Peeking in the Black Mirror

I finished construction and initial blessing of my black scrying mirror earlier this month (in the picture above). I ordered a piece of custom-cut glass (18-inches in diameter, and ¼ of an inch thick) and got black spray paint, per the instructions of Frater Ashen Chassan. 

I should emphasize, this is *practice* scrying equipment, and I thank Fr. Chassan for his emphasis on the beginning student or rookie-magus to spend as much time as possible developing his third-eye and scrying ability. The theory is, if one attempts to scry a dark mirror in formal ritual (Goetic operations) or a crystal glass (angelic operations), then the practice work makes it that much easier.

A few notes about the mirror.

*I waited to spray paint it until the day/hour of Monday (Luna)during waxing of a Moon.
*The nice thing about starting on a Mercurial hour, is it flows right into Luna!
*I needed to use nearly the *entire* spray paint can on the 18-inch glass on one side.
*That’s because little holes of light kept peeking through

After the mirror dried, and the days were still waxing to a full moon, I decided one night to try it out. Not serious scrying, just setting up and doing an initial blessing. That’s when the interesting stuff happened.

Short story: I’m not ready yet to proceed with scrying.

Long story: Why? Well, when I set up the dark mirror and lit the candles, immediately I felt a little funny, like there was another window open in my room, and things could see me or I could, if I gazed long enough, see them. It wasn’t oppressive, but definitely affected my mind. One message kept crashing through: “This is real. Magic is not something to take lightly. If you approach scrying, you need to do it with the full protection of the divine and with absolute attention.”

This really hit home *why* the mages and secret practitioners of Solomonic magic took the precautions they did...because they were dealing with beings that were beyond the physical realm, existing in dimensions of reality inaccessible but through very specific techniques, scrying being one of those initial doorways. I had to smile too...for when people make fun of how drawing a circle on the ground can protect you...they fail to realize they’re talking about a physical act that ripples out into dimensions and affects our being on nonphysical dimensions of consciousness.

Additional faux pas - I did *not* set up a circle of blessed chalk or rope around my sitting space, or recite a circle prayer over it, so I felt less protected, even though I wasn't actively trying to contact/reach out to a specific spirit.

In the end, I felt off balance enough that I took my friend William Wallen's advice and did a Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP) to try and stay grounded and cleanse the room after I took the mirror down.

Things I will do before attempting scrying again:

*Memorize the initial KoS prayer for divine light pre-scrying
*Memorize the Blessing of the Ground/Working space from DSIC
*Slowly start to memorize the other DSIC operations.
*Use blessed chalk in my sitting area

*Finish each session with a LBRP (one of the few lodge magic practices I’m entertaining at the moment).


Keep the Light, Blessings to All,

The Aspergillum

"Thou shalt then make unto thyself a sprinkler of vervain, fennel, provinca, sage, valerian, mint [majorana], garden-basil, and rosemary,5gathered in the day and hour of Mercury, the moon being in her increase. Then cut a handle with a single stroke from a virgin branch of hazel; the length should be three spans.6 Bind together these herbs with a thread spun by a young maiden, and engrave upon the handle on the one side the characters..."

-Key of Solomon, Book II Chapter XI


The first magical tool (celestial implement) needed on my journey is the Aspergillum, or Holy Water Sprinkler. This is the foundation of all tools and, along with the Holy Water, can be used to bless and consecrate any other tools or working space for any magical ritual. In other words, this is where the base of the pyramid begins for me.

So, to do this, I needed: 1. a proper branch, 2. proper herbs and 3. virgin-spun thread.

I ordered a 1. virgin-cut branch from a trusted Solomonic practiioner in Costa Rica, which was cut in the day or hour of Mercury. I then ordered the 2. appropriate (above) vervain, fennel, valerian from Alchemy-Works.com, which is a great resource for harder-to-find herbs. The others (mint, sage, garden-basil and rosemary) I obtained from the local grocery store/organic food place. Finally, I ordered the virgin-spun thread from Solomonic mage and author Aaron Leitch on his page DocSolomons.com. I highly recommend this page for anyone needing holy water, virgin-spun thread.

