Augoeides Theme Update

People have told me on more occasions than you might think that I can be a bit of a fuddy-duddy about technology for a professional software developer. The way I see it, you don't fix things that aren't broken. Blogger has worked just fine for Augoeides for more than a decade, and it continues to serve its primary function. While I'm sure some folks come here and ask themselves if anybody who's still running a version of "Thisaway Rose" could possibly be serious, the only real issue I see is that the site doesn't look quite as modern as I might like.

The good thing is that I never got a site going on one of those hells of spinning skulls, animated lightning, and dripping blood bars, Geocities and Tripod. If I had, I might still be running it, and it would basically be guaranteed to look terrible. I would be used to it, though, so all I would have to say is "It doesn't quite look modern." Truly, that would be a sad, sad day, both for me and for those of you who would have to put up with the spinning skulls in order to read my articles. So in that sense, it's a good thing that I got into the blogging game as late as I did.

At any rate, Augoeides was running the out-of-the-box "Thisaway Rose" theme from 2006 to 2011. In March of that year, I hacked the template to be wider and to have two sidebars instead of one. In April 2011 I added Pages when Blogger finally implemented them. Wordpress had already supported them for a long time, so it was nice to finally be able to create some.

Then, in July 2012, I went through the site and made it less pink. Now I did have a rationale for choosing the colors that I did - "Clear Pink Rose" is the King Scale color for Tiphareth, Beauty, the sephira of the Sun in Liber 777. And besides, I was sick of the black on black "scary" look popular back then with occult blogs and websites. I kept the pink for links and headers, and it is of course reflected in my banner image.

So as you can see, today I have gone ahead and updated the site template one more time to give it a slightly more modern look. First I widened the site to 1020px from 900px. When the blog went online it was at 760px, and when I added the second sidebar I expanded it to 900px. But as monitors have kept getting bigger, it had looked skinnier and skinnier, which is not ideal for reading longer articles. And besides, even at 1020 it will still display fine on a 1024 x 768 monitor - you know, for anyone still using those.

I also have entirely dispensed with the image that used to shade the sidebars light gray and provide the rose-colored border for the page. Now the content background is plain white and it just floats on the screen rather than being contained within a border, which matches more modern trends in website design. I'm still keeping the pink link text and headers to match the banner, at least for now.

Without that background image, I can finally move my page links up to the row below the banner without it looking silly. It didn't really work right with the shading behind it still suggesting three columns, which is why it wound up at the top of the left sidebar. What I'm planning on doing in the near future is putting together a second page gadget for "Featured Resources" that will point to new pages summarizing my various rituals, presentations, and so forth. It is getting to the point here that I could assemble an entire magical curriculum by organizing the material posted on this site, so that's my eventual goal.

Thanks again for sticking with me here on Augoeides, and I hope you all like these revisions to the look and feel.

Easter Egg Roll a Looming Catastrophe

Forget Syria and North Korea. The latest looming catastrophe for the Trump White House is the annual Easter egg roll, scheduled for this coming Monday. According to this article from Salon, it looks as if the administration may be dropping the ball on this event, which has gone on for more than a century - 138 years, to be precise.

Now I do realize that Salon is a partisan news outlet, and that there are many more important things going on in the world. Still, since the Poor Oppressed Christians who back Trump were incensed over Starbucks Christmas cups not bearing ancient symbols of their religion like snowmen and sleds, shouldn't it stand to reason that they would reserve the same level of stupid vitriol for an event based around venerable Christian symbols like rabbits and eggs?

Warnings and finger-nudges to get the White House moving are coming in from many of the working parts of the annual event. The supplier of the wooden eggs that are a party favor staple, sent a tweet out in February tagging the first family with a message: “Please reach out!”

@FLOTUS @realDonaldTrump @POTUS @MELANIATRUMP @IvankaTrump FYI manufacturing deadlines for the Easter eggs are near. Please reach out! pic.twitter.com/D78YqWVPBi

— Wells Wood Turning (@WellsTurning) February 20, 2017

Stephanie Grisham, Melania Trump’s communications director, told the Times, “Plans for the Easter Egg Roll are well underway, and the White House looks forward to hosting it.” But public schools in the Washington area have heard nothing from the White House, even though they are typically allocated up 4,000 tickets for children.

