The Gospel Of The Ghouls: book review

So, this is a review of the book called The Gospel Of The Ghouls, written by Baron and Baronessa Araignee. For those interested, the book's ISBN is 978-0-620-71222-4.

Before we continue in this, I should probably share a fair warning here. This book is truly a book about necromancy, with all its positives and negatives. Don't expect to light a black candle and become an instant necromancer. Another piece of fair warning I am going to give you is that this isn't a book for a weak stomach. If you are an animal loving neo pagan or a follower of a “dark path of fluffy E. A. Curling”, this book isn't for you. After all, the book itself says: “Remember, a life for a life, never more, never less.” Very last piece of advice from me: This isn't something you could just try and then throw into the corner, necromancy requires a full dedication. You have been warned.

Necromancy is a great paradigm, granting superb powers to the practitioner who isn't scared of few sacrifices (the pun intended). Remember that if you play with matches, you get burned, and if you play with Death… Fortunately this book gives a very good explanation about how to do things right, which is very rare in this field. You will learn how to gain your personal spirit guide in the form of the Agent of Death, you will learn how to make altars for deceased, how to work with these spirits, what's the difference between a dead spirit and a shade, how to make your own shrunken heads and many, many more.

The structure of the book is amazing. Practical part always comes with a basic explanation of the ritual and what can be achieved with it and only after that you get a detailed explanation of each part of the rite, that's a great safety mechanism for eager readers who start the ritual on one page and become horrified after turning the next one. I should also state this book is also great for the reasons of history study. The traditional African practices are very well preserved in this book, but also together with some Aztec and Indian practices, including the infamous darker aspects of a real tantra, and many, many more.

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Serpent on the Cross: The Ancient Occult Path to Liberation is a pioneering account of a secret spiritual tradition that is the Western counterpart of tantra. As well as providing an accurate history of this tradition, the author - an academic expert on the occult - also describes his own experimentation with its alchemical and magical techniques of healing and inner transformation.

more info here:

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Liber Azag: Book of Sigils, part 5

Energy model

So far we have described mainly a psychology model of Magick with just a slight tap into the spirit model with our description of servitors, but still more from a perspective of our unconsciousness. We also described one energy model method, charging sigils with Akasha. But for the book of sigil magick to be truly complete, we have to explain different models, too. There are actually many reasons why to do that. First of all not everyone is psychology based, we are unique individuals with different tastes and beliefs. Secondly we don't want to be stuck to one paradigm forever, sometimes we just need to spice things up to keep it going. Third reason is that different models have different sets of qualities, some models are better for something and worse for something else, being able to shift the paradigm equals to being able to adapt to the needs of any given situation. And I know I am now diving a little bit deeper to the Chaos Magick, but still with Sigil Magick point of view in mind.

First new paradigm we are going to talk about is the energy model. In this model everything is consisted of an energy and manipulating this energy is what Magick is about. This universal energy is usually split into outer (external) and inner (of the body) and has many different names across different cultures. It is prana in India, Chi in China, Ki in Japan, animal magnetism, fluidum or vital energy for mesmerists, od or orgone for various different folks and psi for parapsychologists. In this chapter I want to describe the differences between this model and other models, how to use the universal energy source and how to bottle the energy for later use.

Before we start doing anything with energy, we should learn to feel it first. For that reason we will introduce a set of exercises to feel the energy within our body and to shift it around a little bit. First exercise is a simple meditation technique. You should sit in a comfortable position in a nice and calm surroundings. First of all think about your hands getting warmer and heavier, say in your mind or out loud: "My hands are very hot and very heavy". Feel your hands getting hot and heavy. Once you achieve this feeling, you then continue with your whole arms (you can also split it to forearms, elbow and rest, it depends only on you). Then shoulders, then feet, ankles, whole legs. Then chest, stomach, back. And finally neck and head. Once you are finished it is also good to invoke the feeling of coldness to your forehead so you won't feel like overheating. Once this relaxation is done, focus on your body. Concentrate on all feeling in your whole body for at least 5 minutes. Just concentrate and enjoy those little swirls of energy. This exercise is great from both the energetic and psychological point of view. In energy model this exercise removes energy blockages and let the energy flow freely in your whole body and in psychology model this helps from stress and also in long-term this strengthens your immunity.

