Moloch entirely made me before I even wrote a word about this, I try not to talk about magic “in flight” because I think dwelling on the thing robs it of the purity of it’s intent. If you wouldn’t want to be micromanaged at work, don’t micromanage the spirits beyond the ritual unless it requires a huge course correction.
I need a car. When I say “need” I don’t mean “it would be nice to have”, I mean the 1992 Toyota Camry is now only passing inspection because my mechanic takes pity on me and refuses to shift into OD or start when it’s wet out. I’m a pretty handy guy – but when I say “I’m stumped” and my mechanic says “do you really want to pay me to track this down”… yeah. It has as a conservative estimate about 270,000 miles on it.
Just to put that number in perspective, in the 13 years this car has been on this earth, it didn’t have to be on this earth! It could have driven to the moon, and had another 30,000 miles on the moon to screw around with and do moon stuff. Pretty incredible.
Per the usual problem of “what magic do we use to solve large systems”, I was really torn between the Goetia, who are good at managing the physical plane, and the Enochian magic, which works really well to line up large systems. Since a car dealership is a large system, most of which requires the car pass through several bits of administration before landing in my lap, I opted for the Enochian solution.
I had made that decision right in time for the thread on FB asking “Why not Enochian?” Sometimes I feel like magic works in ridiculously subtle ways. This was one of those times. Sure I happen to be friends on Facebook with Moloch so he can see my wall and my ranting about the car, but he’s not in my head in any meaningful way. We don’t chat back and forth. He’s got a fairly low opinion of the OTA (but like most magicians he has a low opinion of everyone who isn’t himself) so we really don’t talk shop. He’s also very much in the quick-and-dirty-whatever-works camp and while I can respect that, he’s going to see a system like enochian as being largely restrictive. This eventually bore out in the course of the conversation, but it also prompted me to throw together this post instead of keeping a private journal. Anyway. Part of the prodding at me was simply because I have spent so much time fretting over the temple kit that I had really gotten into armchair mode and lost the plot for anything more than the daily devotion to Astarte as part of the OTA curriculum. The spirits say, “You want a horse? GET BACK ON THE HORSE.” Cute.
Checking the Enochian Quick Reference Chart gives us a few tantalizing names:
The Names of the Sixteen Good Angels Skilled and Potent In Mechanical Arts
TNBR and companions |
NBRT, BRTN, and RTNB |
earth of AIR |
MAGL and companions |
AGLM, GLMA, and LMAG |
earth of WATER |
OCNC and companions |
CNCO, NCOC, and COCN |
earth of EARTH |
PSAC and companions |
SACP, ACPS, and CPSA |
earth of FIRE |
Since I don’t want to manufacture a car, I am really just looking for a car which is maximally functional to me, the angels who govern the composition and mixing of metals weren’t attractive. Also why not use the Angels of Transportation? Because they move things around. I don’t want a car literally dropped on my front lawn. After a bit of waffling, I decided that I would accept a car in good mechanical condition regardless of brand and appearance. The conditions for success would be:
- Has to carry the kids. Can’t be a truck without a back seat. Jump seats are a no-no.
- Has to be a truck, because I sometimes carry bulky/heavy items (LIKE THE HENGE) and I’m really tired of hanging those out of the back of the van.
- Has to be in reasonable mechanical condition.
- Should be four wheel drive. The van has gotten stuck every bad winter and the camry was a total joke and inspired me to walk home a few times last winter. While I don’t much mind it, we live out towards the sticks.
I only later realized that the four qualifications of “good” lined up nicely with the four angels. It wasn’t intentional.
Here is one of the sticky wickets of Enochian philosophy and theology when it comes to the practical application of it – you will notice I did not pick a specific sub-element to work with. Reason being that I’ve started to play with the idea that the four enochian elements are actually the four worlds. Stealing a page from QBL, that gives us something like:
- ATZILUTH – or the Archetypical World – is OIP TEAA PDOCE. “He whose name is unchanged from what it was”. This is Fire. I picked it because the call seems to describe a final, unchanging being.
- BRIAH – the Creative World – is ORO IBAH AOZPI. “He who cries aloud in the place of desolation”. This is Air. I picked it because the “place of desolation” would have required an acknowledgement that there was a place which did not have God in it, therefor it could create a new God…
- YETZIRAH – the Formative World – is MPH ARSL GAIOL. “He who is the 1st true creator, the horned one”. This is Water. This is the demiurge.
- ASSIAH – the Material World – is MOR DIAL HCTGA. “He who burns up iniquity without equal”. This is Earth. These are the Gods of antiquity, or the accusing Gods.
