Book and Media Store Updates

Earlier this week I took a look at the Books and Media page here on Augoeides and realized I had not updated it in 7-8 years. The last book I had listed was Trump Card, so Ipswich, Written in Blood, and Mastering the Thirty Aires were nowhere to be found. I also had not added anthology contributions or reviews since then either. Obviously I needed to correct that, so I've spent the last few days working on the page. I renamed it "Book and Media Store" since that was the original intent, to serve as a catalog for my books and a central page for all my reviews.

I also went ahead and added a link for the Enochian Master Class, and I am planning on eventually creating more classes and adding them there. To round it all out, I embedded my various YouTube videos at the bottom of the page when you keep scrolling down. All those videos can be found individually here on Augoeides, but the page provides a single location where you can peruse them. If you are a beginning I recommend watching them in order, but if you are more experienced feel free to just watch the ones that interest you.

Check out the newly updated Book and Media Store page today. If you have been thinking about buying a book, now is the perfect time to order and help to support Augoeides.

Review - Modern Hermeticism by Erich and Alannah Brown

I originally met Frater Barrabbas back in 1999 when he was living in Minneapolis and coming around to Leaping Laughter OTO events. At that time he shared with me an unpublished manuscript detailing the system he had developed for his Order of the Gnostic Star entitled The Pyramid of Powers. The system drew elements from the Golden Dawn, Thelema, and Alexandrian Wicca, and represented a unique system of magick in its own right that was meaningfully different from its antecedents.

The Pyramid of Powers system was eventually reworked from that original manuscript and published as The Disciple's Guide to Ritual Magick and Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick, both currently available from Crossed Crow Books. While the Disciple's Guide is targeted at beginners, it still is an introduiction to a complex system of magick that may or may not make sense to rank beginniners without any background in magical workings. What the system still really needed was a sort of Modern Magick for the Gnostic Star system that would work for students who were just starting out.

I provide all this background because Modern Hermeticism appears to be exactly that book. It covers the system in a series of simple steps that build on each other, and thus makes it more accessible and approachable. Even so, it covers a lot of material, from the Qabalistic Cross up the full Pyramid of Powers ritual, which is not exactly analogous to anything in Golden Dawn/Thelema or Wicca. It also has a section on Enochian magick, which is explained in simple and straightforward language.

I don't personally practice the Gnostic Star system, so there are some points that I approach differently in my own work. The Enochian system, for example, is original but heavily employs the Golden Dawn arrangement of the system. As such, my approach based on Dee diary attributions is very different. Still, the Golden Dawn Enochian system and its variants are employed by many modern magicians who report good results with it. The system does not employ the Lesser Ritual of the Hexagram to open and close magical fields the way I do, but instead uses some original ritual forms to accomplish the same objective.

The book also includes a lot of Jungian material, which I criticize often, but it seems like that's currently the case whenever any book on magick touches on psychology. It should be noted that while psychoanalysis is based on an entirely inaccurate model of the mind and brain, Jung's work on mysticism in particular is pretty good regardless. During his life he sought out mystical experiences and writes about them from a firsthand perspective in works such as The Red Book. This likely explains its popularity in esoteric spaces.

I do very much appreciate the lack of "spelling" (pronouncing YHVH as YOD HEH VAV HEH when vibrating) in their rendition of the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram, which is a bad instruction that gets repeated all over the place. Also, the material on working with the godhead and invoking godforms is excellent and gives great instructions for doing invocations. Finally, this is exactly the sort of thing that modern magicians should be doing - developing their own ritual forms and applications, and then subjecting them to peer review through publication.

If you are a fan of Frater Barrabbas' work, or just interested in seeing another way in which traditional ceremonial forms can be modified and worked with, check out Modern Hermeticism. It covers the material with impressive clarity without sacrificing any of the Gnostic Star system's depth and complexity. Even if you don't wind up working with the system, it also contains a lot of good advice that is applicable to magick in general and should benefit any practitioner.

Review - Glamour of the Spheres by G Antra

Glamor magick is usually thought of a niche discipline that involves projecting illusions into the minds of others in various situations. Whether to improve your overall general charisma, or to make yourself more attractive as a romantic relationship partner, the parameters of this art are limited to such circumstances. But this is false reductionism. Glamor magick is the magick of perception, and perception is the foundation of how we experience the world. As such, this art has many further applications that usually go unexplored.

