Hermetics is too small.

It is also too powerful.

Hermetics, especially with diligent work on the Cabala, is capable of raising consciousness and building power to the extent that one can immortalize WITH THE FEY FOLK DANCING AROUND UNSEEN in a relatively short period of time. I was psychically open within 2,500 hours, which I completed in about three years working like a maniac and doing practically nothing else but work in an honorable day job and build a national writing career. I was chthonically stabilized in Hermetics within five years working fifteen hours a week at it. AND CRAZY.

Yet the systems I worked in–Golden Dawn and B.O.T.A.–did not overtly state many things that were known to previous generations of Hermetists and ceremonial magicians. After many losses in myself and my entire clan-tribe, I am going to spell them out and make everyone slap their heads for pounding out what should be obvious but is energetically impossible.

The dead need to evolve for a certain period of energy in order to achieve stability. They do this by helping people in the energy systems that they worked.

Energy systems confer a certain configuration that is overtly recognizable in the underworld. The shape of Hermetics has some stuff that is recognizable to normal Christians, Jews, tarot card readers, witches, Masons, etc., and some that is not. There are not enough Hermetists in most areas for a Hermetic corps of fey folk and ghosts to dedicate themselves solely to the work, and it is geographical, so most Hermetists are aided by normal people who are either injured in Hermetics or take advantage of the blinding qualities of Hermetic energy.

We are being taken for a ride by little old ladies who went to church a lot.

A person’s ancestors are bonded to them in the energy. If you are working very powerfully in a system that is different from theirs, it injures them before they can complete their evolution. Often it is one’s own ancestors who keep a person from moving forward in Hermetics. So I have to go mass a lot, and Presbyterian church, and keep up with the other ur-traditions in my ancestry, like Judaism, Mesoamerican work, European witchcraft, brujeria, etc., to heal the ancestors and help them work with me.

It is building a bridge back to the ancestors who can work in the underworld with the wise ones and the fey folk that helps, and that means church. The older traditions outfitted one to work IN NORMAL MUNDANE SITUATIONS after death. This is part of why the Jewish community is so prosperous and educated when they have the room to thrive. Their ancient energy work enables the underworld to “make” on the regular world. The Catholic underworld has a lot monastic structures in it that so while it is still workable, it tends to turn people into underworld monks who build the church unless one is near a great old church where generations of work has been done. The wealthy have energy structures that accomplish great things as well. I have a lot of ghost friends in the areas where the rich dwelt, and I always try to pay a visit to the old money neighborhood. Those people are still functioning in a wonderful way and have taught me a great deal. Certain old professions like the theatre and the dance have elegant underworlds in the great cities, as does farming in the older areas, and in many older areas the sea has a great underworld for those who will learn to sail and always be on the sea. I have encountered the ghosts of very old seamen–pirates, some would call them–and they assure me that there are indeed ghost ships who can come to one’s aid in times of trouble. There are also the ghost ships of slaves, and I am warned against such things. If I saw a ghost ship, I would make for shore immediately.

I was in a difficult situation with Hermetics. I had opened myself psychically to the extent of being very vulnerable yet did not know that if I did NORMAL exoteric spiritual work in the tradition of my ancestors and the local ghosts, I would be fine.

The Kosher Cabala was always worked within the context of a great deal of NORMAL Jewish energy work. The Christian Cabala was usually worked by Catholic priests or monks who did a great deal of normal stuff or by the wealthy with the time and access to a lot of normal Catholic-ish ritual.

When you open yourself psychically to the extent necessary to do this type of work, you will be interacting with a lot of fey folk who want to do honking great magic and not very many who want to pay the cable bill on time. Chaos ensues. HOME IS WHERE TO BE, MY FUNDS REMIND ME.

Add to that the fact that high magick was traditionally done by the rich, rabbis, or Catholic priests who do not have to worry about cable bill paying because someone else is doing it for them and all they are doing is energy work, all day and all night. Ceremonial magick is too expensive for the modern middle-class person.

