Why Shadow Work Fails

I have posted multiple articles here on Augoeides discussing errors in the psychoanalytic model that have been revealed by modern neuroscience research. It should come as no surprise that a model of the mind from a century ago would turn out to be incorrect and superceded by newer and better science. Nonetheless, in the magical community a lot of writing about psychology seems to be stuck at some point around the 1920's. This is especially true of Thelema, in which the use of Jungian psychology is practically a cliche. Some examples of this are David Shoemaker's Living Thelema, which devotes a full third of the book to Jungian principles. As a personal example, at the last NOTOCON I attended a presentation on alchemy that sounded fascinating from the description of the talk, but basically turned out to be a walk-through of Jung's Psychology and Alchemy, which I read back in college when working on my psychology degree. It was published in 1944.

One area in which I will give Carl Jung credit is that he took Freud's psychoanalytic model about as far as anyone ever could. The problem is that the Jungian version preserves all of Freud's original errors and tries to build its foundation on top of them. I should point out that prior to neuroscience findings on the nature of memory, I considered myself an enthusiastic Jungian. This thesis that I wrote back in 1991 considers the idea of using chaos theory to model Jungian personality structures in order to generate a functional and predictive model of the mind. The central idea is a logical conclusion that can be drawn from the self-similar nature of Jungian complexes, but falls apart when we realize that the Jungian complex does not exist in any real sense. It is an abstraction that rests on the incorrect notion of conflating the brain's conditioning and cognitive systems.

According to the Jungian model, the mind consists of complexes all the way down. A complex is defined as collection of impressions, memories, ideas, and so forth linked together into a unified structure according to similar feeling-tone. Feeling-tone is a term that describes the subjective experience of an emotion connected with an impression, memory, or idea. Jung considered the Freudian ego as a sort of "master complex" united by the feeling-tone of self-identification. In other words, all of the impressions, memories, and ideas surrounding our sense of self combine to create the sense of self-awareness and subjective consciousness. This implies that complexes gain self-awareness once they reach a critical mass of elements, and that implication is a key aspect of the Jungian model not found in Freud or Adler or any of the other psychoanalytic systems that preceded it. In Jungian psychology, the actions of non-ego (and therefore unconscious) complexes play an important role in producing mental illness symptoms.

What we actually know now from brain research is that the phenomena Jung attributed to the actions of unconscious, autonomous complexes actually arises in the conditioning system, a portion of the brain that is present in virtually all animals, from human beings to the Aplysia sea slug that has only twenty thousand total neurons. This system is in many ways a marvel of evolution in terms of simplicity and efficiency. It runs on a small rule set and implements "conditioning loops" that prompt the repetition of behaviors that have been reinforced and the avoidance of behaviors that have been punished or resulted in negative reinforcement. It essentially builds up a "database" of these behaviors, their results, and the situation in which they occurred. It does not think, it does not reason, and it does not "want" anything. None of its processing remotely resembles conscious cognition, and in fact that processing is done by a completely different part of the brain from that employed by the thinking and feeling systems.

Via Solis Leo Elixir Rite - Year Ten

Today's post is a full script for the Leo Elixir Rite that we will be performing tomorrow, Tuesday August 11th, at the Ritual Workshop. We will be starting around 8 PM.

0. The Temple

The ritual space is set up with an altar table in the center. The 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 Leo. The sign Leo is attributed to "The power of training wild beasts." As I interpret it, this power is related to working with conditioning of whatever sort, yours or that of others, in accordance with your will. 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 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.

Bell Chime

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.

The Parents Television Council is No More

This article is from back in October, but I smiled when I recently came across it. The Parents Television Council, a Christian organization founded to promote censorship of television programs such as South Park and Family Guy, filed for bankruptcy late last year. And as far as I'm concerned, good riddance to them.

Christian media censorship has always confused me. Having read the Bible multiple times, I can say with some certainty that there's nothing in scripture that prohibits media of any kind. Sometimes people try to argue that "taking the name of the Lord in vain" prohibits exclamations like "Jesus Christ!" or "God damn it!" but that's not at all what it means. It means swearing to do something in the name of God and then not doing it. So integrity, not family-friendly language.

The PTC hated South Park and Family Guy more than either of them could ever hate each other, and, for years, the Christian censorship organization regularly denounced the shows while orchestrating write-in campaigns urging the FCC to take action against them. Unfortunately for the perpetually triggered parents of the PTC, this week, the once-feared organization filed for bankruptcy amidst mounting debt and following a steep, decades-long decline in their political influence. The ancient and common enemy of crass cartoon comedy seems to be defeated — the PTC might even have to sell all those pearls they’ve been clutching.

