The Path of Initiation - Fire

This article is Part Four of a series. Part One can be found here, Part Two can be found here, and Part Three can be found here.

Working with the Fire element is the fourth 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 Fire. The Fire element corresponds to the plasma state of matter, and in the ancient Greek system of the elements is related to union of the Hot and Dry 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 Fire is separating and structured. 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.

The White Horse of the Apocalypse

That arrow is tipped with something particularly hilarious about tiny hands.

According to disgraced evangelist Jim Bakker, the apocalypse is upon us. How does he know, you might ask? Why, he's already see the first horse, the White Horse of the Apocalypse, with his own eyes. In fact, it would have been hard to miss, because according to Bakker the White Horse is actually people making fun of Donald Trump. By that logic, there's a whole lot of apocalypse going around right now, and it shows no signs of letting up.

Bakker now sells survivalist food and gear to doomsday preppers on his “Jim Bakker Show.” In a clip from Thursday that was posted online by Right Wing Watch, he claimed there was a “hatred among peoples and this is satanic.” Then he went full “Sleepy Hollow” on his audience:

“This is the White Horse of the Apocalypse. The White Horse of the Apocalypse is the first horse. It’s a horse of speech. It’s a horse of spirit. And the spirit of Antichrist is out now. This is what you’re seeing. You want to know what the Antichrist spirit looks like? That’s what’s going on in America. These people mocking the president, the words they use, the speech they use, that’s the spirit of Antichrist. That’s the spirit of hatred.”

Bakker had a popular ― and lucrative ― TV ministry in the 1980s, but resigned in shame after a sex scandal. He eventually did five years in prison for fraud.

With the usual caveat that I have no real issues with Christians who aren't nutters like Bakker, I'm going to ask the obvious question here. Why should anybody worship a God who can't take a joke? That's So Sad! There, I made fun of one of Trump's tweets. Did I unleash the destruction of the world? It doesn't look like it. What's genuinely sad is watching Bakker carry all this water for Trump's thin-skinned authoritarian nonsense.

A reminder - this is America. We have the right to make fun of the president's hair, or his hands, or his diction, or his tweets. Every single president has been poked fun at over their personal foibles. And, if I want to say that I think Trump is incompetent and unqualified for the job, that's my right, too. Dealing with jokes and opinions like those is part of being a public figure, and as the old cliche goes, if you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen.

Bakker should go back to selling potato soup to survivalists before his schtick degenerates into self-parody. By all accounts Trump is not a particularly religious man, so there's no reason to think that God is going to give him any special treatment. That being so, there's no reason to think there's anything theologically special about jokes targeting this particular president. And around here, mocking the president is practically a national pastime.

The Literal Word of God?

Huffington Post has an article up today reporting the results of an ongoing Gallup poll of American's beliefs regarding the Bible. The poll has been taken since the 1970's, and found that belief in the Bible as the "literal word of God" is at its lowest point since that time.

Twenty-six percent of Americans view the Bible as “a book of fables, legends, history and moral precepts recorded by man.” And Gallup found that roughly half of American adults say the Bible is “the inspired word of God” but that it shouldn’t be taken literally.

Gallup polled a random sample of 1,011 adults, aged 18 and older and living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, between May 3-7, 2017.

The survey revealed that the number of Americans who view the Bible as the literal word of God has dropped from 38 percent in 1976 to 24 percent today. The percentage that defines the Bible as a book of fables and stories has doubled since then.

This has coincided with a larger shift in the American religious landscape in recent decades. Belief in God has wavered, and the percentage of Americans who identify as Christian has dropped from over 90 percent to roughly 70 percent. More and more Americans are religiously unaffiliated, meaning they do not identify with any formal religious group.

In fact, the idea that the Bible is the "literal word of God" is kind of ridiculous. The Bible contradicts itself in many places, and it only takes one counterexample to disprove such an absolute statement. The idea that the Bible is a holy book inspired by God, but which should not necessarily be taken literally, is a far more robust belief. As you can see above, the percentage of Americans who view the Bible that way has barely budged.

What I find most interesting is that as the literalist position declines, the increase shows up in the "book of fables" percentage. Some of this likely has to do with an increase in members of minority religions who don't follow the Bible, at least on the surface it seems that what's going on is not "literal" changing over to "inspired," but "literal" transitioning to "fable." Maybe if you're raised as a literalist, once you discover contradictions in the text you can't unsee them.

Still, it seems a little surprising to me that instead of transitioning to more liberal forms of Christianity, literalists might instead reject the Bible altogether as a holy text. To be clear, without a breakout of Christians versus members of other religions, you can't necessarily draw that conclusion from the poll. That's just what it looks like from a surface reading of the results.

