Let’s buck a trend.

Magicians, nowadays, are broke financially.

Not all of them, I’m sure. You’ve probably met plenty of higher-ups in MMS who have successful businesses and careers under way; in general, though, magicians tend to be pretty strapped for cash, as a rule.

I have theories about why this stereotype exists, and is fulfilled. By scraping so much of the energy around us out of our personal space, we can sever our relation to the natural abundance of the universe.

This, coupled with a societal prejudice against woo-woo, can detract from our ability to foster successful business relationships. (Notice how insular communities like fundamentalist churches are populated with successful businesspeople who always do business together, and you can see the disconnect I am describing.)

Magicians don’t patronize each other’s businesses like Christians do, because there’s not nearly as many of us, and so many of us are broke.

We like to trade.

Barter works well for us, because we rely on money from outsiders (non-Magicians) outside of our circle to pay our bills, so we CAN’T be insular.

However, I wonder if we can step out of the classification of ‘broke magicians’ and into the demographic of ‘successful people who happen to be magicians.’

Any thoughts on how to firmly make that shift?

Full Moon and the Kabbalistic Prayer

I’ve been waiting for this prayer.

You gave it to me once before, when you cleansed my house in Portland.

(I’ve got a note to ask you about my office – let’s chat about that sometime.)

While you and Karl were at work, I was given your spellbook, with the authority to copy only that one spell out into my grimoire. I used that prayer frequently, gaining access to deeper levels of spiritual immersion, by calling the names of every angel on the tree in turn.

It was my favorite.

But, I did not bring that spellbook with m when I moved to Costa Rica. I only brought a handful of books, out of my huge library (I kept about half of it in a storage unit, which is where the spellbook is now). See, books mold here, and without a room with air conditioning where you can keep your books, paper will mold in under a year. I’m already seeing it happen to my books here.

So I’ve been without this prayer for a while, and I’ve really been missing it.

Now, I’ve got it in digital form.

I’ve been sitting on it, not reading it since you sent it over a few days ago. I’ve made a commitment to perform the Middle Pillar every full moon, as a way of keeping the ritual in tune and increasing the strength of my aura.

I just now realized, I actually missed the whole ‘middle pillar’ part of the ritual tonight.

Going up through the sephirah and calling them by name, check.
The Pattern on the Trestleboard, got it.
The three circulations, oh yeah.
The Kabbalistic Prayer – knocked me into my first seizure in months.
But did I actually move Jakin and Boaz into the Middle Pillar?

Oh, I forgot…

I was pretty trancey, and I was looking forward to

jumping back into my favorite meditation/ritual/prayer of all time for the first time in more than half a year, and
using my new wand.

I didn’t consecrate it, but I realized, I have a wand. I carry it around all the time.

I was looking to the East, where the full moon dominated the sky, and I looked through a fence made of sprouting logs. The top of my mountain has a great elemental spot for ritual work; to the north is the mountain face, to the south is the majestic view, to the west is the creek behind the foliage of the jungle (and even a tower of water, a cistern that feeds the houses below) and to the east, I can see the city in the distance, obscured by two rows of twine that join parallel wands, branches of jungle trees that were cut down, and then regrow when one end is stuck in the ground.

Quintessential Air, over there.

And since that’s the element I am most comfortable with nowadays, I looked at my iPhone in terms of this element, when I had to transfer the digital version of the Kabbalistic Prayer out of the pages document you sent, and into the body of an email that I emailed to myself.

Atop the mountain, amidst my rituals, I took my wand out of my pocket, called down this prayer from the heavens, and it appeared within my wand. (It was even playing music to set the mood for my meditative space.)

This realization that my phone serves structurally as my Air Wand was very fulfilling for me. I’ve got a new appreciation for it, in an elemental sense.

Going through the Kabbalistic Prayer was majestic. At the end it felt as if a thunderbolt struck me from the sky, and I shook with the power for some minutes. Looking around at the moonlit landscape, still in a trance, I stomped the ground and exhaled, pushing the energy into my roots, to keep it from agitating me. It helped to ground me further, thanks to the grounding and root chakra work I have been concentrating on for the last week.