What about military families, which used to account for 3,000 tickets? “Unfortunately, the Trump administration has not reached out about it,” Ashley Broadway-Mack, the president of the American Military Partner Association told the Times. Congress members have also not been contacted about tickets for their constituents.

In fact, it's likely that this has little to do with Trump's political leanings and more to do with the fact that unlike previous presidents, he has not devoted much time or effort to staffing hundreds of positions at the White House that are still vacant. So these tasks may just not be getting done because there's nobody there to do them. That's why they call a presidential administration an "administration" and not "a guy with a Twitter account."

So it seems to me that Trump needs to get on this, ASAP. Not because an Easter egg roll is super-important in the overall scheme of things, but because it shows the need for staffers who should be on hand when a real crisis strikes. If the White House can't handle a simple public event like this one, what does that say about more pressing situations?

Peak Insanity for "Pizzagate?"

Wait... Whut?

Here I thought that "pizzagate" reached peak insanity months ago. But apparently, I was wrong.

Clearly demonstrating the recently proposed hypothesis that exposure to contradictory facts makes some people more convinced of their erroneous beliefs, a few hardcore idiots out there are still convinced that there's something to this bogus conspiracy theory. For those few folks who haven't heard of it, the conspiracy was made up by some guy on Reddit who proposed that since "pizza" is apparently a code word used by pedophiles, this particular pizza place must be part of a satanic pedophile ring. Yeah, if that sounds like a ridiculous reach to you, you're not alone.

Now these folks are going further. Because the owner of this particular pizza place appeared on a cooking show hosted by celebrity chef Guy Fiori, it clearly follows that Fiori must be part of the conspiracy. As if a satanic pedophilia cult leader who owned a restaurant couldn't appear on a cooking show, just because they happen to own a restaurant, without the show being complicit. That would even be true if the restaurant owner in question was a satanic pedophilia cult leader, which it's obvious at this point that he's not. I know, critical thinking is not the forte of this bunch.

Months after the Pizzagate shooter conceded that “the intel on this wasn’t 100 percent” and Alex Jones apologized for his misleading coverage of the topic, a group of hardcore conspiracy theorists remains convinced that a satanic pedophilia cult with many elite Democrats as members operates out of Comet Ping Pong, a formerly unassuming pizza shop in Washington D.C. Just yesterday, the Trump-approved Gamergate muscleman Mike Cernovich was tweeting about a “deep state pedophile ring.” And if you haven’t been following closely, you might be surprised to learn that the Pizzagaters have accused Guy Fieri–Food Network host, human meme, American icon–of being in on the action.

The accusation stems from an old episode of Guy’s show Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, which featured the host chopping it up with Comet Ping Pong owner James Alefantis in the restaurant’s kitchen. Pizzagaters have been rumbling about Fieri’s supposed involvement for a while: “COMET PIZZA WAS ON DINERS, DRIVE INS AND DIVES, GUY FIERI, VIDEO TAKEN DOWN. ALAFANTIS SAYS HE HARVESTS 10 TONS OF TOMATOES, CANS THEM AND STORES THEM IN HIS BASEMENT,” reads a comment on the apocalyptic financial “news” site ZeroHedge from December. (If you’re unclear on the sinister intimations of harvesting and canning tomatoes in your basement, you’re just not deep enough into PizzaGate yet.) And this week, the satirical Twitter account @lib_crusher tweeted screenshots to a post about Fieri and Comet Ping Pong on the Facebook group “Pizzagate – Stop the Ring.” “They even put these sick molesters on the food network,” the Facebook poster wrote.

So after all the crazies have disavowed it, this nonsense is still going strong thanks to a handful of true believers. Or are they trolls, maybe, trying to see if they can keep it going? In the end, I suppose the answer to that is "who cares?" If somebody does wind up getting hurt over this bullshit story, it really doesn't matter whether the person perpetrating it was stupid or evil. All of these dead-enders will be culpable. Of course, I'm hoping it doesn't come to that, and to this end I want to make it clear that this whole thing was a big con dreamed up by some guy on Reddit. Or maybe it was a joke. But again, who really cares?