Glamour of the Spheres by G Antra opens up the world of glamor magick to its full potential. G has presented on the subject at Leaping Laughter Lodge's Grimoire Bazaar in Minneapolis and the Babalon Rising festival in southern Indiana, and has considerable expertise in the field - along with an experimental, scientific approach to the work that I find many practitioners lack. It does no good to merely speculate on the effects of rituals, since as we all should know many "pretty patterns" in magick just don't work when subjected to real-world conditions. Emprical testing is essential, and as I have previously written I wish more practitioners would test their personal work like this and make it available for peer review.

Glamour of the Spheres mixes glamor magick with planetary magick, a refreshing combination that I have not previously come across. It covers the basics of planetary work, the attributions and powers of the planets, and glamor rituals for each of the planets. These are not limited to presence and appearance. For example, the "Lips of Mercury" spell that can be performed using lipstick or lip balm facilitates communication and helps each word that passes your lips be better understood and carry deeper meaning. This is perception, too, and goes far beyond mere surface attraction.

All these rituals are constructed using a system of energy work that I was exposed to when I first attended the Babalon Rising festival back in 2023. It focuses on energy going out from your projecting hand and returning to your receiving hand, which is an idea found in many systems of energy work. What's different, though, is how this energy work is integrated into the rituals themselves. A simple example would be holding your petition to the spirit (the energy you are sending out) in your projecting hand while you hold a talisman (which will receive the energy) in your receiving hand as you perform the ritual.

This is a very simplistic example and the rituals in the book make use of this technique in more involved ways. Having experimented with variations on this method over the last several years, I can confidently say that it has improved the effectiveness of my Qigong energy practice to a substantial degree. The traditional model of accumulating and then discharging Qi becomes far more effective when projecting/receiving becomes a more dynamic, flow-based process, like the difference between a static spark and an electric circuit. My practice did previously include application of some flow-based methods, but the version outlined in Glamour of the Spheres makes the process more explicit and deliberate.

For all these reasons I highly recommend Glamour of the Spheres. It is a fresh and expansive approach to a subject that is rarely covered in much depth, and even if you are a person like me who does not generally wear makeup or use cosmetics, the techniques can be adapted for rituals involving personal care products, articles of clothing, or even more traditional planetary talismans carried on your person. Pick up your copy today!

G Antra's Linktree can be found here covering Twitch, Instagram, Threads, and many other social media outlets.

Poor Oppressed Christians - The Book!

The Wild Hunt has an article up about a new book called The Pagan Threat. I'm not going to post a link to the book because I have no interest in giving it traffic from the blog, but a simple web search should turn it up if you really want to check it out.

Basically the point of this book is to try and frame Paganism as some kind of existential threat to Christianity and by extension to America as a whole. That prompted me to re-use the graphic above, to point out that Christianity is by far the majority religion in America and is not even remotely under threat from the tiny percentage of Pagan believers in our population.

Back in 2017 I posted an article sourced from the Pew Forum Religious Landscape Study looking at the percentage of Christians in the United States. I further broke the current research at that time down to identify "Poor Oppressed Christians" - Christians who, despite being part of an overwhelming majority of the population, feel that they are somehow under attack by basic things like laws protecting civil rights for members of all religions.

Since I haven't covered this topic in a while, I'll clarify a bit. Being a Christian doesn't make you a Poor Oppressed Christian. I have no issues whatsoever with people adopting Christianity as their spiritual path if that's what works for them. What makes Christians count as Poor Oppressed is when they insist that they deserve special priviliges in civil society that they deny to anyone who believes differently than they do. This article, which shares this one's graphic, lays this out in more detail.

I haven't taken a look at Pew's research on religious identity since 2017, so it seems reasonable to give it another look for 2025. As this chart shows, it remains true that Christians are a large majority and, statistically speaking, Pagans are practically non-existent.

Praxis Behind the Obscure Interview

Yesterday evening I sat down with Ryan at Praxis Behind the Obscure to discuss Mastering the Thirty Aires. We covered some of the differences between the modern approach of scrying Aethyrs and the original function of the Aires, which was to serve as a powerful system of political and zodiacal magick. We also digressed into various topics related to Thelema and magick in general.

MASTERING THE THIRTY AIRES SEPTEMBER 22ND!

All of you have been so patient with me on this, and believe me, I appreciate it. It's finally time. Mastering the Thirty Aires will be released September 22nd. Not next year, this year. Like in three days. If you want to pre-order from Amazon, you can do so here.