Now, I am simultaneously wiped and energized. I’m going to write on affirmations for a while (such is the task of being a writer, is sticking to your own self-imposed production deadlines) and then meditate before a long, restful sleep.

I really enjoy this apprenticeship. Thank you so much.

Re-grounding.

I’ve been working a lot on the root chakra.

(Did you see that? A link to existing content – a good WordPress deeplinking strategy. Try it out.)

This weekend I’ve been spending lots of time with earth energy, visualizing red in my root chakra, feeling roots growing into the earth, invoking the earth energy into me, and it’s been helping a lot. I’m really ungrounded as a rule – my business is very airy, I just left my home country, I don’t have a heritage or a clan to refer back to, I’m severed from my childhood; so I’m giving some extra special effort to my earth energy, and it’s been helping.

I’ve spent so much time within this womb, I have not been within the Netzach/Hod balance as a point of intention. Well, it could be said I am working on rebalancing myself, appropriate for this stage of the tree, so I’ll count it as a win.

I worked a bit with the four worlds meditation you sent over, but I think I’m missing some deeper esoteric interpretation. The 4 worlds has been eluding me for years now, I have become content with putting off full realization of it until the time is right. I’ve probably got some grand recognition in my destiny that involves that meditation, so I’ll wait until that happens.

There’s some pretty powerful days coming up, so I’d like to move into Tiphareth this week. I think during the full moon. This weekend was a study in beauty, with the ease of my family life, and the joy I feel with my children and my home, so it seems like a good time to make that transition into the next sphere. (I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while – for obvious reasons. It’s freakin heaven.)

So, I’m ready for the next step up, whenever you are.

Balancing it out.

I’ve got power in Hod. Its where my head (ha-ha) naturally goes when I am thinking. I am always in motion, like Mercury, seeing myself an extension of the activities I am in the midst of doing, and the places I am in the midst of going.

Even now, in the writer’s trance, I feel most at home, looking behind at the letters I have already typed, and ahead to the ideas I have yet to translate into words that are eaten up by my fingers clattering on the keyboard.

This motion is natural to me.

It doesn’t mean I need to fight it, in order to rectify any imbalance; I simply have to Know this about myself.

In order to achieve balance, I have to manually insert Netzach into my experience regularly.

I am finding this works best through periods of meditation.

I’m a digital ninja, fer crissakes. I took the twenty minutes necessary to find the right meditation apps for my iphone, complete with binaural beat frequencies. Now I have the tools to enter trance, and shut off the raging intellect for a few minutes, sporadically throughout the day.

Then when I return to the domains of Hod, I am balanced while I am there, and I have the powers of Netzach behind me to fulfill the manifestation,.

I can see the next step: incorporating an emotional state. Next I need to invite in an emotion and hold it for a period of time. (I’m guessing this is touching on Four Worlds Meditations, where I am already lacking in knowledge.) Do you have any exercises for me?

Reviewing Netzach

The receptivity is where I lack.

I like taking these two sephiroth in a pair; they interplay so much, being on the same level (but different pillars) I understand them much better now, in the context of one another.

I am very will-driven. My tagline is “I make things happen.”About a year ago I realized the error of this, trying to continually inflict my will upon reality. Privately, I changed my tagline to “I let things happen.”

It’s more difficult for me to ensoul this mantra into my being, so I’m going to make me some subliminal audio affirmations to help do that. (Thanks to the ALF, I know how to do that. And so will you – module 4, coming up next month.)

By letting things happen, I allow in the massive powers of the universe to create the universe that is in truest alignment with the energy I am putting out. I could very well be consciously evoking one intention, and subconciously evoking another, and the result is a pile of bleh.

Using the powers of Netzach, I can relax myself into the flow, and dance my way to manifestation.