In the next exercise we will learn how to shift energy in our body and how to feel this shift. For this to work, we must be relaxed first, so this exercise is best done right after the aforementioned relaxation technique. So, while we are still relaxed and our hands are preferably rested on our lap with some space between them, we now concentrate our whole mind on the right index finger for about 15 seconds. Next we will switch our concentration to the left index finger for another 15 seconds. Keep switching the concentration, soon you will notice there is a distinct feeling between these two fingers as you are switching the attention between them. On energetic level the flow of energy is associated with your will and the energy flows as you see fit. On physical level you slightly change the blood flow and few other things. Now, by doing this exercise on regular basis you improve your ability to control and distribute energy in your body. As you train you also want to prolong the time between switching the focus. The reason is there is a practical application of this exercise. Focusing on the wound will help it to regenerate a slightly faster and focusing on the place that hurts will help to reduce the pain. It can look counter-productive as focusing on pain make it feel worse, but if you keep at it, it really will diminish. The pain itself also is a very interesting thing. It has the double function. First function is to warn us that a body is taking a damage and we should withdraw from the damaging factor. Second function is to bring our attention to the damaged area to activate and boost the regeneration process. So without pain our wound wouldn't heal as fast, it would heal, but at a bit slower pace.

Before we learn to draw-in the external energy, we should learn how to avoid energy blockages because else we could exhaust our energetic "plumbing" and get sick.  In simple terms to avoid energy blockages we have to get our bodies free of a waste. The easiest way is to do so together with a material waste. In other words if you are going pee-pee or poo-poo, focus on all negative energy in your whole body, mind, spirit and soul. Visualize as this all negativity attached to you leaves with your waste. Same goes to blowing your nose, too, simply let all negativity to go with it. As a nice side effect you will be much healthier, your time needed to get out of the sickness will be reduced and you will have much more quality sleep. Another way is to stick your hands in a running water and let it attract all your negativity to itself, a tap water is a good enough for this exercise as well. And of course, bathing and showering can be used the same way, just in case of a bath, make sure no one touches the water after you are finished bathing and letting the water drawing in your negativity, always better dispose of the water right after the bath.

Now it's time to learn how to gain energy from the external source. We have already described working with Akasha before, so now let's talk about a more modern method. We will use a chaosphere for means of gaining energy. To do so we need a chaosphere either printed or drawn on a piece of paper. Sit on a chair in a comfortable position and relax your whole body. Chaosphere can be either placed on the table or attached to the wall at your eyes' level. Gaze at the chaosphere and concentrate all your will on it. If any side thoughts appear, simply dismiss them and re-focus on the symbol. Do so for about 20 minutes. Then reach with your hands, placing your palms about 2 inches above the chaosphere. Visualize how the energy is soaking from the chaosphere and entering your body through your arms, feel this process happening. You can also synchronize this process with your breath, for each inhale you draw the energy in and for each exhale you store it in your body, either in your third eye (between your eyebrows) or in the place called hara, about 2 inches below your belly button.

Speaking of hara, there is another useful exercise to remove blockages, strengthen the flow of energy and improve your health. During each inhale expand your stomach instead of your chest and visualize it like you are breathing directly into your hara, feel breathing into your hara. During each exhale let it all go back out. This exercise is a bit harder in the beginning, to make it easier, use your finger to push against hara while breathing to help pinpoint the location and learn this method correctly. Once you learn this method correctly, you can also use it to draw in external energy Simply inhale into hara and while exhaling, when the breath reaches solar plexus, swallow and feel how the energy goes back down into hara, then finish the exhale This method comes from Chi Kung, where there is a belief that the air we breathe contains the energy and via this process you can separate it from the air and store it.

