Franz Bardon's Initiation Into Hermetics Cheat-Sheet

Chi Kung experiment: Day 16 up to 28

So, my Chi Kung experiment is over so it's time for some conclusions.

The most practical technique
The most practical technique I have found in Chi Kung would be Pi Chi. The ability to send more oxygen to the muscles is truly useful when you need to move stuff around, plus if you know how to draw energy out you can also use Pi Chi for some basic healing.

The most rewarding technique
This one is actually a set of techniques, Tao Yin. If you really want to experience Chi Kung, go for this exercise. It helps you to cleanse your body, remove blockages, get into meditative state of mind and draw in more Chi, needless to say that physical exercises and massages that are part of Tao Yin are also beneficial.

Conclusion
I have to say I have enjoyed this experiment, a lot.

First of all there are clear similarities between Chi Kung and my favorite mesmerism. For example somnambulic subjects often see energy leaving the body through finger tips. In Chi Kung there are energetic paths called meridians that lead to the finger tips. Another common exits are through ears, nose, mouth, eyes and feet. These are also accounted for in Chi Kung.

Secondly the idea of getting used to inhaling through nose and exhaling through mouth is simply clever. You learn to draw energy in with your mouth shut and draw energy out through your mouth. Then a simple trick to conserve the energy is of course breathing through the nose or finish the exhale through the nose while energy is still within your body (basis of Yen Chi).

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.

Chi Kung experiment: Day 8 to 15

So, the experiment continues. Jin Guang seems to be working way better now and last week I have also noticed quite sudden improvement in physical strength (I can now do 6 pull-ups from fully straightened arms without breaking a sweat, that's a good one for 200 lbs).

As for Tao Yin, that exercise is really amazing but I had to omit it from the practice for time reasons but I plan to replace it this week with Lien Chi (full body Chi accumulation). I also need to add the moving exercises to the mix to get the full experience.

Energetically speaking it became very easy to me to locate and focus on m tantien during the day, the feeling is pretty distinguishable. Also, last week some slight bowel problems manifested, I think Nei-Tan followed by Yen Chi is the culprit but so far more data are needed.

Also, many people asked me for a book recommendation, on forums, on facebook, even on my blog. So, I currently work with book Chi Kung for Beginners, written by Scott Shaw. It's a really good book with the beginner material well explained.

Chi Kung experiment: Day 5 up to 7

Well, sorry for a late update, had a little busy weekend.

First of all I have to say I found a mistake in the experiment. What I have considered to be my Tantien was in fact Shenjue, another energy center. The mistake was simple to be made as it is said no one can really tell you the exact location of the Tantien except you and Shenjue reacted very strongly during preliminary exercises to find the Tantien.

Well, so that has been fixed.

As the next part I have added Yen-Chi (swallowing of Chi) to my daily routine. During the weekend I have also used Pi-Chi (holding of Chi) as my lovely wife has prepared a surprise kitchen reconstruction for me which consisted of moving everything outside of the kitchen, getting rid of the old floor, re-filling the gaps between tiles, getting in a new linoleum, painting the walls and getting all equipment back in. We also had to use the new kitchen desk so once again I had to cut out the hole for the kitchen sink... Pi-Chi allowed me to carry objects way more easily so later that day I have decided to test it on my way stronger friend in arm wrestling, first before and then after using Pi-Chi. Well, I lost both times but he admitted the second time I put up a little bit more of a fight.

Well, today I am going to add Neitan (microscopic orbit), at least the most simple version of it to the daily routine, right after Tao-Yin and I will probably finish it with Shou-Kung. In the book by Scott Shaw it is said that you should do the Shou-Kung exercise after each Chi Kung session to make the effects more stable.

Chi Kung experiment: Day 3 and 4

So, yesterday I failed a little as I didn't manage to do Tao Yin exercise, but I finally figured out why I was getting dizzy during Jin Guang (I originally wrote this as Tin Kuang). The thing was that I misinterpreted the description in the book and was inhaling the Chi into the whole body instead of "just" the Dan Tien. I fixed this misunderstanding and the exercise works great now.

I have also tried the method of sending Chi into arms from Tao Yin during the massage and the effect was very impressive, a clear crack sound in my wife's shoulder was very audible during a massage, turned out she had a problem with the shoulder for a couple of days and the massage fixed it.

I am also messing around the idea of sending Chi to the knife's blade during my throwing sessions. The blade does resonate with Chi and after hitting the wooden plank it does act a little bit differently (it shakes for about 10 seconds), but it doesn't go deeper.