I’m exhausted, frankly, of trying to define and manifest everything myself. It shouldn’t be laden with effort. Instead, I’m going to vaguely outline what I would like (in terms of the specific feelings I would like to have manifested) and then step out of the way and let the heirarchy do its work.

I let things happen.

It isn’t as catchy, but it’s a lot more effective.

Moving on, to bigger and better lessons…

I made a deal with myself a few months ago.

I was tired of having money issues. (Okay, I still am, to be perfectly honest.) I’ve been stuck in resource lessons for a while, repeating some old patterns, and decided I was ready to step up on Maszlow’s Heirarchy of Needs. Getting beyond survival issues, I can start working on higher level issues (relationship, existential, etc) that can only really be fully addressed once the survival state is taken care of.

“So,” I said to the Universe, “I’m ready to step up now. You can give me bigger lessons, and I’ll just keep the wheel turning on this whole money making thing, so no more problems there. Deal?”

For a while, yeah, that worked.

I’m kinda glad I went through another period of scarcity, because I’ve come to handle them a lot better now. I don’t get wrapped up in the emotions, and perpetuate it for six months, like I used to. I’ve learned how to remain calm, and optimistic, and gently decline the opportunity to freak out, and just focus on what saves me in the long run: working hard, getting clients, doing my thing.

The times I have been most scarce in my thinking (and therefore my wallet) have been the times I paid the closest attention to my budget. When I’m counting every penny, it’s like they all count waaaay more than the should.

My new philosophy, “Fuck a Budget,” has only gotten me so far.

But, it’s getting me through, with a better state of mind than I usually carry. So I call that a win. Like I told my wife, it’s not that these periods of financial tightness don’t happen. It’s how we deal with them when they do.

I’ve also gotten better at identifying when the periods of scarcity end. I made a sacrifice of my favorite vices (beer and pot) until I got through this period.

And then, aha, I realized how to get out of this state.

I had a beer and smoked some pot.

And wouldn’t you know it, today I have much more money.

It’s a funny manifestation structural crutch: by defining, internally, what the characteristics of two different states will be, then when you change those characteristics, you can successfully change your state.

I was driving back from a client meeting this morning, and my car started having heave-ho problems going up the mountain. I listened to my intuition; which I will always follow, especially when it leads me to a bar.

A drinking lunch on a school day, with $8 to my name, of course I’ll have a beer!

I did, and met some potential new clients. Got home, and said, yes, intuition, I will have a bit of pot. It is, after all, the literal last few leaves I can scrounge together, packed into the bottom of my pipe.

(Nothing like rock bottom to clear you out, energetically.)

So I don’t interpret this as a breaking of my own vow to myself, I interpret it as a recognition that yes, my period of financial scarcity is over. Because those were the boundaries that I set for the change between states, and bam, it happened.

I had two loans come in today (and when you’re a bankrupt with no credit lines, thats a feat, let me tell you). The month will now take care of itself. You’ve got money coming to you in the next 24 hours, and the short term loans I’ve used to bolster myself up over the past two weeks can get paid back.

Now, I’m working at digging myself out of this financial hole. And I do this with a greater knowledge about the truth of myself.

(It took me awhile, but I started this ramble in mind of eventually getting to the subject of this blog.)

The big thing I learned about myself is that I have serious hungers. My two favored vices (beer and pot) are strong, deep hungers within me. After having one beer today, I really wonted another. Like, really wanted another. I could have drank four, happily, and then finished my drive home – mostly straight.

So, I log this in the inventory about what I know of myself. I have strong hunger for my two favored vices.

I understood this before, but didn’t recognize it as a truth about myself. Hod is all about recognizing the inner truths, and I’m grateful for this recognition.

I’ve also come to face my full understanding of my own root. On a resource level, I have scarcity issues. I have no contact with my ancestry or my childhood. This isn’t something to be overcome, but something to recognize and adapt to, which I can do better now that I see this as a truth about myself.

Before moving into Netzach, I felt way off balance with only Hod. I expected some sort of symbiosis, a collaborative energy like when we moved into Air in the Elements class, where I felt most at home.