I waited until the Day and Hour of Mercury, and did the following steps (these are short-hand notes of what I was to do, so please ask me or look to the KoS for more information:


*Dip thy hands in water and Sprinkle over the sticks, with devotion.
*Trace these Key of Solomon characters on the stick:

*Gather all of the herbs from boxes and line them up on a plate.
*Because the incense was flicked by initial holy water hands, censor is good.
*Go outside, w/ Aspergillum stick, lightly sand it and charge it with devotion (Raph)
*When charged, go back inside and bind the herbs with virgin-spun thread
* Light cense and bless the stick (w/herbs on it) w/ devotion
*Engrave aspergillum with characters.


I hope to use this with daily meditation/room clearing, and of course before any ritual work or scrying.

Fetching Port In Light's Harbor

First Hour of Day of Mercury, Wednesday, During Waxing of the Moon.

Praise you, Light! Praise you, All-Good Energy of the Multi-Dimensional Reality! Guide my thoughts to only see You, polish my heart to reflect my inner divinity, which is Me, You, God. 

Hypocrisy has enchained my consciousness. With the infectious-gravity of habit, with the inflaming of desire for flesh and food and all things that tap on the dopamine-drip, thus I kneel in chained defeat. The Celestial Intelligentsia depart, halting their benign vibrations, as I close myself off from higher echelons of magical progress. I used to think I could manage my habits and still carry on the work of a neophyte in the Solomonic Magical tradition, but more and more I am seeing that this is impossible for a Hermetic Mage. I offer just a few pieces of evidence:

"But first thou must tear off from thee the cloak which thou dost wear,—the web of ignorance, the ground of bad, corruption’s chain, the carapace of darkness, the living death, sensation’s corpse, the tomb thou carriest with thee, the robber in thy house, who through the things he loveth, hateth thee, and through the things he hateth, bears thee malice...

For that it hath with mass of matter blocked them up and crammed them full of loathsome lust, so that thou may’st not hear about the things that thou should’st hear, nor see the things that thou should’st see."

-Corpus Hermeticum, book VII.


I'm realizing Hermetic magic isn't about *denying* the body's cravings or lower energies, locking them in a bottle of self-hatred and "sin". That's the domain of organized mega-church religious groups. Instead, Hermetic magic is about *harmonizing* lower energies (lust, desire, cravings, bodily stimulation) under the domain of the higher consciousness, The Holy Mind, the only Good, God. For me, this harmonization takes the form of daily meditation, hymns and inner songs that induce a trance-like state of light-ecstasy, and constant praise of God (the Light, the Good), and incorporating that into myself.

But, that's where hypocrisy snakes it's way into my actions. I am notorious for paying lip service to all of these noble lightworkings, but fail in consistently "keeping the light" in praise, meditation and thankfulness. And it's this hypocrisy that keeps us down, that denies us, as the Corpus Hermeticum tells us, from seeing and hearing what we must hear and see (i.e., the truth of our own divinity).

This concept of waging spiritual war against hypocrisy is also articulated in a 17th century document involving Dr Thomas Rudd, a well-known angelic magician who continued research into holy invocations. In this relation, Rudd and Sir John Heydon encounter spiritual beings, and relate various effects that these 'Good Genii' have on a man. But the end of this document sums up the Path to Theurgy perfectly:

"It is lawful to pray to God for such a good genius or Angel. And to purge the mind from pride and hypocrisy which is one reason that all men are not capable of Consociation with these good Genii, for faith and desire aught to be full sail to make such voyages prosperous, and our end and purpose pure and sincere; but if pride & conceitedness or affection of some peculiar privilege above other mortals spur a man up to so bold and enterprise, his Devotion will no more move wither God or the good Genii than the whining voice of the counterfeit will stir the affection of the discretely charitable. Nay, this presumption may invite some real friends to deceive him & be his destruction.

But the safest wisdom is the sincere consecrating [of] Man's Soul to God, and the aspiring to nothing but to a profound pitch of humility, as not to be conscious to our selves of being at all touched with the praise and applause of men; and to such a free and universal sense of charity as to be delighted with the welfare of another as much as our own; they that only have their eye upon these will find coming in what ever their heart can desire; but they that put forth their hand to catch at high things as they fancy & neglect these, prove at last but a plague to themselves and a laughing stock to the world."

Or, as the American Rap Music Artist Marshall Mathers articulates: "There be no such thing as half-way crooks."