Chi Kung experiment: Day 2

So, a second day of Chi Kung experiment is over so let's sum the day.

First of all, I have to admit I really like the feeling right after the Tao Yin exercise. The whole idea of cleansing the energy channels (meridians) and then getting in more chi is very interesting. I also like that Tao Yin is really a meditation exercise, buzzing sound (Nada) and vision of a color appearing out of nowhere and then disappearing in the middle is part of the experience. This is something I always missed in Five Tibetan rites, they are great for cleansing and physical exercise as well, just the meditation part seems to be missing (at least in my experience).

Tin Kuang exercise today made me a little bit dizzy, hard to say why. I either overdo the breathing or doing this exercise in a moving vehicle is not a good idea, but hell, if I can do pranayama in the bus, tin kuang should be no problem either.

Other exercises
I was a little bit ahead of myself today and wanted to add more exercises to the list. Specifically Yen-Chi (swallowing of Chi), Pi-Chi (holding of Chi) and Nei-tan (microcosmic orbit). I think I have to take things nice and easy at least this week, keeping just Tao-Yin, Tin Kuang and Tao Chi (basic chi breathing exercises). But I do plan to use part of Tao-Yin wisdom for massages.

Quick note
I should check where the name meridian comes from because it seems in Chinese these paths are called simply Ting.

Chi Kung experiment

So, I have gotten into Chi Kung again and have decided to give it a 4 week try, that means till 5th June.

I have experimented with Chi Kung before, many years ago but at the time I felt silly doing many of the exercises. I would say I have matured in this and I am ready for a next attempt.

Setup of the experiment
For now I can say I will do 7 exercises of Tao Yin every evening and Tin Kuang at least once a day.
Tao Yin is a cleansing exercise with a slight energy improve. Tin Kuang is also geared towards cleansing but also for forming a connection between lower and upper tantien.

Preliminary exercises
It's safe to say I have already done some exercises during the weekend and even managed to locate the real tantien (lower tantien specific to my energy body) so I can work with Chi more effectively now.

Further development of the experiment
Tao Yin and Tin Kuang are a good beginning, but I would like to add more complex exercises to the mix as the experiment progresses,

Notes so far
I didn't have time so far to do a full Tin Kuang, but I have to say I did Tao Yin today (Monday) and yesterday (Sunday) and the final feeling is pretty amazing. My whole body feels a little bit hot, but in a pleasant manner, I also feel more relaxed.

Project: Over-Condensing the Light, summary

A full week of this project is behind me so it's a time to make a review. I would say it was an eye opening experience due to a lot of things. As I have mentioned before, the heaviness and numbness that I experienced originally after the invocation quickly went away and more I practised this, more adapted I became to this practice.

I have also mentioned it became way easier to me to wake up in the morning, thinking back about it, I think my energy body had a problem of its own and this routine helped me to clean that one out on multiple levels. Speaking of it, I think it is safe to say that this is an excellent detoxication procedure.

The thing is that I wouldn't recommend it to beginners for multiple reasons. First and foremost, I have already done the essentials. I have worked a great deal through my soul mirrors (introspection and retrospection), I have also a good deal of meditation under my belt so I cannot really say what effects this practice would have on someone that begins in the occult. I can only imagine the effects would be as disastrous as when a beginner just banishes every day. I also can't define any long term effects, not from a week long experiment.

Regarding Reiki
Reiki self-initiation using this method was a very potent experience but I don't think a right one, I work on the self-initiation a long time in general and it still needs a lot of perfection so please don't try that one. Despite the fact that this was my strongest experience regarding reiki yet, it wasn't as stable as I wished it would be and the healing coming directly after this experiment was only a partial success.

The procedure
So, I am going to mention the procedure here as I would like more people to try it and share their experience with me. First of all I would like to reference you to Initiation Into Hermetics (IIH) by Franz Bardon as this procedure is directly related to the pore breathing in the book.

It is also safe to note you should work on your soul mirrors first, you don't need to fix any of it, just make as detailed mirrors as possible, "know thyself" is the key here. Secondly I have made a small change in the pore breathing procedure. Bardon says a breathing should be a little deeper than usual but still natural. I have used my experience from pranayama and tried to make the breathing cycle as slow and deep as possible (we are speaking about 15 seconds for inhale and 15 seconds for exhale with 5 seconds pause in between, but use whatever you can do).

