Via Solis Taurus Elixir Rite

Today's Magick Monday post is a full script for the Taurus Elixir Rite that we will be performing tomorrow, Tuesday May 9th, at Leaping Laughter Lodge, our local Twin Cities body of Ordo Templi Orientis. This is similar to the Libra Elixir Rite I posted here back in 2014, but it includes some additional elements inspired by research that went into the Zodiacal Work posts. Going forward, we will be performing one of these per month, once for each of the twelve signs, in a ritual series called Via Solis (the way or path of the Sun). I will be posting the full scripts here on the preceding Mondays so people can take a look at them if they want to attend. Also, if you are in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota) and would like to attend, let me or someone at the lodge know. This is a public ritual and all are welcome.

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. This ritual may be performed with one, two, or three officers, who may alternate taking the Officiant role and divide up the reading from Liber 963 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.

Happy May Day 2017!

I'm sure your first thought here is that May Day was last week, and it's already May 7th. But for folks like me who live in the Powderhorn Park neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, May Day is always the first Sunday in May, the day of the May Day Parade and Festival, a tradition that dates back to the 1970's. This year just happens to be the latest that it can possibly fall, with the side effect that it was an absolutely beautiful day.

The May Day Festival is an interesting case of a pagan-ish festival that went mainstream by way of the hippie movement of the 1970's. The parade was originally planned as a Vietnam War protest, but the war ended in 1975 just before the parade was set to take place. The organizers went ahead with the parade anyway, as a progressive demonstration and general celebration of spring. Over the years, the parade and festival have grown to the point where they attract as many as 50,000 spectators, and what's noteworthy is they're not all witches, pagans, or ceremonial magicians. Many are regular folks who like attending a fun spring festival.

So whether you celebrated May Day last week, or joined in the festivities here at Powderhorn Park today, or did both, here's wishing you a happy holiday and what looks to be a glorious spring season here in the Midwest.

Watch Out for Book Demons!

My friend and brother Lon Milo DuQuette has written tons of books on magick and Thelema, but I think this is the first time anyone has accused one of his books of causing demonic possession. Or, at least, the first time anyone has bothered to put together a whole story explaining how it allegedly happened in this Amazon review of Lon's book My Life With The Spirits. Now I will start off by saying that the first thing I think when somebody starts out with "this is not a joke or troll review" is that it totally is. But judge for yourself:

First off, I want to say this is not a joke or troll review- these events are described exactly as they happened. Anyways the book is interesting and I read the whole thing in one sitting. However, after reading the book, I went to take a shower and noticed in the mirror the appearance of dark circles under my eyes which are unusual for me, I'm a devout Christian and my eyes never have dark circles under them- even when I don't have time to sleep that day and have been awake for 24 hours. I also noticed they were not as glassy, or 'glowing' as usual- my eyes usually have a shine, but they looked dead. IMMEDIATELY upon my noticing this fact, I felt a HEAVY sense of dread- SHEER terror, and the feeling that I was not alone, the feeling as if the whole room had 'shook' and the floor had fallen out from under me. I've dealt with this sort of thing in the past, but never nearly so strong a feeling- so intense and so real. It was as if whatever demon had become mad that I had spotted this change. I might have panicked and made the situation worse, but instead I stayed calm, prayed, and used my power of will to believe in my prayers and that they would work. I'm thankful that two hours later, my eyes are returned to their previous state- however I would not be surprised if I'm still having trouble sleeping tonight.

Someone who didn't notice the apparent possession or reacted differently may be in big trouble at this point. I still doubt that I am out of the woods entirely.

Taking this person at their word, there are tons of things that can cause dark circles under your eyes that will last for a couple of hours, and "demons" aren't usually on that list. Beyond that, all that really happened is that they got totally freaked out. That sounds to me like "devout Christian" - that is, fundie - programming that attempts to inculcate irrational fear of any spirit or spiritual force that isn't explicitly Christian and approved as non-heretical.

In other words, the odds that this person was freaked out by a demon rather than their own basically broken programming strikes me as very unlikely. Here's my thought - the reader picked up the book even though it was officially "forbidden" by his or her brand of Christianity. Reading through the book in one sitting, this triggered anxiety that started to build. Anxiety, in fact, can cause dark circles under your eyes. Then, the moment he saw something that looked weird, the anxiety came on in full force.

So my diagnosis there is that maybe people who are as "devout" as this individual should stay away from My Life With The Spirits unless they want to get freaked out. But that's where it ends. The book isn't going to cause a problem for anybody who's not triggered by the idea of magick as EVIL. I mean, the book isn't even a book of spells, just an account of Lon's experiences with magick over the years. And it is a fun read for those of us who know what we're talking about with respect to the occult.

"Religious Liberty" Executive Order Signed

As it turned out, the "Religious Liberty" executive order signed by President Trump yesterday wasn't anything like the laughably unconstitutional draft order leaked earlier this week, which singled out specific conservative Evangelical Christian beliefs as the only form of "religious liberty" worthy of protection. Instead, it turned out to be a totally different bad idea, a move to weaken the Johnson Amendment that limits the political activity of churches.