Once we have learned some basic methods  to store energy, we should learn how to use it to charge our sigils. In case of visual sigils it is really simple. All you have to do is to place your hands above your sigil and imagine the energy radiating from your palms and into the sigil while staring at the very same sigil as in focal meditation. Keep doing so for 20 minutes or till you stop feeling the energy radiating from your palms. For a sigil mudra it is a good practice to visualize the energy leaving your body through the hand doing the gesture, being "converted" or programmed with our intention in the process. Same process works for asanas too, but you will most probably want the energy to leave through the top of your head instead. Some people also like to use the third eye chakra for that purpose. When you are using sigil mantras you want to lead the energy from hara to the throat, where it gets programmed with your intention and leaves your body together with the sound, aside that everything is exactly as in the previous description of mantra chanting, your mind should be one syllable ahead your tongue.

It's time to speak a little bit more about the energy model. You could notice that as opposed to the psychology model there is no mention of the psychic censor. The thing is that there is always some filtering mechanism, just now it isn't called the psychic censor. Energy model is, as the name suggests, dependant on the energy work, in how much energy you can gather, program and control, anything in this process being too limited means the result will fail. People usually say that these paradigms are separate and we shouldn't compare them, their differences are the main reason for their distinction. But because I want to teach you about the meta model, too, I think it's good to pinpoint the similarities right in the beginning of our journey.

When we are still within the energy paradigm, it is also good to mention another useful practice: conscious eating. This basically means that any income of food or liquids should be fully conscious and not a mindless task you just do while watching TV. The reason is that the food brings in energy, same goes to water. While eating or drinking we can focus on correct use of the energy. We can focus on storing it, sending it right to the circulation, or we can also concentrate on using the energy from that specific meal to use for a very specific task. This task can be something you normally don't like to do, like washing dishes, housework in general, exercising, or it can be e.g. a sigil charging. To work with energy this way you can e.g. use a simple prayer before eating/drinking or you can touch each bite with the bit of your tongue while  concentrating on your desired goal. Same way it works with water, just remember it usually works better when the water is cold. Another method you can use with water is to place your hands on the water container and concentrate on your goal while visualizing the energy being emitted from your palms right to the water.

Information model

We should speak about the information model now. In this paradigm we work with symbols and their meanings. It is believed that literally everything is consisted of symbols and by manipulating the definition of these symbols we can manipulate the reality. Generally speaking in this paradigm all we have to do is to make a sigil and correctly associate it with its new meaning. Information model partially works with unconsciousness like the psychology model but doesn't consider the energy at all because in this model energy itself is just another set of symbols, another packet of information. There is of course yet another filtering mechanism that makes the association of symbol and its definition hard, but in this case it is quite easy to figure it out. If you observe your mind, you will notice how it works, you have one general thought train that usually gets swayed away in a direction of random thoughts, fantasies, day-dreaming, memory recall, etc. Sometimes you have to do multiple work at the same time and then your thinking patterns change chaotically. This means that in the case of using the information paradigm we need a clean and strong communication channel. In other words we need to get rid of the noise in the channel (side thoughts) and keep using just one main channel (no chaotic thinking patterns).

To reduce the noise we can use a simple zazen meditation practice. Relax your whole body and then start counting your exhales from 1 to 20. There shouldn't be any thinking in the process, only counting. If a side thought appears, simply reset the counting and start all over, if you reach 20 then reset the counting and start all over. Remember that there is no rush, if a side thought appears, it's not failure, there is no reason you should be angry about yourself, just keep counting and resetting the count as needed and the problem will eventually sort itself out, there is no rush in this. After all, if you reach 20 you would reset the counting anyway.