Mastering the Thirty Aires is Book III of my Mastering Enochian Magick series and covers the system of the Aires or Aethyrs, the final major component of the Enochian magical system received and documented by John Dee and Edward Kelley in the 1580's. As with the previous two books in the series, I stick with attributions drawn from the Dee diaries themselves but also include various modern techniques such as pentagram and hexagram rituals within the context of a straight-forward ritual template.

The original system of the Aires or Aethyrs was not intended to serve as a sort of scrying map for "rising on the planes" and the like. It certainly can be used in this way, and Aleister Crowley did so to great effect as recorded in The Vision and the Voice. The original intent was for the system to be a complex and highly powerful system of political magick. The various Aires are linked to particular Parts of the Earth, and by opening the corresponding Aire followed by the corresponding Part, the magician can influence events within that region.

The system is interlinked with zodiacal attributions, and thus can be thought of as the zodiacal portion of the Enochian material, with the Heptarchia Mystica comprising the planetary portion and the system of the Great Table the elemental portion. Thus, with the release of this book, my Enochian series now covers the full set of fundamental qualities employed in the practive of the Western magical tradition.

Again, thank you all for hanging in there. It's been a long road getting here, and I hope you all will find that it was worth the wait.

Another Satanic Panic Source

As I have covered previously here on Augoeides, the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980's and early 1990's largely originated from porn. This is why so many of the things "Satanists" were accused of aren't real techiques of magick or occultism, and why magicians looking into those claims don't understand how their alleged rituals even worked. They didn't, because real magick had nothing to do with the panic. It was all about fabricating accounts and accusations based on material presented in "Satanic pornography" from the 1970's.

The New Yorker has an article up that explores yet another piece of the puzzle that I previously knew nothing about, a Mormon housewife named Beatrice Sparks. Sparks was a literary fraud, kind of like James Frey and other recent authors who have passed off made-up stories as memoirs or factual accounts. The New Yorker article is a review of a recent book by Rick Emerson that discusses Sparks' work.

Sparks published a book called Go Ask Alice in 1971. Sparks claimed that the book was a real diary kept by a teenage girl and that she merely "edited" the text. The book was presented this way to the media and, of course, became a huge bestseller - because the market rewarding writers for fraud is practically a cliche. At any rate, the book tells the story of a young girl's descent into horrific drug addiction and ends with an author's note describing her alleged death by either suicide or accidental overdose.

Go Ask Alice provided fuel for the drug war of the 1970s, as it implied that the lurid and exaggerated events of the book were "what the kids were up to" or something like that. It was Sparks' next project, though, where this story moves into Augoeides territory. Sparks was contacted by a family who wanted her to edit and publish their son's diary, who had died by suicide at the age of sixteen.

A few months later, Sparks was back in the diary business with “Jay’s Journal.” She claimed, in the book’s introduction, that a woman had read an article about her and then called to ask if Sparks might take the journal of her son—a deceased sixteen-year-old who’d had a genius-level I.Q.—and use it to expose the dangers of witchcraft. Accepting this solemn task, Sparks sorted through the boy’s possessions, interviewed his friends and teachers, and organized his journal into more than two hundred entries. A small disclaimer on the copyright page indicated that “times, places, names, and some details have been changed to protect the privacy and identity of Jay’s family and friends.”

Still Against Fiction

Christian book-burners are at it again. Do they ever stop? For a little while there it seemed like the more dramatic stunts had dropped off, even if schools were still receiving plenty of requests to have books removed from libraries by a lot of the same folks. But controversial Tennessee pastor Greg Locke held a book-burning event just last week, in an effort to save his religious beliefs from the scourge of fictional magick.

Greg Locke, head pastor at Global Vision Bible Church, held a book burning event Wednesday night, and urged followers to burn “evil garbage” like young adult fantasy books, tarot cards, “voodoo dolls and crystals.”

“Bring all your Harry Potter stuff. Laugh all you want haters. I don’t care. IT’S WITCHCRAFT 100 PERCENT,” Locke said in an Instagram post Monday. “All you ‘Twilight’ books and movies. That mess is full of spells, demonism, shape-shifting and occultism.”

In a video livestreamed on Facebook, churchgoers hurl books and other items deemed associated with “witchcraft” into a massive bonfire on the church’s parking lot in Mount Juliet, Tennessee. The burning begins about an hour into the livestream. At least one counterprotester claimed to throw a Bible into the flames, Nashville Scene reported.

“We have a constitutional right and a Biblical right to do what we’re going to do tonight,” Locke said in the livestreamed video. “We have a burn permit, but even without one a church has a religious right to burn occultic materials that they deem are a threat to their religious rights and freedoms and belief systems.”