The saddest thing about this is that "satanic pedophile rings" aren't even a thing. They were dreamed up by fundamentalist Christians in the 1980's in an attempt to ban all minority religions, and that plan failed catastrophically. Pedophiles for the most part aren't Satanists because statistically, hardly any Satanists exist. Most follow normal, mainstream religions - which, when you think about it, is a lot scarier.

Office of the Readings for 2017

Happy Thelemic New Year, everyone! It's that time again, for the Office of the Readings.

The Thelemic dates that you may see written online are arrived at by counting the number of 22-year cycles since 1904 to obtain the upper case Roman numeral, and then counting the years of the current cycle to get the lower case one. Within each 22-year cycle, many Thelemites ascribe the Major Arcana trumps of the Tarot to the years in order starting with The Fool and ending with The Universe. So the year that we're about to enter into is V:iii, attributed to the Empress card.

This post will remain the top article here for the duration of the Thelemic Holy Days from March 20th to April 10th. The Rite of the Office of the Readings is performed for all of the readings beginning on March 20th.

This year I'm pleased to announce that like last year, this year's Office of the Readings will be presented at Leaping Laughter Lodge, the Minneapolis local body of Ordo Templi Orientis. In order to synchronize our series with the Lodge's equinox ritual scheduled for March 19th, the Prologue of the Unborn will be read preceding the Invocation of Horus on that date.

Rituals

The Invocation of Horus
The Rite of the Office of the Readings

Readings

March 19

Liber VII, Prologue of the Unborn, preceding the Invocation of Horus.

March 20 - Saturn/Earth, The Universe

Liber LXV, Cap I.
Liber VII, Cap II.

March 21 - Fire/Spirit, The Aeon

Liber LXV, Cap IV.
From "The Four Zoas" by William Blake.

March 22 - Sol, The Sun

Liber VII, Cap IV.
From "A Mithraic Ritual" Translated by GRS Mead.

March 23 - Pisces, The Moon

Liber VII, Cap VI.
From “Dark Night of the Soul”, Book II, Cap 8 by San Juan de la Cruz.

March 24 - Aries, The Emperor

Liber Tzaddi vel Hamus Hermeticus.
From the “Tao Te Ching” by Lao Tzu, Cap 37 and 39.

March 25 - Mars, The Tower

Liber VII, Cap I.
From Liber CDXVIII, The 16th Æthyr.

March 26 - Capricornus, The Devil

Liber A'ash.
Relevant to Liber A'ash is my solution to the mystery of the duck.
From Liber CXI, Cap 174-175.

March 27 - Sagittarius, Art

Liber DCCCXIII, Cap VII.
From “The Vision of the Universal Mercury” by G.H. Frater S.R.M.D.

March 28 - Scorpio, Death

From Liber Arcanorum.
From Liber CXI, Cap 192-194.

March 29 - Water, The Hanged Man

Liber LXV, Cap III.
"I. N. R. I." by Frater Achad.

March 30 - Libra, Adjustment

Liber Libræ.
Selections from “The Spiritual Guide” by San Miguel de Molinos.

March 31 - Jupiter, Fortune

Liber VII, Cap III.
From Liber CDXVIII, The 20th Æthyr.

April 1 - Virgo, The Hermit

Liber VII, Cap V.
"The Emerald Tablet of Hermes" by Hermes Trismegistus.

April 2 - Leo, Lust

Liber Stellae Rubeæ.
From “The Daughter of Fortitude” Received by Edward Kelly.

April 3 - Cancer, The Chariot

Liber Cheth vel Vallum Abiegni.
"Maha Prajnaparamita Hridaya Sutra" (The Heart Sutra, Buddhist text. Translation by the Kuan Um School of Zen).

April 4 - Gemini, The Lovers

Liber LXV, Cap II.
From Liber DCCCXXXVII, The Law of Liberty.

April 5 - Taurus, The Hierophant

Liber LXV, Cap V.
From “On Christ and Antichrist” by Hippolytus, Cap 2.

April 6 - Aquarius, The Star

Liber DCCCXIII, Cap VI.
From “The Thunder, Perfect Mind” (Gnostic text).