Trump approved the measure in the Rose Garden at the White House surrounded by clergy and leaders of faith organizations during a National Day of Prayer event. “Today my administration is leading by example as we take historic steps to protect religious liberty in the United States of America,” the president said. “We will not allow people of faith to be targeted, bullied or silenced anymore.”

The measure is designed to ease enforcement of a provision in the federal tax code known as the Johnson Amendment that bars religious institutions from endorsing or opposing political candidates and parties. It directs the IRS to “exercise maximum enforcement discretion” of the amendment, according to the White House. Additionally, it orders regulatory relief for those who object to ObamaCare’s preventive service mandate on religious grounds.

Trump is fulfilling a promise he made to social conservatives, who strongly backed him during the 2016 campaign. Those groups have long argued that the Johnson Amendment violates their First Amendment rights. Scrapping the amendment was a major rallying cry for Trump on the campaign trail and he made it one of his earliest promises once he took office.

It is not exactly clear what "maximum enforcement discretion" will mean in the context of real-world cases, and the executive order does not have the force of law. To overturn the Johnson Amendment, Congress would have to pass legislation. But the order does signal that overturning the amendment remains one of the administration's priorities, as Trump repeatedly promised it would be during his campaign.

I won't re-hash my argument against repealing the Johnson Amendment in this post, since you can read it here, but basically, I expect that if the repeal goes through, many churches will start becoming more explicitly political and therefore less religious. For sincere spiritual seekers that would just be bad news, and it wouldn't surprise me to see "non-political" become a selling point for churches soon after - kind of like "non-denominational" did back in the 1980's.

Reporting Criminal Space Aliens

All your butts are belong to us.

When the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office set up a new hotline for reporting "criminal aliens," they weren't expecting calls about aliens from outer space. But that's exactly what they got. A group of online activists decided to flood the hotline with calls about the kind of aliens that zoom around in flying saucers, and as a result, ICE issued a statement dismissing every single call that referred to extraterrestrials.

When President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January targeting what he called “criminal aliens,” he probably wasn’t thinking of extraterrestrials.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement unveiled its Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement office Wednesday, one of the results of Trump’s order ― and it includes a hotline for victims of “criminal aliens.”

Critics such as Rep. Norma Torres (D-Calif.) say the new office is part of the Trump administration’s effort “to perpetuate a stereotype that immigrants are dangerous and something to be feared.”

Others are taking their criticism a step further, turning it into a form of performance art by calling the 1-855-48-VOICE (6423) phone number to report space aliens.

A case could be made that referring to these calls as "performance art" could prove just as dangerous as stereotyping immigrants. Also, the volume of fake calls is troubling, and could cover up real cases. For example, what if somebody calls about real criminal space aliens? Abducting people and probing their butts can't be legal, even if the aliens return them to their beds when it's all over. But if fake calls prevent ICE from taking those cases seriously, they may never even be investigated.

So there's plenty of blame to go around on both sides here. Too many fake space alien calls mean that real cases can be missed. But the signal that ICE's response sends is that the Trump administration doesn't care about space alien butt probes, and that stance could wind up hurting his voters. Much of Trump's victory can be attributed to increased enthusiasm and voter turnout in rural areas, after all, and everybody knows that alien abductions always seem to happen in the middle of nowhere.

If we're not supposed to call ICE about criminal space aliens, who do we call? Maybe the administration should set up a separate hotline for these kinds of calls. You know, to show that they care. And maybe these activists should only call in if they've really been abducted or violated by visitors from the stars.

A 2015 Jersey Devil Hoax?

A friend of mine tagged me in a story about a man who claimed to have photographed the elusive Jersey Devil. At first, I decided it wasn't really timely enough to post here because it happened back in 2015. But today, I came across this article from Cryptozoology News with some analysis of the 2015 photo. It's from a couple months ago, so I figured that was at least fairly recent.

At any rate, the photo, which I include above, looks pretty good at first glance. As usual, I considered all sorts of possible explanations involving misidentification of some normal object, and the best I could come up with was a kite. But you also don't see a string or anything like that in the photo, or anybody standing on the right side of the road where they would have to be standing to fly it. So that's probably not it, which puts it in the category of photos that have to be either hoaxes or the real thing.

The image, submitted to Cryptozoology News and seemingly taken from inside the vehicle, shows a blurry and rainy highway with a few blurred cars and a dark flying animal on the top left. The alleged animal appears to be less blurry than the elements in the rest of the elements present in the photograph.

The man said the creature was very large and had “bat-like wings and goat features”. “It was extremely creepy, but we figured we must have just seen it wrong, because of the rain and darkness, but upon looking at the picture it looks like no bird or bat I have seen before,” he said about the alleged November 26th 2015 late evening encounter.

Image analysts tell Cryptozoology News that based on compression characteristics and EXIF metadata, the image initially appears to have been processed or edited with a photo editor software.

