Probably a Bad Idea

To be fair, I will grant that this promotional campaign is weird enough that it got me to post about it here on Augoeides. So maybe it's not a bad idea for all possible definitions of "bad." However, I do run into people from time to time who do magick even though they expect it not to work, and then are surprised or even shocked when it does. Spells are real and they can have real effects, and dismissing anything magical as an automatic joke can be problematic.

If your brand is called Liquid Death, why not hire a real-life Louisiana witch doctor to put a curse on your entire beverage inventory leading up to Halloween? That’s exactly what the Austrian spring water startup is doing with a campaign titled “Certified Cursed Liquid Death.”

In the campaign video, “practicing witch” Mystic Dylan is seen in a smoky warehouse preparing to cast an evil spell on cases of Liquid Death. “I call on the waters of Liquid Death and curse it with a witch’s breath,” he intones. “Curse this place, invade this product, invade those who would consume.”

Disclaimers at the end of the video warn that “Liquid Death is not responsible for what the demons do to you if you decide to consume it.” The video is running on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

According to company co-founder and CEO Mike Cessario, if you’re going up against the beverage Goliaths of the real world, weirdness helps. “As crazy as the name is, it just also made so much sense for what the product mission is: to kill your thirst and help bring death to plastic bottles,” Cessario tells Marketing Daily.

He believes there’s a “false assumption” the wellness demographic isn’t interested in weird, tongue-in-cheek entertainment.

And that's all fine and good for a laugh - if they're not working with a real magical practitioner casting a real curse. According to the article this is being billed as a real magical operation, and if it really is cursed I don't recommend drinking the stuff. Meanwhile, Cessario sounds like he either doesn't know the difference between a real magical operation and a joke or just doesn't care.

Now hopefully any magician hired to do a stunt like this would just show off for the cameras without actually casting a real curse, so odds are this is basically a big joke. Still, with the way the campaign is structured it's hard to tell - and I'll freely admit that's probably the point.

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!

Updating My Book Links

It's been a while since I've made any major changes to Augoeides. This latest one doesn't necessarily count as major, but I still wanted to call your attention to it. Over on the right sidebar, I have updated the links for my published books so that rather than going directly to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and so forth, they now link to dedicated pages on my author web site with more information on the books. Those pages include links to order copies from all of the various online vendors that sell them, in both print and ebook editions.

I mostly did this because I can't fit full descriptions of my books in the sidebar without taking up way too much space, especially as I add more titles, and it's completely understandable for readers to want to know a little more about what they are buying before clicking on "order" solely based on a title and book cover. Also, having dedicated pages lets me share other information like reviews, links to book trailers, and so forth from a single online location.

So now, when you click on the link or the image for any of my five published books, you will be sent to the book's dedicated page over at my author site:

• Arcana
• Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy
• Mastering the Great Table
• The Pathless Void
• Trump Card

If you want to support what I'm doing here at Augoeides, buy my books. I went through a period where I hosted ads on the site years ago and hated it. I would much rather support Augoeides with book sales than with some other online revenue scheme that probably will just annoy everyone, myself included. So when you buy my books, you really are supporting my work here on an ongoing basis. I do think that I share a lot of material here for free that is hard to come by elsewhere in the magical community.

One other point - I also have links on the below on the sidebar for the two anthologies that include my articles, Holy Guardian Angel and Liber Spirituum. They both are good books and I encourage you to buy them, but since I was paid up-front for my contributions they don't generate ongoing royalties for me like my other books do. So if you want to buy a book in order to support the site, I recommend that you pick up something else.

Cthulhu Unbound

I probably should have done this awhile ago, but I am finally getting into the intricacies of producing self-published ebooks. My first title is a short story called Cthulhu Unbound, a satirical take on H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. You can buy it in Kindle format from Amazon and other ebook formats from Smashwords.

A few years ago I submitted the story to a number of magazines but from the feedback I received they kind of didn't know what to make of it. It's satire rather than comedy, and imitates the structure of a Lovecraft story until the twist at the end.

I personally think the ending is hilarious, but that likely has something to do with my encountering a bunch of overly serious "Lovecraftian magicians" on the Internet back in the 1990's who treated the fictional Cthulhu Mythos as a totally legitimate dark and scary system of magick. The whole thing never made much sense to me. Even if you're operating from the perspective that the Cthulhu Mythos is "real" in some macrocosmic sense, why would you ever want to conjure entities whose only goal seems to be to drive humans insane and/or eat them?