We have described how to get rid of the noise in communication, now we should speak about using just one channel. To practice this choose a simple thought or a field of thoughts, set timer to 10 minutes and during that time think just within this thought pattern. If a side tracking thought appears simply re-focus on the original pattern. For this method it is also a good idea to have some sort of prayer beads so you can use it to count a number of "failures" by moving your fingers on the beads. A string with knots is a good enough tool for this exercise.

I know these exercises can get frustrating from time to time, especially during periods where there is no apparent progress. Just remember there is no rush and even while it seems that you are not moving anywhere, believe me that even then these exercises have some effect, from both occult and mundane perspective. Occult based these exercises will improve your ability to work within the information, energy and spirit models. Mundane wise, you will be much more focused, productive, task oriented and resistant to stress.

Once you have done the basics, it is time to learn about how to associate the symbol with its meaning, how to create this connection between the two. First thing we need for the practice is a symbol for the association. Let's say we create a sigil for happiness. Place the sigil on your mirror or somewhere you will always see it. A mirror in the bathroom is quite usual place as we use it every day for brushing our teeth, shaving, etc. Each time you see the sigil, invoke a feeling of happiness within yourself, what is happiness and how does it feel like? Do this every day for some time and soon it will become automatic, soon each time you see the sigil you will feel happy without any explanation, then you will know you associated the symbol with its definition correctly. If you are done with one emotioin, start with another, it can be fear, anger, lust, love, continue as long as you wish. Btw, if you didn't have any luck with AoD before, this is a good way how to charge it.

Once you get experienced in associating emotions to sigils, you can move to desires. Create your desire statement, sigilize it and just like before, place it on the mirror or somewhere you will see it every day. Each time you see it, invoke the feeling that you've already got what you desire for so much, that you already got what was the purpose of the sigil. Notice that so far in the information paradigm we have spoken only about visual sigils. It is a very good beginning for information model, as it is something we just draw and then focus on it. Once you've got enough efficient with visual sigils, you can go for other types, same rules apply for visual sigils as for sigil mantras, mudras and asanas.

Liber Azag: The Book of Sigils - part 1

So I figured out I didn't post any new article in a while so I decided to share what is finished so far from the book of sigils I am currently working on. So, sorry, this post is going to be quite long :D

Introduction

Since ancient times there was a belief in the power of symbolism, a belief that a certain image, certain word and certain posture executed in a certain time can cause a certain outcome. Origins of these symbols were usually an inheritance or a complex sets of mathematics and geometry, combined with mysticism. Some of these paradigms of deriving symbols were so complicated that only a person trained within this paradigm the whole life could execute such operation. Then one person came with a completely different perspective, this person was Austin Osman Spare.

Spare had a very non-traditional and fresh opinion regarding symbology, according to him you didn't need a complex calculation and the knowledge of position of all the planets in the Chaldean sequence. According to him all you needed was a desire, this desire was then converted into a symbol to alienate it for the conscious mind, and make it more available for the unconsciousness.

Now we know, that unconsciousness is rather a symbol based than sentence based, a phrase is simply too chaotic for our unconscious selves, it contains words with multiple meanings, some of these can also be easily lost during the process of migration, but a symbol is whole, a symbol says it all, totally, without any losses, without any omitted words, a symbol is a reference link to what we want the most, a symbol is the most honest thing in the universe.

A symbol is also something that keeps invading our minds, symbols are everywhere. When you e.g. hear about McDonald's, a symbol will appear right in front of your mind's eye, this symbol can be the M logo it can also be one of your favorite burgers, or, if you are into "healthy" diet, you will think about fat people and conservants. There is the association between the symbol and meaning, the reference link between the two.

When you make the sigil yourself, through whatever technique you choose, you are not creating only the sigil, but also the reference link between the sigil and your desire. The sigil in itself is not important, it's its connection to the meaning that counts, after all, you don't want to pass a meaningless symbol to your unconsciousness, you want your desire to be fulfilled.