Cryptozoologists get a bad rap sometimes for being too credible about sightings and the like, but there you go. The photo is probably a fake that was edited to include the image. It just goes to show that even in some of these fringe communities, there's some real investigation and analysis going on. Interestingly enough, in October of 2015 another Jersey Devil photo was circulated on the Internet, and that story can be found here.

When Weather Terrorists Attack

Over the weekend a series of severe storms moved through Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Mississippi, killing fifteen people and injuring many more. In the wake of this tragedy, Religious Right activist Dave Daubenmire thinks he knows what is really going on. According to a webcast that aired yesterday, he speculated that the storms could be the result of "weather terrorism" unleashed by "people who'll kill babies" - which I guess is referring to pro-choice activists. But beyond that, the whole rant is pretty confusing.

Daubenmire said that while most people will dismiss this as “all tinfoil hat stuff,” it can’t be denied that “people who’ll kill babies” are capable of anything. “Folks, we’re talking about people who’ll kill babies,” he said. “They don’t even think about killing babies. We’re talking about unsaved people who will do anything for money.”

“Is it weather terrorism?” Daubenmire asked. “I wonder how many bridges were washed out down through Missouri and through Illinois and up through parts of Texas. I wonder, through the flooding, how much stuff was destroyed that they can just blame it on the weather, ‘Well, it was just bad weather that came through there.’ Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of damage that was done and is it being done through weather modification?”

To be clear, the reason this should be dismissed as "tinfoil hat stuff" is because even if somebody wanted to control the weather, there's no conceivable way that they could do it at our current level of technology. The closest we've been able to get is cloud seeding, which sometimes can make it rain - sometimes. It doesn't work at all if the conditions aren't right to begin with, which often is when a storm is already on the way. Wilhelm Reich claimed to get similar results with his "cloudbuster," but even taken at face value, they were only marginally better than the results of seeding experiments.

It also isn't clear to me how, even if you had a magical tornado machine, you could make money by using it on unsuspecting towns. Is whoever allegedly has this weather control machine a building contractor? Because that's about the only plausible scenario I can come up with where you could create tornados to make money that doesn't involve demanding a ransom or something. Otherwise, trying to create storms "for money" is just stupid - and, as I often point out here, "evil for evil's sake" isn't a motivation that you generally find in the real world.

Also, the point of terrorism is to inspire terror. If a "weather terrorist" group has this mysterious device, why aren't they taking credit for the storms? Why didn't they announce what they were going to do? Why aren't they asking for a ransom or the release of compatriots or whatever under the threat of using it again? I know that was the plot of that lousy 1998 Avengers movie and there's no way this hypothetical group is led by Sean Connery, but still, that doesn't automatically make it a bad plan - you know, if you can actually do it.

Which, to be clear, nobody can. Which is why "weather terrorists" only exist in the confused imaginations of guys like Daubenmire, and why "tinfoil hat" is the precisely correct description for his bizarre musings.

The Path of Initiation - Water

This article is Part Two of a series. Part One can be found here.

Working with the Water element is the second step on the path of initiation into the mysteries of Western Esotericism. On the Kircher Tree of Life, the mystical aspects of all four elements correspond to the tenth sephira, Malkuth, which represents the material world. The elements have both microcosmic (psychological) and macrocosmic (physical) components, and as with practical magick, aligning those components is the key to experiencing effective illumination and visionary work. Hence, I use the operant field in these rites just like I do for practical workings.

"Effective" is harder to define with rites of illumination than it is with practical magick. Practical magick is relatively simple to assess - you perform an operation with a specific objective, and then record whether it succeeds or fails. Effective visionary work should obtain information from the exterior world that you could not possible know by any other means, and effective illumination work should transform you in a positive way, increasing your degree of realization and in some real sense making you a "better person."

This process can be highly subjective, and failed initiatory operations often go unrecognized. I am of the opinion that a lot of the nonsense out there from certain allegedly "advanced" magical practitioners can be traced back to these sorts of initiatory failures, and this is a problem that has been acknowledged for a long time in the tradition. To avoid this, you always need to be skeptical about any apparent attainment.

Always test spirits. Always keep track of any changes you observe following illuminating and visionary experiences, and do your best to see if the changes you are seeing from your work are going in a positive direction. Stories of magicians "going insane" from failed operations are highly exaggerated - most often, nothing happens, and the danger lies in being convinced that something did happen and then acting from that perspective.

Today, I'll be focusing on the element Water. The Water element corresponds to the liquid state of matter, and in the ancient Greek system of the elements is related to union of the Cool and Moist powers. The Cool power unifies and the Hot power separates. The Dry power reinforces structure, and the Moist power breaks it down. So the fundamental nature of Water is unifying and unstructured or dissolving. A more detailed overview of the four classical powers can be found here, and that article includes a link to John Opsopaus' Ancient Greek Esoteric Doctrine of the Elements, which is where I was first exposed to the system.