This was different, though; with Hod, the realm of the intellect, I’ve got plenty of cylinders firing there. By immersing myself in that energy, I am imbalanced.

So when you sent over the expansion on the correspondences for Netzach, I was able to put the intellect in its proper place. By using these two energies in tandem, I can fully focus on areas in which I am deficient (the root chakra).

I have enough intellect in my daily existence, so much that I don’t really need to invoke more of it. (I’m not deficient there, at all.) But I am deficient, on a lot of levels, in incorporating emotion into my daily experience, and into my manifestations.

So, Netzach. I want some more. Whattaya got?

Ah. It’s the root.

I’ve been doing a lot of introspection to try and uncover the cause of the recent life lessons. Once the lesson is uncovered, it’s generally time to move on to bigger and better things. (If, that is, we are ready to learn it.)

So last night I check in with my chakras, to see if everything is okay in there. Turns out my root chakra is seriously unhappy.

This makes a lot of sense, since I’m having resource issues right now. I spend some time meditating on my chakras, giving them colors and light, and I spend a bit of time in inquiry with each of them.

My root is traditionally underfunded, with an early break from my family, and a disconnection from my heritage and ancestry that came with it. I decided to spend some more time coaxing this chakra into health.

The second chakra showed me something interesting. It’s the seat of desire. not just sexual desire, but of all desires we have. I looked around to see, what does Caelan really desire?

Looking back over the past few years of my adult life, it’s money. And not just extravagant money, but money to be safe.

I am always trying to get ‘enough’ money to provide for my family, and this is usually the overarching consideration and greatest desire that rules my days.

The second chakra is being flooded by the lack in the first chakra.

So, I’ve got some big root issues to deal with. Starting now.

A second look at my primary addiction

Somehow, after justifying my daily addiction during Yesod, I got completely out. I’ve gone ten days without smoking pot, until yesterday.

Looking around at the financial difficulties I landed in, I made a sacrifice: my favored vices (pot and beer) until I dug my way out of the hole, and got some cash coming in.

It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, and withdrawal wasn’t too bad, since I don’t smoke very much in one session anyways. 2-3 hits off a joint, 1-3 times a day, is about my max.

Yesterday, I saw what I really needed it for, and how easily I had grown beyond that.

Having three kids is tough. They constantly make demands on your time and attention, with no regard for where you are in the moment or what you need. It is very easy for me to accomodate this when I am stoned.

The morning started out rough. Johanna was frazzled. The kids were spinning out of control. I was yelling and scolding everywhere.

What is the best way to resolve this conflict?

I took one hit off a joint. Got swimsuits, coloring books, and fruit into a bag. Took the kids down the mountain to the pool. We had a great time, Johanna rested up, and I was completely present.

Looking back over how I would smoke, during the 6+ months since coming to Costa Rica that I’ve been smoking daily, it was always when I was entering a period of parenting.

Unfortunately, it ceased being a salve to use when parenting was tough, and became my key to enter the gateway of parenting time. Since I spend rather a lot of my time parenting, I was stoned for significant portions of every day.

So now, I’ve recommitted to a new regimen: I smoke when parenting is tough, and I need an escape hatch.

This means I won’t be smoking every day, or every time I am with my kids, but when it is necessary to even out my emotions, calm the children down, and generally enter a better emotional space.

But I’m going to stop using it as a preventative measure.

Being in hod has helped me to analyze the nature of this addiction, by stepping away from it, examine where its effect are most useful, and where it is not needed.

I’m feeling off balanced, being over on one side of the pillar – so I’m ready for the expansion on the Netzach correspondences. Kindly send them over when you can.

My condolences.

Amanda,

I know that its like to lose an entire computer. Tons of work. Not only your data, but your machine, all gone.

It sucks.

No other way around it, and I know when I went through it, I indulged myself in a dark time of depression, booze, and loathing.

I had a choice, when this happened. And I didn’t take it.