April 7 - Venus, The Empress

Liber VII, Cap VII.
From Liber CDXVIII, The 7th Æthyr.

April 8 - Luna, The Priestess

Liber AL, Cap I.
“Vajrasattva, Primordial Buddha of Diamond or Rainbow Light” From Songs and Meditations of the Tibetan Dhyani Buddhas.

April 9 - Mercury, The Magus

Liber AL, Cap II.
“Visvapani, The Bodhisattva and Spiritual Emanation of Amoghasiddhi” From Songs and Meditations of the Tibetan Dhyani Buddhas.

April 10 - Air, The Fool

Liber AL, Cap III.
From Liber CDXVIII, The 22nd Æthyr.

If you would like to perform this series and have questions, feel free to e-mail me here. All Office of the Readings posts may be viewed here. Our Office of the Readings series is based on this ritual series by the Companions of Monsalvat.

The Zodiacal Work - Pisces

This article is Part Twelve in a series. Part One can be found here, Part Two can be found here, Part Three can be found here, Part Four can be found here, Part Five can be found here, Part Six can be found here, Part Seven can be found here, Part Eight can be found here, Part Nine can be found here, Part Ten can be found here, and Part Eleven can be found here.

The work of the Zodiac is neglected by most magical resources intended for beginners. The reason for this is that in the tradition, students start out studying the elemental work, move on to the planetary work, and only after that explore the system of the Zodiac. But in the context of practical work, the signs are important, because they represent half of the practical magical powers listed in Liber 777.

When going through this series, you can refer back to my Angels of the Zodiac presentation for additional information. The presentation goes into greater detail regarding some aspects of the zodiacal work, as does my Evoking Zodiacal Angels article in Liber Spirituum.

Today I will be moving on to the sign Pisces. In Liber 777, Pisces is attributed to "Bewitchments, Casting Illusions." So what we're talking about here is mind-to-mind type magical operations. The power of casting illusions can be used to alter the perceptions of others, and the power of bewitchment can be used to influence the thinking of others. "Mind control" would perhaps be too strong a term for this power, but "Mind Influence" would probably be an appropriate description.

As you can probably discern, this is another of the zodiacal powers that has many applications with potentially broad implications. Especially in the modern world, perception is incredibly important. And for most things that lie beyond our abilities to control via normal means, the decisions of others are generally paramount. Being able to shift both of these functions to our advantage can lead to great success in all manner of endeavors.

Spirit Communication Devices Video

Here's a fun video I came across about Ouija boards and other spirit communication devices. It's from back in 2015, but I apparently missed it when it first came out. Brandon Hodge, who appears in the video, is a well-known expert on Ouija boards, planchettes, and automatic writing devices, and the video includes footage of various items from his remarkable collection. We generally just think of Ouija boards when we imagine these devices, but in fact there were many other designs back in the day that had substantial followings among spiritualists.

Morbid Anatomy presents this short film by Ronni Thomas exploring Brandon Hodge’s incredible personal collection of planchettes and other devices used to communicate with the spirit world. From his profile on the Talking Board Historical Society:

"Brandon Hodge is a collector, author, historian, and the prevailing authority on automatic writing planchettes and early spirit communication devices. Long fascinated by the bizarre occult world of tipping tables, séances, Spiritualism, and ghostly encounters, Brandon acquired his first automatic writer—a boxed E.I.H. Scientific Planchette—nearly two decades ago. He has since traveled the globe documenting, collecting, and lecturing on the world’s rarest séance artifacts."

For more, check out his website at mysteriousplanchette.com.

I spent a number of years working with homemade "talking boards" of various designs when I was a teenager, and I will say that my experiences there still inform some of my work with spirits today. Over the course of those years, I worked out how to test spirits you get in contact with, how to recognize real channeled material versus made-up stuff, and so forth. That's super-important when you get into astral work and things like that, because especially when you're starting out, you can run into entities who are not the spirits they claim to be.

The biggest takeaway for me was that the easiest spirits to get in contact with are generally the dumbest, and they will tell you anything you want to hear to keep you talking. And, of course, that the board itself isn't dangerous at all, unlike fundamentalists claim. It's just a focus for your own psychic ability or that of whoever you're working with, and nonsense like burning the board won't accomplish anything if a spirit decides to come after you - which, I will add, is usually pretty rare.

