Cracked on Krishnamurti

When I was kid I read Cracked magazine and found it pretty hilarious. Sure, it was kind of a knockoff of Mad magazine, but it did have some very funny writers and good bits. And for whatever reason, I didn't find Mad quite as funny - though I think I was a bit of an oddball there among my friends. In the Internet age, Cracked has reinvented itself as a site for articles that are funny, but often also educational. Today they have a piece up about Jiddu Krishnamurti and the efforts of the Theosophical Society to promote him as "world teacher" - until he got fed up with the whole thing and walked away from it.

Theosophy had tens of thousands of adherents, ranging from serious devotees to celebrity dabblers like Thomas Edison. Blavatsky argued that every major religion contained some element of truth, and she made that argument in books that were based on her invented travels to Tibet and that liberally stole from earlier occult works.

For today, all you need to know about is her idea of a World Teacher, a supposed being from a higher plane of existence that routinely takes human form to guide the development of our species. Blavatsky speculated that our Teacher previously popped down in guises that included Confucius, Plato, Seneca, and Jesus, and in 1909 the Theosophical Society claimed to have found Jesus 2.0.

One of the most damning points regarding the "Tibetan" teachings of Theosophy is that once Tibetan Buddhism made its way to the West, it became clear that the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism did not really resemble the teachings of Theosophy in any way. I will say the idea that "there is no religion higher than truth" is a good one, but if your "truth" is something you're just making up as you go along it undermines your argument entirely.

Let's provide some more context, because otherwise claiming to have found the reincarnated Christ just sounds weird. In 1880, Blavatsky moved to India to establish a new Theosophical lodge. And while "White woman explains India's own religious beliefs to the locals" is normally just the basis of an obnoxious spring break, she attracted supporters who appreciated her interest in Hinduism at a time when British authorities were trying to suppress local beliefs to spread Christendom.

Is the QAnon Conspiracy a Religion?

I've made fun of the QAnon conspiracy a couple of times now here on Augoeides. A recent article from The Week now argues that QAnon has evolved into a full-scale religion. To be clear, it doesn't fit my definition of a "real religion" - a system designed to produce spiritual awakening and experiences. But it also is true many of the more dogmatic traditional religions out there don't fit that definition either. Broadening the definition to fit the conventional connotation of the term, the claims made in the article do seem to have some merit.

The QAnon movement started on 4chan, an anonymous message board influential in online culture but generally considered outside the bounds of the respectable internet, not least because it has repeatedly made the news in connection to child pornography. That makes the site an odd first home for QAnon, whose narrative centers on a cabal of powerful figures in government, business, academia, and media who make time for child sex trafficking and satanic sacrifice in their busy schedule of world domination. Q is the movement's anonymous digital prophet whose forum posts ("Q drops," now migrated from 4chan to a similar site called 8kun) reveal both the nature of the cabal and Trump's heroic plan to defeat it. QAnon's most fervent followers reach a point of obsession, clinging to it even at cost of total estrangement from their bewildered families.

An in-depth report on QAnon in The Atlantic's June issue closes with the suggestion that QAnon could become the latest in a series of "thriving religious movements indigenous to America." But research from a Concordia University doctoral student, Marc-André Argentino, shows the church of QAnon already exists and seems poised to spread. Argentino attended an online QAnon church where, he reports, two-hour Sunday services with several hundred attendees consist of prayer, communion, and interpretation of the Bible in light of Q drops and vice versa. The leaders' goal, Argentino says, "is to train congregants to form their own home congregations in the future and grow the movement."

As an aside, how very Scientology of them. The original Dianetics Foundation came under fire for practicing psychotherapy without a license, so L. Ron Hubbard reincorporated it as the Church of Scientology and re-branded dianetics as "spiritual counseling."

Gemini Elixir Rite for 2020

This is Part One of the Rite, through tuning the space.

This is Part Two of the Rite, from the conjuration to the end.

These two videos are the full Gemini Elixir Rite from last night. We had a technical issue partway through and I had to restart the livestream, which is why there are two of them. I suppose it's appropriate that for Gemini there would be two videos instead of one. It could also have something related to doing this ritual on a void-of-course Moon, as I discuss in the video. To see the full ritual, watch them in the order that they appear above.

Regarding the void-of-course Moon, those comments are specific to the livestream I was putting on. If you want to watch the video and follow along for yourself, check the astrology and see whether the Moon is void-of-course or what the final aspect is for the time you will by watching. Those are the astrological conditions that will be in effect, rather than the ones at the moment the ritual was recorded.

Lockdown Hauntings

As I see it, this is entirely expected.

CBS news here in the Twin Cities is reporting that there has been a rise in reports of hauntings during the lockdown. It's expected because, first of all, homes are probably more likely to be haunted than offices, and second of all, that spending more time at home provides more opportunities to misinterpret odd sounds and so forth as evidence of ghosts.

