Author: Reverend Janglebones

From Unsavory To Sweet

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It’s funny how stories reach out and touch you so deeply at just the right time. It’s hilarious, and arguably even more profound, when they weren’t intended to. Often times I find those narratives and ideas which cut to the core are able to do so through a sort of divine synchronism, a sort of rhyming with whatever else is going on in my life. These stories that punch through the veneer of entertainment to the truth of what stories really are seem to pack an extra punch when they come from a place I would normally see as silly, or “not my thing.” There is something about transcending one’s expectations of mediocrity, or vapidity, that brings a surprise. A surprise that lands experientially somewhere between a birthday party and the Trojan horse.

The Way of the House Husband has landed in this fertile yet awkward land I call my consciousness and, for those who don’t know, the show is about a Yakuza legend who wrought total destruction upon every local gang single handedly for the sole purpose of retiring with the love of his life in domestic marital bliss. 

While I was not, myself, by any means a successful criminal the amount of trauma and horror incurred during my years as a drug addict make me feel, at times, much like our House Husband. Carrying the weight of all I have seen and done into this loving and pure new life, and with the intensity of mundane tasks dialed up to life/death consequences internally. While I do not wish this hyper attentive and intensely ultra state upon anyone, I do feel comforted by a character who is learning to turn his fighting all the time mindset into something potentially useful, repurposed for the art of affection. In service of love.

He terrifies all the women at Yoga, he sees his Roomba as an underling in his gang, and he tries to severely punish himself for the smallest inconvenience or disappointment he causes his beloved. These are all tendencies which are disturbingly relatable for an ex addict who married a priest.

Through the humor of this show, this strange archetype, I am able to hold the idealized deified House Husband in my mind as I go about my day. He reminds me that when I spill some shit on the floor right after mopping that the vein in my forehead and twitching eye are actually just a well-drawn, funny cartoon. All I need to do is lean into it. Take the moment less seriously. Be a bit kinder to myself about the adjustment from skipping meals to save up for dope, ducking dealers I owed, and juggling lies to keeping up a clean kitchen, happy garden, shining shrines.

It also affords me a cheeky stance from which to see the dishes as “scum that needs dealt with” or the weeds in the garden as “saboteurs popping up left and right.” With a self satirizing lens, these become jokes instead of psychoses.

In essence, what was intended to be a funny anime playing on tropes about Japanese gangsters has become a thought form with which I am working towards results of incremental healing. I often say I don’t like Chaos Magic because it’s like tourism, all of the cuisine and none of the lifeways, but perhaps this is my Chaos Magic. Because they absolutely did not know this show would be a profound tool in my spiritual arsenal for this time in my life, but they made it anyway, just because. And now it is so much more than a funny cartoon. 

I digress: To be honest I’m not sure how this would be different than plain animism, now that I’m thinking about it, outside of employing something in a spiritual context which was only meant for entertainment. This feels more like returning to a world where ideas are alive more than some kind of eccentric hack. Dropping down into the reality where it was never weird in the first place seems more accurate than stacking a bit of magic on top of materialism and calling it something else. Like scratching a chip of paint off of a blacked out window and calling it a new peep hole. It’s not a peep hole, it’s a mostly fucked up window. But like I said, I digress.

This inevitably brings the question to mind, whether this thought form arose from the show, or the show arose from the thought form. The nice part is, it doesn’t matter at all and we never need to try to figure that out. It’s more of a rhetorical wondering meant for wonderment.

Archetypes arise anew as new roles emerge in the world through our endlessly complicating tendencies. The need for these examples is their only source. The need is the origin. From there, the spirits may pull these archetypal garments out of the Akashic closet whenever there’s a need or desire to help or traumatize this person or that, but only if they lean into it. If a resonance exists, explore it- this is all there is in the universe, really. And yes, this is how I actually imagine it- a big closet full of archetypes.

If you have a weird niche archetype or character you identify or work with, I would love to hear about it in the comments.

Child, Heal Thyself: Angels, Ancestors, & Spirits of Place

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When I first began sputtering out heretical medieval prayers in dim candlelight over poorly drawn copies of differently poorly drawn abstract squiggles and trying myself in knots straining to relax my mind enough to make out the subtlest of angelic imagery and messages, I genuinely had no idea what the hell I was doing.

When I first set up an ancestor shrine and began an elevation with no preparations or research other than the gut feeling that it needed done and that first night when that bowl of soup, by that time lukewarm for hours, split down the middle with a soul shattering crack– I had no idea what the hell I was doing or getting myself into then, either.

And those times in the end it all worked out. I learned a lot. There have been plenty of other times though, where it didn’t quite work out so well, times when I was afraid to utter even a prayer for months and swore off any intentional spirit contact whatsoever. But I also lost a lot of time, not from my mistakes, or these quiet periods of healing in between bruises, but from the innumerable opportunities for progression which I simply didn’t have the bandwidth to notice. Likely thanks to a constant assessment of whether or not I was doing it right and the energy spent on the continuous search for someone else by which to measure these repeating assessments.

