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Because I suck at wordpress, this post was accidentally published before it was fully baked. Oops.
This post is about divination and magical responsibility against philosophy. There is no morality for the magician. There is only philosophy and mindfulness. Actions are not inherently right or wrong but rather considered against their effects.
Yesterday, someone shored up to me who I sort of peripherally knew but couldn’t place the name. They expressed a desire to learn some ceremonial magic. Normally I just pitch people a reading list tailored to what I believe would be interesting to them and the onus is on them to read it and come back. This very quickly, and with little effort, separates the serious people from folks who just want to perform magic for some paltry end. Ceremonial magic is ceremonial magic because it very specifically requires proper philosophy and observation. This isn’t pick a color and light some candles, this requires an effort. If they can’t put forward the effort to read a book, I doubt they will have the required will to maintain some guard over what enters their minds and bodies. The book is easy. The book is the easiest requirement of magic. The hardest requirement of magic is priming the pump of the subconscious with the appropriate philosophy and imagery. Maybe it’s easier for me since I have kids and no desire to watch Dora the Explorer for the millionth time but I wholly understand people who, given to solitary life, there is a temptation to fill their minds with fiction and pornography. Crowley I think had a novel solution to it – simply make yourself sick of fiction and pornography through indulgence and you’ve bored your devils to death. The trick is to then reflect on the experience instead of moving on to the next immediately.
Rambling aside, for whatever reason (perhaps the name I felt I should have known) I decided to start throwing around the runes. His psychic space is fairly ridiculous and is either incredibly disorganized or he has employed or attempted to employ magic to everything in his life. It was such a consistently close-knit pile when trying to divine for him that I started looking at which runes were not in play just so I could pick out a negative set. This technique is not in the rune guide, I actually haven’t ever seen a spread this busy before. It was like asking “Hello Runes, show me the universe!” and a complete jenga stack of face up runes lands from the bag. The reading was just that absurdly busy. I decided this wasn’t particularly worth chasing, so I started playing the name game to try to narrow down sets of interactions. The name game works by picking a symbol, rune, or card and assigning it a person based on their qualities. Not sure about what the person represents? Pick a card, any card, and stick with it. However that is very last-resort and it is much better to pick something based on known-qualities.
After cycling through a few names and trying to come up with spreads that matched or implied a connection, I happened across a name of a person and she overlapped the center of the tightly knit spread. More importantly, she was actually present in the spread and face-up, while all the other names had been face down or at the edges of the cloth. While it sounds like I’m playing with the Dice of Satan to the casual reader, the symbols matter as much as the position of the symbols, which gives a fairly high significance to individual throws.
And here is where I screwed up. I assumed because there was a connection indicated between these two people, that they were best buddies and friends forever! In fact, they pretty much don’t get along at all. But this was after I had made the assumption that they were interested in working together and friendly. From a hermetic perspective the spirits (or runes) were not deceptive. They did indicate there was a connection there. It was a failure on the part of the operator to not then say “tell me about this connection” and divine that the connection was overwhelmingly negative. This is a really interesting idea to roll around in our heads – if we want to see someone we focus on meeting with them and if we don’t want to see someone, we focus in avoiding them. However that doesn’t mean there’s any less force of will, it simply means the polarity of that force of will is banishing or attracting. This isn’t to say an attitude like “ignore them and they will go away” is appropriate to every situation, but if someone is concerned about things coming down the magical spiderweb, it would be best not to operate on the person but to redirect the forces they’ve expended if there is open hostility. That doesn’t nearly appear to be the case and explores a worst case scenario, but the important takeaway is that effort along the attraction polarity or the banishing polarity directed at someone creates a detectable disturbance in the force.
Additionally to all this divination, everyone but me happened to know they didn’t get along and since I have infrequent interaction with the covens, I didn’t know any of the history. A quick mention and I got the crash course and ten-cent tour from my wife.
What is his reason for leaning ceremonial magic? Immediately, like most people I would guess who take the plunge, he has a need. He has a “haunting” over his friend’s place (in quotes because I haven’t explored the situation) and he’s tried to solve it with ad hoc new age tools and has been unable to bring it to any resolution. Ceremonial magic as a formal discipline means that the operator can (and will be as in the case of last nights divination) be wrong because there is structure and rules and philosophy. There is observation, and there is intent, and it’s bad to confuse them as given in the example above. I gave him the ever popular License to Depart and we’ll see how it goes.
Ceremonial Magick Musings 
I think that is true , as in some cases every one thinks that a witch is all Good and never harms , I haft to laugh at this ideal , perhaps its because they, some of the practitopners think that magick is all good . but I say its a tit for tat , their is always nagative in the mix . this is part of the balancing system . you never did say what the runes told you ? or if they even helped to give guidance to your friend ? So I took the the bag in hand and and drew a symbol for you it is the symbol of Naudhiz and this tell you their may be a need to examine ones motives in regards to what one is involved in ? it tell us its time to separate the real TRUTH from that which is fiction Its a time when one must separate your desires [ which are very strong ] from that which is really needed ? this could be keeping ones feet on the ground for now, firmly planted for the time being . It is also the rune or symbol of shame , perhaps something that you have lived with a very long time ? its time to heal,[ throw the baby out, with the bath water one might say ]. You have the strength I since this in you , get over it , let it go and start a new , past hurt does no one good if we hang on it to , its a lesson in life’s journey , and perhaps even wiser for it . All of life renews its self, if we are willing to live in the present Life has some harsh realities but to carry them around does no one good. And if you are in debt , its time to pay these off , debt can be a terrible burden and can way heavy on us , so look at money as a tool . thanks for the read and do have a good week …..
Yeah that’s how I feel about people who do magic for money but then attach “let it harm none” to the conjuration. Harm is a weasel word, and unless they had the authority to print money in the first place, it has to come from someone or something. I generally roll my eyes when people get on about the topic. Regardie was onto something I don’t think even he understood about the role of psychology in magick, which is to first determine all the parts of the problem, then assign them spheres, then they can be worked over.
The omissions on the blog are intentional and twofold – The runes sometimes tip me off to things which aren’t all fit for print (usually there’s relationship commentary in there) and people sometimes are unhappy with the level of stuff which is printed on the blog as not everyone is out of the broom closet. Also a few months ago, some idiot stole a large portion of the blog for their podcast and didn’t credit me, which also means that he couldn’t give any context to what was published, which means people who might be recognized in the discussion would be in a position where that person was speculating about them. All this contributed to a dry spell in the middle of the class drafting where I was leaning heavily on divination to figure out what would speak to people and at the same time, it would not be appropriate to publish in detail what was kicked up. The blog is intentionally not a tabloid, when I discuss brass tacks stuff I usually write from my own perspective.