Conservative political activist Leo Brent Bozell III founded the PTC in 1995 to combat what he perceived to be a decline in “decency” in mass media. Officially, the PTC advocated for “responsible, family-friendly content across all media platforms,” but, in practice, that meant using public shaming and the mass filing of FCC complaints to pressure networks into censoring or pre-empting any material that didn’t align with the PTC’s socially conservative politics. While the PTC was most famous for lambasting networks whenever a performer in a live broadcast would slip in a swear word (or, in Janet Jackson’s case, slip a nip), the group was also accused of being a deeply homophobic organization that fought against the rise of gay representation in television that coincided with their own cultural ascent.

What the fundies never seem to understand is that their religion doesn't prohibit me from doing anything. I don't follow their strict interpretation of Christianity - and as a matter of fact, a lot of Christians don't either. So if we non-fundies want to watch comedy show with adult themes, that should be none of their business. I get that they don't want their kids watching, but you deal with that issue by actually being an attentive parent and knowing what your kids are doing. You don't deal with it by policing everyone else unless you're an asshole.

Christian censorship is especially annoying because it doesn't just target obvious obscenity. It targets any mention of the fact that gay people exist. It targets any mention of pagan religious beliefs. It targets anything remotely related to sexuality, even educational programming. It's basically the media arm of the Poor Oppressed Christian movement, since as far as I can tell they consider themselves oppressed by the mere existence of a lot of things that are just part of the modern world.

These folks really should abandon this idea that the world needs to be sanitized to their idea of "family friendly" and instead pay attention to their own families. They may not believe it, but the rest of us are perfectly content to leave them alone with their regressive beliefs.

More Kim Davis Drama

Here I thought we were all done with Poor Oppressed Christian icon Kim Davis after she officially lost her lawsuit forever. Unfortunately, she has a real talent for getting herself in the news. Davis is being sued again for hiding assets from an inheritance to avoid paying the judgement in her original case.

Combined with attorney fees, Davis owes more than $560,000 under the civil rights judgment. The lawsuit also claims Davis has yet to pay any of the amount ordered. Attorneys for Ermold and Moore say that after Davis’ mother died in 2025, Davis inherited land and transferred the deeds of that property to other family members. The lawsuit claims the transfers were made to conceal her assets.

Attorney Michael J. Gartland said there are three parcels of land in question. Deed certificates list the total value of those parcels at more than $400,000. Gartland cited a fraudulent conveyance statute, which prohibits transferring property to avoid paying existing claims against you. He said the transfers took place before the couple won the judgment.

“Now we only found out about it in December of 2025 — Kim Davis answered sworn statement interrogatory written questions — we asked her to identify all transfers in the last five years that were worth more than two thousand dollars and she wrote none — that turned out to be a false statement because we have copies of the deeds by which she conveyed these properties just eight or nine months earlier,” Gartland said.

These phony "Christians" are absolutely shameless. Isn't lying supposed to be a sin or something? I don't happen to follow her religion, but I'll always call out a hypocrite. If she had any integrity she would have answered that question honestly and faced the consequences. But these folks are literally as self-serving as everyone else, if not moreso in the current political climate.

These people need to face accountability across the board. Their religion doesn't grant them special rights, at least according to the United States Constitution. Whenever they try to force their beliefs on others, they should be sanctioned to the full extent of the law.

So Close, But Still So Far

Exotericism is my term for magick demystified. At some point here I am going to be doing some writing on that topic over on substack and adapting some of the material here from Augoeides for a different audience. That audience is made up of people who work with "manifesting" and other New Age techniques that have a lot in common with magical practice. In fact, I would say that they basically are the same thing as what we magicians do, just along more intuitive lines and with less formal structure.

I sometimes describe formally structured magick as a martial art for the mind and by extension psychic abilities. The advantage of a formal structure is that it lends itself to scientific investigation by empirical means, at least up to a point. It is also far more optimized than general intuitive fixing of thoughts. As a practitioner for many years, I am fully capable of shifting probabilities just by fixing a thought on my intent for about 20-30 seconds. While I see measurable results using that method, the probability shifts I can throw are a lot bigger with formal rituals.