Another possibility is that "literals" are transitioning to "inspireds" at the same rate that "inspireds" are abandoning Christianity for other religions and therefore placing the Bible in the "fable" camp. Or there could be some even more complex set of dynamics at work. It's good to see the literalists on the decline for whatever reason, even though 24% still translates to a lot of people who would be fine with killing me just for being a non-Christian - or, I suppose, are hypocrites about the whole thing.

The Path of Initiation - Air

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

Working with the Air element is the third 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 Air. The Air element corresponds to the gas state of matter, and in the ancient Greek system of the elements is related to union of the Hot 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 Air is separating 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.

He Picked the Wrong Water

Even though it sounds like something out of The Onion, this story from back in March is from Zimbabwe Today, which as far as I know is a legitimate African newspaper. According to the story, a pastor trying to demonstrate "walking on water" was instead eaten by crocodiles.

It is said that Pastor Mthethwa walked into the water and when he was 30 meters inside the river, he attempted to ascend above the water so he can start walking, but the 3 crocodiles appeared out of no where and started feasting on him.

"They finished him in a couple of minutes. All that was left of him when they finished eating him is a pair of sandals and his underwear floating above the water." said Deacon Nkosi.

ER24 responded to the scene 30 minutes after, but upon arrival there was not much they could do as the man of god was already dead, digested by the crocodiles.

Above and beyond the irony factor, what I find interesting about this story is how the pastor's actions are described. Instead of just walking across the water from the shore, he walked 30 meters in and then attempted to "ascend?" I can do that trick. I just have to be in the right place, and I only know of one that fits the bill - the Gulf of Mexico coast off Sanibel Island in Florida. But I'm sure there are many others around the world.

The deal is that off Sanibel island, there's a shallow sand bar about that far out from shore. So I could walk out into the ocean and then appear to rise until I was only knee-deep or ankle-deep in the water and walk for a ways. Obviously, anybody who followed me would discover they could do the same thing - but if, say, the body of water happened to be infested by crocodiles so nobody ever went in? That would keep the secret pretty well.

I don't know whether the pastor really believed he could do it, or if he was pulling a trick that meant he had to do at that precise location. Either way, luck was not with him. Even in waters with a lot of crocodiles or alligators, they usually are willing to leave people alone for a short period of time unless they are especially hungry - time enough to wade out, walk around on a sand bar or, I suppose, on the water itself, and then wade back. But not this time.

Maybe if he really was trying to pull a trick on his congregation, the crocodiles were just God's way of saying "no."

Movie Review: A Dark Song

I rarely post movie reviews on here, since most Hollywood films about magick are hopelessly clueless when it comes to how it's supposed to work. Either it's this comic-book thing where wizards shoot beams of light all over the place, or something like Harry Potter where the magic is a bunch of fairy tale folklore mixed in with bits and pieces of real occult ideas and terminology. But A Dark Song, a new Irish horror film written and directed by Liam Gavin, at least puts some effort into trying to get it right. That alone is praiseworthy, hence this review.

The film stars Catherine Walker as Sophia Howard, a grieving woman who sets out to perform a fictional version of the Abramelin working. We'll get to that in a moment. It also stars Steve Oram as Joseph Solomon, an experienced magician Sophia hires to help her with the ritual procedure. Much of the film takes place just between the two of them, and both turn in excellent performances. The film manages to be creepy, suspenseful, and at a couple of points genuinely scary, and it accomplishes this without relying on a huge special effects budget or anything like that. The otherwise positive top review on IMDb complains about the low budget, but I have to say, I watch lots of films and I really don't see where spending a ton on effects would have made it much better.

The fact is that when you do real magick you don't see laser lights all over the place, or crackly energy like a plasma ball gone crazy. Magick is about doing the work, day in and day out, with all of that practice leading up to eventual success. The movie gets that completely right, showing the sustained effort and intent required to perform an operation that lasts for months. There's no "Hollywood magick" here, and I found the film better for it. There are a lot of misconceptions that beginning practitioners bring with them, and that sort of "shoot laser light" or "levitate feathers" nonsense is to blame for a lot of it.

So as a film, I enjoyed A Dark Song very much. As for the magick itself, I imagine that how I felt watching parts of the film must be how physicists feel when they watch movie scientists go on about how to solve whatever physics problem is driving the storyline. Much of the exposition is close to the real thing - much closer than in any film I have previously seen. It's refreshing to hear Joseph Solomon talking about how these are "real angels" and "real demons," and that those "people on the Internet" who say the Holy Guardian Angel is your "Higher Self" are just wrong. That's an actual conversation I see all the time. But many of the details of the ritual are misinterpreted, and some are just wrong.