Now J. K. Rowling has shown herself to be problematic of late, and Twilight is just plain bad. Still, I'm absolutely and unswervingly opposed to book burning regardless of content, and as a practicing worker of magick I can also assure everyone out there that both the Harry Potter and Twilight series are fiction. The "spells, demonism, shape-shifting, and occultism" portrayed in those books has nothing to do with magick in the real world.

And these folks honestly have to know that the magick in these books is actually 100% fake and poses no real occult threat. The reason they persist in this nonsense is that to some kinds of Christians - to be clear, the wrong kind - there's nothing more dangerous than imagination. It's no wonder that so many young people who grow up in those churches leave. I have trouble contemplating an existence in which no one is safe even in their own thoughts, and can think of few things more existentially depressing.

Obviously, a belief system that awful is under threat from anything fun. It's not just fantasy fiction, which remains popular because people like it, but anything at all enjoyable. As I see it, joy and spirituality should go hand in hand, and any belief system that can be destroyed by something as trivial as fantasy fiction should just be destroyed and get it over with.

The Cult of Power

I don't personally have a problem with Christianity in general, or with people who follow Christianity as a spiritual path. As a Thelemite, I believe that everyone's spiritual path is entirely their own business. It does me no good to disparage someone else's spirituality just because it doesn't work for me. Now if you read Augoeides, you might be a little puzzled by that statement. I do post a lot of articles making fun of a certain group of people who I call "Poor Oppressed Christians." This group is generally made up of evangelicals and fundamentalists - but I should stress that not all evangelicals and fundamentalist Christians belong to it.

Salon has an article up today about a new book that articulates exactly what I find objectionable about these particular Christians. They don't worship God or Christ as much as they worship political power. The "Oppressed" thing is basically a narcissistic ruse, in that the whole point is to gain special rights and privileges that they can use against those they see as enemies - atheists and agnostics, the LGBT community, and even other Christians they consider heretics. The bottom line is that if they were willing to leave the rest of us alone and quit trying to write their beliefs into laws that everyone has to follow, I would leave them alone.

Author Katherine Stewart has the answer: Because the true god these folks worship is power. In her book, "The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism," Stewart details how she traveled around the country, getting to know the various Christian conservative figures that are whipping support for Trump and his agenda. She deems the "Christian nationalists" and demonstrates how their supposedly Christian values always come second to their endless quest for power. Stewart spoke with Salon about her new book. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Book Banners At It Again

Last week, a number of news outlets covered an outrageous bill proposed to the State Legislature of Missouri. The bill would empower a "parental oversight board" to determine whether books stocked by public libraries are "potentially inappropriate" for minors. So basically, this would be an elected panel with the power to ban books from libraries. It should come as no surprise to any of my readers to find out that I vehemently oppose such a plan. It's especially heinous in that it proposes fines and jail time (!) for librarians who refuse to comply with the law.

Under the parental oversight of public libraries bill, which has been proposed by Missouri Republican Ben Baker, panels of parents would be elected to evaluate whether books are appropriate for children. Public hearings would then be held by the boards to ask for suggestions of potentially inappropriate books, with public libraries that allow minors access to such titles to have their funding stripped. Librarians who refuse to comply could be fined and imprisoned for up to one year.

“The main thing is, I want to be able to take my kids to a library and make sure they’re in a safe environment, and that they’re not gonna be exposed to something that is objectionable material,” Baker told a local news station. “Unfortunately, there are some libraries in the state of Missouri that have done this. And that’s a problem.” Titles including Sherman Alexie’s award-winning The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, a young adult novel about the rape of a teenager, have all come under fire in Missouri over the last decade.

Liber Spirituum Now Available in Paperback

I love those rare edition hardcover occult books as much as anybody. I have a decent-sized collection that I have been accumulating for more than twenty-five years. But it also is true that books like that are expensive and can be hard to come by, especially once the run is sold out. There's a market there, but it's a very pricey one.

That's why I'm a big fan of publishers who eventually release less expensive paperback editions of their rare titles. It allows those of us who aren't collectors to get access to the same information at a fraction of the cost. You shouldn't have to spend a fortune to keep yourself up to date on all the latest magical lore and commentary.

Along those lines I'm pleased to announce that Liber Spirtuum, the anthology containing my essay "Evoking Zodiacal Angels," is now available in paperback. The book has in fact been out for over a year now, so I probably should have posted this sooner. But work has been intense lately and I haven't had much time for promotion or writing new material. I keep waiting for things to calm down, but they haven't yet.

