Run Viral

There will come a time in the future where the release of the Testament of Cyprian the Mage will be seen as a seminal point for western occult philosophy.  The final installment in Jake Stratton-Kent’s Encyclopedia Goetica, wherein a meaningful alternative to the masonic crosses the current rash of western occultists have crucified themselves on is revealed.  I say, ‘in the future’ because masonic initiation is as addictive as heroine and I say, ‘rash’ because it suggests a bunch of similarly aligned or focused practitioners as well as a distracting and ugly eruption upon the flesh of a thing.

With the Testament as his cypher Jake delves as far as our contemporary grasp of far history will allow, to trace the roots of the grimoire tradition, a tradition which is slowly taking a position of primacy in western occulture.  With Cyprian as his tour guide Jake visits each of the great centers of knowledge in the ancient world and like his guide discovers facets of the Arte which have been mastered there.  It is a powerful and thought-provoking journey which comes to highlight stellar lore and ancient healing paradigms as the root of what is now known as goetic magic.

It persuasively sheds the contemporary dualism's of grimoire work (good/bad, holy/evil) in favor of an ambiguous eschatology rooted in ancient correspondences between our planet and the life it sustains and the greater universe.  No small feat and one which calls into question a great deal of our current methodology and mythology regarding the daemon of the grimoires.

Though it is the conclusion of the Goetica series, it is more properly a point of departure.  It is the moment where your hand is let go.  Every historical revelation raises a myriad questions best negotiated by the individuals sympathy to the work.  I think that most veteran practitioners with a grounding in Goetia, Hellenistic Greek thought or plant-lore will have at least one ah ha moment and that those newer to the exploration have a profound leaping off point.  It will certainly have me returning to some of my earlier explorations with the daemon of the old books, in particular the old Goddess figures which didn’t fare so well in their Pauline interpretations.  So much good stuff. 

In a way that seems strangely fitting, this is my first purchase of a digital copy from the Scarlets. Though I intend to add a physical copy of the book to my collection I have been in a state of perpetual transit since last winter and it simply doesn't seem as though that is going to change in the near future.  So many strange syncronicities had arose that finally I simply broke down and got the ePub version.  Somehow even that liminal state of transit-induced limbo was fitting to the work.  It is a book whose value is found in between things, between nations, between the lines, between religious certainties, an exaltation of the liminal state.  I cannot simply consecrate it as a book in my usual manner because it is not a book in both the literal, physical sense as well as the more esoteric, it is a mythic cypher.

Fittingly, though I shall read and reread it, I shall never dirty it's pages.  Though I will carry it with me in all my travels, I shall never mar its cover.  It feels correct to me, untethered from the physical privilege of hard copy Cyprian is free to run viral through all my triumphs and evil deeds.

The L.A. Diaries, pt. I

[The LA Diaries are excerpts from the working journal I kept while living and working in Los Angeles a few years ago. The entries are raw, often unintelligible, with literally no regard for convention (neither literary or social) or mass appeal. I have decided to publish parts of this journal without regard for grammar or presentation for regular readers of this blog seeking a window into the destinationless spiritual wanderings of a practicing karcist.]

[Written after undertaking the consecration of a solid gold demonic seal of Baal. A demon-king of some renown featured in both the Old Testament and most of the old Grimoires with which I had little experience previous to the contracted work. While I realize some aspects of this text may seem disturbing it is a true relation of my experience of the spirit.]

Baal is the unformed stuff of magic. The black empty spirit of the witches’ Sabbath. Strong stuff, goes straight to the head. The arbitrary meting out of karma is what keeps it fair. Sometimes it’s the Internet going out, sometimes it’s falling off a roof. If it was all so transparent that you could anticipate its execution it would sort of invalidate the whole thing, wouldn’t it. To Baal we are just a bunch of hungry ghosts that got a body. For the most part I am inclined to agree …but what a body.

Baal is the naked mechanic of the magical exchange. A process which seems darkly joyous in its ambivalence toward human suffering. We embrace it as sorcerers or we are haunted by it, as we are haunted by so many of our revelations. He is there in that process too. Here among the fires of creation he is everywhere. Ellison’s Paingod. Stirring the pot of karma, Baal is some long dead God-king whose ghost outlasted his gods. They took a great deal of care preserving the old god-kings in death back in the day, they were total pros. Shax got his talon's on the gall bladders of some of those old Egyptian geezers back when they raided their tombs like they were 7-Elevens but I digress.

In his purest form he illustrates the manner in which you unknowingly generate conflict with your actions. The subtle undertone of ‘you’ beneath everything that you do, the very basic expression of your being. He is that pure hunger in the roots of desire. Baal is not headless, he is just deaf, blind and dumb. There is a difference.  You got to seal a body up to preserve it in death, you got to cover those holes, man. All the death will run out everywhere. He is still out there beneath the earth somewhere waiting for the world to end. The god-mans hunger turned all up on itself and gone M. C. Escher on your ass. 