At any rate, if you're interested in checking it out you can preview about half of the story for free. The Cthulhu Unbound ebook also includes a preview of the prologue to my novel Arcana and links to order the ebook edition if you decide that you like my fiction and want more.

Great Table Presentation

For those of you who live in the Twin Cities area or happen to be passing through, I will be presenting an introductory lecture on the Great Table or Watchtowers this Saturday, March 8th, at Leaping Laughter Lodge in Minneapolis, Minnesota at 7:30 PM. The talk will be based on the ritual template from my new book, Mastering the Great Table.

Like my previous presentation on the Heptarchia Mystica, it will focus on working with the angels of the Watchtower quadrants along the lines of the original system as revealed to John Dee and Edward Kelley, rather than the Golden Dawn approach or "Neo-Enochian" methods that combine techniques like pentagram and hexagram rituals with the original grimoire system.

A link to the event can be found here, and directions to the Lodge can be found here. For those of you in the area with an interest in Enochian magick, I hope that you will be able to make it. In addition to the lecture itself I will have books available for sale and will be on hand to answer any questions you might have about the Enochian system.

Mastering the Great Table is Now Available!

It's finally here, folks! Mastering the Great Table, the second volume of my Mastering Enochian Magick series, is now available from Pendraig Publishing. Mastering the Great Table covers working with the angels and cacodemons of the Great Table or Watchtowers just as I covered the Heptarchial Kings and Princes in Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy. The attributions for these entities are not those of the Golden Dawn, but rather the schema presented to John Dee and Edward Kelley. Like the first book, though, this one includes a template for Enochian operations that allows the operator to integrate modern forms and methods into the original grimoire structure.

Currently only the print edition is available, but an ebook version is in the works. You can click here or on the link to the right to order the print edition from Amazon. Other online retailers should be following soon, if you would rather order from one of them.

Mastering the Great Table

It's finally almost here. My new book on Enochian magick, Mastering the Great Table, will be available in September from Pendraig Publishing.

The first book of my Enochian series addressed working with the Kings and Princes of the Heptarchia Mystica, while this one will address the Kings, Seniors, and other entities derived from the four quadrants of the Great Table. I've made a deliberate effort to structure the new book just like the previous one, so if you liked Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy, which received many positive reviews, I expect that you will enjoy Mastering the Great Table as well.

Writing about the Great Table courts more controversy than writing about the Heptarchia Mystica. While the latter material has remained relatively unexplored, the former has been analyzed, expanded, reworked, and integrated into the curricula of many modern magical orders, all of whom have their own ideas about how it should be interpreted and applied. My version doesn't quite line up with any of those, but rather takes an approach like that articulated in my first book. While the ritual template I include shows where modern ritual forms can be added to the basic procedure, it also allows those magicians who prefer to work with just the original material to omit them and interact with the Enochian entities grimoire-style.

The new book will also expand upon some of the general ideas about magick that I introduced in the first book, so if you were holding off on picking up a copy of Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy until my book on the Great Table came out now is the perfect time. Click on one of the links to the right to order your copy today, and enjoy!

Walking With the Angel

My essay "The Descended Angel" will be included in this new anthology on the Holy Guardian Angel from Nephilim Press. The full list of essays and their authors can be found at The Lion's Den here. The anthology is now going into production and will be available soon. With this list of contributors I'm really looking forward to reading it, and I will notify you all when it is available for purchase.

So the "blogosphere school of magick," as I dubbed it awhile back, continues to make its mark in the world of traditional esoteric publishing. Chaos magick started with a small group of British magicians including Peter Carroll and Ray Sherwin back in the 1970's and grew into a major magical movement. It will be interesting to look back on this period in history and see if something similar happens here with the models, ideas, and practices that have taken shape out of our shared online community.

Fascinating times, indeed!

Hitting the Social Media

It's been a while since I've updated the social media links for my books. My Facebook author page goes all the way back to shortly after the release of Arcana in 2009. However, seeing as I appear to have two distinct audiences for fiction and non-fiction books I've added two more pages, one for my Guild series of novels and another for my series of Enochian books. I only have one book out in each series so far, but that will be changing soon. Here are the new Facebook links:

• The Guild Series. This page is for the series of novels that began with Arcana.
• Mastering Enochian Magick Series. This page is for my series of Enochian magick books that began with Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy.