Then there is the fact that as you open psychically, you become more open to other people’s agendas toward you. My ancestors are very traditional and wanted the females to be virgins upon marriage, normal housewives, and take care of the children. The farther you go back into the ancestral situation, the more prevalent that idea is. Hence this work is mostly done by men who are vulnerable to psychic control by the large systems run by men: the synagogue, the church, the Masonic lodge, etc. No one sees that the Masonic brotherhood extends after death and is as honorable–and as corrupt–as the Masons always were. Read history. Those guys made money. Yet my ancestors who were Masons are still working that system and filled with the great love of humanity in it. It was an answer to the celibacy, monasticism, and self-interest of the Catholic world. You could make the soul in freemasonry and still work in the world after death with normal people. A lot of the ghosts who work in business in the older urban areas are Masons.

The Cabala is several thousand years old. Several thousand years ago people wanted women to be nice, normal housewives and stay away from the Cabala. This poses a problem for the female Cabalist.

The modern world holds undreamt-of opportunities for women to have careers and lives outside of traditional domesticity, and I sought to take advantage of these.

Big explosion.

Now that I am practicing full-on ceremonial magic and able to work with the ancestors and the old ones of my Deep Self in fully conscious ways, we are able to come to some accommodations about this whole thing of my lifestyle.

The gods have brought in some NORMAL people from the Deep Self and the ancestors, and I am now practicing normal witchcraft and doing fun normal things in order to give them some nice jobs and keep my own energies focused on normal stuff like solvency, romance, health, care of the children, etc. These things are most of what ancestors do anyway, and if you are redirecting your ancestors into crazy howling Hermetics, they don’t function as well in NORMAL. WELL, WE TRIED.

Hermetics opens you to the point where you can be “eaten” by the ghosts and energies in it, local energy workers, lovers, and family members. It is also designed to conceal this fact. I have endured sickness in the art, and have had two cancer scares and a lot of near deaths in accidents. This expensive biological entanglement of mine–the body–would fund a couple hundred years of luxury for an enterprising old one who could get it off me.

It is only by performing the Lesser Key of Solomon WITHOUT Enochian magic, as well as lots of Hermetics, witchcraft and divination of various kinds, and regular religion like Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and work with the local Native American energy that I am able to perceive what has happened and how to fix it.

And yet the Lesser Key of Solomon has not arranged me for this work. A woman can never be worked in a system. We do weird things to the grimoire. We bring in ancient gods and fey folk FROM WHO KNOWS WHERE. Fey folk–the ghosts of hybrids–are completely unique. It is not that horse fey do not “make” like cow fey. It is that each horse “makes” differently as does each cow. My system is entirely unique and only functions within a few square mile area. It is only in a giant universally constructed system that the dark ones can make energy money without having to make for the living, and they vastly prefer that. An old one in this system is in THIS SYSTEM ONLY and not in The Lesser Key of Solomon, so ghosts or an energy beam from some Grand Lodge in California cannot come in and take over or steal the money. My work can never be replicated, nor can it be evil unless I am evil. And I am working with demons who look like cows! Nice demons! This is against my religion, says everyone who is not a witch or an old school wizard. We were raised to believe that cows were not as good as us. This is quite a comeuppance.

The Lesser Key of Solomon has arranged this work for a man. It is the Buddhists who are irate that a major worker would be destroyed for being female who keep me in business. Hello Buddhism.

This is a lot of work.

I started all this to ease ancestral anxiety and have a career. I often wonder whether taking pills wouldn’t have been a more effective route to that. I never blame people for taking pills. Have a life. It’s great.

Special thanks to Lama Bob and the crew of explainers who adore the fey tricks of art but need to spell things out from time to time, and also Lord Ganesh. The Hindu portal facilitates the comprehension of underworld mechanics in ways that are indispensable. Too bad we don’t notice the Golden Dawn opened us all to it in the tattwas and work it shamanically.