar a lot of people actually are with Mercury Retrograde and the Shadow of it I mentioned.
Now as I begin, in honour of Mercury Retrograde (being confused and meaningless communication) after loving harassment of my friend Psyche (who has four websites so I didn’t know which to link to or should I link her twitter?) I have finally broken down and have decided to give twitter a try, so you can follow me here under the name Blueflamemagick. As far as I know I’ll be using it mainly to mention blog stuff, and to share interesting articles/links that don’t deserve their own posts but are fascinating none the less. This apparently gets me into this century.
Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging. I was surprised that a lot of people who dread Mercury Retrograde don’t even know what it is, much like a Saturn Return. Simple put Mercury Retrograde is when Mercury goes backwards in the sky. Obviously the planet doesn’t actually start to travel backwards but that is what it looks like from Earth. Why? Because we’re both orbiting the Sun at different distances and different rates and that creates the illusion of it travelling backwards. Have you ever been in a car and as you pick up speed that car ahead of you gets closer and then once you overtake it that car looks like it is travelling backwards? It’s the same illusion; Mercury just looks like it is going backwards because we “lap” each other in the race around the Sun.
So why does this disrupt our lives? I don’t know, it’s astrology, I find it works but no known mechanism, moving on. What it represents is everything about Mercury going backwards, against the flow of things. So it tends to be a time of travel issues, technological hiccoughs, miscommunications and the like. Now essentially all the bodies used in astrology go retrograde, so why does Mercury get all the glory? Mercury is a personal planet, which means it moves fast and affects people in more individual ways than a slower planet like Saturn does, but because it moves so fast when it goes Retrograde it “hits” a lot of other planets. When Mercury travels backwards it covers around a dozen degrees and if there are any planetary aspects in that range they get a touch of Mercury Retrograde. This is why it seems to hit people so much, Saturn hits around 8 degrees when Retrograde and it takes almost half a year to do it, so when it does affect something it is a smaller range, so less people are likely to share in the experience. Mercury is also an interpersonal planet, it’s communication, it’s commerce, it’s about you and other people, so it seems like it hits more people because by its nature it is a shared experience.
What is the Shadow of Mercury Retrograde? It’s a fancy name describe the time before and after retrograde when it is in the affected degrees. So right now Mercury started at 24 degrees of Aries and will go back to 12 degrees. So this area of 12-24 degrees is the shadow period. March 31 to April 23 Mercury is travelling backwards, but on April 23 Mercury will be in the same spot in the sky it was on March 17, and on May 12 it will finally be as far ahead as it was on March 31. So while March 31-April 23 is Mercury Retrograde, March 17-March30 and April 24-May 12 are the Shadows of Mercury Retrograde. They aren’t nearly as bad but share some of the same influence. One way of thinking of it is the first shadow is like walking on uneven terrain, retrograde is when you actually stumble, and the second shadow are your first few shaky steps as you catch your balance.
So what is the lesson of Mercury Retrograde? Like I said in the last post all retrogrades are about re-doing that planetary influence, and turning it inwards. Mercury you have to rethink, replan, rewrite, recommunicate, and such. While life must go on if you can avoid it never start something during the retrograde planet associated with it. That would be like a certain blogger who stupidly decided to upgrade Windows during Mercury Retrograde and has spent the last two days trying to get everything functional again. When you can’t avoid something in a retrograde people, always try to “re” it over in your head. Mercury Retrograde is commonly known for miscommunication, so when sending that important email or letter take time to reread, and revise it because now is the time where mistakes can appear more easily. Other than that, sit back, and relax, it is only Mercury Retrograde, it lasts for a short while and then you’re safe…for three months.
(Disclaimer: All spelling and grammatical errors are the result of Mercury Retrograde, milk the excuse while you have it.)

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick
14
Apr
2011

Christ Copper Codices a Curious Cache


Oh, and a hoax…
Going with the flow. I have two posts that I wanted to put up this week, but I’m going to hold back because there is something I want to address.