I recently came across this video of one of these manifesting teachers talking about Aleister Crowley's Magick: Book Four in the context of the general New Age manifesting model. He gets some of the basic points right, but misses several key things that are essential to performing truly powerful magick. In fact, magical practice offers a remedy for the exact problem that he identifies, and this is a remedy that I know works from personal experience. However, because of some of his initial assumptions, he just does not see it.

New Age manifesting is mostly based on "New Thought," an incorrect model of the universe that presupposes the universe is actually mental and your thoughts deterministically produce your experiences. This idea shows up in Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, Christian Science, The Kybalion, Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking, and most recently Rhonda Byrne's The Secret. The problem is that there are all sorts of goofy ramifications of this model that do not bear out in physical reality.

Via Solis Cancer Elixir Rite - Year Ten

Today's post is a full script for the Cancer Elixir Rite that we will be performing tomorrow, Tuesday July 21st, at the Ritual Workshop. Doors will open at 7:30 with the ritual to start around 8 PM.

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 Cancer. The sign Cancer is attributed to "The power of casting enchantments." As I interpret it, this is related to the ability to magnetize or draw things into your life in accordance with your will. So those sorts of intents are most appropriate. 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 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.

Christian Nationalism a Theological Error

That was the determination made by the latest General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. It's about time mainstream Christians started saying this out loud. There is literally no way to reconcile the Christian Nationalist project with the actual teachings attributed to Jesus Christ. I could go through a whole bunch of Bible citations to support that point, but let's just say I wholeheartedly agree with this determination.

Commissioners to the 227th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted overwhelmingly to declare White Christian nationalism and similar ideologies “a theological error” incompatible with the teachings of Jesus Christ, advancing a proposed constitutional amendment that would add that language to the denomination’s Book of Order.

Erica Nelson speaks on behalf of the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy The Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP). Photo by Jonathan Watson. The assembly also approved a denomination-wide policy statement condemning White Christian nationalism, directed church leaders to expand public opposition to the movement through ecumenical partnerships and public witness, and declined to commemorate Presbyterians’ role in the American Revolution, citing concerns that such a celebration could elevate nationalism over the church’s gospel witness.

By a vote of 458-18, commissioners approved RUS-01, which asks the denomination’s 164 presbyteries to ratify new Book of Order language affirming the church’s commitment to justice, peace, mercy and human dignity while rejecting “any ideology that seeks to establish Christianity as a privileged or dominant force through the power of the state, or that conflates religious identity with national, racial, or ethnic supremacy.”

The apparent lack of faith shown by Christian Nationalists is utterly bizarre to me. If you honestly and sincerely believe that everybody who disagrees with you will be tortured for all eternity, why do you care about making their brief time on Earth harder by weaponizing the legal system against them? The easiest answer I can think of is that maybe they don't have faith at all, so they're doing everything they can to punish their supposed enemies here and now.

Psychic Ability Versus Intuition

Back in April, Vice posted an article about a recent study in which almost one in five American claimed to have psychic abilities. I actually don't find that number particularly surprising, since the question was about psychic ability in general. Lots of people have experiences that seem psychic, which is why paranormal beliefs exist in the first place. Psychic abilities are "real" in the sense that people keep experiencing them. The debate is over what their actual nature is.

A new survey of 2,000 adults from Talker Research found that 19% of respondents straight-up believe they have psychic abilities, another 71% lean on intuition at least some of the time, and over the past year, the average person logged around 18 moments they’d describe as psychic. Only 11% said they don’t buy into it at all. So what’s actually happening?

Nobody was predicting earthquakes or lottery numbers. The experiences people pointed to were more like: knowing something was off before anyone confirmed it (33%), clocking that someone was lying (28%), or just feeling like it was time to leave a situation (26%). Twenty-five percent had a bad feeling about something before it went awry. Twenty-four percent thought of someone right before that person texted. Psychic or just paying attention? Depends on who you ask.

Adam Dickinson, a former FBI intelligence analyst, didn’t dress it up. “Intuition is your body compressing years of experience and pattern recognition into a clear signal you can feel right now.” The people who sensed dishonesty before it surfaced, or finished someone’s sentence before they got there—they’re reading data. They’ve just been doing it long enough that it no longer feels like work.

The part of the survey that deserves more attention is the anxiety overlap. Thirty-five percent of respondents said they genuinely can’t tell the difference between a real gut feeling and anxiety spiraling. Dickinson’s way of separating the two: get still, get neutral, and notice whether the inner voice feels steady or frantic. “That urgent, demanding tone is usually anxiety trying to control uncertainty,” he said. Not intuition. Just the nervous system doing its thing.