Now to the procedure:
1. Sit comfortably and relax your body
2. Start with pore breathing, inhale and exhale through your lungs same as through the pores (IIH)
3. During step 2 slowly pro-long inhales and exhales till you get to the point where breathing is very pro-longed and hard to notice
4. Imagine everything around you is a pure White Light, continue breathing and hone this visualization to the perfection
5. Start visualizing as with every inhale your body fills with this white light, repeat this process and fill your entire body. It is also good to note that now we use pore breathing only with inhale, exhale only with lungs and focus on the energy to stay in your body (this one is a little bit tricky)
6. Keep inhaling and condensing the light in your body till it's a very dense (visualization of a milk-like fluid in my body helped a lot).

So, this is generally a method I have used from Monday to Sunday (with few tweaks here and there). So, if you already have some experience with IIH, make sure to try this one out and send my some feedback, just remember I do not recommend going over one week for now.

Project: Over-Condensing the Light, Day 5

Today and yesterday I have played table soccer with a colleague of mine. I have outmatched him drastically despite the fact we are usually even. It makes me wondering whether my reflexes got better or simply the eye-hand coordination improved (either way would be great). It is not probable the reason would be that my colleague would play worse than usually, I rather noticed I could more easily switch between player rods and position them as needed with minimal effort.

Reiki experiment
I had to do some healing yesterday on my wife. Because my reiki self-initiation ritual still isn't perfect I have decided to use my method of Astral Light invocation for it. I have basically cleansed the space, get tuned-in on the Light, then draw all 5 reiki symbols in 4 cardinal directions and then invoked the Light together with these symbols.

The effect of this experiment was weird. I have felt a little bit numb, like being disassociated with my body. Buzzing (Nada) was very strong, my whole body actuall felt like being in a very strong field of static electricity.

The healing itself wasn't very effective, it randomly moved on the wave between being very strong and overpowering and being completely unnoticeable and powerless. I have also noticed it was easier for me to transmit the energy through my fingertips rather than from my palms as usually. Anyway, the feeling of displacement stayed with me for the most of the night after the healing session.

Project: Over-condensing the Light, day 4

I am not sure why but I felt pretty cold before falling asleep yesterday, fortunately a quick invocation of Astral Light solved the problem, it's weird to see how fast you can actually change your body temperature by such a simple method.

Anyway, I have noticed that my daily consumption of water went down to about half a liter. 2 liters per day is a recommended intake so I will have to work on that one. Generally it is not a good idea to drink less during this experiment as the data could become inaccurate due this.

Project: Over-Condensing the Light, day 3

So, a little tiredness appeared yesterday in the evening, yet I was still able to wake up this morning (once again sooner than usually).

Today some sort of tiredness also appeared after an hour long meeting but I managed to get rid of it with a very quick invocation of astral light. It leads to the question whether Astral light started getting absorbed faster by my body or whether there is some sort of "leak" that was either unnoticeable before or developed recently.

Either way, this is the third day of the experiment and also first day I also did the evening session. During this session I have noticed another effect, despite the fact that my thoughts flow as usually, I can now easily sort through them and switch between them without any loss of concentration. This easiness is similar to what I usually experience during days without sleep, except in the sleepless days it is usually caused by naturally minimized thinking patterns. Maybe the feeling of being centered I have mentioned during the first day of the experiment is actually caused by this added clarity.

Water dilemma
This is based on another forum I do frequent. One user responded to this project with an interesting point. Water, while being vital, can be lethal when overdosed, while I am thinking of the possibility side effect of "overdosing" on Astral Light, one possibility that strikes me is increased aging, unfortunately that is something I won't be able to tell just during 1 week experiment, but it should be considered before doing permanent changes to the energy body.

Enhanced routine
I have decided that since day 4 I will make the routine a little bit more dynamic. Morning and evening session will stay in the practice as it is, but I am also going to add a conscious astral light invocation to the day for any possible spare time to really get sublimed in this project as much as possible. This should make any side effects more probable to appear during this project but it will also give me a more proper taste of its benefits.

Quick note in the night

So, the sweet wife of mine has blocked her back and I had to fix it, during that I have noticed my physical strength got a noticeable boost, that is interesting.

Project: Over-Condensing the Light, day 2

Yesterday was a very interesting day. Generally I have felt more centered but also more alive. The original feeling of heaviness I have mentioned in the last post went away after a couple of hours. It is also interesting that I couldn't felt asleep till 2 am yet I was able to get up at 6 am without any problem. Just to mention why it is interesting: I usually need about 7 - 9 hours of sleep, that can be reduced to 4 - 5 hours if I manage to do all my meditations during the day and before the sleep, but yesterday I did only the morning meditation yet the effect was stronger than usually.