Copper and lead books tell the most contemporaneous account of Christ’s life!
Or so they say. This story has been getting spread about the internet the last week or so. I’ve seen it pop-up several places, everywhere from magick blogs to the facebook page of a friend who is a Catholic priest and very excited about this. So I decided to put aside some time this afternoon and rant and analyze this.
So if you don’t want to read the link above, let me summarize it. A British couple are currently hiding out in Gloucestershire (but don’t tell the Jordanian hitmen) after recovering a collection 70 books believed to contain an early account of Christ’s life written sometime in the first century by early Christians who fled to Jordan in the 70s.
A lot of people are getting into this story, but there a lot of little problems with it that add up to bigger questions. I’ll start with a reading of the news story before I expand my discussion. Yes, I could just link all the data and other people doing the work, but part of my issue with this is that anyone can pick up some of the concerns with the text with reading and googling.
First thing I noticed is the couple are described as archaeologists and David, the hero of the story is also an author. Yet there are no credentials. Granted this could be an oversight, but in pretty much any news story when you mention an expert you put their credentials, where they studied, where they work, what they degrees are, etc. Every expert the Elkingtons consulted within the article have their credentials mentioned yet the Elkingtons are left blank. Where did they study, what is their area of focus, and who is sponsoring this dig? Why is he sometimes called Dr. but often not? Archaeologists, despite the media image of Croft and Jones, don’t fund their own digs, they don’t decide to pack up, go to some random dirt pile and start digging. No, a museum, university, or government branch has a location site, permissions, equipment and hires people to excavate and analyze the findings. The article mentions none of this, and quite frankly if this were real what museum or university wouldn’t fight to get that information included in the press release that they just uncovered the real story of Christ? Suspicious point.
David (who gets all the press, despite the idea that it is a husband/wife team) is also an author. Of what? Well two books, first is In the Name of the Gods, a book about Templars and an energy-sound-spirit connection, and an upcoming book based on how awesomely exciting and dangerous his current quest for these early Christian books have been (this will link up to Feather later). Not only is he writing a book on it, because it is so much like Indiana Jones (his own admission) but Robert Watts, producer of Raiders of the Lost Ark has contacted them about making it into a movie. Amazing how this story is just coming to light and already a book deal and a movie proposal. Don’t worry folks, it gets more suspicious. (Also the constant reference by Elkington to how much like a movie it is seems odd. The researcher was like Ms. Marple, the owner is like a mafia boss, then he’s like Gollum…) But suspicious point two.
The books are written in ancient Hebrew, a fact we’ll touch more on later, which is odd. Aramaic was more commonly used (and probably Jesus’s mother tongue) though Hebrew and Greek were both widely used in that area and time frame in different circumstances.
The article lacks anything primary. All the research that is done is relayed by David, not cross-referenced to the experts; he’s talking for them, they’re often unnamed, who tested the metals? So that’s the issues with the news story just as it is, time to go down the rabbit hole?
Dr. David (or Paul?) Elkington. An archaeologist, author, real-life Indiana Jones, curious where did he study and get his credentials? Turns out he studied as an artist at the Bath Academy of Arts. Nothing against artists, trained or otherwise, but I prefer my archaeologists making ground breaking discoveries to have some relevant degree in history or archaeology. So not an archaeologist, historian, or anyone qualified for such a dig. Suspicious points abound.
When investigating the source of the books, where they were found and by who, two stories emerge, sometimes on the same website or paper. Five years ago they were uncovered in a flash flood in Jordan, or they were uncovered in a flash flood and in the Jordanian trucker’s family for a hundred years. New stories once you branch past the telegraph (which I’m dealing with because it was the first I came across and the most widespread) don’t always agree. The language it is written in is is often mentioned as Hebrew as well as an unidentified Phoenician language, and then rare occasions in Greek. The name of the man who owns the books changes, not drastically, but enough to be suspicious, then again David Elkington is sometimes Paul Elkington, so many everyone on this adventure have multiple names. Whether there were found in Jordan or Egypt changes. The story shifts more than the sand it was apparently buried under. Now just because news papers disagree on stories doesn’t mean they’re wrong, but it does start to make the story questionable as we have to wonder why are these mistakes present, why aren’t they corrected? 5 years, 100 years, big difference. Jordan, Egypt, big difference. Hebrew, Greek, Unidentified, big difference.
Now one Peter Thonemann, MA, DPhil, lecturer on Ancient History at Wadham and Keble Colleges (look credentials!) was an expert that Elkington asked to help with the translation of the texts a year ago, yet he isn’t mentioned in the news articles generally for some reason. He translated the Greek on the cover (wait, wasn’t this written in Hebrew, or an unidentified Phoenician language?) and came up with an odd sentence fragment that made no sense, but mentioning a name Abgar. A bit of research on Thonemann’s behalf turned up not just the name Abgar, but the entire fragmented sentence on the cover of the book. What profound Judeo-Christian source did he uncover? A Roman tombstone for Abgar from Madaba Jordan c. 108 CE and on display in the Archeological Museum in Amman. Thonemann let Elkington know this, but Elkington, with the academic insight of his art degree, went public anyways.
What makes the story more amusing is that the books were previously discovered/released by Robert Feather as an early Qabalistic text with the location of the treasures of the Temple of Solomon. At that time there were only more then 20, now the number is 70. At that time the Israel Antiquities Authority said they are useless and a hoax because they contain a horrible mishmash of languages, images, and sentence fragments that really don’t match up. Letter soup that is grouped together to look intriguing until you start translation. This was denounced as a hoax, and then a month later with a much better back story Elkington arises with the same documents.
The only thing lending any credibility to this is that apparently the corrosion on the metal dates back about 2000 years (but again not properly cited who did this research, sometimes it was an “initial” test, other times seems more of a proper study) and the fact that the Jordanian government apparently wants them back.
Recently some more data came to my attention while writing this as Ananael posted on it in the process of my editing, and a friend knowing what I was doing sent a link.
The image of Jesus on the codex is considered currently to be Helios, but there is also a theory that it is The Mona Lisa of Galilee. I’m not totally convinced by this, but it makes an interesting case, and if all the data from the author is right it means this forgery is less than 30 years old.
From Ananael’s post there is a link showing how the letters themselves show the age of the books is wrong as some of them are from a form of Aramaic that is from the second and third century it also contains so far to my knowledge the only article so far pointing out that Elkington doesn’t have credentials to be involved with this sort of thing.
When I saw the title of the article I was curious, after reading it I was suspicious after some googling I realized it is a hoax. I can’t say by who or for what end, but all signs point to hoax.
Some good reading for those wanting more information on this:
Heavy metal secrets from a Mid-East cave

Peter Thonemann on the Lead Codices
Lead Codices and Leaden Minds
The Messiah Codex Decoded

Posted by kalagni in blueflamemagick