While this is a skeptical take that assumes psychic senses could not possibly exist, otherwise I don't really disagree with most of it. There is a difference between psychic awareness and intuition, but a lot of the time what is happening when you get "a feeling" about something is definitely the latter. Psychic abilities aren't called "paranormal" for nothing, after all.

Poor Oppressed Christians Target Prayer Group

No, not a Christian prayer group, a Jewish prayer group. That's the entire point here. Daniel Grand, an Orthodox Jewish man living in University Heights, Ohio wanted to hold a prayer group with his friends at his home. No big deal, right? Most Christian churches start out as Bible study groups or prayer groups that meet in members' homes, and this goes on all the time with nobody saying anything about it. Extending that same privilege to a member of the Jewish faith, though, was not something that the Poor Oppressed Christians in the community could stand. The city targeted Grand, insisting that he could not pray with his friends in his home without a special permit establishing it as a "place of religious assembly." Then, when he tried to do just that, the city turned him down.

Attorneys with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe and Alliance Defending Freedom represent Daniel Grand, who, in January 2021, e-mailed a dozen friends to invite them to his home to pray as a minyan, a “threshold requirement for the most sacred acts of Jewish communal worship,” that upcoming Sabbath. But when city officials found out about the e-mail, and before any minyan convened, the city demanded that Grand “immediately cease and desist any and all” uses of his home as a “place of religious assembly” unless he first obtained a special use permit, which the city requires for houses of worship in residential districts.

When Grand filed a lawsuit, federal courts closed their doors because Grand had not completed the permitting process—even though successfully obtaining a permit would have required Grand and his family to leave their home. “Every American has the right to host a prayer gathering in his home, and he certainly doesn’t need a city permit to do so. When government officials forbid that, courts must hold those individuals accountable, immediately,” said ADF Senior Counsel and Vice President of Appellate Advocacy John Bursch. “The city’s actions underscore a troubling trend of weaponizing zoning laws against people of faith while allowing other gatherings of the same size, like book clubs or poker nights, to meet without issue. We’re pleased the Supreme Court will hear this case.”

The reply brief filed in May in Grand v. City of University Heights explains that city officials targeted Grand because of his religious practice. He was never trying to establish his private residence as a synagogue; he was simply hosting a prayer gathering with friends. City officials went so far as to order police to spy on Grand’s home and encouraged his neighbors to file complaints if anyone visited. The city then issued unfounded property violations, unlawfully withheld his certificate of occupancy and tax abatements—which cost him thousands of dollars in additional taxes—regularly failed to collect his trash, and engaged in a broader pattern of harassment that went far beyond ordinary zoning enforcement.

The brief further notes how Grand canceled his planned minyan as ordered and tried to comply with the city’s directive by submitting a permit application. But neighbors opposed the permit with letters protesting, “I am not Jewish, and I do not want our neighborhood labeled as Jewish.” The city then broadcast a public hearing marked by overt hostility to Jewish religious practice.

This is the playbook that these Poor Oppressed Christian snowflakes always use. They feel oppressed by the mere existence of any religion but theirs, and will stop at nothing to stamp out anyone just trying to exercise their religious freedoms. A group of friends getting together to pray is not a synagogue and should not be treated as such. City zoning codes are intended to deal with, for example, large numbers of people converging on a place of worship that could stress city infrastructure. But this minyan was a quorum of about a dozen people. That's the same size as a regular house party, which as far as I know is still legal in Ohio.

This case is now before the Supreme Court, which will decide whether or not to take it up. I would like to think that would be a good thing, since it seems to me that religious expression is explicitly constitutionally protected and any reasonable person would see that. I would also hope that the Christians on the court would realize that allowing a city to harass a Jewish prayer group would allow it to do the same to Christians. With today's court, though, I have no idea what their ruling might be. They seem so in line with the Poor Oppressed Christian agenda that their recent religious rulings make little sense.

Mass of Nuit and Babalon for 2026

This Tuesday, June 30th, we will be performing the Mass of Nuit and Babalon at the Ritual Workshop. This is the full script for the ritual, which we have been celebrating for a number of years now around the Summer Solstice with some pretty impressive results. Doors will open at 7:30 PM with the ritual to start around 8 PM.

