Reguli

This is a video I shot earlier this year. I've been waiting for permission from the OTO Grand Lodge to publish it. They asked that it be put up somewhere private on the web for inspection; I hope this blog is private enough! It seems like more of a place for me to put down my thoughts that one where groups of people gather together regularly, so here goes!

Spirit Vessel

I took a while to decide whether to post this. My first thought was that Lilith might not like me putting this personal image of her on the net for all to see, (and I really don't want to make her angry). The second thought was that this might be exactly what she does want! Wouldn't you want your followers to spread the word? It seems like this is how religions are supposed to spread. If Liber Lilith really was an inspired grimoire, it makes sense that this is what she would want.

The final thing that decided the matter is, I've decided to take a break from my intensive work with her. Everything else is falling behind. and I may be focussing too much on this at my current level of development. I don't want to end up like the unlucky Karl Steiger in the book! I need to carry on developing my personal power in order to be able to handle contact with such a primal force. So as a last sign of devotion, I'm presenting the Spirit Vessel in the stages of its development.

This is my first attempt at sculpture. The figure is half a cubit tall, (about 9 inches), and contains a hollow chamber with the true image of Lilith drawn in her special ink in it's abdomen. Here's the first stage of the figure, in unfiinished clay.

Conjunction Conversation

Made it to the top of Beachwood Canyon Rd to see the conjunction, not without a few complaints from the herniated disc that's been bugging me for the last few months. It was worth the pain.

While I was up there I had a conversation with Lilith, wondering if She was annoyed at me posting Our work on this blog. Told Her I thought that was what disciples were supposed to do; spread the word so others would follow. She seemed to understand.

This post is sort of a trial. Before I go putting up pictures of the Spirit Vessel I've been working on, I'll wait to see what Her reaction is to this. If things go well, I should be putting up some interesting info in the not too distant future.

Monday night conjunction

It's been a while since I've gone out to do any work in the desert due to a herniated disc, but it looks like I'm going to have to break that curse on Monday. There's going to be a conjunction of the Moon, (at 15%), Venus and Jupiter - Lilith and both her aspects. It sounds like it'll be well worth a little pain to take advantage of that!

Lilith Spirit Vessel

And so to the next stage of the grimoire of Liber Lilith - the spirit vessel.

This one's really going to test my artistic talents, and even the first step's proving to be a challenge! The Spirit Vessel is a clay figure model of Lilith with a hollow center. Into the center, the 'True Image of Lilith' must be inserted, drawn in 'special' ink on Papyrus. Luckily(?), I happen to live two blocks from the only shop in L.A. that sells blank sheets of Papyrus. They got them in only two weeks ago from Egypt as a special order for a local artist. I spent an evening drawing a re-drawing the design from Tyson's book. It's the first time I've tried drawing with a calligraphy pen, (really just a nib on a stick dipped in ink), so three or four early attempts were lost to blotches and smears. When I finally figured out how to keep a line going, it took another three or four attempts to get something even remotely resembling the design. Anyway, this is where I ended up. It's about three inches square. Hopefully She won't hold the artistry against me!

This weekend, it's on to the real challenge - my first attempt at figure sculpting...

Invisible Worlds

A thing happened at work today that made me think.

I'm pretty lucky in that sometimes my job involves hanging around on film sets with some interesting people for six or eight weeks at the start of a project that I'll end up working on for one or two years. It's my job to add the visual effects after the main shoot ends. Right now I'm working with one of the Directors people think of as a visionary, and perhaps one of the most creative minds in the business. You've all seen his films. I can't say who he is, but they're usually fairly unusual, fairly dark pictures.

Anyway, for this project we've put together some relatively new technology that tracks what the film camera is doing and can add a computer generated environment and characters in real-time. Usually you don't get to see this until long after the shoot, and by then its too late to change anything, (it helps if you know where the castle's supposed to be behind the actor who's out there standing in an empty stage in front of a green screen). It's pretty cool. The weird thing is, he doesn't want to look at it.

He sits in front of two flat-screen monitors, one with the empty green background and the other with an entire virtual world. He only ever looks at the green one. He says he finds the rest 'too distracting'. The trouble is, if he only looked, he might decide to put the camera in a whole different place so you could actually see that castle... he might get the real actor to look at where the computer generated characters are instead of somewhere too high/low/back/forward of them.... hey, he might even shoot a shot wide enough to see them in the first place!

So here's the philosophical part. This virtual world we're making isn't real, but does it affect this Director's movie? You bet! If he took notice of it, would it change some of his decisions? Absolutely! It could make his movie better, cheaper and more believable, but to him it just isn't REAL.

But it's there.

I think the same thing goes for 99 percent of us. We only see the world that's right in front of us. If we hear there might be something else, something more than that, its easier to dismiss it than to change our way of thinking to incorporate it; even if one day its going to bite us in the ass! Just like our Director, we only have a certain amount of time in a day so we tend to spend it on things that are familiar - our job, paying the bills, taking care of the kids. Beyond that, nothing much matters. Then one day we retire. The kids leave home. Our pension/401k is all the money we'll ever have. At that point, our life is effectively... over.