I also have created pages for Arcana and Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy on Google+ for those who prefer that platform to Facebook.

Go ahead and 'like' whichever series you happen to be interested in if you primarily use Facebook, add the corresponding Google+ pages to your circles if you primarily use Google+, or do both. That way you can stay in the loop on upcoming publication announcements and so forth.

Arcana generated little buzz back when it was first published, but it's a fun story that includes a lot of real magical elements like Enochian incantations and modern ceremonial forms rendered in more detail than what you usually find in urban fantasy novels. If you enjoy occult fiction, and especially if you find yourself rolling your eyes at the unrealistic magical concepts that most of those books present, I invite you to check it out. In addition to the print edition, you can order it for Kindle from Amazon or in multiple eBook formats from SmashWords.

Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy has gotten good reviews around the blogosphere, which I have compiled here. The ceremonial methods it includes are suitable for both modern and traditional grimoire practitioners, and present a vision of Enochian magick that has room for modern elements but remains true to the content of Dee and Kelley's original system. If you're interested in working with the only portion of the Enochian system that Dee ever assembled into a usable grimoire, it's a must-have - the only book in print that focuses exclusively on the Heptarchia Mystica. In addition to the print editions, you can also order it in multiple eBook formats from SmashWords.

Creationists Lose It, Big Time

Young Earth creationists are just about the easiest target for mockery on the planet. The idea that the universe was created just as it is now sometime within the last 10,000 years is completely contradictory to a stack of scientific evidence that grows higher every year. However, according to surveys a substantial percentage of Americans do in fact believe it to be true. Many of these folks are the same Christians who whine about being an oppressed minority, even though they belong to the largest religion in the United States by far. Their particular complaints generally relate to their conviction that the very existence of contradictory ideas threatens their own apparently unbelievably fragile faith.

Contradictory ideas can be found anywhere - you know, because not everyone in the world agrees with creationism. These dire threats can come from other religions, scientific theories, and even tongue-in-cheek advertisements. Like this one. Soda maker Dr. Pepper recently ran the ad shown above, which satirizes the concept of evolution as being catalyzed by their product. This, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with how evolution works in the real world. But the mere mention of the word was enough - creationists online completely lost it and commenced an even more epic version of their usual whining.

Ever since, on the JESUS IS NOT A PEPPER side, commenters have been weighing in to register their fury, declaring “this photo is in very poor taste and certainly not something I want to identify with!!!” and “I didn’t come from no ape the great creator made me GOD!!!!!!!” Because God loves exclamation points like he despises abiogenesis. And several people have declared “No more DP for me” because of the apparent anti-world-in-seven-days stance. “Let me believe in a God that created me,” writes one poster. “I’ll let you believe that you came from a rock.” Reminder: We’re talking about an ad in which a caveman discovers Dr. Pepper.

The controversy has also spawned some hilarious responses in the atheism subreddit, from Peppers who know that “EVERYTHING AROUND YOU IS EVIDENCE OF DR PEPPER OPEN YOUR EYES” and ask “Do you think all 23 delicious flavors can come together like that by chance?” It’s all very entertaining — if you don’t think too hard about the fact that it’s 2012 and we’re still arguing about evolution in this country. And how it pertains to soft drinks.

In fact, I should point out that the Dr. Pepper advertisement in no way contradicts creationism's close cousin, intelligent design. After all, somebody had to have put the soda there in the first place for the caveman to find, right? I think we can all agree that it must have been God.

Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy EBook Now Available

Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy is now available in a variety of ebook formats from Smashwords. If you've wanted to buy a copy but have been holding out for something that will fit in your e-reader, here's your chance.

Click here to check it out, and pick up a copy if you're so inclined. I haven't had a chance to take a look at it myself yet, but I'm told that it includes all the various sigils and so forth necessary for performing the conjurations of the Kings and Princes, just like the print version.

The sidebar will be updated with an ebook link soon. Until then, use the link above for Smashwords.

As always, thanks much for your continued support!

Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy Review Roundup

Up until now I've been posting reviews of my latest book over on my author web site, but for those of you who haven't had a chance to check my other site out, Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy is continuing to be well-reviewed across the blogosphere. If you're interested in the sort of magick that I actually practice, Heptarchy represents the first published portion of a system I have been working with since the mid-1990's. It's powerful and effective, and a lot less complex than the Golden Dawn Enochian system that frustrated me and eventually drove me back to working with the original source materials.