Talking boards can be used in the context of magical ceremonies, too. You just have to go through the same sort of diligence that you do with a ceremony - observe the proper prayers, or forms, or whatever it is that you usually employ, and set up a proper link to the spirit that you want to contact so you can be reasonably sure that you're communicating with the right one. You do want to avoid is a random procedure, the "hey spirits, come and get me" method. It's still not dangerous for the most part, but you're unlikely to learn anything useful from it.

The Zodiacal Work - Aquarius

This article is Part Eleven in a series. Part One can be found here, Part Two can be found here, Part Three can be found here, Part Four can be found here, Part Five can be found here, Part Six can be found here, Part Seven can be found here, Part Eight can be found here, Part Nine can be found here, and Part Ten can be found here.

The work of the Zodiac is neglected by most magical resources intended for beginners. The reason for this is that in the tradition, students start out studying the elemental work, move on to the planetary work, and only after that explore the system of the Zodiac. But in the context of practical work, the signs are important, because they represent half of the practical magical powers listed in Liber 777.

When going through this series, you can refer back to my Angels of the Zodiac presentation for additional information. The presentation goes into greater detail regarding some aspects of the zodiacal work, as does my Evoking Zodiacal Angels article in Liber Spirituum.

Today I will be moving on to the sign Aquarius. In Liber 777, Aquarius is attributed to "Astrology." From the standpoint of divination, you can use this power to help you gain insight into any particular astrological chart, or obtain information about particular planetary aspects that may influence other operations. Also, from a practical perspective, this power can be used to energize magical effects that are primarily based on astrological aspects, or conversely, to mediate their effects.

One example of an effect based on astrological timing would be the sort of alchemical work taught by the Philosophers of Nature and published by Jean DuBuis in The Experience of Eternity. This style of working eschews ceremonial forms entirely, relying on "exposing" talismans to astrological influences at key points in time. An Aquarius operation could be theoretically be combined with this method to enhance the astrological effects on the talismans and other materials.

Likewise, operations from The Picatrix are heavily dependent upon astrological aspects and timing. I've mentioned in the past that I haven't had success with Christopher Warnock's Picatrix rituals, but perhaps employing an Aquarius operation in conjunction with one of those might make it work better. At this point I have enough on my plate that I'm not going be running experiments along those lines any time soon, but if anyone wants to give it a shot, I would like to hear their results.

The Trepanation President?

All the way back in 2007, before I really even knew how to properly clip source articles, I put up this post about trepanation, the controversial practice of drilling holes in your head in order to increase your level of spiritual realization. The photo above, which has been going around the Internet for about ten days, has raised some questions about whether or not President Donald Trump is considering taking up the practice.

Tracing the photo back to its source, though, it turns out the captured incident with the power drill was just the latest attempt by Trump to remove a listening device from his skull that he believed was placed there by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Rushing toward the president as he pressed the eight-inch bit into his temple, several White House aides managed to wrestle a drill from Donald Trump’s hand Monday while he attempted to remove Obama’s listening device from his skull. “Obama implanted a microphone inside my head to record everything I say!” Trump reportedly shouted shortly before three White House staffers pinned him to the floor and pried apart his fingers to seize the power tool. “You don’t understand, he can hear everything we’re saying! Obama can even hear my thoughts! I have to get it out! I can feel it! I can feel it! I can feel it!”

While it is something of a relief that we don't have a president who thinks drilling holes in his head will make him more enlightened, his obsession with the alleged listening device is still troubling. If Obama really was able to implant a listening device inside Trump's skull, nobody is safe. It's hard to even imagine how it would work.

Some sort of earwig-like micro-drone that could be piloted into the ear canal remotely, maybe? It's not completely beyond the realm of current technology, but it would require some pretty expensive miniaturization work. Or maybe it was snuck into his hair while he slept, then anesthetized the skin and burrowed its way in. There are no pain neurons in the brain, after all.

Still, the president could be wrong about the whole thing. He is wrong a lot, after all. Or, maybe it's just still April Fool's Day somewhere in the world.