So let the Director carry on looking at his green monitor. At the very least, I'm going to walk away with the lesson that even though I spent another day at work - that's not all there is.

The Seal of Lilith

My first experience with engraving! Using a blank medal I created the seal as described by Tyson. It's not consecrated yet, so it should still be able to be 'gazed upon', plus this is just the first pass. I'm going to get it silver plated, and/or make another one out of pure silver. Yet another thing that's not perfectly by the instructions in the grimoire on the first pass.

I also ordered all the materials to make the Spirit Vessel - a 9" figurine of Lilith. This is going to be a challenge too, as I've never sculpted anything before!

Yesterday, I spoke the Prayer of Lilith on my way to buy some light globes for my lamp and while I waited in line at the checkout there was a crack of lightning so loud everyone in the store thought that something outside had exploded! All that night, the animals in our household behaved like they were spooked by something. SHE is coming...

Runes

On a side note to the Lilith work, I finished a set of Runes as part of the Dragon Rouge curriculum. The process was to spend a night in the wilderness under a tree in a Swedish ritual called 'Utesitta'. I went to the place in Griffith Park that I've used for a lot of ritual practice. It's got a great feeling to it, as well as an amazing view! I spent the night under an oak tree and in the morning, following the teachings of Castenada, asked it for permission to cut off a branch with my dagger.

All it took was some sawing and sanding to produce these. There's a a 24 rune set symbolizing the 24 paths between the spheres of the Qliphoth, and another seven Adul or Noble runes.

There's a lot more work to do still. The process of Rune creation is to Carve them, to learn to Read them, to Color them red, and then to test, to ask, to offer, to send and to sacrifice. More on this, (I hope!), to come.

The Circle of 11 Serpents

This is a different kind of magic circle. The right way up, it's designed to attract Lilith. Reverse it and the Hebrew forms a protective circle to keep Lilith out. The text is Isaiah 27:1 - "In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish Leviathan, the piercing serpent; even Leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea".

I finished the circle on Wednesday from a second shorn sheepskin and, after a little experimentation, figured out how to tie the strips to make the closed circle. I threw together a ceremony to invoke Lilith and ask her blessing on these two implements. Just a simple purification, consecration and banishing, followed by the invocation then a ritual of purifying them with water bought on the day and the hour of Jupiter.

So far, I haven't had a lot of success with the invocation. Could be because I'm dead-tired after 12 hour days at work. Could also be because I've had to take some shortcuts, (like purchasing the sheepskin rather than obtaining it directly from its owner!). If I did everything Tyson describes in the grimoire, it would be several months before I could start the work. This way, I'm figuring that I can at least get the process going, and go back to do the steps more thoroughly later on, (all the time hoping this isn't a recipe for disaster!)

Nights with Lilith

I've officially started my work with Donald Tyson's Liber Lilith!

I started invoking Her a few months ago as part of the Qliphotic explorations in the Dragon Rouge curriculum with limited success. Limited but enough to get me hooked. Since then I've been reading everything I can on Lilith mythology, from early Kabbalistic texts to Mr. Tyson's 'received grimoire'. I was very suspicious of this book for a long time, but when I finally read it, it was Lilith all right. The Lilith I've come to know. In fact this is the ONLY book that came close to my understanding of the Mother of Demons.

There's a LOT of preparation to follow Tyson's system. I'm not looking to follow it EXACTLY, more to combine it with the Dragon Rouge system to meet Lilith as an equal, to gain illumination, and to explore her shell world in the Qliphoth. Even so, I decided to follow the steps he lays out in order to gain 'Knowldge and Conversation'. The first of these is the creation of a Pentacle of Lilith and the 'Circle of 11 Snakes', both on parchment created from sheepskin, (sans wool). The Pentacle has taken over a week, (see the pic above!), and I'm about to start on the Circle. After that, there's a Seal, a sculpture, a house... and even a diet!

This could take a while!

"No, I don't want to read your Blog!"

I saw this on a t-shirt the other day, so I thought, 'hey, I should start a new blog!" The old one at Live Journal didn't work out too well. All the super-serious seekers of hidden truth post on there are embedded links to YouTube. I learned a few valuable things from it though, like why you shouldn't post the name of the company you work for right after pictures of the magic circle in your library, and how you end up spending all your time responding to other people's youTube links, otherwise they stop reading yours.

This blog came about because I started reading 'Head for the Red' on here. That guy knows magic. He DOES magic. His comments were a big help to a new kid on the block; much more than hours of searching Yahoo Groups' endless argument threads. Well, the kids got some stories of his own now! Not tonight, but soon I'll start posting a few tidbits. Let's see how this flies! Thanks Red!