Peer review
I have to say I am also happy I have announced this project publicly because I got a lot of interesting information about what normally happy during over-condensing. On one forum it was mentioned that this practice can attract negative entities which makes a lot of sense as I believe the circle casting works in a similar manner. On another forum I got the information that by over-condensing the astral light I will create vital force, which for me, as a mesmerist, also makes a lot of sense, but the most important message came from Regardie's quote.

Something wrong with Eastern practices
According to I. Regardie's description of Middle Pillar Ritual, this practice can be dangerous for people who didn't work their way through soul mirrors and also for people coming from eastern practices. This part was crucial! For those of you frequently checking Occult Resource you might know they shared an article about chakras. In this article a person who knows Sanskrit really well said that the modern (and especially western) take on chakras is inherently wrong. I really recommend to read the article but anyway, one of the things the author mentioned was that e.g. the current setup of elemental bijas for chakras is dangerous as e.g. for the heart chakra you use bija manta YAM, mantra for the Air element. This can lead to social and emotional problems and he also recommended to use the Earth bija mantra from time to time to "ground" the heart.

Anyway, in that chakra related article it was also said that chakra system wasn't made as anything pre-existing but it was actually intended as a template to create your own energy body (and there also are different chakra templates with different sets of chakras). This project is actually my own experiment in re-designing the energy body and if this project goes well, I will do some permanent changes and maybe I will also post method I am using.

Second session
So, I have finished second session before I started writing this article and I feel pretty similar to yesterday, bit hot and heavy. I should be able to do another session this evening so more information should come after that.

Project: Over-condensing the light

So, I always found curious why while working with Astral Light it is recommended to take what you want from it and then expel it from your body. It really leads to the question: What would happen if you keep the Astral Light in your body.

So, I am running a week long test now to figure it out and to have faster results I am actual trying to make the light in my body as dense as possible (to the consistency of milk).

I have already finished the first session and I have to say, I feel heavy. The initial numbness common for meditation went away very fast and now I feel like having a way better awareness of my body.

Banishing The Pentagram Myths

Awesome video and explanation about the use of lesser pentagram rituals in the original GD by Nick Farrell:

Magick not working?

I have noticed a lot of people who used to practice occultism are now against it, saying it doesn't work and it's all in our heads. I have already written an article about the psychology paradigm and its pitfalls so I would like to link you there. For the rest of this article I am going to write a set of conditions you should follow for your practice to have fruits.

Also, if your operation goes awry, write it to your journal as well, for example if you mispronounce some name, if you forget some move or simply when you are just not feeling it, write it all down. That way you will get doubts out of your head and later when checking results you can say: "Ok, I didn't do A and B and the operation failed" or: "I forgot to do A and I did B instead of C, yet the operation worked, so A and B might not be as important".

Keep a journal
I have written this over million times now, yet some people still don't get the hint. Journal helps you to remember things better, track your progress, track your results for later analysis AND it gives you important stimuli for times when you are in doubt. A journal is a must for every occultist.

Steady practice
People who quit Magick tend to have very intense, but shortlived practices. Hours of meditations for practiced for 1 month at most. It is better to meditate daily 5 minutes for a full year than meditate 2+ hours for 2 weeks. Steady practice is really important as you cannot boil water if you keep putting it off the stove.

Steady practice also allows to create a habit of doing Magick, that is also very important for the change of perspective I have mentioned in article "Defeating theory, part III". Also if you practice isn't steady, you shouldn't consider that everyone has the same problems you do.

Have fun
What I have noticed a lot in those who over-practice is they hate their practices. They hate doing the daily routine they chose for themselves. Your practice should be enjoyable, have fun. If your practice starts boring you, change it a bit, experiment with new things and always make sure to track it.

Integrate
People also claim they do not have time for steady practice. Of course you do have time, a normal person sleeps for about 7 to 9 hours, that still gives us 17 to 15 hours of waking time. Not only that, but also a lot of practices can be integrated into the mundane life. For example in the "Sex and Magick" article I have mentioned a practice you can do every time you sit. Similarly you can take a 5 minutes of your lunch time for meditation. During lunch you can also practice conscious eating and drinking (mentioned in Magickal Curriculum). During boring meetings you can practice telekinesis on your cup of coffee. The point is that Magick should become the integral part of your life, not something you add to your already existing schedule.