So if you did see Liber Spirituum when it was first released, liked the content, and wanted to pick it up for your library but found it too expensive, here's your chance. If you have something like Amazon Prime you can even get it before Christmas, and it makes a great gift for any ceremonial or ritual practitioner. The material in my essay is similar to what you will find here in my Zodiacal Work post, but in a convenient book form for temple use.

Demons for Kids

I never fail to be confused by Christians who can't tell the difference between fiction and reality. I shouldn't be - they have a long history of it. To be clear, I'm not talking about all Christians or even the majority of them, but poor oppressed fundamentalists who find even the slightest exercise of imagination disturbing and potentially dangerous. Like this nonsense.

The retail giant Amazon is actually selling a children's book that teaches young children how to summon demons.

What, like every edition of the Goetia, every paperback grimoire, and every other practical occult guide that teaches people how to work with real spirits? Amazon carries all of those. And Llewellyn has a whole "For Beginners" series, again, all sold on Amazon! But that's not what the fuss is about. This is much, much sillier.

Yes, you read that right. Amazon is peddling a book titled A Children's Book of Demons. The description on the Amazon webpage reads: "Don't want to take out the trash tonight? Maybe you're swimming in homework? Perhaps that big bully is being a real drag? Well, grab your coloured pencils and sigil drawing skills and dial-up some demons! But be careful, even if these spirits are more silly than scary they are still demons." If you're not aware, a "sigil" is a symbol that's said to have magical powers.

Well, yes. Real sigils that are associated with real spirits are said to have magical powers because they are associated with said spirits. I'll return to this in a moment.

If that one book isn't enough, Amazon also suggests you purchase another book for your kids titled Demon and Devil Stories for Kids: Sixteen Short Stories About Demons and Devils for Children. The description also reads: "Sixteen short stories about demons and devils are selected from several popular books for children. These tales are designed to be fascinating reading for young children."

So let's say that the first book mentioned teaches children to conjure real spirits, demonic or otherwise. It seems to me that would be a much bigger deal to any reasonable Christian than an indisputable work of fiction. But no, it gets mentioned in the same breath. This is what I mean when I talk about the distinction between fantasy and reality being fuzzy with these folks.

Burning Harry Potter Books?

This again? I thought we had seen the last of it years ago, but I guess not. A group of evangelical Catholics in Poland recently staged a burning of books that they say "promote sorcery," including books from the popular Harry Potter fantasy series.

Three priests in the northern city of Koszalin were pictured carrying the books in a large basket from inside a church to a stone area outside. The books were set alight as prayers were said and a small group of people watched on. A mask, various trinkets and a Hello Kitty umbrella were also visible in the pictures of the makeshift bonfire.

Oooh, that Hello Kitty is so Satanic! She's a cat, and she talks. And carries umbrellas! If God wanted us to stay dry, he wouldn't make it rain, right?

The Catholic evangelical foundation SMS From Heaven posted the photographs to its Facebook page, which has 22,000 followers, accompanied by fiery emojis and Old Testament quotes decrying sorcery and idolatry. The stunt provoked mockery from Facebook users, many of whom left comments questioning the sanity of those involved, or making comparisons with Nazi Germany.

It is not the first occasion in which the hugely popular Harry Potter series has attracted the ire of religious zealots, some of whom believe the books are inspired by evil spirits and could lead children astray.

A serious question for these folks. Don't you think that if the Harry Potter books were inspired by evil spirits they would include instructions on how to do real magick? Chanting levio-SAH at a feather doesn't do anything - and it is very easy to design an experiment to prove it! Likewise, real magical practitioners don't literally fly through the air on brooms, let alone play a sport while doing it. And so on.

"QAnon" Now Has a Book

Whut???

It amazes me that anybody still believes the "QAnon" conspiracy theory, but for whatever reason it seems to be a ridiculous idea that nonetheless refuses to die. After many failed predictions the theory has died down a little online, just like those fake "End Times" pastors who predict the end of the world over and over again and are always wrong. Maybe because the online version is starting to fade, some clever con artists have come out with a book that aims to "educate" (that is, defraud) anybody who buys it.

The book, which says it was written by a dozen “anonymous Q followers, decoders and citizen journalists known collectively as Where We Go One We Go All (WWG1WGA),” claims that Democrats murder and eat children and that the government created AIDS, polio and Lyme disease. Then there’s the belief that the world is run by a Satanic cabal led by Hillary Clinton.