Historically speaking, sigils are nothing new, they existed way before Spare, they just weren't made by meshing letters together. Gematria, planetary tables, rose croix, nine chambers, possession drawings, these all were used just to draw sigils, not even speaking about audial sigils (mantras) or gesturial sigils (mudra), even asanas (body postures) are sigils.

In our every day life we use a lot of symbolism, clothes we wear, our ethnicity, how white teeth we have, how expensive watches we possess, these all we use to create some image, this image is the symbol of us, when someone thinks about us, this is the image he sees, at least when we are lucky. It happens that our self-perception and the perception by others is slightly off, that's normal, if it is off a little bit more, we have a problem, because people give a different definition to ourselves, one we may not be satisfied with. If a company, or a celebrity has an unpleasant image, one that doesn't bring the bright future, this image is changed. A company changes the name, replaces the CEO, puts more money into PR. A celebrity buys new clothes, changes haircut, appears on some show, that's how it's done.

One could say that Spare didn't invent the Sigil Magick. Firstly he himself claimed to be taught by another person, secondly we as a mankind has a tendency to overcomplicate stuff. It is very probable that sigil magick started in its pure form thousands of years ago and new generations then started attaching more requirements to it, like planetary correspondences, elements, deities, ceremonies, we really tend to do that, especially when our effort fails. Many people use this form of thinking: "The recent sigil didn't work, so maybe I did something different from before, maybe one has to be turned into the correct cardinal direction or it's in the day, last successful day was Saturday, maybe it works better on Saturdays". And new successes and new failures attach more and more rules to the mechanics, when the truth might be that you simply used a wrong intention, maybe it doesn't work at all or maybe it does something you haven't intended or you are somehow ignoring the real execution of your spell. This was one advice given to me by Patrick Dunn when I told him I never had much success with money magick. He told me to make a sigil to be more receptive in receiving money. That method worked like a charm and I was thinking about why, does being more receptive to something makes it come true?

Now I think the culprit was hidden somewhere else, my previous spells did work, not as flashy as finding $100 on the street the very next day, but they did work, I was just ignoring the indications, I was simply apathetic to what was happening all around me.

Mechanics of Sigil Magick

It's time to describe the basic procedures of Sigil Magick, first of all, how does Sigil Magick really work? In Magick there are generally these following paradigms as described by Frater U. D.:

1. Energetic paradigm - everything is energy, different frequencies of energy cause different results
2. Information paradigm - everything is information, everything is symbology, by manipulating our own internal symbology we can affect the symbology of the world
3. Psychology paradigm - all the Magick is caused by our psyche, by our unconsciousness.
4. Spirit paradigm - everything is governed by spirits, each action, event or item has its own spirit, we can communicate with them through the use of symbology
5. Meta paradigm - all previous paradigms are sorta true. There is an internal mechanic of Magick we cannot comprehend, but we can use it by either of the previous paradigms.

Now we can speak about the procedure, the most basic one is to state a desire, sigilize, and then either fire and forget, or charge it for a pro longed period of time. For a fire and forget one has to enter the state of gnosis and pass the symbol to the unconscious part of our mind (as the psychology paradigm would explain it). The thing is that during the gnosis our psychic censor is deactivated so we can pass the information directly into our unconsciousness without any filtering. Then we have to forget about our desire else the psychic censor might figure it out after being re-activated and stop the execution.

Dynamic charging means using the sigil for a pro-longed period of time, e.g. for focal meditation. We have already described the fire and forget method as bypassing the psychic censor behind his back. In that case using the dynamic charging is like beating him repeatedly with a stick, till our desire is fulfilled. It is quite obvious that this method won't be as fast as the fire and forget, but internal mechanics are easier, more accessible, and are also useful for a more complex tasks where a couple of factors must fit together to bring our desired change. There is also another difference and that is in the behavior of a sigil itself.

A one time sigil used via fire and forget method is a no-brainer, you wish for a change and the change will more or less manifest. Dynamic charging where you use the same sigil over and over again can bring the sigil to the life, in that case the sigil gets a consciousness on its own, one needed for executing the task, this conscious symbol is then called a servitor.