Frater Ashen Chassan, a modern Hermetic magician, author and researcher into the occult arts of Celestial Invocations mentions in his book "Gateways Through Stone and Circle", that a wise man once said the most powerful thing we humans can say to ourselves is "No". To choose. To never straddle the fence, but rather, to plunge headlong into the pools of light and divinity, consecrating our consciousness to all things holy and One. To be sincere. Sincerity is the paddle from which we can cut through the waters of hypocrisy and exhausted, low-energy, and make sail to the Port of Light, to Honesty and Magic and Humility.

Praise and Bless You, Oh God, oh Thoth, or All Mind, Universal Brimmer Of Consciousness and Light! Please help me as I seek to always praise Thee, harmonize my lower passions to sing in union the song of your Light.

Sudden Trance

Easter Sunday - Sol rises on the first hour of Sunday, Michael's Day.

Have you ever been suddenly approached by the divine? Something that made you question "What is this humming eternity?"

Even sitting in a meeting, suddenly the occult tides of multi-dimensional energy and hieroglyphics wash in wave after wave over my mind, washing and cleansing my spirit.  Oh Majesty! Oh Allah In A Glittering Leaf! What *is* this feeling?  Does anyone else *feel* this? Unreal.  

Theurgy: I don’t need to run, exhausted, to the beach to fill my pail with water and haul it back to the mote of my sandcastled body.  I just have to *allow* myself to be still...let the waves come and wash naturally...they wash all the time!  Always waves!  Whether we feel them or not!  Whether we cling to occultness, or materialism, or this thought or that...the waves crash!  I am so humbled right now...proud, little flesh me….so thankful to the Almighty.

*What *IS* this?  Feels similar to being on bill hicks...just seeing the spiral move across my skin, rabbis gripping brown robes in Egyptian tombs full of multi-dimensional hieroglyphics!  Just so amazing.  So thankful.  Thank you, Lord.  “be still and know I am God.”  How true the bell of these words reverberate throughout my soul.  

Devil Pacts Debunked

FUNNY EXPERIMENT: If you type in the phrase ‘devil pact’ into YouTube and hit search, without leaving the first search result page, your eyes will be blinded by the following:

*Blond haired girls running through the woods in low-budget horror film trailers

*Metal bands equating the Catholic church to an Illuminati conspiracy to steal souls *Televangelists talking about how pacts with the devil cause earthquakes in Haiti, and *Some guy telling us he’s the - and I’m really quoting here - “The Grand Mufti Of Satanism”. (?)







Have you ever played the “telephone” game as kids? Where you whisper something to the kid next to you, like, “Blue is the best color” and it goes from kid to kid until by the time it gets back to you it's supposed to be the same message but it’s the national anthem of….Romania?” Welp...that’s exactly how most of the modern world treats the concept of pacts with the devil: instead of focusing on the origins, they see it as some pre-existing, evil-horrible thing that’s always been there, and that happens every time you open a book of magick.

Well, for those of us who study and practice ritualistic Western magick, known as Solomonic Magick, we open books on magick (also known as grimoires) everyday, read from them and recite incantations and engage with surrounding powers and consciousnesses...and our souls remain steadily NOT stolen or committed to a smiling, horn-imbued beast leering over us with a contract and a pen.


I’m sorry I’ve you’ve been married to your own ideology for many years, but this post aims to divorce your thoughts from the notion that Pacts With The Devil go hand in hand with ritualistic magick, OR that pacts with the devil have their roots in traditional western shamanic practices. So let’s take a very broadstroke look at where the concept of pacts come from.


Rosemary Ellen Guiley, the author of The Encyclopedia of Demons & Demonology, gives us a solid definition of a pact:









"Pact - A binding agreement with a demon or the Devil for gain and services beyond the power of nature, usually in exchange for one’s soul."


She also mentions how pacts with the devil are implied in Scripture:


Isaiah 28:15 “For you have said: We have entered into a league with death; we have made a covenant with hell.”


Matthew 4:8-9 Again, the devil took him [Jesus] to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me."