There’s more. So much more. But we’ll leave it there. QAnon emerged from the dark corners of the internet and into the national spotlight thanks primarily to supporters of Donald Trump who would show up at his rallies wearing clothes and holding signs referencing the “Q” conspiracy.

Mike Rothschild, a conspiracy-theory expert, told NBC that the book is just another way for the QAnon movement to cash in on its gullible followers, calling it “a bold new step in the endless grift at the heart of Q.”

Nevertheless, the book keeps selling and racking up questionable glowing reviews, which Jason Kint, CEO of the trade association Digital Content Next, chalks up to manipulation and the lack of oversight on Amazon’s part.

“To be clear, they absolutely shouldn’t be censoring the availability of books like this,” Kite explained to NBC. “But the fact we’re left only with the publisher’s own description of the book and a clearly gamed set of 5-star reviews — how is the average shopper supposed to know this is toxic garbage?”

Book Production - What Haunts Us

Augoeides has been quite for the last week and a half because my publishing company, Moonfire Publishing, has been finishing up the rollout for our latest title, What Haunts Us by Loren Niemi. Loren is a storyteller who performs all over the country, and What Haunts Us is his first-ever published story collection.

This book was challenging to produce, but if I don't say so myself the result is pretty outstanding. From a literary standpoint the narrative style comes from performance storytelling, which gives it a fundamentally different feel than your standard anthology of short stories. Some are adapted from existing folklore and others are entirely original compositions. This is a work that has been long in the making, as Loren has been performing for more than forty years. You can check out his website here for more information about him and his background.

All of these stories touch on various elements of the paranormal and metaphysical, and should be of interest to magical and spiritual practitioners. I know that a lot of us don't read much fiction, but this is a book that grounds the fantastic firmly in the real world as we know and understand it. As magicians, that is, after all, precisely what we strive to do with our practices. So I think that What Haunts Us is definitely a book worth checking out, and on top of that the stories themselves are quite good.

Loren will be performing tomorrow evening, Wednesday February 27th, at Tillie's Farmhouse in Saint Paul, Minnesota. If you are local to the area, come by and check it out. It promises to be a good time with opening music starting at 6 PM and Loren's storytelling starting at 7 PM. He also travels around the country, with his upcoming events posted on his website. If you get a chance to see him, you should - there aren't a lot of storytellers around any more, and Loren is an excellent one.

Now that the book production project is mostly wrapped up, I'll be getting back to our regularly scheduled programming. Also, the Office of the Readings is coming up in a few weeks and as always you will be able to follow along here. I have to say, with all the snow we've been getting this February I really am looking forward to spring.

Books for the Holidays!

Cross-posted from my author web site.

With the holiday season upon us, it's good to keep in mind that the gift of books never goes out of style. Of course, I'm talking about my books. My first novel was published in 2009 and since then I've put out additional fiction and non-fiction titles. Naturally, if I do say so myself, they make great gifts.

The Mastering Enochian Magick Series

Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy

Volume I of the Mastering Enochian Magick Series is still the only book I know of dedicated to exploring the Heptarchia Mystica, an early portion of John Dee and Edward Kelley's work that precedes the better-known Great Table and Aires or Aethyrs. The Heptarchial system works with sixteen spirits total, a King and Prince for each day of the week plus a King and Prince who rule over the entire system. This book makes a great introduction to Enochian magick that can get the reader started right away without a lot of the complexity normally associated with the Enochian system, and produce impressive practical results.

Click here to find out more and order your copy today!

Mastering the Great Table

Volume II of the Mastering Enochian Magick Series is my own exposition of the attributions of the Great Table or Watchtowers. It is more controversial than Volume I because the attributions I use are based on my interpretation of the Dee diaries and they don't line up with the attributions used by the Golden Dawn, the Aurum Solis, or Aleister Crowley. Even other "Dee Purists" don't necessarily agree with my reading of the original texts, so this book is not going to be a re-hash of other Watchtower systems that you will find elsewhere. It is, however, rooted in decades of practical work and experience, and the rituals and structures contained therein have been proved highly effective.

Click here to find out more and order your copy today!

Mastering the Thirty Aires - Coming Soon!

Volume III of the Mastering Enochian Magick Series is my exposition of the Aires or Aethyrs based on my work with the Dee diaries rather than the modern attributions derived from the various Golden Dawn-based systems. Mastering the Thirty Aires has been submitted to my publisher but is not available at this time. Watch this space for an announcement once it is ready to order!