The truth turned out to be much simpler than I imagined. Once upon a time there was an anxiety leading up to every ritual which was mostly based on assumptions about how things should go while doing my magic. I used to be afraid to leave where I stood or break my attention away from what I was doing, even for a minute. Perhaps I was mistaking everything but grimoire spirits for grimoire spirits? It’s hard to say. But nowadays I don’t even hesitate to catch the planetary prayer to open the ritual with five minutes to spare then take a break to prepare should the need arise, and it often does because these days I run a lot on intuition and instinct. In fact the one thing I am now sure of that I wish like hell I had figured out way earlier is that almost every time I was worried that I hadn’t prayed enough lately, that I had been slacking on the attention I had been giving spirits, that I wasn’t a real magician if I wasn’t doing this way or that way, that a lot of these times in question the spirits involved absolutely could not give a shit one way or another what the fuck I was doing.

After long enough, I started sinking into myself more, figuring out that I still have to be me. Even when I’m at my best. And that’s, well, it’s something all right.

Worrying that I hadn’t prayed enough lately came from the false belief that there is some sort of pious expectation that exists in the world independent of my unique relationship to prayer and the spirits to whom I pray, which is understandable for someone with a Christian upbringing, but also objectively insane, at the worst, and at best simply not a functional, relational, animist way of thinking.

Worrying that I had been slacking on the attention I had been giving the spirits with whom I worked came from a couple of places- The first and most obvious being the classic fear of abandonment, as it is the plight of those terrified of being left in the dust who distort themselves in order to keep the company of another. And the second source of this projection came from the fear that doing what I now know and practice as correct, that is the intuitive freedom of relinquishing all expectations of consistency, would get me into trouble due to an unnoticed discrepancy between what is expected and what is given. I was scared my spirits would feel cheated and be mad, but it’s more than that. This is a fear of being replaceable and unimportant, even to those one works with intimately. Which sounds a lot like retail or the service industry, to be quite honest.

This is the demon of anxiety that possesses us at the crossroads where the affects of the industrial revolution and 40+ years of psyop and MK research meet up in the commercial breaks in our Saturday morning cartoons. These roads, paved before we arrived, host the car crash of our expectations and our lives of infinite dreams and limited servitude. The result of this, aside from general malaise, is the norm that we do not understand what is expected of us until it is too late.

This is the mechanism of bureaucracy. This is a picture of an authoritarian abuse cycle and, not merely poorly drawn and maintained personal boundaries and comprehension of one’s expectations, but also the overseers systemically assuring that these metaphysics could not thrive even if they were somehow brought into the light of day as realities- That is to say, we don’t ever feel we know what is expected and the consequences of admitting that could be worse than pretending. I was projecting this mess onto my spirits and worrying that they weren’t getting enough frankincense. Seriously, I must’ve looked like a metaphysical ball of yarn.

Which brings me to one of the most important messages I ever received from an angel: Child, heal thyself. Which has been pretty much what I have been doing for several years now. Just cleaning out pipes and gutters in the temple of my life, all the charged moments that hold a person back from being here, now.

A lot of those were mine, but in equal measure they have turned out to be the moments, the wounds of the dead. Not just those blood-related to me, but also those with whom I share land and place. It was a process with no guardrails and no one with a method that worked for me as most required journeying in one’s mind, but with the sheer volume of spiritual and emotional static I was subject to on the daily there was no hope of me successfully doing the necessary work through these methods. What followed was, when etched out with other techniques and areas of practice and out of sheer necessity, became my Magical Fortitude: Ancestors & Place course which I have been facilitating for over a year now in private groups.

The idea that one single source of one’s unease may exist is almost surely a wrong one, thus it becomes necessary for us to cover our bases if we want to exist in a state of mental peace, stability, and equanimity. Another immutable aspect of this full-spectrum relationship-mending process is our relationship to the often already abused and ignored spirits of the land. This troubled aspect can be daunting, however as strong and foreign as they can be there seems to be an element of them simply wishing to exist in the wider human perception, a strikingly understandable desire.

Not long ago my wife, the priest of this parish, and I went for a walk out on the path behind our house. There had been machines going all day long, clearing brush and doing their seasonal trimming. She had a lot on her mind that day and the conversation, and our minds, were focused on very human things. So much so that we didn’t even notice one of our cats mewing at the ground as if he was in mourning, with such sadness, and pissing little trickles on all the cut ivy and wildflowers, just a bit at a time, as if an offering or a medicine.

We walked past the 800+ year-old church where she performs services and down the long lane with giant old trees flanking either side and talked about how shitty it was that they cut down one of the trees back there behind the house. How it was an older one and it definitely wasn’t something that had to go. We talked about how she was the caretaker of the people here and I was learning to be the caretaker of the spirits, how we made the perfect team.

Later that evening while watching TV I had deja vu. Instead of letting it pass it was surprisingly easy to sort of grab it like I often do when a fragment of a dream memory flashes across my mind and follow it. The oddest thing happened then. I followed it, not to somewhere in the imaginal, or to some invisible abstraction from another place, but through our very living room and to the front door of our house. When my attention arrived there I was overwhelmed with the feeling of both an old friend and a callous enemy who cared nothing for our well being, simultaneously.

My eyes began to stream tears and my whole body perked up with goosebumps. My wife’s wide eyes mirrored my own and she was crying too. She described to me the exact same scene and feeling and action that I was experiencing- Someone barging into our home with zero regard for our existence.

This kept repeating as if stuck in a time loop, as if the moment was trying to fully happen and couldn’t. Just there in limbo, with our space being violated.

And then it hit us. The tree, the cat, the proclamation that I was a caretaker of this place and it’s spirits.