0. The Temple

The ritual space is set up with the Holy Table and Sigillum Dei Aemeth in the center. The banishing dagger, invoking wand, and bell chime are arranged on the Table. The pitcher containing the Eucharist is placed in the center of the Sigillum. All present should have their own cups or glasses. Holy images of Our Lady Nuit and Our Lady Babalon, including the Star of Babalon, may be prominently displayed. The Lust card from the Crowley/Harris Thoth Tarot can be used as a meditation focus, if desired.

Programming the Universe - Babalon Rising 2026

This is my fourth and final presentation from the Babalon Rising Festival this year. This material will be included in my new book Thelemic Sorcery, which I am currently in the process of writing.

There is a long history of new technologies serving as models for magical and spiritual processes. When electricity was first discovered, for example, energy work was sometimes explained as the interaction of the electric and magnetic forces. In the 1970’s the new technology was computers, and today the new technology is the Internet. Both computer programming and networking have a lot in common with how magick is generally explained, since they rely on symbolic manipulation and the transfer of information structures.

Many different models of magick, and by extension sorcery, have been proposed over the years. Some models are based on spirits doing all the work. Others are based on personal psychic abilities. Still others are based on the idea of some sort of subtle energy that magicians direct to accomplish their goals. Paranormal skeptics treat the whole process as psychological, though in my experience most people who work with practical magick do not have to do it for very long before they encounter paranormal effects of some sort.

The problem with each of these models is that they try to reduce magical effects to a single mode of operation. I have found that I can make magical operations work using only my own psychic abilities, but I get bigger probability shifts when I also call in spirits. And when I employ energy work techniques, generally Qigong in my case, it enhances the effect further. I do often describe practical magick to students as a martial art for psychic abilities, but at the same time you will not get the best effects relying on personal psychic ability alone.

Revisiting the Equations of Magick - Babalon Rising 2026

This is the third of four presentations I offered at the Babalon Rising Festival this year. It is based on a updated version of this post from back in 2008. This material will also be found in my new book Thelemic Sorcery, which I am currently in the process of writing.

Decades ago, I once asked a much more experienced magician who I had a lot of respect for what the limitations of magick were. The answer I got was something to the effect of “Well, does it have any limits?” There may be a sense in which that answer is true, since given nearly infinite time the probability shifts created by magick might allow us to do almost anything. However, it was an answer I found entirely useless. Real things have limits – this is precisely the point of the physical sciences – and understanding those limits is how we understand all phenomena. We cannot assume the omnipotence of the mind without any evidence, and likewise we cannot fall into the common skeptical assumption that if you can do anything paranormal you must be able to do everything that could possibly be described as paranormal.

That conversation proved valuable in motivating me to embark on my own exploration of magick’s exact practical limits One thing we do know is that numerous factors go into figuring out how successful a magical operation will be. One of the early attempts to quantify those factors was a series of equations published in Peter Carroll’s 1992 book Liber Kaos. The chaos magick movement in the 1980’s and early 1990’s represented a significant step forward for practical magick. Peter Carroll and Ray Sherwin first broke magick down to what they considered its essential components. They then approached magical experiments in a scientific way – or at least as scientifically as was practically achievable. Liber Kaos was released around the same time as my fateful conversation, and it proved to be a good starting point for my paranormal research.

Peter J. Carroll passed away on April 22nd of this year at the age of 73. I submitted the proposal for this talk prior to that date and had no idea that he would have passed by the time I would be presenting it at Babalon Rising. While the central thesis of this presentation has to do with places where I disagree with his formulation of magick, it is important to note that he was a true pioneer in this area. Prior to Liber Kaos nobody had ever even floated the idea of probability equations for magical operations. Without his work I would have had nothing to build on, and might never have arrived at any of these revisions.

Too many modern practitioners talk about the “chaos” in chaos magick as something akin to “anarchy.” But while the chaos magick system does reject hierarchy, the original meaning of the term referred to chaos theory, an emerging branch of mathematics. Chaos theory describes systems with arbitrarily large degrees of freedom, independent variables that are nonetheless loosely interlinked. Phenomena that conform to chaos theory principles operate as if any point in this network can act as a critical point, at which a small probabilistic influence can propagate itself into a much larger overall effect.

The Star Sapphire - Babalon Rising 2026

This is the second of four presentations I offered at the Babalon Rising Festival this year. It is based on a updated version of this post from back in 2016. I have done a lot of work with this ritual since then, and am happy to be able to share my insights. This material will also be found in my new book Thelemic Sorcery, which I am currently in the process of writing.