If you said this reads a lot like Plato’s Celestial Hierarchy, you would have a good eye. There’s more Plato in Dee than I previously thought and I’ve been poking around there. That particular current from The Republic may also be responsible for the wife swapping incident.
I’m still a little bit uncomfortable with the assignments, but I feel the language and names are the most important part of the system. If you’ve poked around in the Five Books of Mystery, the use of the language becomes a bit clearer. Most importantly, the system is fundamentally gnostic. We cannot know God. Dee goes to great lengths in the monad to make a body of God, but ultimately, he is describing God in the context of Earthly things. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Dee can only relate to God in a symbolic way which honestly sometimes feels short of the symbols he put to the task. If the system is Gnostic and we cannot know God, than the Place of Desolation is the place God occupies, because how can anything but God occupy the place that God does? This is an argument which would be recognized in Classical Philosophy. On the other hand if we hold that the Monas is actually God and that Dee apprehended the idea, then I would flip the names. It is my personal opinion that The Horned God is a very sexual image, and instead of the reconciliation or the Hermaphroditic union, we’re being handed a God who is only half the puzzle. This would also jive with the Hermetic current, so I feel there’s a strong argument for organizing the work this way. The first true creator, of the earthly realm, is human. God set the stage, if we want to go all biblical with it we can say that God created the world, placed the garden in it, then he made people and people gave the animals names, tilled the earth, and really took things over from there. God steps out. I kept the elemental associations with the names so as not to break other bits of the systems.
“He who’s name is unchanged from what it was” is pretty easy to suss out, anyone can look at a catalog of cars and identify that they are all in fact cars. Maybe the Chicken Qabalah is worth a review here. Also Crowley enters here with arguments about princes and kings if you happen to follow the Thoth tarot. Having worked through this in blog format, I’m leaving the associations how they are.
“He who burns up iniquity without equal”. There’s a lot of really nice imagery in here, but I chose to really go with the idea that the Earth is iniquity by most religions standards. The moment something is created, time itself conspires through the forces of entropy to destroy it. I’m not even talking about manmade things like houses and cities, the sun is literally running out of energy right now as you read this. Big thoughts, but it’s not going away tomorrow, so we’re good.
Given the fact that I need something for material ends, something which is made, and something which is suffering from entropy in the form of mileage and care, the Holy Name I chose to work with was “MOR DIAL HCTGA” (Earth). Going back to the previous chart here, all of the mechanical arts are in the Earth tablet, so really it feels like Earth of Earth (“OCNC”) is the correct thing to be working on. I’m a little surprised too, but thems the ropes. That gives us the top-and-bottom, so we can fill in the rest for the sake of working with the Essential Enochian Grimoire.
Tablet of Union: NANTA (Spirit of Earth)
Secret Holy Name: MOR DIAL HCTGA (Earth)
The Great Kings: ICZHIHAL – “He who Solidifies the Past” (Earth – neat, huh?)
Seniors: LZINOPO – “He who is first in the Deep Waters” (Earth – Moon)
Calvary Cross Angels: ABALPT and ARBIZ – “He who stoops down” (over the engine of your Camry) and “He who’s voice protects”. (Earth of Earth).
Archangels and Kerubim: POCNC – OCNC, CNCO, NCOC, COCN
We’re going to ignore the daemons for the moment. Why Earth-Moon? There’s no Earth-Earth and I’ve always felt like Jupiter is more for the continued operation of business and the affairs it entails, while the moon is really governing purely material manifestation, since material stuff is only temporary.
OK so I wrote all that about five days ago, got into the argument about neoplatonism, avoided getting baited by Mo and I had planned on actually conducting the ritual today (Sunday – Day of Sol, Hour of Sol) so that King Carmara, who is the “wildcard” in Enochian, could be overseeing the operation. Experience says planning a magical operation causes all hell to break loose if anyone knows you’re planning it, so I kept it real deep under my hat. Still, the camry managed to develop a miss when it was first started, which really sucked in the single-digit temps we’d been having over the first week since I couldn’t drive it until it warmed up. Also started making nasty valve noises. I was getting nervous. After triaging the miss by putting in fresh spark plugs, and adding thinner oil, it was happy enough I felt confident to go car shopping.
A philosophical point – working with the Angelic Language causes stuff to happen. There’s a whole lot of Enochian corpus which is simply “make this book” or “make this chart” and the Angels were trying to deliver it piecemeal because delivering it whole-cloth works the magic. The magic isn’t the ritual, the magic in Enochian is the language. Or the work of producing that product, but the work will involve the language. See what they did there?