I shifted my attention to the felled tree and the meadow behind our house and everything else also shifted. The anger turned in an instant into utter anguish. It was the consolation-less agony of one who was deeply wronged and remained invisible, the feeling of being stepped on and forgotten.

What came through me was entirely out of my control. It was a moaning, a wailig. I wept like a mother who lost a child with emotions which were not my own. They came hard and fast, but they were not angry or violent as they had initially threatened. The immense release that came through me was a deep purple-black, like the ashes of royalty.

And then it was over- A fact that was almost just as unbelievable as it happening in the first place.

My wife was watching, breathless. I told her with puffy face and a scope of perspective which I am still processing now, two months later, that “It just needed to be seen.” And she immediately put the rest together. That we must have felt just like the spirit of the meadow did, intruded upon, disregarded, with someone busting down our door and nobody giving a shit how horrible that was for us. That it registered as a frightening alien and also an old friend simultaneously, echoing the lost relationship between the people here and it’s spirits of place and the resulting apocalyptic landscaping. That in it’s moment of need all logic would suggest the spirit of the land would, when in duress, seek out as witness (and a release valve for their trauma) the person who not only believes in them, but also regularly gives offerings and thanks to them. And that even if someone is bigger, stronger, and unfathomably older than you, sometimes even they just need to be seen, heard, held.

And going back, what would have happened if my mind had been so cluttered with self doubt and logical assessments of progress that I had missed that deja vu altogether? At the very least it would make me a sub-par caretaker.

There is no manual for this experience. No matter how many more books I made myself read I could not have been prepared for this experience, and it seems that most of the worthwhile ones show up in a similar fashion.

I’ve tried to run with this idea in the course work, providing a sort of fuzzy formula while encouraging personal alterations and insisting that the individual trusts their intuition as the final say. While there are formulaic methods provided in the course which are tried and true for elevating the dead, caring for a cairn to the land spirits, and cutting out unhelpful spirits, the experience of feeling out what works for you and what doesn’t (with community support and without anyone telling you you’re wrong) can be just as valuable as the actual work itself.

If you’re interested in cutting out some of the unhelpful static and intrusive thoughts, or if you feel called to commune with the land, or even if you just want a framework by which to improve your fundamentals of practice, myself and a slew of other course graduates and participants are here with open arms and ears to witness one another go through the process of healing thyself. Because when I think back on how uptight I was about everything, and how badly I wish someone would have just told me it was cool, that I could relax and do whatever moved me because the heart is a magnet, and not everything was trying to eat me, well it’s difficult to want to do anything else.

MAGICAL FORTITUDE: ANCESTORS & PLACE

(Post art by Kazuki Okuda)

The Mirage of Failure ; Thai Occult Reflections Pt. 2

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One of the most surprising and profound aspects of stepping into the currents of the Thai occult lies not in the power of the magic or amulets themselves, but the slow realization that there is no separation between the practices aimed at achieving results and those aimed at improving the devotee’s character and cultivating their virtues. Even the act of praising a ghost with whom one works contains within an element of Bhakti-esque adoration and gratitude. It is not so impersonal a relationship as that of an employee to whom one assigns a task, nor are the exchanges exclusively transactional in nature. 

As Jenx discusses in his guest appearance on Nightbird Radio Podcast, the magic of amulets open opportunities to us which we are then beckoned to grow into. The doors opened by the magic of amulets do not take the effort out of living, but push us to put forth even more through the new possibilities which unfold before us. This and the central dynamics of Merit, as discussed in my previous post, create a system which encourages virtue and kindness as a means to bettering oneself and actually making the magic work better, which is consciously for the sake of primarily the self however the necessary actions and changes in thinking this brings to one’s life has far more profound and far reaching effects. For the self, yes, but more importantly these changes unavoidably have a positive impact on those in our lives and communities. 

This perfectly illustrates the illusory colonial categorizing which draws a defining line through our Western practices based on the intent of the practitioner rather than the objective effect. If one improves their life through the use of purely results based magic and this alleviates suffering, providing the practitioner has a sense of connectedness and gratitude, does their comfort and joy not then radiate to those in their vicinity? Does a removal of hardship combined with the co presence of awe not create a sort of grace?

And on the other hand, does the theurge and alchemist not improve their luck by toiling in their inner work, shedding layers of trauma, static, and illusion? Does anyone actually believe that this doesn’t have dramatic life improving effects for both the individual and their relationships as well as the success of their magic? By clearing out the static of overactive egos, excessive thoughts and self reflections, are not all the results desired in life closer to reach?

The categorical split between theurgy and thaumaturgy seems, upon examination, to be yet another useless, excessive categorization which only further confuses our dynamic with the living world. Thinking in these terms is subtly suggestive in that it preemptively limits potential. The attitude and archetype of “make things happen for me” is, if not embedded, at least connected by cultural context within the concept of pure thaumaturgy. Perhaps not inherently, but when woven together with a Western psyche so shaped by commerce, commercial, and marketing that many of our first words were from TV, the danger of missing out on valuable lessons for the assumption that they do not exist within the current chosen modality, like a shadow beneath the colossus of capitalist selfishness, is a very real and present malaise.

Lessons exist anywhere we are willing to find them. And even more so with spirit work. Failure can only be measured by one’s inability to learn from the unexpected. Failure is literally just the unexpected happening to a person and their inability to address the invaluable data which is presenting itself. If one is capable of learning from each of their experiences, the concept of failure itself is a fallacy, as one advances more through the insight gained through the unexpected than when things go as intended. 