Aleister Crowley's Star Sapphire ritual is one of the most difficult rituals to work out in the entire Thelemic canon. It's not that the ritual instructions are difficult so much as they are so frustratingly vague. If you have seen the Hellier documentary all the way to the end you will see the paranormal investigation crew figure out that a paranormal message they received is telling them to do this ritual. They then completely freak out reading the instructions and decide that it would take them years to learn, let alone attempt.

I was halfway tempted to email them and just offer to do it, since at the time it was a big part of my daily practice. In fact, one of my students did wind up writing them with the same offer but never got a response. Maybe that means they were not quite as freaked out by it as they were suggesting, or maybe it means they had no real intention of following through on it. Whatever the case, Crowley’s vague instructions do no one any favors. He describes the ritual itself in one chapter of The Book of Lies and describes the Holy Hexagram that is traced to the four quarters in another. That’s everything we have to work with.

The Star Sapphire is Crowley's version of the Lesser Ritual of the Hexagram, just as the Star Ruby is his version of the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram. He described the latter as an "improved" version of the pentagram ritual, so I think it's safe to say that he probably considered the Star Sapphire an improved hexagram ritual as well. It is certainly true that both rituals incorporate more Thelemic symbolism than the Golden Dawn rituals that Crowley sought to improve. There is more than that, though. The structure of the two rituals represents an evolution of the Golden Dawn rituals he originally learned.

The Enochian Great Table - Babalon Rising 2026

This year I offered four presentations at the Babalon Rising Festival in Springville, Indiana. I have decided to post those presentation here on the blog for the general public and anyone who attended the festival but was unable to make it to my talks due to scheduling issues. If you are interested in seeing presentations like this in a festival setting, I highly recommend the Babalon Rising Festival. It happens every year during the second weekend in June. This presentation is an updated version of this earlier presentation that I gave at Leaping Laughter Lodge in 2014. It covers material from my book Mastering the Great Table and walks through how I do evocations of the various Great Table spirits.

The Enochian magical system of Dr. John Dee and scryer Edward Kelley has inspired ritual magicians for centuries. Dee’s spirit diaries were first published in 1659 by Meric Causaubon, a clergyman who sought to discredit personal spiritual revelations by making the case that even John Dee, one of the most intelligent men of his age, was nonetheless taken in by evil spirits. Causaubon’s sixty-page preface to this effect was mostly ignored, but his edition of the diaries, A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some Spirits (normally abbreviated TFR by modern magicians) made Dee’s work available to an audience for the first time.

By 1700 the first attempt to integrate the Dee material into the canon of Western magick was published as the Treatise on Angel Magic, attributed to one "Dr. Rudd." In this volume we find some curious attributions that were passed on by early Enochian authors, such as attempts to mix Goetic and Enochian spirits. While there is some overlap between Enochian and Goetic practitioners, the two systems in fact have nothing to do with each other. That did not stop Rudd, though, from creating his own versions of implements such as the seven Ensigns of Creation that added Goetic spirit names to Dee’s designs. His Table of Art is also an odd synthesis of Dee’s Holy Table and other magical containment structures of the period.

The most famous system of Enochian magick was developed by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the late nineteenth century. The Golden Dawn system was influential enough that for much of the twentieth century it was what everyone thought of as Enochian magick. Aleister Crowley’s version was derived from the Golden Dawn version and similar enough that it was essentially a dialect of the system. But in the 1970’s and 1980’s Enochian magicians started going back to the original sources, most of which were maintained by the British Museum. Today these documents are available as online scans, making Dee’s original work more widely available than ever before.

What We Occultists Have to Deal With

I keep coming back to this idea of how fundamentalist Christians consider occultists some sort of existential threat based on made-up nonsense about who we are and what we do. A friend forwarded this video to me and it's a perfect example. The story is absolutely ridiculous, and it's nothing any occultist would ever do - for reasons I will get into.

It's obvious to me that this woman suffers from sleep paralysis and dreamed most of this, at least if I give her the benefit of assuming she's telling the truth. She could be making this all up, of course, since that's pretty much what fundamentalists do whenever they get into any details about magick, but let's just take the account on its face. If we do, it becomes clear that this is something no magician would ever bother with.

First of all, why is this "warlock" spending so much time and effort to attack this woman? Is she important? Like, at all? I have no idea who she is and apparently she has enough of a media presence somewhere to get interviewed. But just cursing random Christian people for no reason is stupid. It's a waste of time. There are better things you can do with magick to improve your life, so you should save your curses for those who are actively impeding your will or threatening your loved ones.

