Venus Elixir Ritual

With Tuesday evening's transit of Venus I decided to break out the planetary magick and perform a trimmed-down version of my Venus elixir ritual. A while back I published the elixir ritual for Jupiter, and this one follows the same structure with the proper names, colors, and figures inserted for the planet Venus. I used a small cup of absinthe for the elixir itself, and began the rite during the hour of the Moon while Venus was still making its transit of the Sun. From a subjective standpoint the elixir felt highly charged and the ritual seemed to go well, though I'll want to see some tangible results before I conclude it was a success. Subjective impressions can arise from all sorts of circumstances, whereas measurable results are a much more reliable benchmark.

The ritual script follows. Since I was performing it myself rather than in a group I truncated some of the sections, but the structure I used was essentially the same as this more elaborate version. The script presented here can either be used by either a group or an individual, depending upon the preference of the operator or operators. The statement of intent that appears here is also quite generic, and can be customized as you see fit to anything that would properly fall within Venus' sphere of influence.

The Hazards of Snake Handling

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the main hazard of handling venomous snakes is, well, the venomous snakes. Pentecostal Christians interpret Mark 16:17-18, "And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover," to mean that the faithful should literally be able to handle snakes without being harmed. However, it doesn't always work out that way. Recently a Pentecostal minister was bitten by a rattlesnake during one of these snake-handling services and killed. Oddly enough, his father, also a Pentecostal pastor, died the same way years prior.

Pentecostal pastor Mark Wolford, 44, hosted an outdoor service at the Panther Wildlife Management Area in West Virginia Sunday, which he touted on his Facebook page prior to the event. "I am looking for a great time this Sunday," Wolford wrote May 22, according to the Washington Post. "It is going to be a homecoming like the old days. Good 'ole raised in the holler or mountain ridge running, Holy Ghost-filled speaking-in-tongues sign believers."

Robin Vanover, Wolford's sister, told the Washington Post that 30 minutes into the outdoor service, Wolford passed around a poisonous timber rattlesnake, which eventually bit him."He laid it on the ground," Vanover said in the interview, "and he sat down next to the snake, and it bit him on the thigh." Vanover said Wolford was then transported to a family member's home in Bluefield about 80 miles away to recover. But as the situation worsened, he was taken to a hospital where he later died.

One of my first vajrayana teachers liked to warn his students, "Don't concretize!" By taking this piece of scripture and reading it as literally true this is exactly what pastors like Wolford are doing. It seems to me that the quote can be interpreted more metaphorically, meaning that those who have faith will remain uncorrupted by elements of the society around them and generally be blessings to those in their presence who are suffering. It also could be implying that the faithful need not worry about exposure to any person or object deemed ritually unclean, akin to Matthew 15:11, "What goes into a man's mouth does not make him unclean, but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him unclean" and Acts 10:14-15, "'Surely not, Lord!' Peter replied. 'I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.' The voice spoke to him a second time, 'Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.'"

But then, I'm not a Christian, just a Thelemite who happens to know his Bible pretty well. Maybe the Pentecostals do have it right and all the other Christians who don't play with rattlesnakes are missing out on an essential spiritual practice.

Oppressed Christians Versus Huffington Post

I've already posted a number of articles here about certain Christians who somehow feel oppressed despite belonging to the majority religion in the United States by an overwhelming margin. Today I came across this article, which shows just how much these particular Christians like to whine. In the article, titled "Huffington Post Promotes Witchcraft & New Age spirituality to Readers (in addition to its usual brand of anti-Catholicism)," you might think at first that the author is referring to some sort of widespread coverage of Pagan or New Age beliefs. However, once you read through it you will realize that what he's complaining about is one article! Not only that, but the article in question is simply a list of books about Paganism, not even an advocacy or opinion piece!

Perhaps even more disturbingly, the editors of the Huffington Post have published a story this morning, alongside their usual anti-Catholic cover-story, presenting a list of pagan New Age and witchcraft books for readers to explore. Written by Jahnabi Barooah, an assistant religious editor for the site, the story is called "27 Essential Pagan Books for Your Bookshelf (ADD YOUR OWN)," and it explains: "Recently HuffPost Religion put a call out to our community about books on Paganism that every Pagan and those interested in the varied strands of Paganism should read. The result is this great list of 27 books that range from introductory to scholarly in nature and cover the entire gamut of Pagan religions -- Witchcraft, Wicca, Shamanism, Asatru, Druidism, Egyptian and Hellenic."