This is always true.

One must consider that these unexpected experiences may be gifts and our framing of them may prevent our acceptance and comprehension thereof. Which in a living world seems sort of rude, if we’re being honest. 

In the Thai occult, many Ajarns were ordained and trained as monks before embarking upon their magical training for the simple and obvious reason that it makes their magic work better. Here we have a total lack of imaginary line drawn between these two modalities. This is not an example of future thaumaturges dabbling in theurgy as it may seem, as monks are masters of many practices us Westerners would not hesitate to refer to as magic. This is about future magicians learning virtues and wisdom, connecting to higher deities, and developing their skills through practices that are undeniably worthwhile. This does not improve their magic, but the entire self. 

To be more capable, less vulnerable, and possess equanimity, combined with practices which improve intensity and duration of focus poises a future Ajarn to train under many masters without the ego preventing their progress. They have the stability to learn from mistakes without the ego knocking them off course. Their emotional tranquility prevents them from making enemies unnecessarily and closing off potential opportunities to them. And their intimate understanding of the very real metaphysics of Merit and Karma maintain their helpful nature and prevent them from taking advantage of others through their power.

To attempt to draw a line here between two types of practice would not only be silly, but damaging. It seems important to consider how far into our minds and metaphysics our subtle cultural and economic norms and resting philosophies have woven their tendrils. For our sake, and that of our neighbors.

Making Merit ; Thai Occult Reflections Pt. 1

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    Within the various interweaving strands of the Thai occult as illuminated through the bold and groundbreaking hands-on work of Peter Jenx there can be found a seemingly endless variety of spirits, ghosts, amulets, lineages, and knowledge. These widely reaching and sometimes drastically differing techniques and teachings can, however, be linked by a metaphysical common denominator which not only creates a medium for the individual parts to interact seamlessly as one unified system, but additionally causes this overarching umbrella to become, at least generally speaking, benefic.

    Buddhism is that common denominator in many ways, but a specifically metaphysical analysis proves more effective for the purpose of identifying and rehabilitating of our own magical blind spots, the wounds we cannot see until reflecting back from outside our own culture and mindset.

    In Western Magic, meant primarily as shorthand for the colonizing world’ and it’s European tributaries’ magical descendants, can be found a historically clinical or transactional view of spirit interactions and magic, one which is likely an unfortunate artifact of both reductionist logic and materialist machine-world philosophy. Animist views are not entirely absent in the West, and far less so with the passing of recent years, though it still seems to be a far less relational, vulnerable, and cooperative modality which gets represented in our literature, teachings, and thinking when compared to those of cultures whose animist roots have remained intact as a part of both their philosophy and identity, such as with Thailand and Burma as represented in Jenx’s work, as in Japan with Shinto, or some of the later intrusions by the Roman Catholic church upon indigenous lifeways in which cases little was removed from the indigenous practices when compared to earlier crusades.

    In the case of the Thai occult there is one element which is so simple, so obvious once it has been understood, and so liberating once it has been employed, that one almost feels as if waking from a long dark dream, a pessimist’s facsimile of life. This single metaphysical component to the Thai occult systems can have such profound impacts on the individual that if one were to hypothesize that all those amulets were just a trick to seed the idea of this single element into the minds of Westerners through a trojan horse of desire, I would say amen and hallelujah.

The concept of Merit is not entirely foreign to us Westerners. The Catholic Church teaches that a reward in heaven is promised for meritorious works, however they unsurprisingly complicate things by breaking this down into three distinct types, getting together with Lutherans and arguing about it until the whole thing was presumably more trouble than it was ever worth to them. But the idea of good deeds as spiritual currency remains, well, meritorious.

We can find this concept employed as magical technology within prayers to the dead, Anima Sola, and in the invocations following Christian prayer and evocation which invoke the “Merits of Jesus Christ,” of which there are presumed to be a great many, in order to persuade and command spirits. When a spirit is being cajoled by Merits rather than offerings or even the blood of the Savior, this alone should inform us of the power and potency of this non-substance in the realm of spirit, and perhaps a renegotiation of our definition of “heaven” could assist us in providing the above Roman Catholic sentiment on the subject with some much needed immediacy of application. 

Heaven, when seen as an analog for the spirit realm which exists in, with, and through the physical (here in the present rather than in an abstraction of the future) becomes suddenly and miraculously liberated from inaction and comes to rest comfortably within a sound, living, active, and most importantly immediate mystical logic.

In the Thai occult and it’s “funny sort of Buddhism” as Jenx lovingly refers to it, the concept and practice of making Merit is central. Within an animist culture, where belief in the unseen is common, the idea of a spiritual record of one’s deeds would seem more tangible, less ethereal. Adding to that the Buddhist understanding of Karma places the idea of Merit further into the real world than you or I can likely comprehend.

I can recall, as a child, being in touch with my true heart’s desires. Mostly I wanted to help and be included. I wanted to give, to do good. It was simple. But over time the disenchanted denizens of the world impressed their ways upon me, seeding fear into my soil. Fear that a good deed unnoticed truly counts for nothing, and that generosity will be met with selfishness in equal measure as a rule.

To put it simply, the fear of getting fucked wormed its way into my heart.

The underlying and under examined materialist philosophy which supported these patterns of thought and action acted as a setting agent in the concrete wall so carefully constructed around a once generous soul. Because if nobody up there was keeping score, the whole thing was a damn wash. The same bureaucratic bone grinder that runs the human world must be in charge of the whole thing.