Nightmare House With Mystery Tenant

Huffington Post has an article up today about a "Nightmare House" that apparently was being sold complete with a mystery upstairs tenant. The listing is no longer available, but it was pretty bizarre while it lasted. According to the listing, the house came complete with an upstairs apartment that could never be shown that was occupied by a mysterious tenant who never paid rent on the unit - and still somehow still had a lease.

The first red flag shows up in the very first sentence of the description, “Please read carefully before scheduling showings.” And you’ll want to read carefully, or you may almost miss the buried tidbit about the mystery tenant who has never paid:

"Upstairs apartment cannot be shown under any circumstances. Buyer assumes responsibility for the month-to-month tenancy in the upstairs apartment. Occupant has never paid, and no security deposit is being held, but there is a lease in place. (Yes, it does not make sense, please don’t bother asking.)"

Can you ever meet this person? How on earth does this no-pay lease work? Did said upstairs tenant have anything to do with this?

Various theories about the upstairs apartment have been floated, including speculation that the "upstairs tenant" is actually a ghost and the sellers are trying to cover up evidence of a haunting. Personally, I don't know what to think. Some of my relatives invest in real estate, and have run into one situation where the seller's family members were occupying the house and insisted that they weren't going to leave even if the place was sold. But this "mystery tenant" business is a whole other level of weird.

That's what makes this story drift into paranormal territory. The situation of the house probably has a mundane but strange explanation, like a family member who made some sort of agreement to stay there indefinitely. Still, why all the secrecy? Why can't the unit be shown "under any circumstances?" Is the tenant an evil wizard, or some weird old dude who has to remain in the unit to guard a portal to some other dimension? If this were a movie, it would totally be something like that.

Since the listing has been taken down, I don't know if the house sold or if the seller just gave up. I know that I wouldn't want to buy a house with half of it entirely unseen and occupied by a stranger, and I think most buyers feel the same way. Either that, or the seller went upstairs to try to work something out with the tenant and wound up falling through the portal to Hell.

Watcher of the Dawn At It Again

Last February, it came to my attention that Watcher of the Dawn was trying to transition from snarking about the various Golden Dawn orders to setting itself up as the new Augoeides. Since the big Golden Dawn flame wars seemed to have died down, it was understandable that they might be looking to do something else. But as I said at the time, this is my beat. I stepped up my posting, both on the weird news side and the serious magick side, and it appeared that I won quite quickly. Watcher was back to only a couple of posts a month by last May.

But it looks like they've decided to try again. In April, the posting frequency jumped back up and the site is posting some of the same sorts of stories I have on here again. Thankfully, the "World's First New Age Tabloid" tagline is gone, because that was a lie. I was here first, folks. And while Augoeides is much more than a New Age tabloid, with serious magick articles and the like, a lot of my weird news and religion news posts certainly count as exactly that kind of subject matter. The monetization angle looks to be gone as well, which is smart. As I pointed out last year, there's no way to make any serious money blogging about the occult.

And I joke, sort of. It's not like Augoeides is the only paranormal blog in the world, and there's certainly room for more than one. But I also can be stubbornly competitive when I put my mind to it, which generally works out better for my readers. After all, who doesn't want to see more posts and more content? So that's what I'm going to do - I'll see if I can step up my game a little more here and vanquish Watcher once more. You know, in the metaphoric sense. Tracking down articles to post every day or even every other day takes time and effort. I'm used to that. But are they? Last time it seemed like they ran out of steam pretty quickly.

To be fair, there are some areas that Watcher could conceivably cover that I generally ignore. For example, I don't cover a lot of scandals involving religious leaders because they usually don't touch on the topic of "spiritual technology." It's not that, say, stories about religious leaders engaging in the sexual abuse of children or parishioners aren't important, but there's also not much to say besides pointing out that such leaders are simply awful human beings - and I shouldn't even need to say that since it's so obvious. But it does fit with Watcher's previous "scandal sheet" aspirations, and I would think that widening the focus from the Golden Dawn to religion in general would yield a lot of stories that I probably won't cover here.

As far as mainstream Christianity goes, one of my biggest targets is the "Prosperity Gospel" movement precisely because I think their tech is hopelessly broken and simply can't work. If you donate money, God isn't going to magically give you more. But prosperity preachers keep trying to convince people that this time, for sure, it will work, when as a magician I know that it never will. Also, the blog has become more political since the presidential election, in part because I really dislike our current president, but mostly because his administration seems determined to enshrine religious discrimination into law under the guise of "religious freedom." I've been fighting against that bullshit for years, and I'm not about to give it up now.

At any rate, Watcher, game on. Again. Let's see if you can keep up this time.