Servitors can be created through a dynamic charging or methods I will describe later. The conscious creation of the servitor is better as it gives us better control over its intent and also expiration. The expiration is also an important factor, as we want to have the count of our servitors in check. The servitor is usually programmed to expire till a certain date or till his task is completed. Sometimes we also need servitors with no expiration date, but more about that later.

We have already spoken about internal mechanics of Sigil Magick, but what about its uses? What are sigils good for? Well, you can use sigils to get a raise, to win the heart of your chosen partner, to improve your memory, learn things faster, get rid of your habits, heal faster, get rid of bad dreams, bless your family or friends or even add few rare pieces to your vase collection. Sigil Magick is good for anything as long as there is any chance for it happening, as an example, you won't become an US president when you were born outside the United States or you will never look into the space unless you are in a good position to be an astronaut.

You can also use sigils for vague stuff like happiness, luck, feeling of unity or inner peace, but keep in mind that vague desires have vague results and result is everything that Sigil Magick is about. In Sigil Magick it is a good idea to keep your work in the journal together with the records of your results, your successes and failures will help you to figure out your personal system of working with sigils, just remember, don't overcomplicate it like our ancestors did.

Specifying the desire

Before we do anything in Magick, we have to set what our ideal goal should be. For that matter it is good to ask yourself questions like "What do I want to change about my life?" or "What do I want to experience?". Once you got some basic idea, close your eyes, relax and imagine yourself in the situation when you already got what you wanted. Think whether this outcome is really what you want, think about what could go wrong or right in that situation, if you find a possible problem with that, modify the situation a little bit and repeat. Do so till you find the desire with a perfect outcome, one that you are completely satisfied with.

Once the desire is specified and we are completely ok with it, it is time to formulate the desire statement. Austing Osman Spare used an example of THIS MY WILL TO OBTAIN STRENGTH OF THE TIGER. Spare generally believed that using some immutable part of the sentence like THIS MY WILL TO helps to get accomodated to the process and bring better, faster and more accurate results. You can off course follow his example and build the desire statement his way, but first let me tell you what I personally find ineffective on that method and why.

First of all, that method uses an immutable part of the sentence, more and more sigils you make, more unique your approach will be, unfortunately you will also develop a design which will appear in all your sigils because of this part, so your sigils will be less unique and your unconsciousness will have more troubles distinguishing between them. Secondly this method defines a desire, not truth. Saying this my will is similar to I wish, wishing something doesn't mean will become true.

I personally prefer the concept that Bardon introduces in IIH regarding affirmation. An affirmation should be in present tense and formulated as if the desire was already fulfilled, like it was always true, so e.g. instead of "I will quit smoking" or "This my will to quit smoking" it should be "I don't smoke". Many people also prefer the V-Prime model, where words like "to be" are omitted, so instead of "storm is gone" you simply write "storm gone", this simplifies the sigilzation process too, as there are less letters to work with.

You might also ask why is it important to write the desire in present tense. If you specify the desire for the future, your unconsciousness will have time to intervene with the result, the psychic censor will naturally try to stop the work. But, as Bardon states in IIH, if you make your unconsciousness to lose the sence of time and space, it will have no way of stopping your desire.

Sigilize your intent

Now it's time to sigilize our desire to alienate it from our conscious mind and let it slip past the psychic censor to our unconsciousness. There are many sigilization methods but let's speak about the most traditional one for now, meshing the letters together to create an image. Many people start this process by crossing out repeating letters first, so each letter is present only once in the desire statement, but you can omit this process, simply don't draw each letter more than once and frankly, if you find any letter in the sigil that you still didn't draw consciously, you can omit it too, as it is already present.

Let's use some example now, e.g.

STORM GONE

First we ca draw a circle, representing O.