If you’re playing to the timeline here, you’ll notice I’m going car shopping before I do the ritual. I have never actually purchased a car from a dealership or traded them in. I much preferred to find that car with 100k miles on it some guy can’t move because he doesn’t have receipts and throw $1k at it. If I get a year out of it, still cheaper than a lease. I would donate the old cars to charity when they blew up and let them keep the scrap money. Mostly this move was inspired to find out the pricepoints on things (I was planning on asking for specific things during the ritual I felt would show up in the price range) and to figure out which dealerships had good stuff. Also the larger car dealerships are over an hour from me since I live in the sticks. I looked at a few cars while I was out and about and found a Mitsubishi Raider I really liked. I did everything but sign the paper for that listing, since I wanted to go home and try to get a loan.
At this point the ritual planned above was off the books and I was going to change it to a “thank you” ritual after signing.
Next day the guy calls me. “Hey Phergoph, I can’t sell you that car.”
“Why?”
“Look, our guys just took a look at it, and it’s really leaking oil out the rear diff”.
“If you guys want to replace the rear diff I’m interested. If you think it’ll work if I do the seals myself I’ll still buy it. A seal kit is only $120” (and literally two days of trying to bang the stupid orbital gears out, having done this before).
“No, this is going to seriously explode in 15k miles, I know you got kids, I will find something else.”
I hung up the phone in a bit of a fog since a salesman literally just gave up a commission for the sake of helping me. That’s a paycheck for that guy, that takes some real balls. Seriously if you’re car shopping, hit up that dealership and ask for Jon, he’s a really nice guy. He didn’t have to do that. Turns out there was a Honda Ridgeline coming into the lot on trade in, but after talking to Jon about that car also, the miles were just way too high. He agreed to keep looking and I thanked him for being really honest.
On Saturday, I happen to be doing very little except reviewing/revising the ritual waiting for the snow to melt and I happen across a listing (no photos) of a Dodge Ram 1500, with the mid-size engine. 81k miles, asking $9k USD. I called the dealership and it was still there. Turns out they couldn’t take pictures because… it was covered in snow. It had been traded in two weeks ago and they just decided to list it now because of the weather. OK fine I’ll come out. Miracle of miracles, the camry started without too much prodding, so I got the kids dressed and buckled them in.
Turns out this truck wasn’t just a Dodge Ram 1500, this was a Dodge Ram 1500, with the Infinity Sound System, with the towing package, with the quad cab, and it had nice tires and the bed cap. The paint was so-so, but they had all the service records. It was also the Laramie trim level so it had a super nice interior. Best bit? Class III towing suspension and hookups. However in the secret center console (under the middle seat) I found… a 7 pin to 3 pin adapter and a Mr Green Lawnmower Sparkplug. What were they towing? A trailer that needed a 3 pin connector (brake lights only) and lawn equipment on that. Someone ordered a top-shelf truck to pull around a lawnmower business. Philosophical question time: Why did the guys who obviously detailed this and put the paper flootmats in miss the sparkplug? The wiring adapter I can see as being “part of the vehicle” but the spark plug is an oily mess and an obvious miss.
Anyway, they offered me $500 for the Camry and we settled up. While I don’t want a car payment, having something which gets my kids around safely (Laramies have extra side impact airbags) and lets me haul around all my work stuff and still gets 20mpg on the highway (keep telling yourself that Phergoph)? That’s a win. Plus payments are under $200 a month, which is manageable and leaves enough in the budget for repairs and other crap.
Here, we have a real temptation, and one I haven’t quite worked out all the details for. If the language is the magic, then do we have to perform the ritual? I’m going to opt for “yes”, I personally feel there’s a trap here for the lazy (Dee) to go fishing or whatever instead of following up with the magic. It also really smacks of “fuck you I got mine”. On the other hand, there’s plenty of places in the Enochian system where the spirits themselves are defined by their labels, so when writing out the ritual nicely on the finest cardstock money can buy, you are literally conjuring up the spirits by the writing of their names. “I create as I speak” and the “breath of God” literally. If that is the case, then the ritual really happened a week ago when I drafted everything and we’re merely on the execution side. This sort of reverse-order thing doesn’t happen to me using the Solomonic system.
Rather than the original plan of petitioning the spirits, I merely called them up and thanked them for their efforts and asked them for their continued efforts in protecting the vehicles, which is always something I worry about anyway which is why 4WD was a requirement to begin with. (As I’m typing this, the internet is being spotty because of a solid inch of ice on everything and we jokingly said the truck was christened).
I suppose that’s how you summon a truck.
EDIT: The ontological argument is a really good listen – http://www.historyofphilosophy.net/anselm-ontological-argument