Enochian Master Classes

This is not a book but it makes a great gift anyway. I recently participated in a set of Enochian Master Classes along with Jason Augustus Newcomb and Aaron Leitch. These classes are a great opportunity to hear me lecture on my system of Enochian magick and at the same time hear the perspectives of two other longtime practitioners. You can sign up for the course here, and the coupon code STENW-ENOCH7-50 will give you 50% off the registration price.

Click here to sign up today!

Damien Echols is an Occult Author

Back in 2015, Damien Echols wrote an article for Vice about how he used meditation and magical practices to keep himself sane on death row. Echols was one of the West Memphis Three, a group of teenagers convicted of the murder of a young boy mostly because they were "weirdo loners" and because Echols was interested in occultism.

That provided prosecutors with a motive back in the Satanic Panic days, since what the fundies were going around telling law enforcement is that occultists did what they did "just to be evil" - as opposed to, say, casting spells that have an actual function and are intended to produce practical results. Echols has now written a book on the practices he was able to keep up in prison. The book covers pretty standard Regardie/Golden Dawn methods - LRP, Middle Pillar, and so forth - but Echols offers his personal experience of how these rituals and techniques can be employed in extremely difficult circumstances.

Though our culture has consigned “magic” to fiction, stage illusions, or superstitions about dark practices, the magick Damien learned is an ancient Western tradition equal the Eastern practices of Buddhism, Taoism, and yoga in its wisdom and transformative power. Here he brings you an engaging and highly accessible guide for bringing magick into your own life, including:

• What is High Magick? Damien clears away the stigma and reveals the history and core teachings of this extraordinary art.
• The Four-Fold Breath—a foundational meditation practice to train your mind and body to channel subtle energies.
• The Middle Pillar—how to bring divine energy into the central channel of your body for empowerment and healing.
• The Qabalistic Cross—a centering technique to help you stay balanced and protected regardless of circumstances.
• The Lesser Rituals of the Pentagram—powerful practices for banishing negative energies and invoking energy to manifest your goals.
• Working with angelic beings and other spiritual allies to support your practice.
• Creating thoughtforms to assist you in your ongoing magickal development.
• Guidance for overcoming your doubts, enhancing your visualization skills, creating talismans, practicing magick ethically, and much more.

“Magick is a journey,” writes Damien. “It’s a continuously unfolding path that has no end. You can study and practice magick for the rest of your life and you will still never learn everything that it has to teach you.”

Mark Stavish used to say that "nobody ever got enlightened using the LBRP." That's probably a true statement since generally speaking you need to invoke in addition to banishing in order to make real spiritual progress. But I think it's safe to say that Echols offers a unique perspective on these rituals and their overall effectiveness. Yes, you can do magick on death row without tools or implements or anything really, and it can and does work. Echols' example shows that these well-known rituals can indeed by part of a comprehensive spiritual practice that expands and uplifts your consciousness.

Ban the Banned Books!

If a banned book is banned from a display of banned books, does the universe implode or something? Hopefully we won't have to find out. A library in Maine set up a display of banned books for Banned Books Week, an annual event set up to draw attention to censorship and related issues. But a group of pastors is now trying to get books banned from the display of banned books. Truly, somebody out there has a dizzying intellect.

A group of pastors in Rumford, Maine are attempting to have LGBTQ books banned from the Rumford Public Library’s display of banned books. The library is holding a board meeting today, where the controversy will be discussed. The National Coalition Against Censorship and Comic Book Legal Defense Fund support Rumford Public Library’s display and freedom to choose how best to serve their community. NCAC and CBLDF oppose efforts to limit a whole community’s access to books based on the personal viewpoints or religious beliefs of some groups or individuals in that community. As public institutions, libraries are obligated not to discriminate on the basis of viewpoint or sexual orientation.

The display coincides with Banned Books Week, an annual celebration of the freedom to read, highlighting books that often draw challenges in schools and libraries. Half of the books on this year’s American Library Association Top 10 Banned Books list tell stories of LGBTQ characters. Books representing a wide variety of experiences and voices allow readers, particularly children, to find connection, safely explore unfamiliar ideas, and broaden their understanding of the world.

The bottom line is this. Public libraries currently cannot discriminate in favor of particular religious beliefs. If these pastors succeed, it will set up a dangerous precedent. Do any of us really want public resources restricted whenever they don't fit the agenda of some small but vocal religious group? It seems to me if these pastors are opposed to these books the obvious thing to do would be to not read them. Preventing people who don't share their beliefs from seeing them is a clear violation of those other religious beliefs - that is, the belief that it's perfectly okay for material like this to be read and displayed.