As the article continues, the editors of the Huffington Post make clear that the point of publishing this list of books is not only academic - it's not just about studying such topics - but spiritual as well. In other words, readers are encouraged to use these witchcraft and New Age books for their personal, spiritual pursuits if that is something that they are interested in. The article explains: "HuffPost Religion hopes that this list will be equally valuable for those who identify as Pagans, as well as those who are interested in Paganism, both academically and as a spiritual pursuit."

The bottom line is that this Huffington Post article is not threatening to Christians in any way. Presumably devout Christians are not going to be interested in Paganism, so the quoted line clearly doesn't apply to them. Similarly, the mere existence of Pagans does not in any way undermine anyone's Christian faith. The author goes on to explain how supposedly "dangerous" Paganism is, hitting all the usual talking points, but I would submit that there are Christian denominations that can be characterized the same way. If you have any doubts about that statement all you have to do is watch the documentary Jesus Camp. What those kids are put through strikes me as way more psychologically damaging than any Pagan or Thelemic ritual I've ever attended.

I could sit down and count up the number of articles Huffington Post has published about Christianity, divide one by whatever that number happens to be, and see if percentage-wise it's greater or less than the percentage of the population that's actually Pagan. I won't, though, because with people like the author of this piece it would make no difference. As they see it, if they can't have the entire spotlight to themselves they must be under attack.

Now That's A Spell!

In the past I've mused on how possible it would be to summon a lighting bolt to strike a specific target, and commented on how something like that would probably be the closest a real magician could get to replicating fantasy-novel class magick. You need to have the right underlying condition, an ongoing thunderstorm, but circumstances in which lightning is going to strike somewhere nearby the required probability shift to make it strike where you want is a lot lower than what you might initially think - to the point that on a good day a good magician could probably make it happen. According to this story out of Congo, such a thing might have actually happened recently during a soccer match.

Accusations of witchcraft have been launched after a blast of lightning reportedly struck dead an entire football team in Congo, whilst their opponents were unharmed.

Daily Kinshasa newspaper L'Avenir explained: "Lightning killed at a stroke 11 young people aged between 20 and 35 years during a football match. The athletes from Basanga [the home team] curiously came out of this catastrophe unscathed."

According to the Congolese newspaper, 30 other people had received burns at the weekend fixture.

Suspicion of nefarious magic was aroused not just because one team was untouched but because the games was in the balance with a one-all scoreline.

Now this always could have been a coincidental freak accident, but it's a remarkable enough one that I know I would suspect a spell if I had been there and watched it happen. Soccer magick is quite common in Africa, as I've covered on this blog a number of times. If the score of the game was a factor it suggests that the spell was cast not long in advance of the strike, which makes it all the more impressive. Since weather magick relies on something akin to the butterfly effect of chaos theory to work, the more immediate the spell the more powerful the magician. I'll have to see if I can replicate a controlled lightning strike with my methods one of these days, though hopefully I can find a situation to test it on that won't involve the loss of life.

Ghost Hunting in Saudi Arabia

In part due to the success of the "Ghost Hunters" television franchise, paranormal investigation of haunted sites has become popular here in the United States and in Europe. These investigations are not just limited to Western nations, either - ghost hunting goes on all around the world, as this story out of Saudi Arabia demonstrates. The Saudis just have a rather different take on how to go about it. Last week a group of Saudi teenagers broke into an abandoned and reputedly haunted former hospital and essentially trashed the place under the guise of hunting ghosts - literally.

"Teenagers sent text messages calling for an operation against some of the jinn who live in the hospital, and they broke into the hospital and smashed its facilities and burned 60 percent of it," Okaz newspaper reported last week. The rampage prompted angry press complaints the authorities were allowing the building to fall into disrepair.

Several films have since been posted on YouTube showing grinning young men exploring the building's deserted rooms in search of evidence of spectral activity. One showed blazing palm trees that had been torched by the ghost hunters. Jinn fever reached the point where the Health Ministry issued a terse statement on Monday disclaiming responsibility for the decaying building, which it said was privately owned and too decrepit to be revived as a working hospital.

A columnist in the English-language Saudi Gazette daily on Tuesday recommended that authorities form "a committee for the jinn" to help the owners of possessed houses.