The thing about all this is, it’s fucking wrong.

If you don’t believe me, go do something nice for someone, go home to your altar, think of the good deed in your mind while pulling in a spirit friend, and offer the good deed to them. Feed the moment of the act to your spirit ally with a generous heart. Hold that shape for a moment and you will feel a response. Try it. Try it with your ancestors. Try it with the land spirits. The inherent truth in merit as spiritual currency is self evident in practice.

We live in one world, with each explanation for how it all works being its own sort of true. But here we have a clear an obvious universal metaphysical technology, one which shows up in multiple places and times and functions cross culturally and beyond borders of tradition or lifeways. The implications of this are staggering and liberating.

No longer does that voice in the back of my head that nags about getting either rewarded or screwed over have an audience with me. The rug has been swept clean out from under that prick, and he absolutely had it coming. The rug is rolling up around him in layer after layer of surrender and lovingkindness.

I encourage everyone to try this.

Go out on a limb: be kind.

Even if just to prove me wrong.

So I made a podcast.

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Until I make a permanent home for this new project by myself and illustrator-magician Kurt Huggins, I’m just going to post the debut episode here.

This is an exploration and an experiment. Taking cues from our own favorite podcasts and realizing that in an edited world raw realness is useful, we’re going with the improvised low budget, low effort improv prompt for the show where we just talk about stuff we (or the guest) like and whatever else comes up.

This will be a learning experience and an adventure, our comfort level and rapport developing over time, while the content and structure will be forever open to change. The sound quality will improve too, but a lot quicker if we get donations (which you can give through the link on our page or through Bitcoin donations within podcasting 2.0 apps.)

Enjoy!

Here’s a link since WordPress can’t embed a simple podcast without failing. 😀

Different for Necro Nerds?

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When we moved to Northern Germany, two gravediggers from my wife’s parish helped us move south just across the border. We had been denied our Family Reunification in Denmark and so this Priest and Wizard couple were forced to relocate to stick together.

My wife, who officiates funerals, and myself, who facilitates a course that teaches ancestral healing and working with the dead, were literally carried by graveyard attendants to the south and across a border during a Mercury retrograde.

Now, over half a year later, we have finally been approved to move home to Denmark and to the quiet village we call home. Interestingly, the approval news came upon Danish Liberation Day, a significant nod from the spirits during these tyrannical times, which also happens to be beloved Danish philosopher and father of existentialism Søren Kirkegaard’s birthday. This is especially significant to us, as he has always been important to my wife and I was reading him when I first visited Denmark at age 17- I didn’t even know he was Danish and I had gone on a walk by the sea when I discovered a giant stone memorial to him, blowing my little mind.

So standing here, looking at everything and the kitchen sync, and getting ready to move again during retrograde, I’m forced to ask myself, honestly; Is it different for necromancers?

It’s impossible to say how much of the following is because of any given factor, but I find the shape of it worth glancing at here. As someone who has debilitating ADD, I notice different frequencies of thought fairly acutely. In a similar fashion to the way a pure sativa will send your thoughts into an electric, active, bristling dynamism but indica will create a dreamy slow, hungry, smooth, deep river, so do I experience rational thought and emotional thought as high and low. One is in the head, one is in the belly and heart. 

This experience of thought spectrum is useful. If I think too many thinky thoughts I get overloaded, my momentum spins out of control (what my parents would call getting wound up when I was little, which still feels right to this day) and this can be instigated by just too much sensory input.

So what I’ve noticed in MercRx is that those high frequency logic thoughts simply don’t get as loud and out of hand as they usually do. And that the lower frequencies are all dialed up. And I fucking like this. 

If communication feels like too much of a struggle I just give up, stop trying. Feel things out in that lower register instead. That’s often the state I’m already reaching for in daily prayer, there’s just less static to slough off in Rx times.

I like it here.

So I’m just wondering, am I the only one? Am I the only weirdo out there who moves during retrograde, who prefers his thoughts to break down easily and communication to be forced into a more earthy, bodily modality? 

And is this because I feel so pulled to working with the dead, or is my pull to the dead because of my ADD? 

I have no answers. 

Only stories and questions.

Ten Choirs on a Pocket Tenner: The Whole World In Your Hand

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The following is a means of being in relation and connected to angels as a daily practice by using a pocket tenner rosary dedicated to Saint Michael. The daily recitation of these devotions, supplications, and petitions have had profound effects on my dreams and my ability to recall them as well as significantly reducing the effort and time involved in getting into the appropriate headspace when the time does arise to perform a conjuration or scrying session.

In the case of this method we go backwards from the usual tenner method, beginning at the saint medal (rather than the cross) with the anthem prayer which was said to have been transmitted by Michael himself as part of the chaplet of Saint Michael.

Then we move on to the choirs for the decad as found in Dr. Rudd’s keys which include a tenth choir of “blessed souls” (or Saints) governed by the angel Issim which is, more specifically according to Rudd, part of the Christ spirit embedded within the incarnate sphere of the elements. The descriptions of the choirs found here I have taken from the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses for two reasons. For one, they are the most eloquent and magically useful that I have found. The second reason is that the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses were considered both the most notorious and important texts in Pow-Wow and Braucherei craft, to which I have ancestral connections.