Lockdowns across the country have left many people spending more time in their homes, and that’s led to a sharp increase in reports of possible hauntings.

Jason Hawes is a paranormal investigator, and host of Travel Channel’s “Ghost Nation.” Since lockdowns around the U.S. began in March, his website has seen a 35% jump in reports of hauntings.

While he believes some are likely the real deal, he thinks others have simpler explanations.

“People are spending more time in their home and everything from woods drying out, you're getting popping sounds, cause were getting into the warmer months of the year,” he said.

Hopefully at least a few of these new reports will be investigated once the pandemic restrictions are lifted. It's probably too much to expect something really spectacular to come out of this - any haunting that significant would probably have been reported already, even with residents out of the home for much of the day.

Still, maybe a few interesting cases will come to light that might otherwise have been missed.

Via Solis Gemini Elixir Rite - Year Four (Streaming)

Today's Magick Monday post is a full script for the Gemini Elixir Rite that we will be performing tomorrow, Tuesday May 26th. Like the last couple of elixir rites, it will be streamed on Facebook Live at the Leaping Laughter OTO page. The page can be found here. I will be starting around 8 PM CDT, but I barring any technical difficulties I will archive the video after the ritual so you can view it whenever you have time.

A brief comment about the timing. At 8:05 PM CDT the Moon will go void of course. I could hurry up and start right at 8 PM to catch the Moon's final aspect, but it's not good (Moon opposing Jupiter) so that isn't helpful. Void Moons are not good for most direct practical operations, which is why I recommend avoiding them for practical work, but they don't necessarily interfere with "works of illumination" - such as obtaining mystical states of consciousness and/or receiving information.

The power of Prophecy certainly falls into this category, both in the sense of engaging with prophetic consciousness and obtaining information about the future. If you want to apply your intent to something like astral projection, I would change it from "make me better at astral projection" to "show/teach me how to do astral projection better" in order to account for the void of course Moon.

Note that this is a general intent adjustment that you can make for any spell that you have to perform while the Moon is void of course.

0. The Temple

The ritual space is set up with an altar table in the center. The bell chime, banishing dagger, and invoking wand are placed on the altar. In the center of the altar is placed a cup of wine for creating the elixir, within the Table of Art corresponding to Gemini. The sign Gemini is attributed to "The power of being in two or more places at the same time, and of Prophecy." As I interpret it, the former is related to astral work and the latter is related to precognition in all its forms, the ability to see into the future. In a mystical sense, it also corresponds to prophetic consciousness in general. Therefore, these sorts of intents are most appropriate. This ritual may be performed with one, two, or three officers, who may alternate taking the Officiant role and divide up the reading from Liber 963. The Via Solis Elixir Rites were written by Michele Montserrat in 2010 for the Comselh Ananael magical working group.

I. Opening

All stand surrounding the altar. Officiant inhales fully, placing the banishing dagger at his or her lips. The air is then expelled as the dagger is swept backwards.

Officiant: Bahlasti! Ompehda!

Officiant then performs the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. All rotate accordingly.

Officiant: We take refuge in Nuit, the blue-lidded daughter of sunset, the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night sky, as we issue the call to the awakened nature of all beings, for every man and every woman is a star.

All: MAKAShANaH

Officiant: We take refuge in Hadit, the secret flame that burns in every heart of man and in the core of every star, as we issue the call to our own awakened natures, arousing the coiled serpent about to spring.

All: ABRAHADABRA

Officiant: We take refuge in Heru-Ra-Ha, who wields the wand of double power, the wand of the force of Coph Nia, but whose left hand is empty for he has crushed an universe and naught remains, as we unite our awakened natures with those of all beings everywhere and everywhen, dissolving all obstacles and healing all suffering.

All: AUMGN

Officiant: For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.

All: All is pure and present and has always been so, for existence is pure joy; all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass and done; but there is that which remains. To this realization we commit ourselves – pure and total presence. So mote it be.

Bell Chime

A New Quantum Entanglement Record

One of the points I make in discussing my quantum information model of magick is that if consciousness is indeed a manifestation of higher-order quantum information structures, the creation of such structures must be physically possible. So far, what we've found is that it is possible to create quantum entanglement within relatively small sets of particles. That's significant because in effect, a set of entangled particles is exactly the sort of higher-order structure that I'm talking about. The greater the number of particles involved, the greater complexity of their entanglement links, and the greater resilience those links have, the more likely it is that consciousness could indeed be such a structure.

A recent physics experiment scaled up the number of entangled atoms that can be observed into the trillions. This is an important finding for the quantum consciousness model and by extension the quantum information model of magick. If this sort of large scale entanglement had been shown to be impossible, it would probably have been back to the drawing board for me and my model of magick, spirits, and pretty much everything else esoteric. The researchers also discovered that the entanglement links created were more robust than previously thought - another key finding supporting the notion of higher-order quantum information structures.

Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon that’s as bizarre as it is fragile. Entangled particles are thought to lose this inexplicable link when exposed to outside factors. But now, physicists have managed to produce hot clouds of trillions of entangled atoms, breaking quantity records and showing that entanglement isn’t as fragile as previously thought.

Pairs or groups of particles can become so intertwined that measuring the state of one will instantly change properties of the others, no matter how far apart they are. That sounds weird enough already, but the implications threaten to undo our entire understanding of physics. Somehow, information seems to be sent between them much faster than the speed of light, which is meant to be impossible.

Einstein himself didn’t believe it at first, deriding it as “spooky action at a distance” and instead blaming hidden variables. But decades of experiments have shown that quantum entanglement is indeed the real deal, and we’re already starting to exploit the phenomenon for new technologies, such as faster and more secure communication networks.

Hobby Lobby Stole Gilgamesh

Well, sort of. The owners of the Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores are also the owners of the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. As reported here on Augoeides, the museum got in trouble in 2017 and 2018 for displaying stolen artifacts. Now the museum is in trouble again, over a cuneiform tablet known as the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet that was stolen from Iraq.

U.S. federal prosecutors are seeking the return to Iraq of a roughly 3,500-year-old clay tablet purchased by the Hobby Lobby arts and crafts store chain for display in the Washington, D.C.-based Museum of the Bible. The cuneiform tablet is described as "stolen Iraqi property" in a civil complaint filed Monday.

The complaint details part of the journey of this fragment of the oldest known creation tale — from a palace library in ancient Mesopotamia to its present location in a Department of Homeland Security warehouse in Queens, New York. It alleges that a major international auction house, unnamed in the complaint, obscured the provenance of the tablet, known as the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, when it sold the tablet to Hobby Lobby in 2014.

Agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations seized the tablet last year from the Museum of the Bible, which, it said, cooperated with the investigation. Hobby Lobby's owners are the founders of the Museum of the Bible. The prosecutors said the 5-by-6-inch tablet, which Hobby Lobby purchased for more than $1.6 million, is considered the property of the Iraqi government and should be returned.

How many times does somebody have to get in trouble over stolen goods before it becomes clear that they are a thief? I ask this because, as I pointed out in my previous articles, Hobby Lobby was able to obtain a "religious exemption" due to their "sincere religious beliefs" that allowed them to deny contraception coverage to their female employees.

Ritual Night Talk for May 19th

Here's the video of last night's Ritual Night Talk, focusing on energy work and the Middle Pillar Ritual. I also spent some time on the Elevenfold Seal, which I'm convinced has a similar function using explicitly Thelemic godnames and symbolism. Learning some form of energy work is very important if you want to get really good results with your magick.

UFO Videos Declassified

A couple weeks ago the United States Navy declassified two videos of "unidemtified aerial phenomena" encountered by fighter pilots in 2004 and 2015. The videos have been circulated online for some time now, but this official acknowledgement confirms that versions on the Internet are the real ones and not fakes created using special effects.

The U.S. Navy has officially acknowledged three incidents reported by F/A-18 Hornet fighter pilots of "unidentified aerial phenomena" -- what most refer to as UFOs -- and released video of the encounters.

The Defense Department on Monday published the videos of the separate incidents, one taken in November 2004 and the other two in January 2015, "which have been circulating in the public domain after unauthorized releases in 2007 and 2017," officials said in a statement.

"After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems, and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena," according to Pentagon spokeswoman Sue Gough.

The Navy has previously stated the videos did belong to the service, but did not give credence to the idea its pilots have confronted alien spacecraft.

I like to give Robert Anton Wilson's answer whenever I'm asked if I believe in UFOs - of course I believe in unidentified flying objects, because I encounter numerous unidentified non-flying objects in the course of my regular life. The real question has a similar answer - I believe that it's practically a given that intelligent alien life exists somewhere in the universe.

Ritual Night Talk for May 12th

Here's the video of my Ritual Night Talk from yesterday evening. In this one I cover the Lesser and Greater Rituals of the Pentagram and talk a bit about elemental magick. A lot of students seem to want to "get through" the elements so they can work on planetary magick, but in fact you can do pretty much anything with the elements that you can do with the planets.

The Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram is the general pentagram ritual that you use to set up your space, and the Greater Ritual of the Pentagram is the specific ritual that you use to tune your space to a sephira (generally Malkuth, for the Vision of the Holy Guardian Angel) or a path corresponding to the practical power of a single element.