I suppose that fits right in with the mandate of the Anti-Witchcraft Squad, and it would give the group something else to do besides arranging executions for accused magicians. On the other hand, given the squad's history I can only imagine that they would find a way to twist even ghost hunting into something very very wrong. I would hate to see anyone winding up charged with witchcraft and killed, for example, just because they reported some weird paranormal activity in their home.

Muggle Quidditch Invasion of Britain Continues

Back in March I covered the first Muggle Quidditch match played in England. As Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is British, it might seem strange that this version of her fictional game was invented in America. However, as I noted in my previous post, creating sadder, more watered-down versions of cultural treasures from other nations is pretty much what we Americans do. In the eighties it was the Croissan'Wich, and today it's Muggle Quidditch. And don't even get me started on the chow mein sandwich, invented in Fall River, Massachusetts. Given that chow mein is a sad American substitute for real Chinese food to begin with, putting it in a sandwich is a whole other level of suckage. But I digress.

Julia Rivera is a die-hard Harry Potter fan, and she is a natural athlete. So she decided to combine the two and formed the first Quidditch league at Kennett High School.

“It’s so much fun,” said Rivera, a Kennett sophomore. “There’s a lot of laughs to see everyone get so into it. After people play, they realize it’s more difficult than they were expecting.”

I don't think anyone who's ever tried to run holding a stick between their legs would expect this version of Quidditch to be easy. See, that's why the brooms are supposed to fly...

Deeper Down the Rabbit Hole

On the evening of June 12th at 8 PM EST (7 PM here in the Twin Cities) I will be appearing on Deeper Down the Rabbit Hole, an online show that runs on the Para-X Radio network. I'll be discussing Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy, Enochian magick, and ceremonial ritual forms. I've touched on all those topics here on Augoeides, but this will be your first chance to hear me discuss them live and in-person. I've never appeared on one of these shows before so I hope you'll tune in and check it out.

As an aside, May sure went by fast! I've been really busy with my new job and getting the new Enochian book, Mastering the Great Table, put together for Pendraig. Hopefully June will prove a little less hectic and I'll be able to get the posting back up to the usual rate soon. Until then, thanks for bearing with me!

Western Mystery Tradition Conference Canceled

About a month ago I submitted an abstract for a presentation at the Journal Of the Western Mystery Tradition conference, scheduled to be held this July in Milwaukee. Unfortunately, though, the conference has been canceled. This is a real downer, because it sounded like an incredibly cool event. Here's the description, which you can still view online though I suspect it will be taken down soon. The problem appears to have been that the conference was not promoted very well and had trouble attracting presenters and attendees, so if they try it again next year I'll promote it well in advance here on Augoeides. It seems like the sort of event many of us in the magical blogosphere would enjoy attending, so perhaps some of us can help make sure the next one goes forward.

My proposal was to present on my Solomonic-inspired style of Enochian magick. Here's the abstract that I submitted to the conference organizers.

"Ministering Angels: The Solomonic Roots of Enochian Magic"

This paper presents a methodology for working with the Enochian system of magic that is informed by the Solomonic grimoire tradition of the sixteenth century. Scott Michael Stenwick proposes that these Solomonic foundations of John Dee and Edward Kelley's original source material reveal a powerful method of practical magic. This thaumaturgic style of working with angelic spirits is compared and contrasted with modern interpretations and uses of the system, in which the Enochian material is generally approached as part of a theurgic structure based on scrying and complex analysis.

The Enochian magical system has inspired many modern esoteric groups, including the various Golden Dawn traditions, Aleister Crowley's A.'.A.'., and the Aurum Solis. However, much of the Enochian lore developed by these diverse groups is not drawn from and in a some cases directly contradicts the source material. A more accurate perspective may be found by approaching the system as an advanced form of Solomonic grimoire magic instead of viewing it through the lens of nineteenth-century Hermetic Qabalah. In this light the tools and temple furnishings recommended for Enochian operations can be understood in their proper context and the original intended ritual structures can be deduced in a straightforward manner.

Some of the material that I was going to cover is already published in Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy, and the rest will be included in the second book of my Enochian series that I'm still in the process of writing, Mastering the Great Table. I was really looking forward to presenting on my methods at the conference, but it seems I'll have to wait for the next one.