So the implication is there, and that’s not uncommon for tribes and communities to recognize forces like sickness, death and the like as having ‘dark’ attributes...but something to keep in mind is that, in the last two thousand years this implication was existing right alongside traditional, shamanic, ritualistic magickal practices, the writing of the grimoires etc. So what happened? How did Christian Europe methodically start to tolerate, then suspect, then accuse and finally kill off people convicted as being “in league with the devil”?? Well, in Europe, the Christian-infused Middle Ages saw a gradual shift in labeling magick as heresy (or a violation against God). So what happened? Authors Stephen Skinner and David Rankine weigh-in on this shift in their book “The Goetia of Dr. Rudd”, starting off with how things USED to be, where “...magic was being transferred from the secular to the religious courts. Previously, in the secular courts magic was only prosecuted if it led to death, or seriously affected some highborn person, but in the religious courts magic was increasingly construed as a crime in itself.” (Goetia of Dr. Rudd, pp. 30) “Up to 1258 the categories of sorcery and heresy were kept well apart, and Pope Alexander IV actually issued a canon forbidding inquisitors from getting involved in sorcery investigations, unless manifest heresy was also involved.” (Goetia of Dr. Rudd, pp. 30) ...Sounds pretty decent if you are a practicing pagan or a priest with a secret Solomonic oratory in Middle Ages Europe. But what happened? Well, Guiley helps give us a very brief timeline, and here it is, of this shift:



Timeline


*200 - 430: Early Church fathers condemned simple magick (divination).
*400s - ‘Devil Pacts’ appear in writing for the first time (via St. Jerome)
*500s - Stories appear of people selling souls for love, money
*538 - Theophilus sells soul to become a bishop (starts the Faust myth)
*1200s - St. Thomas Aquinas - “Magicians perform miracles through devil pacts.”
*1484 - Pope Innocent VIII Papal Bull finally declared any practice of magic a heresy.
*1500s-1600s - witch hysteria, mass trials.


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So let’s expand a bit on the last 800 years to trace this transformation:

“Formal pacts with the Devil appeared for the first time in the writings of St. Jerome in the fifth century.” This is where St. Jerome tells us of a man who wishes to seduce a pretty girl, and agrees to renounce Christ in writing via a magician, undergoes a black baptism, BUT St. Basil helps the man repent and all is well in the end. (The Encyclopedia of Demons & Demonology, pp. 192)



*In the 400s and 500s we start hearing stories in medieval Europe about people allegedly selling their soul to the devil to either get, say a woman fall in love with them, riches, or to gain power. Guiley tells us there was one such man, Theophilus, the treasurer of the church of Adana in 538 who sold his soul to the devil to become a bishop. Guiley tells us that that last example also helped provide the basis of the legend of Dr. Faust, (pic) the learned but arrogant man who made a pact with the devil to experience all forms of lust, and mental ecstasy in return for giving up his soul.

*In the 1200s, St. Thomas Aquinas also states that “Magicians perform miracles through personal contracts with demons.”

*In the 1300s, Guiley tells us we see the first appearance of a devil’s pact in witchcraft trials, where in 1335 a married woman was accused of entering into a devil’s pact via a shepherd boy she was having an affair with, and was required to attend black sabbats every Friday night. (193)

In 1484 - a Papal Bull from Pope Innocent VIII finally declared any practice of magic a heresy, and inquisitors could get involved and prosecute those suspected.

And in the 1500s and 1600s - devil’s packed riddles accounts during the massive witch hysteria, where we see everything from bewitched nuns to a stranger making a mother and daughter swearing allegiance to him, having sex with them, then disappearing into thin air.

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So what was behind this shift? Were hordes of pagans and grimoire authors running through the countryside, burning churches, boiling virgin blood in cauldrons and engaging in massive orgies on top of the Vatican? I’ll leave those theories to another Dan Brown novel, but the historical truth is that Christian, Catholic Europe was going through some massive problems at the time, and the Church needed someone or some group to blame. What were these problems? Even a cursory wiki-search gives a condensed explanation





<<The prosecution of witchcraft generally became more prominent throughout the late medieval and Renaissance era, perhaps driven partly by the upheavals of the era - the Black Death, Hundred Years War, and a gradual cooling of the climate which modern scientists call the Little Ice Age between about the 15th and 19th centuries). -wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition>>

Couple those problems of war, disease and climate shifts *with* direct challenges to the Catholic Church itself like the Protestant Reformation and individual kingdoms wresting the sovereignty from the Vatican...and why you’ve just listed the perfect recipe to pun-intended “demonize” The Other.