Occult Crime Isn't

The whole idea of "occult crime" is something that gets tossed around by the media and law enforcement, but the truth is that for the most part it doesn't exist. While you will sometimes come across a murderer with severe mental illness who happens to be fixated on occult and/or ritualistic themes, the "occult" components of what they do are nonsense from the standpoint of genuine esotericism. Magick is a technology and it works a certain way. "Occult" murderers are basically the same thing as someone who sacrifices their neighbor in order to pour their blood over a laptop with a fried motherboard - because, you know, that'll totally get it running again.

To be clear, there are spirits out there who like blood offerings and so forth, but if a spirit demands that you go out and murder someone before it will work with you the solution is simple - find another spirit to work with. They're everywhere, and most of the old grimoires have been published, so it's not like it's hard. And there's absolutely no evidence that spirits who like blood are more powerful than ones that don't need and/or want it. For example, the Enochian angels and cacodemons are famous for being especially powerful. They don't demand offerings at all (though they will accept them), and I've written a couple of straightforward books on how to contact and work with them.

At any rate, here's a story from the British tabloid Mirror that illustrates how law enforcement's poor understanding of magick and occultism can result in all sorts of incorrect assumptions.

A blue moon – a rare second full moon in a lunar cycle – only occurs every two or three years, hence the saying, ‘Once in a blue moon.’ It is considered a spiritual time to many and authorities in Pensacola, Florida, were convinced it had triggered the murders of three family members. ‘It’s witchcraft, I’ll say that right now,’ a sheriff declared at a press conference to an astonished room of media.

It was July 2015 and Voncile Smith, 77, and her two sons, John, 49, and Richard, 47, had been slain in their home with the blue moon fast approaching. The brutal killings were described as being ‘ritualistic’ by the local authorities. It seemed something beautiful was being blamed for causing something very tragic indeed.

How were they "ritualistic?" No, nobody found any evidence of a magical ceremony. Here's what the police had to say about the crime scene:

Taurus Elixir Rite for 2020

Here is my video of the Taurus Elixir Rite from last night. The ritual itself went well and I think I am finally getting some of the camera settings working the way I want. Like the Ritual Night Talks, I will be posting these here on the blog going forward.

If you have been reading these elixir rites and wondering what they look like when I do them, here's your chance. As I mention in the video, normally we would be doing these with a group standing around the altar rather than one person, and since east is behind me I have made a couple of modifications to the ceremonial forms.

Enjoy!

Via Solis Taurus Elixir Rite - Year Four (Streaming)

Due to the ongoing stay-at-home situation in Minnesota, I will be streaming the Taurus Elixir Rite tomorrow night, Tuesday May 5th, at around 8 PM on Facebook Live at the Leaping Laughter page. You can find the page here.

The ritual requires some modification for a streaming performance. Years ago I presented one of these elixir rites at Paganicon here in the Twin Cities, and I adapted it for a presentation at the front of a room as opposed to a central altar. I'll be making some of those changes so I can present it more easily, and I'll explain the differences before I get going with the ritual tonight. Aside from those modifications, the script is the same as last year's.

My plan is to keep streaming the Elixir Rites going forward until we can go back to business as usual at Leaping Laughter Lodge. Hope to (virtually) see you there!

0. The Temple

The ritual space is set up with an altar table in the center. The bell chime, banishing dagger, and invoking wand are placed on the altar. In the center of the altar is placed a cup of wine for creating the elixir, within the Table of Art corresponding to Taurus. The sign Taurus is attributed to "The Secret of Physical Strength," and therefore intents related to strength, healing, vitality, and so forth are most appropriate. This ritual may be performed with one, two, or three officers, who may alternate taking the Officiant role and divide up the reading from Liber 963.

I. Opening

All stand surrounding the altar. Officiant inhales fully, placing the banishing dagger at his or her lips. The air is then expelled as the dagger is swept backwards.

Officiant: Bahlasti! Ompehda!

Officiant then performs the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. All rotate accordingly.

Officiant: We take refuge in Nuit, the blue-lidded daughter of sunset, the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night sky, as we issue the call to the awakened nature of all beings, for every man and every woman is a star.

All: MAKAShANaH

Officiant: We take refuge in Hadit, the secret flame that burns in every heart of man and in the core of every star, as we issue the call to our own awakened natures, arousing the coiled serpent about to spring.

All: ABRAHADABRA

Officiant: We take refuge in Heru-Ra-Ha, who wields the wand of double power, the wand of the force of Coph Nia, but whose left hand is empty for he has crushed an universe and naught remains, as we unite our awakened natures with those of all beings everywhere and everywhen, dissolving all obstacles and healing all suffering.

All: AUMGN

Officiant: For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.

All: All is pure and present are and has always been so, for existence is pure joy; all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass and done; but there is that which remains. To this realization we commit ourselves – pure and total presence. So mote it be.