One of my main goals in writing the book the way that I did is so that it would appeal to practitioners of both Enochian and traditional grimoire magick, as I am of the opinion that the original Enochian system of John Dee and Edward Kelley in fact has a lot in common with the latter system. It incorporates similar tools, similar conjuration structures, and so forth to the grimoire methodology of the sixteenth century, and is heavily influenced by the works of Henry Cornelius Agrippa and contemporary grimoires such as the Almadel. If you go through the Dee diaries themselves this structure is fairly obvious, and as long as it's followed you don't need to work with Enochian Chess or truncated pyramids or even scrying to get solid, practical results.

Here's a collection of the reviews that the book has received so far. To all of you who took the time to review my work, you have my thanks. I've been very pleased with the response the book has received.

Shop Augoeides for the Holidays!

As all of you probably noticed awhile back, I've completely given up on the Google ads. Frankly, I'm continually amazed that banner advertising is something companies are willing to pay for. I've never purchased anything off a banner ad myself and don't know anyone else who has either. On top of that, the ads that used to run across the top of my blog page attracted so few clicks that they were essentially worthless and at the same time mildly annoying. So now I've come up with a new way to generate a small amount of income for this site without costing my readers anything in terms of time or money. I originally set up an Amazon Associates store to capture commissions off my books, but quickly realized that it would work for any other product Amazon carries as well. Call it the Augoeides Store.

So here's the deal. If you still have holiday gifts to buy and are planning on ordering them from Amazon anyway, you can support this website at the same time. Clicking on my store link above will take you to the Amazon home page, just as if you had typed amazon.com into your browser. The difference is that every purchase you make will send a small commission my way. You can also just click on the link and bookmark it for later use. Ordering through my store instead of the Amazon homepage costs you nothing, as Amazon would otherwise just keep those commissions while charging you the same price. So if you're already planning on making some Amazon purchases and don't have your own associates store, please consider taking advantage of mine and helping to support my writing.

Thanks much, and happy holiday shopping!

Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy Reviewed

Morgan has a post up today about coming across four transparently phony Amazon reviews for a book that just came out. Whether or not this is a bot or somebody switching accounts is hard to say without looking at the book in question which is not named, but either way it's a pretty obvious attempt to game the Amazon review system. Here's a tip to any would-be bot programmers or review spoofers - it's really easy to check your other reviews, and that's hard to fake. If every review of a particular book is posted on the same day, and each of those four reviewers has only ever reviewed the exact same two items anyone with half a brain is going to be able to figure out that something is up with a couple of well-placed clicks and a modicum of critical thinking skills.

Let me also reassure you all that the book in question is not my new Enochian book, Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy. So far it's garnered two reviews, one from Michael Cecchetelli at The Lion's Den and another on Amazon from Christopher Feldman, better known online as Enochian magician Christeos Pir. I've summarized those two positive reviews here at my author website, with links to the originals. So far the book has been well-received, by real magicians rather than bots or clones, and while the temptation is always there to post a bunch of glowing phonies I would rather that my readers get the real scoop from actual people. If you're interested in grimoire magick, Enochian magick, or both and haven't done so already, click here to check out Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy. Real practitioners agree with me that you will not be disappointed!

Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy is Out!

My new book, Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy, is now available at Amazon!

The listing just went up so they don't have a cover image posted yet, but once they do it will match the one shown here.

I'm really looking forward to getting some feedback on the book's contents, since it's my first non-fiction work on magical practices. The focus of it is the magick of John Dee's Heptarchia Mystica, but it also represents the first publication in print of various ideas that have appeared here on this blog, such as my operant field method and several original Enochian rituals.

Click here to order your copy now, and enjoy!

My New Book Cover

I guess it's just the season or something. A few days ago Jason Miller posted the cover of his new financial sorcery book, and then last night Pendraig sent me mine for Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy. So here it is.

I still don't have a firm date as to when it will become available for purchase, but it's on its way to the printers so it should be pretty soon now. I'll post another link as soon as it's out, so watch this space for more details.

UPDATE: I just checked out RO's place and he has a new eBook available as well. 'Tis the season indeed!

Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy

Let me tell you all a story. In the mid-1990's I started work on a book on Enochian magick that was tentatively titled The Enochian Universe. At that point I had worked with the Enochian system for many years with great success, and considered myself to be something of an expert on it. I had gone so far at the time as to develop my own personal variation on the system that eschewed many of the Golden Dawn associations and worked with the Enochian angels in a manner based on Renaissance grimoire methods.

My plan for the book was very ambitious. I would cover the language, the history, the various controversies over conflicting versions of the system, and so forth. I would fully expostulate the various temple implements and explain their function in the same sort of detail as you would find in an engineering textbook. I would explain the Golden Dawn system, Aleister Crowley's later revisions, and my own experimental discoveries based on testing hypotheses derived from years of studying John Dee's diaries. Finally, I would include my own new set of Enochian rituals for creating operant fields (though I wasn't using that particular terminology at the time) and raising energy in the manner of the Middle Pillar or Elevenfold Seal. I imagined that it would become the definitive work on Enochian magick and remain so for years to come.

But then my software development career really started to take off. I got derailed on the project, and the manuscript sat languishing on my computer. It wasn't just a matter of having less time to write, but rather the problem was also that with the dramatic scope of the book I kept running into problems reconciling the different versions of the system and different renderings of some of the source texts, as the British museum scans weren't online back then. What I realize now is that the project was just too big - I should have simply written a book on my own synthesis of the system rather than trying to cover all the variations that had arisen during the prior century.

Catching Up

I've been busy over the last couple of weeks so I haven't had a chance to update the blog. But here's some of what's been going on and will be happening over the next couple of months. I hope to be able to get back to more substantial blogging soon.

New Job: I started a new job at the end of December. The good news is that I'm making more money than I've ever made, but the bad news is that it takes up more of my time than the last one did.

New Manuscript: I just finished off a new manuscript, for a non-fiction book on working with John Dee's Heptarchia Mystica. I'm in the process of shopping it around to publishers, starting with Pendraig who published Arcana. I've wanted to formally publish my work with the Enochian system for quite a few years, and hopefully this will be a good start.

Planetary Magick Presentation: I will be giving a presentation on planetary magick for Paganicon, which will be happening here in the Twin Cities over the weekend of March 24th and 25th. I plan on covering the Intelligences and Spirits from Agrippa, so it will definitely have an "old school" feel to it even though the ritual forms I use incorporate a number of modern elements.

Underground Film: Later this month I'll be acting in a short underground film, playing (of course) an evil magician. This will be my first acting role outside of my own experimental film work, and I'm looking forward to doing it. Bad guys get all the good lines!

Arcana for Kindle: My novel is now available on Kindle, for any of you who might have missed the announcements on Facebook and my author web site. While the print version of Arcana was a bit pricey for a paperback, the Kindle edition is quite inexpensive even as Kindle books go. If you have a Kindle, iPad, or anything else that reads the format check it out.

I'll add that the weird news hasn't been what it used to be lately. In the past, a lot of the times that I've been too busy to write up a longer article I've been able to check the weird news and come up with something interesting or amusing that tied back into religion or spirituality. But recently it seems that the religious, spiritual, and paranormal stories just haven't been showing up as often. Hopefully this is just a dry spell and not an overall trend, because I would much rather read about ghosts or Jesus sightings or the Apocalypse than stupid criminals and odd pets.

New Promotional Website

While I've been recovering from surgery I've set up a new website using WordPress and Yahoo! Groups to promote Arcana and my writing in general. The idea is that once folks are used to looking over there for information about book signings, readings, and so forth I won't need to be duplicating those announcements on Augoeides and more of the site can remain dedicated to the discussion of magick and related topics.

I've been enjoying working with WordPress and I think it does look a little more professional and full-featured than Blogger does. At some point in the future I might consider moving Augoeides over, but I won't be doing so any time soon. After all, I just got the archives from the old Scoop site copied over the week before last and that's been down for several years. I don't have much interest in doing all that work again with 3+ years of posts, and besides Blogger works great for the kinds of things I want to discuss here and how I want the site to look.

My new promotional site can be found here. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Arcana Now Available!

Just in time for New Year's Eve, my novel Arcana is now available from Pendraig Publishing! The cover image hasn't shown up on Amazon yet, but the book is in stock and available for orders. Just click on the image to check it out.


If you enjoy modern-day occult fiction and like my writing I hope that you will consider picking up a copy. Just think, if I could make a living as a professional writer I'd have a lot more time for blogging!