The prayer for the separator bead is my own re-working of the first of the preliminary angelic prayers found in the Cunning Man’s Grimoire, including a Semiforos magical name said in Sepher Raziel to be rather convincing when intoned in the company of angels.

The prayer for the cross is another re-working of my own, this time from the Gaelic-Scottish prayer, sometimes called St. Michael’s Shield found in Carmina Gadelica.

And the final invocational devotion comes from Devotion to the Nine Choirs of Holy Angels and Especially to the Angel Guardian and has been one of my favorites for some time due to the blatant association made between angels and asterisms.


(Medal)
O glorious prince St. Michael, chief and commander of the heavenly hosts, guardian of souls, vanquisher of rebel spirits, servant in the house of the Divine King and our admirable conductor, you who shine with excellence and divine virtue, deliver us from all evil who turn to you with confidence and enable us by your gracious protection to serve God more and more faithfully every day.

Pray for us, O glorious St. Michael, Prince of the Church of Jesus Christ, that we may be made worthy of His promises.

Almighty and Everlasting God, Who, by a prodigy of goodness and a merciful desire for the salvation of all men, has appointed the most glorious Archangel St. Michael Prince of Your Church, make us worthy, we ask You, to be delivered from all our enemies, that none of them may harass us at the hour of death, but that we may be conducted by him into Your Presence. This we ask through the merits of Jesus Christ Our Lord.
Amen.

(Decad)
O burning Seraphim, who set our hearts ablaze with, and firmly fix our eyes upon, the fervent love of God; By the intercession of St. Michael, may the Archangel Metatron and the choir of Seraphim assist me gladly in every need and desire throughout this life. Amen.

Our Father
Hail Mary x3

O illuminated Cherubim, who give us enlightenment of the mind, power and wisdom over exalted figures and images, through which we can gaze upon holy presences; By the intercession of St. Michael, may the Archangel Raziel and the choir of Cherubim assist me gladly in every need and desire throughout this life. Amen.

Our Father
Hail Mary x3

O regal Thrones, who grant unto us the knowledge of how we are made and constituted first in spirit, that we may direct our thoughts upon eternal things; By the intercession of St. Michael, may the Archangel Cassiel and the choir of Thrones assist me gladly in every need and desire throughout this life. Amen.

Our Father
Hail Mary x3

O fearsome Dominations, whose divine assistance enables us to attain salvation and bring into subjugation our daily enemies, whom we carry with us constantly; By the intercession of St. Michael, may the Archangel Zadkiel and the choir of Dominations assist me gladly in every need and desire throughout this life. Amen.

Our Father
Hail Mary x3

O indominable Powers, who tirelessly protect us against all enemies of life, love, and humanity, whether they be seen or unseen; By the intercession of St. Michael, may the Archangel Samael and the choir of Powers assist me gladly in every need and desire throughout this life. Amen.

Our Father
Hail Mary x3

O wise Virtues, who infuse strength into us, enabling us to contend against the enemies of truth and reward, that we may journey along our paths with grace and mastery; By the intercession of St. Michael, may the choir of Virtues assist me gladly in every need and desire throughout this life. Amen.

Our Father
Hail Mary x3

O intelligent Principalities, who grant that all things may become known to us, that we may grasp all power, and draw unto ourselves all secret and supernatural knowledge; By the intercession of St. Michael, may the Archangel Anael and the choir of Principalities assist me gladly in every need and desire throughout this life. Amen.

Our Father
Hail Mary x3

O majestic Archangels, who grant that we may care for all things that God has made in relation to us, for the animals of the field, for the fishes of the sea, and for the birds of the air; By the intercession of St. Michael, may the Archangel Raphael and the choir of Archangels assist me gladly in every need and desire throughout this life. Amen.

Our Father
Hail Mary x3

O holy Angels, who assist that we may receive the power to act as messengers of the divine; By the intercession of St. Michael, may the Archangel Gabriel and the choir of Angels assist me gladly in every need and desire throughout this life. Amen.

Our Father
Hail Mary x3

O most Blessed Souls, who guide and ward us day and night as Saints and honored heroes; By the intercession of St. Michael, may the Archangel Issim and the choir of Blessed Souls assist me gladly in every need and desire throughout this life. Amen.

Our Father
Hail Mary x3

(Separator bead)
O infinite, wise, holy, blessed, omnipotent God, who commanded the light to shine forth from the darkness and conjured the world by the sound of His voice, who created the choirs of thine most holy angels and arranged them in perfect harmony, who made them thy ministering spirits for all believers in the power of thy name, wherefore I, the flawed and fraught, do constrain thee to pardon my sins and offenses through the infinite mercy of thy son Jesus Christ, and to purify my spirit, body, and mind with thy Holy Spirit’s endless might, and to fortify me with genuine faith, hope, and charity, and grant me virtue and power that these, thy holy angels, Metatron, Raziel, Michael, Gabriel, Samael, Raphael, Sachiel, Anael, Cassiel, and Issim, with their ministering angels and spirits, being called in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, may through the merits of Jesus Christ willingly and readily teach, protect, and empower me in all my questions, demands, and desires. And in each and every necessity with courage, understanding, and memory grant unto me thy power and strength of wisdom and might against all assaults of mine enemies, spiritual and bodily, to thy glory, the good of thy people, and the comfort of this humble servant of the most high Creator. By the holiest and most efficacious names Iao, Sabaoth, Adonai, Elohim, so be it done. In the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and through the merits of Jesus Christ ✞,

Yeseraye.

