Talk, but not specifics.

A Hermetic aspirant is given the idea that if you do the grade work of your system, your karma will be cleared automatically.

This is true to a certain extent. I have seen people’s lives change gradually yet significantly for the better. The Golden Dawn causes a recognizable succession of changes to take place in the elemental grades (which in my opinion way outclass the Adept grades, where people tend to get freaky and unstable): 

Earth: finish college, get married, start a family, get real about finances, deal with health issues

Air: study, travel, learn

Water: heal relationships, focus on children and family

Fire: decide what to do with the magic

I have done some of this in my partial ascent up the grades of the Golden Dawn in an Order headed by a very destructive Imperator who I saw demonstrating signs of megalomania, anger management, sex with minors, etc. I understand there was also theft of debit cards of Order members. So much for that system.

The B.O.T.A. in which I spent seven years also bestows beneficial change in its members–up to a certain extent. I also worked through its grade system and occupied all of the offices of the ritual group. I experienced unremitting agony in my work of the B.O.T.A., strikes upon me even when I acceded to their requirement of strict orthodoxy and ONLY their work. The Builders and I do not get along, or they cannot protect their more sensitive members from the family who are being downshifted by those stupid cards and complaining (!) and former religious associations like churches that do NOT like the tarot. I also don’t agree with their theology in so many energies it is not pleasant. 

What is lacking in all Hermetics that I have occasion to deal with is the healing of the ancestors, the clan, the lovers, and people around us who are not members of the in group. The immortals of the Deep Self are also not particularly healed or allowed to pack up with their soul being, and we are not allowed or enabled to learn the various geographical and spiritual traditions of our Deep Self and Higher Self (which can only be done when the giants–the illuminated animal, plant, and earth spirits –deign to participate in one’s magic, and they are very reluctant to be eaten by the Orders or the Enochians). 

This is because the clan, the ancestors, and the Deep Self/Higher Self are energetically drained in order to build giant empires of Hermetic Orders and the new large empire system of Enochian magic. This is also true of churches and synagogues.

The Deep Self is also divided from its living sorcerers-in-training and not able to bring them into the fundamental chthonic organization of the soul.

The work of the death gods is done with honor by organizations that are small enough yet expert in a viable system currently in use to really judge a soul, melt their destructive patterns, and facilitate post-mortal energy work for the benefit of the living–especially the family, lovers, members of one’s profession or workers in one’s great passions, and others in the Higher Self’s cadre of about 300 humans currently in incarnation.

Christianity is dishonorable otherwise and gets full of dark immortals who make runs of lives aimed at energetically enslaving others and portions of the Higher Self in order to enter lives of aristocracy.

The rich have broken death. 

I have spent forty years in very hard work in churches and lodges, Mormon, B.O.T.A., Golden Dawn, the Lucky Mojo, and have been hampered at every turn from coming into possession of this knowledge and opening the road so that the fine Christian death god technology of my Deep Self could function.

Sorcerers who work honorably in the multi-faceted system possible in Hermetics and The Lesser Key of Solomon could create a unit of effective death god and underworld functioning administered by a team of one’s old gods in various traditions that would perform honorable underworld work for oneself, clan, lovers, closest friends, and some random magical buddies who really should be rescued from the titanic destructive parasites of the lodges.

I am told that my death god functionality must be done in Christianity because that is how my old ones can work it, so I must actually practice Christianity. This is not hard when I am involved in the church of my old ones, the Lutheran Church. Jesus “feels” right to me there. He is very diaphanous in the Catholic Church and always seems to float up to heaven too much. I do like Him, but He is a stranger form of Jesus than the Danish one who is like my old Mormon Jesus. He is very fine in the Latin rosary, though, and does a great job of sucking sin to Him and fixing things. That rosary is a great energy work.

It is also necessary to involve the gods and immortals of my Deep Self from Denmark, the Norse religion, because our Christian death wizarding has lost too much of its chthonic functionality in the giant system of Danish church world. 

This can be accomplished in the contemporary Hermetic system because this beautiful system accommodates many godforms and I can do all cooperating magic with it: Christian, Norse, Buddhist, Hindu, Amerindian of both First Nations of this local region and Mayan of my ancestors, hoodoo and European witchcraft, and tai chi. This ecumenical form is possible with their god the Master Jesus but not with the god Jesus, who is only a Christian god and tends to EAT all of the old religions in that he was formulated to do so. So Hermetics in the Golden Dawn tradition is essential to what I am doing with sorcery. I don’t know how Thelema will work with this, since they have traded Jesus for Horus or something. And Crowley is the prophet of the post-Christian era, not a continuation of his father’s stuff. It is better than that, in his humble opinion. IMHO, functioning needs some past in it to really work. You can add new stuff, but you need to have some old stuff that is still viable. Egyptian religion is not viable. Two thousand years of track record in Christianity is better than a hundred in Thelema. That is part of the problem with Thelema by itself. It is a baby in diapers.

What I am describing, of course, is probably similar to what Dion Fortune came to but did not publish the more extensive particulars of because she was not required to. The fact that she did not give the specifics of clearing one’s karma with Catholic saint magic and other types of operative witchcraft is why I am in such a pickle. Empire.