Second, the setup for this spell is ludicrous. You have a whole group of witches "flying around" to create a perimeter? If she's talking about physical flying that's flat-out impossible. If she's talking about some sort of "astral flight" why bother? I can see where you could use a physical perimeter to target a spell - I've done that personally - but the whole point is that the physical perimeter serves as an anchor for the spiritual force you are sending. It would do no good to have a bunch of witches astrally flying around the house so that a "warlock" could astrally project inside.

As astral perimeter for astral work does nothing. You need something physical, but that's easy enough to do with a set of talismans. You can make them out of ordinary objects like coins and place them at key points around your target. You don't need people to do any of it. Now let's talk about astrally projecting with an "astral knife" to attack someone. To cast a curse you don't need to any of that, and it makes little sense to me why anyone would do it. Once you have your perimeter, that's a magical link that you connect with your containment structure and then just use a targeting link like a photo.

So a magician would have to be really, really bad at magick to think something like this would work. Appearing to your target is silly. Curses work much better without warning, which is also why a good magician will never threaten. They just act. And anyway, a target wouldn't be able to take an astral object from you and use it. Their hand would slide right through it. There are way too many problems with this account for it to have anything to do with real occultism. It's basically made-up fundamentalist nonsense about what magicians - oh, I mean "warlocks" - actually do.

Persecution makes Christians feel important, and the best persecution is made-up persecution because it poses no actual threat and involves no actual risk. If the Poor Oppressed Christians even encountered real oppression, I wonder if they would even know what to do with it. They certainly wouldn't charge at real oppressors yelling "Dominion! Dominion! Dominion!" That would just get them killed.

So... sleep paralysis. This is caused by the body partially waking up while dreaming. Much of the dream content is present and the dreamer usually perceives a sense of threat or dread. They initially can't move, which means they try to exert effort to do so to no avail. This is because we have a physiological mechanism that impedes movement while we dream, to prevent things like sleepwalking. Then, when the mechanism finally turns off, the person can thrash around and bruise themselves without remembering anything but what they were dreamining about.

If this woman is being honest, that's what happened. And, of course, if she's making it up maybe none of it did. This is one more case where if people had a real idea about what magicians do, they would understand that not only do we not bother with such things, the mechanism described is also entirely unworkable.

Another Cabal Update

I never have been very skeptical regarding the idea of an elite, wealty cabal trying to rule the world. I've mentioned this many times before here on Augoeides. There's plenty of evidence that all sorts of plots to dominate society are devised by people with more money than they could ever spend and way too much time on their hands. The part that I have always been skeptical about is that the cabal has anything to do with occultism.

The idea that occultists and/or Pagans pose some kind of existential threat to "regular" people is ridiculous. It is nonetheless the mainstay of much fundamentalist Christian musing about what they fear is going on in the world. Their enemies can't just be garden-variety ultra-rich money-grubbing sociopaths - you know, the kind of people who actually pose an existential threat to everyone outside their income bracket. No, their enemies must somehow be metaphysically evil and depraved. As if starving the world just to amass unlimited wealth isn't evil enough.

Here's a new update on who these folks really are, or at least one particular subgroup of them. The original article was published in Wired but it is behind a paywall, so I am instead linking to this summary from Esquire that includes a link to the original piece. The cabal or sub-cabal in question is called "Dialog" and is led by perennial super-villian Peter Thiel, founder of uber-surveillance firm Palantir. And as usual, there's not an occultist in sight. Thiel himself appears to be some odd variety of fundamentalist Christian obsessed with the End Times and the Antichrist, which South Park parodied quite effectively in its latest season.

A source separately provided Wired with the registration list for Dialog’s 2026 retreat, which names 222 people and records what the list describes as each registrant’s membership status and attendee type, including “active member” and “guest.” The retreat is scheduled for August 12–16 at a venue near Dublin, Ireland.

The same data lays out a program of off-the-record sessions, including: “Money (Does?) Buy Happiness,” “Bring Back Nuclear,” “Navigating WWIII,” “Battlefield Technologies,” and “How’s Your Sex Life?” Other talks include “Build-a-Cult,” moderated by the founder of the Christian networking site Pray.com, and “Build-a-Party,” run by a former White House national security official.