The Secrets of Solomon

One of the really cool things about living in the Twin Cities is that the wonderful Joseph H. Peterson only lives a couple of hours away.

This last weekend, he came to Leaping Laughter Oasis in Minneapolis and gave a presentation on his latest book, The Secrets of Solomon: A Witch's Handbook from the trial records of the Venetian Inquisition. Peterson is one of the few authors in the grimoire field doing academic-quality research, and his books on the various texts and their histories are always illuminating.

I bought a copy of the book at the presentation and have not had a chance to read it, but I figured for today I would summarize a couple of takeaways from Peterson's presentation that are relevant to issues that keep coming up in discussions of the grimoires.

The Secrets of Solomon is a grimoire that is explicitly dedicated to working with chthonic spirits. It appears to be one of the sources used by the original author of the Grimoirium Verum, and it is clearly aware of the Key of Solomon. It positions itself as a grimoire for working with chthonics, whereas the Key of Solomon is dedicated to working with "aerial" spirits (which I usually refer to as celestial). Here are a few takeaways related to issues that have come up in the grimoire community that The Secrets of Solomon may help to shed some light on.

The text is clear that chthonic spirits are supposed to communicate visually, and aerial (or celestial spirits) do not. In other words, if you're charging up your Key of Solomon pentacles and trying to get the spirits to appear visually, according to the tradition you are doing it wrong. I doubt this is an absolute rule, and I also know from experience that the modern scrying techniques I use work fine, but it's a nice point to be able to pull out in those arguments over the whole visual appearance thing. It The Secrets of Solomon is to be believed, the celestials from the Key of Solomon don't necessarily appear and in fact are not supposed to.

According to the text, chthonic spirits can generally accomplish more than celestials. I can't personally say that I've found that to be the case, since I'm able to do about the same level of effects with both, but it's no surprise that the author of the text is going to say that the methods they are outlining are the best, whether or not that's true. The trade-off is that celestials can be "bound into a ring and carried with you" for performing ad hoc magical effects. This is an interesting idea for the Key of Solomon pentacles - what if you made a ring for one of the pentacles, enchanted it for general effects related to its function, and wore it around? It seems to me that could be a very useful technique.

Trump Card Would Make a Better Movie

The Poor Oppressed Christians are at it again. In their quest to create their own little media world in which nothing non-Christian - and therefore impure - ever has to darken their poor, sensitive souls, Liberty University is planning to release a film called The Trump Prophecy. Of course, it will be released in October just ahead of the midterm election, because Liberty University is totally apolitical like that. The movie tries to make the case that all the Christians who love our distinctly-un-Christian president aren't actually terrible Christians at all for doing so - because Trump being president is part of God's plan.

In post-election interviews in 2016, voters often expressed a belief that God had some role in the dramatic, unexpected outcome. For the many people of faith who see God’s hand in their own lives — from their triumph over alcoholism to their luck in finding a parking spot — it’s not such a stretch to believe that God has a hand in determining who wins the Super Bowl or the White House. That may help explain why Taylor’s and Mary Colbert’s 2017 book, “The Trump Prophecies: The Astonishing True Story of the Man Who Saw Tomorrow . . . And What He Says Is Coming Next,” won a following.

Taylor in the book recounts his traumatic experiences as a firefighter, and how, suffering from anxiety and depression, he began to hear from both God and evil spirits. God told him in 2011, he wrote, that Trump would win the election, though he expected that to happen in 2012. Trump won in 2016 despite widespread belief among pollsters and voters alike that Hillary Clinton would beat him easily. He won in great part because of the support of more than 80 percent of white evangelical voters. Taylor gained attention and made more predictions.

Trump will win a second term, he said. God has also told him, he said, that the dollar will become the strongest currency in the world and that the news media will come to see that Trump is in the right. Producer Rick Eldridge and his Charlotte-based ReelWorks Studios heard Taylor’s story and imagined it as a compelling movie for Christians who feel secular filmmakers offer them too few choices. Over Thanksgiving, he met with Schultze, who was visiting family in Charlotte. The two talked about a collaboration with Liberty in which students would get weeks of hands-on experience doing such tasks as camera work, lighting and makeup.

I don't know that God was necessarily responsible for Clinton's decision to divert campaign resources from Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in an effort to win North Carolina and Florida. That decision proved disastrous to the Clinton campaign, as Trump won all five, the former (neglected) three by very small margins. It's easy to imagine a scenario in which Clinton could have won by pouring resources into those three northern states in which Trump was campaigning very hard. That sounds more like a flat-out strategic blunder to me rather than anything divine.