Amen.

(Cross)
O Michael of the Archangels & the righteous in heaven,
Shield thou my soul with the service of thy sword.
Shield thou my soul both below and on high.
Shield me on every side,
From enemies above and beneath the earth,
From those seen and from those unseen,
Protect me from deceit and destruction, St. Michael.
Protect and encircle my soul ‘neath thy wing
‘Neath the safety of thy fiery wing.
In the name of the Father, Son, & Holy Ghost, and through the merits of Jesus Christ.
Amen.

(Hold the whole chain up or in the palm of the hand)
Come all ye Angels, so holy and so pure, spirits truly blessed who stand before your Lord and contemplate with such exceeding joy the Divine Countenance of that Heavenly Solomon, who hath enlightened you with a wisdom so excellent, who hath ennobled you with so many prerogatives, and hath made you worthy of so eminent a glory- you, I say, who are those brilliant stars which shine with so much luster in the radiant Heavens, pour into my soul, I beseech you, your blessed influences. Preserve my faith in its purity, my hope in its firmness, my virtue in its integrity, and make me to advance ever in the wisdom of God and the love of my neighbors. I beseech you, O ye blessed Angels, that you will be pleased in your auspicious graces to lead me along the path of knowledge, of which you gave us the example in your own blessed beginnings, that after this life I may merit with you to contemplate the sovereign beauty of the heavenly Creation, and to occupy the place of some one of those stars which through their curiosity and desire have fallen from heaven. In the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and through the merits of Jesus Christ.
Amen.

Ahriman & Cyprian

Reverend Janglebones1 Comment

Two conversations I listened to recently got me buzzing inside in that way that most things don’t after a certain age. It was one of those ideas that takes your current mode of thought and crumbles it calmly in its hand and stares at you blankly, indifferent to your reactionary protests. The talks in mind were both featuring everybody’s favorite sex-positive theosophist Conner Habib (once on his own show with Alkistis Dimech and Peter Grey, the other on Rune Soup as a guest) and feature some difficult concepts relating to Rudolph Steiner’s work on a being called Ahriman. Now, I’m no Steinerite nor am I even well-versed in his work, however the characteristics of Ahriman are a matter I believe most of us can identify as alive and active in the world today. There is something about the personification and inspiriting-through-myth of these forces in the persona of Ahriman that somehow makes the task of grappling with such dark and mechanistic powers a bit more manageable.

Ahriman is a far older being than Steiner’s work, though his prophecy and interpretation seems to have pulled this being from the abstractions of ancient (or the reinterpretations present-day) Zoroastrianism into a practically-applicable contemporary relevance. Steiner’s vision of Ahriman is one of a being who possesses no framework or capacity for empathy or compassion, meaning there is a deficit in its ability to relate. For a being that is conscious and alive, having no ability to form a sense of realness or aliveness in relation to the Other would reduce the possibilities of interaction so acutely that self-expression would necessarily be limited to such truly meaningless and contextless acts as the application of force, increase of efficiency, volume, output, or any other factor which is void of a deeper relational meaning but have a visible, measurable, material impact on the world. Complex expression relies upon the way one identifies, relates, and adapts with the Other, therefore without empathy one would likely exist in a world where everything (and everyone) else is perceived as unconscious, un-aware. All feedback data relating to the nuance of well-being, coherence, sentiment, joy, pain, or trauma would all be purged as irrelevant and the being in question would never respond to cries of pain, unless these data indicated that they were disrupting its self-expression or efficiency, or could be employed as manipulative tools to increase these factors over time. 

Now, if this shape is beginning to set off some alarms, bouncing off of literally everything you know about financial tycoons, late-stage capitalism, and the frenzied conversion of earth-matter into profit then I’d say your’re getting the picture. These tangible phenomena seem to be the impact of Ahriman expressing itself in our world via technological and human means, though as with the tyrannical uber rich who pull the strings behind the scenes- you can’t really fight these forces head-on, lest you find yourself destroyed by them, or worse, subsumed. 

Regardless of which version you’re familiar with, the essential structure of the hagiography of Saint Cyprian remains in place. A powerful character, Cyprian, finds great gains in being capable of manipulating the world through the force of magic, presumably making his living and enjoying notoriety, but primarily the satisfaction of being somehow superior to others. A full commitment to being powerful enabled him to disregard other human concerns and become a magic-learning machine, until he encountered an anomaly. The faithful Saint Justina was able to thwart the very best of Cyprian’s sorcery with nothing more than faith and the sign of the cross, an act that should have, by his accounts, been impossible. This was far more than a simple defeat; this was an existential crisis. Cyprian had gladly given himself to the Devil in exchange for power and there had yet to be an instance in which this power fell short. This was a restructuring of Cyprian’s cosmology to include the impossible, to adapt to the idea that the most powerful being he had ever encountered may have been a small fry, and the subsequent awe and humility one cannot escape from following a reality disruption of this magnitude.

Now, currently we are experiencing Ahriman hard at work in zee fourth industrial revolution. It is mining all of our data, creating digital twins of us to be used in predictive simulations for social and carbon credit systems, predetermined education and career paths, advertising, law enforcement, military training and psyops, and the creation of new human futures markets which literally make us livestock. This means that as someone watches their marriage fall apart, or slips into addiction, or becomes suicidal due to the ever-unfolding consequences of lockdowns, job loss, foreclosures, closed businesses, and mysterious lingering health issues, every change in behavior from social media scrolling to their phone microphone may as well be the eyes and ears of Ahriman observing, learning, and formulating new strategies to make the world better (by force) through future manipulations. As stated, this isn’t the kind of thing one can wage war on, so what do we do? 