Enter the Inquisition: That bloody, tortuous period where the Church, in a seemingly paranoid and reactionary manner….brought the full weight of its suspicion of the Other down upon the heads of so-called witches, pagans, and people who practice Solomonic Magick...people who engage in ritualistic grimoiric tradition...many of whom were in the priestly class itself within the Church! Again mentioned in the Goetia of Dr. Rudd

“In the darkest days of the Inquisition, magicians and witches were forced to ‘confess’ not only to heresy, but that they had made pacts selling their soul to the dark side, a concept that probably would not have even remotely occurred to Solomon or to any of the magicians of pagan antiquity. If it had occurred to them, they would have thought it totally laughable that any man would make himself beholden to a demon, rather than simply binding it.” (Goetia of Dr. Rudd, pg. 31).


This hits at the heart of the matter: The Church’s own reactionary suspicion finally succeeded in labeling God-fearing and Angelic-seeking magicians into the class of being in league with the devil….just because they engaged in a perceived departure of the Church itself.









Aaron Leitch, an author, scholar and practitioner of Renaissance-era Solomonic magic, weighs-in on this paranoia in his book Secrets of the Magickal Grimoires: “...the art is mired in anti-occult Church propaganda and the glitz of Hollywood. Modern occultists have generally drawn their opinions on spirit work from sources influenced by these things...As always, a little understanding of history can go a long way.” (Secrets of the Magickal Grimoires, pg. 365) “...the critics of the grimoires cited the sacrifices and offerings made to the demons (animals, incense, etc) as proof of the Satanic nature of the texts...In reality, this was not the stance of mages at all...the act of sacrifice is a method of empowering and nurturing a spiritual entity.” (Secrets of the Magickal Grimoires, 365) *Devil pacts, in fact, so a historic and spiritual disservice to actual infernal spirits as worked with my traditional Solomonic magicians...for more information on actually Defending Demons, check out a link to another video below on that topic.

*But here’s the bottom line: a great deal of this hysteria concerning magic being tied to pacts with the devil has almost *everything* to do with the Catholic Church’s near paranoia of everything NOT Christian, more specifically Catholic. And as for devil pacts in Hollywood and death metal band interpretations...they either draw from *later*, Romanticized interpretations of grimoiric books of magic, OR they simply draw from so-called “left-hand path” Church of Satan or so-called Luciferian interpretations of “engaging the devils”....but even people from these paths will tell you that actual pacts with Devils aren’t existent, or are secondary to self-empowerment and self-knowledge….but as for Solomonic Magickal practices...devil pacts fall way, way outside the traditional grimoires.





In conclusion - YES pacts with the devil were widely circulated tales in Christian Europe in the Middle Ages, and Yes there are people or organizations, musical bands, who allegedly engage in devil pacts today and in yesteryear….but these are NOT consistent with Solomonic Magickal and shamanic practice. Instead, these were the products of the Catholic Church’s paranoia and reaction to historical events to help protect it’s own identity. Inventing so-called Devil pacts helped toward this end.

Just ask yourself this: When religious leaders turn Astarte (that ancient goddess of fertility) into the Evil Demon Astaroth, THEN the Church tells congregants to avoid any contact with the demonic monster THEY themselves created...is this rooted in spiritual reasoning, or paranoia of ‘The Other’?







WHY do religious groups do this today? Why perpetuate the false stereotype of Devil pacts? Because if you’re scared about diving into the subconscious or spiritual world and, through ritual or meditation, *confronting* with a variety of forces and energies….well, if you’re not doing that then it’s easier to be controlled by established institutions that exist, on a large part, because of a level of dependency by their flock of adherents. In other words, if you’d rather be scared in a movie theater seat than composing your own Psalms to the seven planetary angels and activating your consciousness with meditation, then you’re easier to control. It’s that simple. Solomonic magick is the opposite….it’s all about independence, tailoring your own psyche to the energies that constantly change and swirl around us.


*A saying goes, the opposite of love isn’t hate...it’s apathy...because love and hate are strong passions with motivated means. Just so, ask yourself...is the opposite of Modern Day Religion really evil devil pacts with Satan? Or, are religious authoritarianism and devil worship, like love and hate, really two sides of the same, ever-spinning coin, and do both rely on each other far more than….perhaps either care to admit?