Together, alongside the mundane fare of a typical thought leadership conference, the documents show an extraordinary convergence of power. The registration records list General Alexus Grynkewich, NATO’s supreme allied commander of Europe and the head of U.S. European Command, who took the post in July 2025 and is recorded on the leaked list as having attended Dialog gatherings since 2021.

The website directory names sitting Trump administration officials, two U.S. senators, six members of the Paypal Mafia, a former Middle East chief of intelligence, and a sitting ambassador to the United States, along with the founders and directors of many of the country’s largest surveillance, data-broker, and advertising-data companies.

Now at first I wondered about that Build-a-cult thing, because that at least sounds like it could be occult adjacent. But no, it's being put on by a Christian organization. That means that either (A) it's about how to create a Christian cult, or (B) it's going to be full of the usual fundie nonsense about occultism that has no basis in reality.

As a point, "Bring Back Nuclear" is a good idea in my opinion. It's emission-free and new reactor designs are incredibly safe. But that's likely about where my agreement with these folks is going to end. This sort of concentrated political and financial power is always going to be dangerous, and these are the same folks pushing artificial intelligence, the end of personal privacy (for everyone but them, naturally), and accelerationism.

So it's not that the conspiracy theorists are wrong, exactly. They just wander too far into the realm of fantasy regarding the cabal and its members. People don't need to be aliens or lizards or demons or wizards to be dangerous. Massive concentrated wealth and lack of accountability can do are plenty of harm all on their own.

Via Solis Gemini Elixir Rite - Year Ten

Tomorrow evening, Tuesday June 16th, we will be performing the Gemini Elixir Rite at the ritual workshop starting around 8 PM CDT. The full script is below if you would like to review it before the event.

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. 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.

US Military Removes Minority Religion Codes

This week the United States military announced the removal of religious classifications for about 180 minority religions. This eliminates categories for Wiccans, Pagans, Atheists, and - oddly enough - Unitarians among many others.

The reforms mark the first time the list has been officially revised since a memo was issued March 27, 2017, decreasing the total number of faiths from 211 to its new number of 31. The changes were iterated in a May 20, 2026, memorandum issued by the Under Secretary of War and signed by Anthony Tata, under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness of the United States, and obtained by Military.com.

This latest revision to the faith codes comes at the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to the Tata-signed memo, done to “streamline the DoW collection of religious preferences collection for service members to enhance the delivery of targeted religious support from the Chaplaincy.” It calls for the previously instituted faith and belief codes to be revised within a 60-day period from the issuance of the memorandum.

Minority non-Christian religions now all will get dropped into a single "Other Religion" category. Atheists will get sorted into the "No Religion" category. Meanwhile, practically every variation of "Christian" still gets its own code. This is despite the fact that I can't say I even know the difference between some of the remaining denominations. It also should be noted that the LDS church - the Mormons - does get its own code, but it is not listed as "Christian." This has resulted in some objections from Mormons, because they absolutely consider themselves Christian even if Evangelicals do not.

“The new list will provide chaplains with clear, readily available information that will better enable them to anticipate the religious support needs of service members and to provide religious support activities that align with service members’ personal faith and practices,” Tata wrote.

This reclassification absolutely will not do this. In fact, this announcement is almost on the level of Orwellian Newspeak - we're going to help you by taking something away from you. Far from simple bureaucratic streamlining, this is one more example of Evangelical Christians doing everything they can to enshrine special rights and privileges into law and government. And it is absolutely bizarre to suggest that in the information age it is remotely necessary to simplify these classifications. A computer database does not care if there are 31 categories or 211. Both of those numbers are tiny compared to what our current information technology can handle.

It is true that we are living in an age when being a weekend Fox News host - not even a regular Fox News host - apparently qualifies you to run the US military, but I still have trouble imagining how incompetent people would have to be with technology to make a couple hundered codes a problem. So the only explanation is that this is one more attempt by the Poor Oppressed Christians to free themselves from the mere existence of other religions - a circumstance which these whiners will swear up and down totally oppresses them and threatens their rights by allowing them to hear diverse opinions.

Via Solis Taurus Elixir Rite - Year Ten

Tomorrow, Tuesday May 19th, we will be performing the Taurus Elixir Rite starting around 8 PM CDT. Leaping Laughter is no longer located at our previous California Avenue NE space. Check discord and the members group for the address, or contact me directly if you have previously attended Leaping Laughter events. The full script is below for review.

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. The Via Solis Elixir Rites were written by Michele Montserrat in 2010 for the Comselh Ananael magical working group.

I. Opening

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.

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.

Bell Chime