What is possible with genuine sorcery of this type is a small unit and will never be a world empire, yet it can heal oneself and one’s family and solve many real world problems in a four-block radius of one’s home. I have seen many beneficial changes in my family and those around me as a result of this combination of work, and it is gradually pulling me out of the downward spiral caused by being too open and on the verge of telling tales out of school. Or just being a delicious energy source for another’s run at perpetual aristocracy, the achievement of which requires chthonic workers who are not only good Christians but aristocrats themselves in various ways.

It is also an extremely fragile unit whose fulcrum is a human being who is always in danger of being killed by sorcery, the many curses of the Christian world upon “demon” workers and witches (pesky levelers of aristocracy), the strikes within the family who want the regular human death structure wherein the dead eat the children passively and automatically and do no or inadequate “making” for them. 

Once these old gods and old immortals are brought into functionality within the chthonic work, they have to function in it or die themselves. Thus if the sorcerer abandons her magic, they will have to go to work for the local workers, getting them rich, famous, and laid in exchange for a vantage point wherein they can heal humanity, usually in the ordinary ways of Christianity but also in the sorcery of this era which is geared toward eating the children. BTW this is why the grimoires are full of tempting goodies backed by a death pact with the devil. It is partly a failsafe for work with the goofy operators and partly getting rich.

The sine qua non of operative magic is the right ghosts to get the job done. In hoodoo, I was taught to look around my area for dead people who had accomplished great things in the world and use their graveyard dirt to acquire those goodies. In fact, I was offered graveyard dirt from famous people and required to submit a sample of graveyard dirt from my local area as part of the course work. That was a bad idea. It could be used to eat or control me, which it probably was. I know of one operator who has hundreds if not thousands of samples of graveyard dirt from various cemeteries worldwide and can command a great army of the dead with them.

What Solomonic magic does is to raise the most excellent ghosts of the Deep Self of oneself and one’s clans. It would take hundreds of years of searching throughout the worlds to collect these ghosts and enslave them for a bid at permanent aristocracy. This is why Solomonic magicians are highly prized victims of enslavement. They bring the greatest powers of many souls with them as potential slaves.

This is also why my gods and old immortals would not come into this organization without a death pact that placed the grownups in control. I renew this death pact every week and obey these gods even when it is dangerous or inconvenient to do so. It is not wise to place this much ghost wealth in the hands of someone who is not utterly “in” for the gods.

Many local workers and empires want my ghost organization working for them and I am always being tempted to do stupid things that endanger the organization.

I have at least three known death curses on me by workers in effective extant traditions that have caused two cancer scares and several brushes with death.

And I am in the line of fire for significant bodily harm at any given time. 

Part of the problem is that I have done a great deal of Hermetic Cabala without first clearing my karma, which is a nice way of saying do a ton of witchcraft to heal the ancestors, family, ex-lovers, friends, etc., who are overly influential and passively parasitic to a person who is psychically open.

And the clearing of the karma can be done entirely through Christian witchcraft of various types, though it is best approached through multiple types of witchcraft and shamanism.

I will in the coming entries blog on various types of witchcraft and offerings that can be used to clear one’s karma, so that those who come after me in Solomonic magic will be able to do their work without being in imminent risk of death before they figure out how to do this.

The Enochian magic that is growing in power in the West is a new empire. It paralyzes the occult aspirant so that they cannot ever be free. And it enslaves the worker after death.

If I do not nail it with this hodgepodge coalition, I will probably be a slave ghost to some of the more accomplished Enochian magicians in my energy grid of people in the occult I have known and those in this local area and/or possibly a slave in the African tradition that is the preeminent sorcery of this era.

And I will die early. 

A lot of Hermetists don’t like the demon work because it causes the operator problems. I suspect that’s why they stick with Enochian, which causes the family, the ancestors, and the wise ones problems, leaving the operator in the ecstatic contemplation of elegant energy while running out the clock. 

If Enochian magicians would ALSO do the witchcraft necessary to heal themselves, the family, the ancestors, and people around them, while participating in the Catholic Church in some form, they could construct their Enochian system in a way that is humanitarian and beautiful, and I would not hate those warbirds when I feel them hanging around. 

In my neck of the woods, the Enochian system is being taken over by the African powers and turned into a cute subset of that empire in the underworld. I have no idea what this will mean for Thelema and the Golden Dawn, but I do know that African sorcery has a very hard side to it, with a lot of magical warfare that strikes people not only in this life but after death. It also strikes the family, the ancestors, and has ancient strategies that I will also discuss in the coming entries.

The sweet and lovely ethic of the Rosicrucians which strives to heal and do no harm will be darkened by this hostile takeover that is only possible if the more accomplished Hermetists are fooled by the terms “Angel” and “demon” into working only the magic of the sky and never putting their ear to the ground and living in the isolation and purity that was always the requirement of the Hermit so that they can “make” the old gods in Solomon with the illuminated animals, plants, and land spirits in them instead of only humans.

I had a very fine teacher of Golden Dawn who made this mistake. The sky powers do not care about you eating your vegetables, hitting the gym, quitting the cigarettes, and generally keeping the instrument going in ordinary ways. That is the province of the demons and the old gods, who “make” on your life in the world. This saintly man refused to muddy his hands with those icky demons, died earlier than necessary, did not have the bodily health to protect his proteges, and with perfect integrity, kindness, and love, got me pulled into the bad guy’s lodge.

My father always used to say that we are standing on the shoulders of giants. This is my work in the developmental succession of that beautiful thing, the modern resurgent of the deep magic of the West.