Then if we draw short line inside, touching the border of the circle, we will get both T and G.

We can then turn this short line into a lightning, giving us both N and S.

All that is missing now are letters E, R and M. M can be drawn as E, which helps us to kill two flies with one hit.

Now all we need to do is to add R to the sigil and our work is nearly done.

Now we can continue in our artistic work, adding new shapes to the sigil. Triangles, crosses, petals, pentagrams, planetary symbology, anything we feel appropriate for fulfilling our desire and alienating it further from our consciousness.

We can of course make the sigil in different sequence, directly from the desire, starting with S and ending with E, this method then creates more open ends which can be decorated with occult symbology.

There is no right or wrong way of how the sigil should look like, the only key aspect is to do what works for you, as the time passes, you will create your own personalized design which will work the best for you, everything is in practice, so don't be scared to try new things, through failure we can learn what is the best approach for us.

Pictorial method

Another method used for the sigilization is the pictorial method. You simply draw a sigil based on the stated desire and then you derive a sigil from it. This method is commonly used for healing of another person, you draw a person, usually with initials of the person you want to heal and you draw a needle aiming at the part that should be healed. After the drawing part is done, you then continue simplifying and reshaping the picture till you get the sigil.

Another type of pictorial sigilization is automatic drawing, also heavily advocated by Spare. For this method you need a quiet space where you can relax. Meditate for a moment to calm your mind, then place your hand with a pen on a piece of paper, close your eyes and think about your desire, let your hand to move automatically, drawing on the paper.

Once you fel you are done (or after some time you have specified) put your pen aside and look carefully at the drawn picture. You should notice some part that feels like being associated to your desire, extract it from the drawing and decorate it as needed, e.g. add planetary symbology and close it within a circle. Once again I suggest that there is no right or wrong design of the sigil, this can't be stressed enough.

Mantra method

Another method is the mantra method. In this case you don't create a picture, but rather a sequence of sounds that you repeat again and again during the meditation (like a Sanskrit mantra). Let's use the storm example again:

STORM GONE

One way of creating the mantra is to write the words backwards, adding or removing letters to make it more readable:

MEROTIS NOG

This mantra is a bit hard for chanting, so let's modify it a bit more:

MEROTIZ NOGEY

This one is better for chanting.

Another method is to write are desire phonetically, which won't work in this case as the difference between STORM and its phonetic version is zero to none. But what we can do is to get rid of all AEIOU's and mesh the rest together:

STRMGN

Now we can add additional letters for the readability:

SETORIMAGANA

and split the mantra in separate words for readability:

SE TORI MAGANA

So, we have described two separate ways of sigil mantra creation which gave us two separate versions of the mantra, MEROTIZ NOGEY and SE TORI MAGANA, whether we like method A or method B, let's see how the mantra can be used, for that purpose I choose SE TORI MAGANA as that is my personal favorite in this case.

1. Sit comfortably in a dim lit room and close your eyes.
2. One by one, stretch all your muscles for the time of 5 seconds and then relax them
3. Feel the heat slowly filling your body, your body becomes hotter and hotter.
4. Feel how your body becomes heavier and heavier with each exhale.
5. Turn your eyes up to look at the place between your eye brows, keep them this way for the rest of this exercise.
6. Your breathing should be deep and calm, but still natural. Observe your breathing till you start hearing the buzzing sound. That's called Nada, it's a sign that you have entered the lower form of trance.
7. Now comes the tricky part, vibrating your mantra. Let's use our SE TORI MAGANA example here. Your mind should be one syllable before your tongue, so when in the head you say SE, you're silent, when your mind is at TO you start vibrating SE, when your mind is at RI you start vibrating TO, etc.
8. Repeat step 7 for a couple of minutes or stop when the time seems right.

If the purpose of the mantra is to bring in a certain vision or an experience in a dream state, you can repeat the mantra silently in your mind till you fall asleep, this is also useful for mantras that should help you to break bad habits. You can also turn your mantra into a word of power and focus on it during orgasm.