Avoid unneeded reductionism
I have heard that a lot from quitters. "I don't need to do the death posture, just focusing on the sigil does the work for me". Or "I don't need to draw sigils, I will just focus on my wish and via Law of Attraction the universe manifest my desires". They also tend to argue with others about using "pointless" rituals. Later such person quits and says that Magick doesn't work. Well, are you sure Magick doesn't work when you never tried it?

I am not saying that modification and reduction aren't needed, I am chaote, after all. But this method of working should be done AFTER you already had some visible and verifiable results, AFTER you got your feet wet in the rivers of Magick. I have it hard to look at, when someone claims about how many things are not needed in Magick, not much because of them, but because of their readers. These people tend to find followers quite quickly. People who believe them and believe in their words. Imagine the betrayal when such a person, person viewed as the spark of light in the moments of darkness, turns out to be quitter and claims that Magick doesn't work.

To explain this a little better I will return to my original "boiling water" example. Normal and educated reductionism says you do not need to salt the water and you can still boil it. Or you can omit the lid of the pot and still boil the water, it will take longer time and more water will vaporize and get lost, but you will boil it. Uneducated and inexperieced point of view usually leads to "you don't need the pot or the stove to boil the water", so in one case a cold water will keep sitting in the pot doing nothing and in the other you will pour water right on the stove, effectively putting of the flame.

Keep an open mind
Belief is one of the most important aspects. The belief in success of your operation is vital for your Magick to work. And such a believe must be limitless. Now, I am not saying you should believe whatever you want and don't have any doubts at all. All I say is everything has its time. Don't be negative before and during the operation. But during the analysis of results be a little skeptical, it's actually needed to avoid the comfirmation bias (the very same comfirmation bias that reductionists suffer during their early stages).

Sex and Magick

Sex in Magick and Magick in sex
Sex and Magick runs together for a really long time. There was always something mystical about sexual intercourse and the fact that we can actually make our own human descendants. Also considering some recent news (Kanye's debt for example), I think breeding should be something you have to deserve first.

Anyway, the use of sex in Magick was destined to come sooner or later. First of all, orgasm itself is a perfect mind-state for the operation, there is this tiny window where all thought processes get numb and you suddenly become concentrated at just one point, with no feeling of time. At that one point you exist just in the presence. Another asset is the physical exhaustion which gives the feeling that some energy was spent somewhere. This feeling allows you to believe some work was done towards the desired goal and more importantly that some potent energy was released toward the desired outcome.

Another great thing about Sex Magick is that most adults have sex (or masturbate), which means we do already have some opportunity to perform our Magick, we just have to use it properly. Who would say we could actually mix work with pleasure and even call it multitasking, right?

The scope of this article
I am going to try to be as general as possible so this article is useful for both men and women. Unfortunately I am just a man and my experience comes mainly from the male standpoint so I can e.g. describe the male retention practice but I don't know much about its female counterpart, sorry for that.

Something I do know about were e.g. Crowley's countless attempts to create hommunculi (artificial humans or humans with artificial souls) but I personally find this thing disturbing and I am not going to describe any of that. If you wish to know about it, it can be found in Liber Agape and I am pretty sure that K. Grant also wrote something on the topic as he inherited a lot of  A. Crowley's possessions.

The retention
The retention of sperm is originally a tantric practice (so called western tantra, maybe). The retention means that you are not allowed to ejaculate as it was believed the sperm contains vital fluids that would be lost otherwise. There were many methods how to avoid this loss including eating the white goo to let the energy re-enter the system. Well, I don't want to underestimate the drive of my male readers but just in case I will share another working method with you (despite celibacy).

It is possible for a man to have orgasm without the ejaculation thanks to the little muscles on the bridge between your genitals and your a-hole (or simply behind the balls to be more exact). It is the same muscle that allows you to interrupt the stream while you pee (this works for women, too, more about it later). If you press this muscle during orgasm you will stop your semen on the way out, meaning it will not exit your body, that's the simple way of doing this.

The harder way for the retention is to actually train the muscles. You should be able to stop your pee and the very same way to stop the stream is also the way how to train the muscle, just flex it and hold it as long as you can (not while peeing). Few weeks of training should be enough to strengthen the grip and allow you to stop the semen from exiting simply by locking it there. It is also needless to say that women have these muscles too, they are not very helpful for retention, but if a woman has trained these muscles, she will enjoy sex way more (or so I was told).

Another benefit of this practice is that it is nearly invisible, whenever you are sitting or standing in line you can simply lock in the muscles and hold, no one is going to notice (unless you stand really weird, in that case you look like you need to pee). Anyway, this allows you to practice anytime you want.