I was midway through the second draft of my novel. It was a high fantasy romp, based on a D&D game that I had played for 5 years. (Yes, I’ve got serious dork cred.) I had a writing partner for a few years, he was the DM of the game. We created a 12-issue graphic novel series (never drawn, never published, but beautifully scripted) and moved on to other things. I decided I wanted to tell the backstory of my favorite characters, from boyhood to manhood, and wrote a novel.

The second draft was moving along sluggishly, and I was unemployed, with a newborn baby, focusing my time on being a struggling writer. Living off credit cards. I went into town one day to meet with a friend and play a D&D scenario which would, I justified, count as research for my book. He bailed on me, so I went out to lunch with my wife and baby at Wildwood, one of our favorite restaurants – a little pricey, but I was always trying to manifest a better life by living the finer side, even when I couldn’t afford it.

When I went out to my car, I saw exactly how much I couldn’t afford it.

The back window was smashed open. My laptop, my bookbag, my camera, my cell phone, my 3 new D&D books, all gone.

The hardest was my data.

Newborn pictures of my baby girl that I never backed up. The entire second draft of my novel. All gone.

The lessons learned have stuck with me. Now, I back up regularly. (www.backblaze.com, peace of mind for five bucks a month.) I also keep an external hard drive and a spare machine, so if I lose my laptop, I can be up and running again within hours.

This kind of protection is only diligently created after a loss; so, unfortunately, welcome to the club. I know you’re going to be better for it from here on out.

The choice I neglected, you may be facing as well.

I looked around at the shattered remnants of my creative life, and I saw stacks of spiral bound notebooks. Relics from a past of slam poetry and loneliness. Notebooks I always planned to go through and cull out the really beautiful nuggets.

Given my emotional state at the time, it would have been perfect to revisit those tearful years, slice out the pages that could add up into a different novel, the story I always wanted to tell.

I toyed with it for a few weeks, and never got around to it. The notebooks are still waiting for any type of use, carted off into boxes in a storage unit in Portland.

I rebuilt, slowly, and found my way back into creativity. It took a detour into professional life for a few years, so I could learn how to support a family as well as indulge my creative side.

I see the experience of losing my laptop as a wakeup call. I was being lazy, which is all too easy to slip into as a writer. It is such a fragile state of circumstances that allow the writing trance to be invoked, it is easy to put off changing things in favor of keeping things normal enough to keep on writing. This easily leads to stagnation.

Now, I think, is a good time to ask you the question I’ve been sitting on:

What the hell are you still doing in Seattle?

Future tripping – its good for the soul

I could feasibly make some serious money with this launch.

I have known that intellectually, but I haven’t felt it, which is why I sometimes feel like it’s not going to happen.

I have not been actively applying my emotional power to this phase.

That is where I can best serve use with my mindpower and heart.

I am so happy and grateful that there are people who will benefit greatly from this work.

I am so happy and grateful that I know the exercises to turn my emotional setpoint around

I am so happy and grateful that people are excited to read my sales page

I am so happy and grateful that there are people bookmarking my site, and coming back for more to read it later.

I am so happy and grateful that I now have a cauldron for all of my many different ideas, and so many different ways to provide good value
I am so happy and grateful that this project provides the opportunity for me to make a lot of money

I am so happy and grateful I have the entire shopping cart system setup, and I have learned how to do this

I am so happy and grateful that I have learned these new skills, and I can move forward confidently in the realm of information marketing

I am so happy and grateful that people are excited to pay me their money

I am so happy and grateful that people like my writing and my message enough to pay for it

I am so happy and grateful I have hundreds of relationships I can leverage into a solid online marketing platform

I am so happy and grateful I am aligning my business so that I can focus on product creation and ideation

I am so happy and grateful now that my bills are all being paid

I am so happy and grateful that my wife can pay for things she wants with my credit card

I am so happy and grateful that the universal supply always fills us with enough money to meets our needs

I love it how perfectly everything is working out!