To turn a mantra into a word of power, you ca simply take the first syllables of the mantra words and join them together. So in case of SE TORI MAGANA it would be SETOMA, you can of course use any method of word of power creation you want, just turn the whole mantra into one word.

The mantra and a word of power can be also used for the creation of the servitor, where the word of power would be the servitor's name and the sigil mantra would be his activation formula, but more about that in the chapter about servitors.

Tarot: The Celtic Cross spread

This is the little excerpt from the book about Tarot I am currently working on, enjoy :).

The Celtic Cross

The most famous of all spreads, unfortunately also the most overused one. The Celtic Cross is a common-use spread, if you don't know what spread to use for the reading, use this one. This spread has qualities of many aforementioned spreads, plus it shows many tendencies we want to use or avoid. Unfortunately it also contains a great deal of relations between different card positions which normally isn't well taught. That's why I will teach you this spread traditionally, as I was taught.

For this spread you need to select   10 cards. Meanings of these cards are as follows:

Card 1: That's it

Card 2: That crosses it

Card 3: That's the crown of it

Card 4: That's the base of it

Card 5: That was before it

Card 6: That comes after it

Card 7: That's the querrent

Card 8: That's where it takes place

Card 9: Those are hopes and doubts.

Card 10: This is the result, This is where it leads to.

This explanation might look a bit confusing, but it's the one I started with and it's also probably the only one that shows the basic relations of cards to the card 1 (hence the bold it word). But let's give some a bit more extensive explanation now.

Card 1 shows the current situation, Card 2 shows either positive or negative influences that cross the situation (sometimes the universe is on your side, and sometimes it pushes obstacles in your way).

Card number 3 shows what consciously drives us into this situation, why we want to achieve what we want to achieve. Card number 4 shows what drives us unconsciously (that's the base of it). Fourth card is why we really are in such situation but it isn't apparent at the moment.

Card number 5 shows what preceeded this situation (the past) and card 6 shows what comes after (the future). From this sense cards 5,1,6 are The Three Cards spread and have the same relations as in that spread.

Card number 7 shows the querent's take on the situation. How he behaves and how he feels about the situation. It can happen that the situation will be good according to the reading just this card will show bad signs, that means the querent is too pessimistic about the whole thing to see things as they really are (opposite can happen too).

Card number 8 shows the surroundings of the querent, where it happens. This card can show the external influence regarding the situation and/or the querent (if you use The Celtic Cross instead of the Relationship spread, then this card represents querent's partner).

Card number 9 shows hopes and doubts. Positive cards are hopes and negative one are doubts (or fears). This card shows the the querent hopes for or what he is scared of.

Card 10 is the final result. We can say that card 6 is the near future and card 10 is the distant one. Once again we can do a Three Card spread comparison of cards 5,1,10 as we originally did 5,1,6. The difference between 6 and 10 is also important, as it shows the development of the situation in the future, so use these two as a Two Cards Of The Day spread.

Now, the reading of the spread has a bit different order. First cards you reveal are card number 5 and card number 9. You want to see these two first to find out what happened and what are expectations of the querent. The difference between these two should also give you some information about the current situation.

Next card you reveal is card number 1, the current state of the situation. Then card number 2, what is crossing the current situation. Then cards 3 and 4 to check the background of the situation, then followed by cards 7 (querent) and 8 (surroundings). While revealing each of the cards you are checking all the relationship between the cards and you are trying to sort of guess what will happen next.

Cards number 6 and 10, future related cards, are revealed as the last one. After you check all relationships between the cards you then should try to see the whole picture, to read the spread as the whole.

Current project

I do not post much once again. The reason is I currently use my spare time for writing. I am working on a book called Liber Azag: The Book Of Tarot (I will post some parts here a little bit later).

New book available

Astro Magick Essentials now available for sale, check it out:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/237567521/Astro-Magick-Essentials