Using the sexual energy
This article wouldn't really be complete if I didn't add any way how to use this harnessed energy. The most simple way, of course, is masturbation. The prepared sigil of any kind is presented to the unconscious mind during the orgasm/ejaculation to embed desire into it. Of course how the sigil is presented depends on its type. Visual sigils are hold before the eyes, words of power are called out loud (or at least silenced), gestures are kept at the eye's level (don't try making the gesture with the same hand you are masturbating with, that would be weird).

Regarding visual sigils, some people recommend to let the load go right on it, I would rather say to keep them in the front of your eyes or visualize them and let the goo go somewhere safe. Only reason why you would want to stain the sigil would be a servitor or amulet creation, but for general work? Rather try to be tidy and reasonable :).

Working with the partner
Things I have mentioned above work with a partner, as well. It doesn't really depend whether during a traditional sex or what method of stimulation you use. You can also hide the fact about what you are doing, but frankly it is better your partner knows and you both focus on the same goal (sigils placed around the room can do the trick without exposing much).

I would also like to share one method of servitor creation for which you need a man and a woman (finally some occult reason to get social). A. Crowley has believed that a mixture of semen and women's secrets form a strong fluidum, a philosopher's fluidic condenser to be exact. Crowley also mentioned certain parameters a sex should have to make this condenser stronger. To name a few:
-long foreplay
-sexual intercourse should take 1 hour at minimum
-after all "work" is done, penis should be kept in vagina for about 15 minutes so keep the condenser in to make sure it's "baked" properly.

After that all is done you simply let it out on the prepared servitor's sigil to charge it or into a jar to store it for later use (here the knowledge of creation of fluidic condensers come in real handy).

Importance of dreams in Magick

There are still people who underestimate the importance of dreams in Magick so I am going to explain why are dreams really important and how to atually work with them.

Consciousness versus unconsciousness
There are many ways how to define this but let's just say that your personal reality is split into what you are conscious about and what you are not conscious about. The amount of influence of your conscious and unconscious parts on your life is about 50:50, and of course consciousness also affects your unconsciousness and vice versa.

Unconsciousness does a sort of a compensation work for your daily life, it's a very cleverly designed process, but sometimes the fragment of our psyche (usually traumatic one) gets supressed from the conscious and so transfers into your un-c where it becomes more or less autonomous. This then turns into neurosis and affects your conscious life (sorry I am simplifying so much).

Another work of unconsciousness is to gather and analyze details we are not normally aware of, it can be the most subtle mixture of various physical senses up to the metaphysical perception (e.g. telepathy). This allows our consciousness to be much less occupied with seemingly unimportant details but it can also inform us back if one or more of these "unimportant" details sum up to some important event or a piece of information, but for that to happen, it also needs a communication channel, a link between conscious and unconscious.

What are dreams
Dreams are the most direct communication channel between consciousness and unconsciousness. With their help un-c can actually give us its experience of our waking lives but from its perspective. Due to the nature of dreams we split them into following categories:
-compensating
-reducting
-prospective
-reactive

A compensating dream tries to inform us of something we are omitting even while it is important, it shows us what we should be focused on or what we are forgetting.

A reducting dream is a sort of a healing mechanism. It repeats a bad experience over and over again in a symbolic form till we get used to it and it doesn't appear as horrifying anymore.

Prospective dream can give us insight into the future. It is not a prophetic dream as in a prophetic dream all details would have to match with the real future event but it can still give us enough details to spawn a lot of curiosity.

Reactive dream is like a reductive dream, except in the case of reductive dream understanding the symbology and interpretation of the dream automatically stops the repetition. In case of reactive dreams there is no symbology af these are a direct copy of past traumatic experiences. Reactive dreams usually appear as the result of a traumatic experience from war, etc.

There are more categories and subcategories but I am going to simplify it on these four for now.

Why are dreams important
The health isn't just physical or psychological, both aspects are part of the sum and both aspects also influence the sum, so a psychological problem can influence our physical state just like a physiological problem can influence our mental state. Dreams as the direct output from the unfiltered unconsciousness give us a decent overview of both the mental and physical state and as such dreams are a very helpful aid for the introspection (practice of self-discovery). Introspection was heavily propagated by F. Bardon in his work but even nowadays many occultists do not care about its benefits.

How to interpret dreams
In case of dreams we have a double symbology, one is shared for all of us despite of our race or culture and one is individual for us and it's based on our personal lifes, experiences and character traits.