On some level the sorcerer must concede that if he can manipulate the process, then the process is not sacred. Or conversely, that the actions of the sorcerer profane the process. Baal reveals sudden death by bus is an available karmic outcome to nearly every problem because you deserve it. Your human birth anchored you to death through the vehicle of karma. Baal reveals that all the sorcerer does is stir the pot.  That none of it actually matters to God, that suffering is a human concept which has never occurred in the mind of the Great Almighty. You can live your dreams or die a crack addled failure, Baal doesn’t care. He knows you started an ignorant moron, you can hardly be blamed for ending up one. The path was so clear.

When one man is raised above others, Baal is there. When a 3 year old chokes to death on it's blanket, Baal is there. In both cases, he couldn’t give a rat’s ass. Baal is always fair, it’s you that is being unreasonable, reading meaning into shit where there is none. Baal is there from the beginning to the end, for the lot of us.  He is the secret truth of our human body and its animation, the inexpressible dark hunger. It’s killing us. We hunger for suffering. 

That’s Baal, our collective hunger for suffering and death. Karma is a bitch. They say we fed him babies once. It’s possible I guess, at the most basic level that’s what we do, feed babies to karma.

That’s what Baal’s arrival meant for me. It’s all fucking arbitrary. If anyone is crazy enough to hire a witch-doctor then the path is laid, paved and lit with the corpses of dead Christians like the streets of old Roma.  Morality has no place in the mojo. Morality is meaningless, it’s the sorcerers sacrificial lamb. If Christ died on the cross for me then I killed him, I murdered God. It wasn’t hard, he was asking for it. Like the rest of us, his human birth made it karma. Nothing unfair about it, when he raised his eyes to heaven and asked why he had been forsaken he got the same answer we all do ..none. If that’s true for Old Glory himself then it is most assuredly the end to which you are destined. Baal don’t care, so why should I?

I won’t be haunted by it. Baal’s old ghost is just too ugly and self-important. There is no such thing as ‘bad karma’. There is only karma. I say, fuck that bitch. Baal can suffer with the rest of us, it’s what he gets for keeping his spleen in a jar. Baal may have been the dark sun once but now he is a pair of old shoes. Angry, malevolent old shoes. I’ll keep them handy for when I have to paint or traipse through the mud or some shit and old Baal will be grateful for it. The sister fucking, murderous tyrant loves the dirt, lives for it. Even now, all but forgotten Baal plays in the shit and loves it. It’s why the Egyptians saw him as a demon-pig. Dirty corpse-eating fucker can’t get enough of our morals. 

Them’s good eating.

Kittens

There is a new cat in the house. A black and grey tortoise-shell. Still counting age in months although I have no idea how many, she just showed up here. Climbed through the window and made herself at home. Cats are everywhere, the cliche of venus in leo made universal truth. Whats left for a mars ruled dude to do when his planet hits cancer? Watch a kitten act like an idiot.

A tortoise-shell showed up once before, far enough back that I didn't know the astrology of the times. Deep in my saturn return. In some ways its a fearful omen. It means that somehow I am again deep into it. I remember the last time vividly and it is recorded in the gnostic piece 'Six Days in Sodom' which describes my confrontation with the devil of a 14th century heretical exorcism (CLM 849). Good stuff that was the product of some evil times in my life.

Its when the shit is hitting the fan that people seek out the services of the bokors. So a bokor has to be able to work while the shit is hitting the fan. Sometimes that means getting deep into it. That's why there are so many grimoires. Necessity. This round I see a daemon of the grimoire traditions, a duke named Gramary (Gremory, Gamori), everywhere I look. Whats more she courts my attention and I find it impossible to find fault with her. I mentioned this last night to V and she said, "ya, her name means glamour. In the Feri magic sense of the word. So you see whatever she wants you to see." That caused a pause in my consideration of this daemon which allowed me to finally conceive of the tremendous danger hidden in this spirit.

You absolutely must be able to penetrate her glamours in your continuous observation of the world beyond you. Seeing what you want to see leads to an unimaginative, limiting and impractical praxis. In its most destructive forms it is paranoia and delusion. With glamour you have to turn the dynamic around to really benefit from it. You want the world to see whatever they want in you. Real talent in glamours is pretty rare, and it has a very steep learning curve as far as the old magics go. I have never gotten it exactly right. The contemporary daemon I have encountered that are masters of it are as I mentioned earlier, tremendously dangerous. I speak from experience here. When the orange and black tortoise-shell came those years ago, the great devil within the exorcism was Satanachia. In the old hierarchies, the Grand Duchess and a Lieutenent to Lucifer. She too could make me see whatever she wanted me to see. I remain to this day deeply frightened of Satanachia, my grand mal. Always take saturn seriously, or it will fuck you up.

Saturns energy isn't traditionally equated to the duchies, but libra very much is and that's where saturn is headed. Out of virgo and into libra. So it goes like this. The Grand Mal(saturn)+Venus-rulership(libra)=Duchess of Hell, Gramary. Already a space has been created for her. Her sigil chalked out on the floor and marked with candles and offerings of cigarettes and perfumed oils. Already she has reunited lost lovers, and seduced men and women into acts of daring romance. Thus far she has asked nothing of me. No fetish or ritual or sacrifice. Nothing.

But there is a tortoise-shell kitten.