And this brings us to Conner’s point about our human responsibility to humanize this being which has made its firm arrival into our world. We have an obligation to our realm to be a living example of that which is both irrational and illogical, but inherently human. Conner shared in those talks that he had come to understand that the only option is for us humans to grow Ahriman a heart. If we can’t fight it, and we can’t make it go away, logic dictates that we must somehow learn to live with it. This idea was the aforementioned hand that crumbled up my previous mode of thought and watched it sift through fingers to the floor. In the Rune Soup episode, he said he wasn’t quite ready for the task. And me neither, not directly. But it also got me thinking of practically how we would go about this work of offering compassion to an enemy. How do we do the thing?

We do this by defying Ahriman’s expectations. We find our center and we dig deep for calm and compassion when we don’t feel up to it. Like when we’ve been stuck in the house with the same person(s) for weeks at a time and we speak kindly when we want to scream. Like when everyone around you is a toxic mess who doesn’t deserve your respect and you give it to them anyway. Like when the future seems incredibly dark and we still find it in our hearts to whistle as we stroll, to lose ourselves in the resplendent joy of being. Like when a mechanistic intelligence from another world is invading yours and you throw a wrench in its gears by being the compassionate outlier, the factor that won’t behave predictably and selfishly. Because the anomalies will not be ignored by this being. When by all accounts you should break, but you don’t, it breaks the predictive logic of the machine. It suggests that there is another power at play, one it hadn’t considered formidable, or hadn’t considered at all. This power is very much invisible and it is an absolute mystery. It is the same power that Justina found in her savior, the one she imbued in the triple cross. The very same that thwarted Cyprian and the Devil thrice, the anomaly that makes saints of scoundrels and adheres that which would otherwise be desiccated. It is the power that restructured Cyprian’s understanding of, and relationship with, power itself. It is the anomalous expression of this power which will, over time, force Ahriman to include factors in its computations which it currently deems irrelevant. It is this power that saves us all, but is reduced by its compartmentalized verbal utterance, therefore I care not to say it outright here. It doesn’t need to be mentioned. It’s more of a thing to be done.

Novena to the Providence of Saint Michael

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In light of Michaelmas coming up on September 29th, I thought it would be a good time to share a potent protection novena for leading into the feast day of the Archangel Michael.

The following was reworked from commonly available prayers with a touch of grimoiric spice.

Gather nine small candles or tea lights and some frankincense.

Make a seal for Michael, ideally within the center of some version of a hexagram. There are many variations available with a quick search and any that resonates with you is appropriate.

Write the following Invoking Psalm clockwise around the hexagram or seal.

“The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.”

Place an image of Michael upright in the back center of your altar space. Directly in front of Michael, place his seal flat on the altar. To the left and right front corners of the altar, place a candle at one front corner, and the brazier or incense burner at the other. The Michael image, incense, and candle should form a triangle, with the seal of Michael flat in the center.

Open in whatever fashion feels suitable, perhaps Levi’s Prayer to the Sylphs, the Cunning Man’s Grimoire angel prayers, or anything that feels right. Genuinely and faithfully recite the following each day for nine days. Offer one candle per day, allowing it to burn out.


In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

Offer candle and frankincense.

I call out to you, Archangel Saint Michael, and I honor you this day.

“The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore” x9

Saint Michael the Archangel, loyal champion of God and His People. I turn to you with confidence and seek your powerful intercession. For the love of God, who made you so glorious in grace and power, and for the love of the Mother of Jesus, the Queen of the Angels, be pleased to hear our prayer.

You know the value of our souls in the eyes of God and may no stain of evil ever disfigure their beauty. You help us to conquer the evils which tempt us and to grow ever in our strength. We desire to imitate your loyalty to God and the Queen of Heaven and your great love for Creation’s people, and since you are God’s messenger for the care of His people, we entrust to you this special petition:

That every soul who prays this novena shall be granted coherence, lucidity, and protection from all enemies, visible and invisible, and grant that every time this novena is prayed with faith, its power and effectiveness multiplies for all others who have done so, in an ever-increasing choir of divine grace. Lord, hear and grant our special intentions for this Novena.

By Yeseraye, Sabaoth, Adonai, Elohim, and through the blood of Jesus Christ, we ask that you protect us, Archangel St. Michael, against violence, curses, and theft, both seen and unseen. In your goodness, preserve us each day from all the malice of those who are sinful and wicked. In your sleepless vigilance, watch over the safety and welfare of our hearths and homes and keep guard over our assets and belongings. Ever hold in your special care, most triumphant St. Michael, the safety and protection of those who seek the divine against the crimes of hardened hearts, and defend us in times of peril. Defend us in battle, Archangel St. Michael and be our defense against the curses and snares of the hateful ones. May God rebuke them, we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into the abyss and bind any evil spirits who prowl about us seeking the ruin of our souls or bodies, or the destruction of our plans and dreams.
In the name of… &etc.
Amen.

Lord. Amen.

Lord, you have given your angels charge of us.
To keep us in all our ways.

Glory Be x3

Our Father