This could lead to the idea that by understanding just the symbology we can easily interpret our dreams, which would be false and gave us a very general meanings at best. Even the best dream interpreter in the world will give a wrong definition if he asks a wrong question.

The right question in dream analysis isn't what does the dream mean, but why did I have this dream and where should it lead me to. If you ask yourself these questions while analyzing your dreams, you will start to understand where I am going. The dreams try to either warn us, inform us or prepare us for something, that's why it's not important what does the symbology in the dream mean (well, it is sorta important but do not overestimate it), but why we had the dream to begin with.

Chaos Not 4 Kidz

A little project in development of mine, trying to teach Magick in an humorous form.

Kickstarter: Serpent on the Cross

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:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/734636441/serpent-on-the-cross

Wax dolls

What is a wax doll
Wax doll is a small figure made out of wax, made in the shape of a human or animal you wish to affect. Wax dolls are a great asset for Magick. These figures have a bad reputation as in movies and certain cultures they are used mainly for maleficient purposes when in fact they are just focal points, they can be used for variety of tasks including blessings, telepathy suggestions, healing and of course, curses.

Why wax
Wax is naturally oily and a little bit moist on touch, these are the properties that a suitable volt materials should have. Speaking of that, any object containing fat, grease, oil, wax or other materials with similar qualities can be used for the creation of the volt, one famous volt creation counts with a dead frog baptised with the name of the victim of this powerful curse.

How to model your own wax doll
It is ideal to have some modelling wax handy as that one is very soft and can be easily shaped by your hands, in case we do not have such a wax handy, here is another solution.

For this method you will need some candles (tea lights are the best option). You will also need some paper, scissors and a cookie cutter of the desired shape.

Light the candles to liquify the wax. Tea lights naturally have their own containers and it's easy to pour the wax from them but if you don't have any, just toss some candles on a pan and liquify the wax there.

As the next part make an outline of your cookie cutter form on the paper and cut it out. This will give us the base for the form so the wax doesn't stick to the surface below. Another benefit is that the paper also holds the wax together during the removal from the cookie cutter and then can also be stripped and used again.

Now place the form on the paper outline and pour the liquified wax in. It doesn't spread as easily as water so make sure to fill the cookie cutter evenly, then let the wax rest and solidify, this takes quite some time. You can figure out when wax is solid by color and also by touch (slightly pushing the wax won't leave there any fingerprints).

Now take the form with solidified wax and gently twist it, this will allow the wax to be separated from the form. Then gently and evenly push the wax doll out of the cookie cutter form. As the last part remove the paper base and your wax figure is finished.

Using the doll
Famous method of using the wax doll is to embed it with something from your "victim", a tooth, hair, fingernails... These can be added into the doll during pouring of the wax. The thing is you don't really need any such item as a visualization and desire are good enough to create the link. Attaching the photo or sigil that symbolises the target also helps greatly.

In case you are going to use needles, make sure to heat their tips first (e.g. in the flame of a candle). This allows the wax doll to sustain more "punishment" as wax is rather melted by the needle instead of broken apart. The wax that is liquified this way also turns black and leaks out of the hole just like blood, making a great visualization aid.

Quick note about volts

Just had this idea how to create a volt:
-Cut out a body shape from paper
-Create a sigil of a person you wish to affect
-Draw it on the paper body
-Charge it
-Pour wax on the paper body, sealing the sigil inside and giving it a proper material suitable for the volt.

There will still be some tweaking (incantations, etc), but this looks nice so far :).

Interesting turn of events

So, I mentioned yesterday that I generally felt pretty much drained. What I didn't say (as I didn't know at the time), I also lost my bus card where I just sent money in. Having no name on the card, the chances of getting it back were close to zero.

Anyway, yesterday after I got home I made a couple of arrangements. I did 5 Tibetan rites, I also performed emotional and spiritual banishing (My favorite Sumerian style), I also placed a glass of water next to my bed to figure out any possible spiritual activity causing the drainage. I also made sure. To fully relax my body before falling asleep and making certain to remember all my dreams which would also show any unwanted spiritual activity.

So, I slept great, no spiritual activity happened during the night and in the morning I woke up fresh and kicking. Only bad event that happened was that I figured out I was missing the bus card as I mentioned before so I had to use cash.

Now, going back home from the office I was lucky enough to catch the same bus yesterday, and guess what, the card was there waiting for me on the dashboard (I know it's mine because of the scratches). So I asked the driver about it and took it. The most improbable thing that could happen to me today happened :-D.

