Most of my magic recently has been simple thank yous to the spirits, specifically Jupiter. I’ve been having a really good run recently on money and this gives us the opportunity to pay off some remaining student loans, which means more monthly money for the kids. This is super important because I want to start the kids on preschool both to socialize them and get them learning.
Got talking to fireborn, he typically gives me enough to get me started but never enough to pull off the ritual without riffing. Two interesting ideas came out of the conversation, one being that planetary time might not matter for the “gatekeeper to the zodiac” and the question “Which came first: Math or Nature?”
I set my wooden wheel of signs and sepheriot to the proper sign for neptune (chokmah) and lacking a grey cloth, I threw a grey tee shirt over the altar. It wasn’t the best, but the remaining covering was yellow (the sun) and since I believe all things are in the sun, it’s acceptable.
Opened by KC, LIRP, LIRH, KC.
Now there is no invocation in the Denning and Philips book for Chokmah, so I took the Saturn one and retooled the knocks and a lot of the text off the cuff. What I couldn’t come up with substitutions for immediately would work since the day was Saturday, and the sun cloth was on the altar, along with the wheel and correct colors.
Spirit vision came on quickly. The spirit really wanted to talk and I found my head getting into the mode before I even did the rituals. Normally this would be a warning sign from the Goetia but I was less concerned working with planetary spirits. A spirit quickly came to me as I was changing Zitriel, and was wearing colors like Gabriel but inverse. Dark blue skin, yellow eyes, and a grey cloak.
Zitreil? Yes.
“I am the angel of the zodiac, I am the angel who guards eden. I shall show you.” The angle turns around and shows me it’s back. Growing out of it’s back is a miniature garden. As I look closer, I realize there’s giant trees, animals, birds, an entire world growing out of his back. It looks, uh, painful. Turtles, all the way down as a joke came to mind.
Do you have a sign? A figure, just a line, completely angular, sort of emulating the LV but 90 degrees off. Points at each tip, three of them. It burns gold on a black background.
Take me to the garden!
We’re in the garden, but it’s weird. It’s yellow, its sickly looking, I’m getting less of an impression of things alive and more like things are papery. Or there’s not enough sun here. The plants are sort of meh, overall I’m starting to wonder if this is the garden post fall. However this doesn’t really mean the garden of eden was corrupted, it wasn’t. I also know the garden is/was in Saturn…
“Oh, the garden, see how else it is. For those who (concept – “drink of the cup of death”) shall stray far from (concept – “the path of”) righteousness! See!” The garden gives way to a city. It looks like New York after the towers fell. High winds, dust, ruin everywhere. The vision is wild, but the vision is also starting to make me realize it’s off somehow…
I have this thought and I hear distinctly: “RAZIEL.”
Uh oh. I called up something else… I quickly vibrated the name and I was about to make a pentagram when an angel dressed in red with long black braided hair, looking extremely native American, lands behind the first angel and runs it through with his flaming sword. The first angel melts into the cloak, then turns into a black gooish stuff which dissolves into the floor of nothingness.
This time, because I’m not going to get fooled twice, I tested by LVX signs. The Angel tested well, which is good because yours truly did not test by signs the first time (hopefully you noticed) and god knows where the heck I was or what I was talking to. I actually tested Raziel twice because I was so jarred by it. In true Ben Rowe fashion, the more LVX signs the better. I had also lost visualization of the pentagrams, hexagrams, archangels, and crosses. I took the time to set it all back up. Normally when I leave my “landing zone” in the astral that stuff sort of fades out anyway, but better safe than sorry. The first spirit was sort of fast-moving and wanted to run the vision, Raziel was like drinking from a firehose.
A firehose which isn’t trying to lure you into a ruined city growing out of it’s back.
Firstly, the Angel shows me that the garden lives way up high. The purest form of the garden is the zodiac. As we’ve been moving along, we get further and further from our spiritual selves, so we consequently get further and further from the Garden. It’s not that we were thrown out per se, it’s that (I’m going to have to ask again because I think I misunderstand) the apple analogy moves us from the realm of the spiritual to the realm of the physical and because we exist on a plane so low in the flesh. Then (something) Eve is become flesh and tempts Adam (lust?) to live in the flesh. This all came to be at once, so putting it on paper is lacking. But, when we operate magic, we elevate ourselves into the realm of the spiritual and therefore all magic is beyond morality and it serves to elevate us spiritually. This has profound implications for someone like me who routinely throw nontheurgic acts under the bus while at the same time trying to tease out my rail pass using spells.
Which came first? Math or nature? “The math came first. In the beginning was the word. It doesn’t have to be words.” (A vision of an eagle, not really sure what that’s about).
Can you show me the garden? Instead of going to Saturn like I expected, instead I’m shown a giant clock. The clock has many hands, one for each planet. Each hand is actually a beam of energy, which paradoxically connects through the center to the sun, which is also represented on the clock. I then saw another wooden wheel, and each planet was a precious stone. I might be instructed to make a device.
Teach me some magic? I see the spirit, and he has an apple. He cuts the apple in half. The apple is prayed over, it’s on a silver dish. The dish may have had a pentagram on it, I could tell it had some design but I couldn’t see clearly enough to make it out. The top half of the apple seems to become glossy, but the bottom half of the apple turns to ash. The ash is discarded, but the Angel eats the top half and glows more.
The message is that magic can be an everyday thing, and it is magic that our food nourishes us. Also, keep kosher apples – only eat the “shirt half”. When we pray over our food, it’s the eucharist.
Now again, the Angel draws back the curtain (sometimes I get “Acts of a Play” format visions). The angel is unhappy at something or has some problem (red spiky energy is normally how I see this). He takes the apple, and as he enumerates his problems he is shoving toothpicks into the apple. Each toothpick represents some problem. As he does so, each toothpick he takes off his red spiky self makes him smooth and whole, but the apple seethes with energy under the skin. He takes this apple, after telling it all his ailments, and he buries it in the ground. The vision dims.
Tell me about the garden? “Each Angel is assigned a watch (vis: tower) and we are provided authority there. But as each angel lives, so does each office live. As each office is destroyed in the endtimes, each angel itself returns to the source.” A vision of the woman on the beast. Each angel comes up to her, and is slain, and returns to god as some finer thing, but the earth and solar system is ruined as this happens. Trees burn, the Earth is blackened. Finally I see Raziel himself ground up into dust, and the physical universe contracts into a point of incredible light. I get the impression God must decide if he is to remake it (another big bang) or let the whole thing go. But as this universe is crushed down to an impossibly small and finite point, the zodiac is filled with golden (vis: magic) light. Me and Raziel stand and watch it fill with golden thread. Again, the vision dims before I can ask more questions.
It was getting on past an hour now and I was feeling sort of drained, so I thanked the spirit for it’s time, and let the candle burn upstairs.