Anyway, I will continue with the 5 Tibetans for now to get back on tracks :).

ZI ANNA KANPA,
ZI KIA KANPA,
ZI DINGIR ANNA KANPA,
ZI DINGIR KIA KANPA

Some news

So, I have been feeling drained lately, probably because of having a shifted sleeping cycle for the whole December.

With that being said I moved back to practicing autogenic training and also some chakra work (mainly biju mantras, really).

Except that I am trying to kick myself into the book writing again (speaking about the geomancy grimoire), the main problem is I have a lot of mundane plans for following 3 months and after that I want to finally move to my own domain.

Speaking of that, I have decided to use wordpress as my next CMS system, simply because I am currently too lazy to write my own CMS. Well, not really lazy, I just cannot force myself into using PHP and MySQL again when I got too used to Java EE, JSF, PostgreSQL and few other perks. I actually like the idea of using Wordpress as its plugins pretty much sum all of my needs (and here and there I can code little something for it myself).

Ok, that's it from me for now, just don't forget I am available on facebook now, just look for Frater Akenu, there :).

My beginnings in the occult

So, I am back from a month long vacation that took quite a revealing turn as I recalled something from my childhood.

I am 28 now and I actively practice for 6 years but as it turned out, I was an occultist long before that. First of all, I got signed up to karate classes when I was 6 years old and a very basic form of meditation was part of the curriculum. Later when I was about 10 I bought a book about Ninjutsu (ninja movies were big at the time). The book was namely about history and dictionary but there was also a big section regarding meditation and kuji-in (hand gestures). Different effects were associated with different gestures and I will take a look at this later.

When I was about 12 I tried a silver magick ritual (sort of fluff dark magick but hey, I was 12), the ritual consisted of using 5 names: Astaroth, Dragonis, Moloch, Empusa, Nosferatu, shortly ADMEN (I remember it even now), when I was 15 I read A. S. LaVey's Satanic Bible which by the coincidence was the book that also refreshed this memory. After creating my occult FB account and getting invited to countless LHP and Satanism groups I got interested to refresh my memory on LaVey's satanism so I bought the book and read it again. The vibe of the book was the same as the vibe of Thelema which explains why Thelema felt so natural to me, I knew some of it from before.

My childhood
I've had some weird experiences before even attending school. For one instance I remember an experience during which I tripped and fell face first into a fresh concrete, my father wasn't really happy about this and I got beaten up for it. The problem here is that this didn't happen to me, but to my 6 years older brother, yet I still have this vivid memory seeing everything from the first person as if this happened to me.

For another one I recalled seeing myself from the third point of view on a couple of occasions, this happened to me especially during practicing karate katas. In other words I had seen myself externally while moving.

It happened to me at least twice that a time slowed down around me, both instances were during a jump which felt unnaturally long because of this. Something similar also happened to me during a fight in school when the time stopped fully while my "opponent" was caught mid-air. I remember thinking about how to use this to my advantage and where to stand so after "the time runs again" it will look impressive. During this maneuvering around I noticed my body still stands on the same place and while I tried to get into it so I can moved with it, the time started again and I got kicked to the chest :D.

Adult years
I became interested in hypnosis when I was about 17 and read a lot of things about it in the public library. I usually sneak into the section I didn't have access into and read there. When I was caught I said I forgot the registration card at home and will come with it the next day. I obviously didn't have the card so I never did. Btw this way I also learned programming which is what I do for a living now :).

In the time I was recently employed I got prosecuted for fare evasion in the city I never even visited. Someone somehow got my ID details and used it to identify himself during the ticket inspection. Problem was that I didn't have any alibi for that time as it was when I still visited the university and the university can hardly prove when someone is or isn't in the class, especially that way back. The events weren't in my favor so while waiting outside the courtroom I have used the jin kuji-in (described in the book I had as: for telepathy and the universe manipulation) to manipulate the court decision in my favor. Luckily I won that case and didn't have to pay any penalty or the court bill (in my country the defeated side pays for the court). But what is interesting I had this emergency "magical thinking" I would fall into if required to manipulate things I normally couldn't, and this was before I started being officially interested in the occult practice.

Few observations
I didn't only have weird experiences as a child. It seems that the universe didn't miss any opportunity to send some interesting pieces of information my way. Thinking back it doesn't look like it was my free choice to start with the occult, it more seems like I was meant to and the occult was dragging me in quite strongly. The question is why. Was I born with this kind of a plan for me or did it develop because of my early meditation practice? Like if you open the door will you then always be attracted to the light behind it?