My father was an astrologer who learned the craft studying at the American Federation of Astrologers in the Bay Area at the dawn of the New Age movement. One of my earliest memories was of him sitting cross-legged on a cushion meditating while a purple octoganal candle burnt.
He had an office in our home where he took clients. This was in addition to his day job as a computer programmer who worked for N.A.S.A. I still remember my mother ushering people into our home to take counseling from the guru.
Back then astrology was all done by hand with an emphemeris and a science calculator. Nowadays we perform these calculations on our iPhones, but in that day, it was an expensive Texas Instruments device, powered with a cord, that was kept next to the slide rule. The old astrologers who had performed these calculations could take out their little book, usually kept in the back pocket or purse, eyeball the numbers, and guesstimate what was about the chart. My father used to come up with some eerie predictions based on where the stars were in the sky.
I don’t like believing in astrology, any more than he did, but I have to admit that is does have some credence.
I don’t like the programs because they don’t enable the brain to enter into the 100th monkey force field of the calculations, which is how astrology has been done for millennia. Reliance on a computer program is not as intuitive.
At the same time, I have only once or twice performed the entire calculations for a chart. It’s not my thang.
Being a theatre artist, I like ceremonial. I studied John Michael Greer’s Rosicrucian magic and a great deal of the Golden Dawn and B.O.T.A. lodge ritual. It is how I was raised and took to it. At the same time, it is only safe and reasonable to do two or three talismans, especially those charged with sex, because it taxes the body’s fundamental energies, so it is wise and expedient to work in more traditional forms of folk magic to power one’s wishes.
Yeah, yeah, you can go on a date and secretly vampirize your mate, but it is considered poor form in my club. In the first place, consent is required. Second, how are you going to hide the fact that the bed is in the middle of a giant magic circle, your lover is wearing an Egyptian headdress, and, at the moment of crisis, you are instructed to look at a piece of paper, often pasted to the lover’s forehead, and project your Will into it as a device of manifestation? That is how we do things, and we do this with Angels!
I always say, Sex magic is about making love and getting a new jacket, and that is great, but if your entire sex life is dedicated to acquiring goodies and dominating others, it becomes a boring Rat Race.
One should do lots of types of magic, or fall into the pit of THE ONE TRUE CHURCH ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH. Every 100th Monkey Circuit has its orthodoxy and it often just behaves ridiculously in the face of different circumstances or individuals.
My father did not stay a professional astrologer. He couldn’t stand terminally ill people asking him to calculate their hour of death. He was not really happy doing the hard jobs of astrology. That’s how a lot of people are. But the emphemeris was always in his back pocket somehow.
I studied Hoodoo at the Lucky Mojo and did a bit of it for a few years. In the end, it took me into deeper levels of the lodge magics where I went down the Rabbit Hole for quite some time. Lost in Space, as some might say.
If you do a lot of studies with this type of thing, the school urges you to get clients. That is how it works.
I became a phone psychic. I didn’t make any money because I didn’t like to. My calls lasted three minutes and usually went like this, “Does that cute person like me?”
Yes. No.
Yet I had to be available ten hours a week for twenty bucks! It didn’t really work because I needed more money faster than that.
This one woman called and inquired about Work. I did offer additional services off the phone lines in the form of regular brujería. It isn’t quite enough to diagnose the problem — it is wonderful to do some candle work to be able to fix it.
She said her boyfriend had left her for another woman, and she wanted him back.
Make Lovers Return is a sine qua non of professional work. You got to give people what they want or shove off.
I am not completely available.
The Lucky Mojo teaches us about the different types of workers. One is called "Lady-Hearted.”
Let’s say a woman’s husband ran off with another man. She now has herself and a couple of kids to support and care for. She comes to the Worker declaring that the she wants him destroyed, she wants his manhood to shrivel up, she wants his hair to fall out, she wants his car to wreck, she wants his boss to throw him out, she wants the world to rain down terror on him.
Until he comes back, I would imagine, humble as a sheep.
The Worker looks at her and says, okay. Are we really going to pull the trigger on this?
She hems and haws. “I love him!”
I thought so.
She can’t stand to be hard. She is a lady. That is a lady’s heart. It is a Path of Work and must be respected.
I am lady-hearted and I know it. It is best to handle things kindly.
I read the situation of the woman and her lost love as a phone psychic.
There are various paths in love. There is the path of Luna and the path of Venus.
Luna is home and family, where you cozy up in a nest and get on with the business of a profound union that often involves children. It is an organization within which people grow and evolve. It is meant to last a lifetime. This woman was a lunar lover and could not conceive of anything else.
Venus is elegance, development through engagement with the world and genius, yet it often has a terminus. This is where you meet someone who has a lot in common with you, connect in Eros, grow and evolve through the psychism of sexuality, then move on to the next connection. The man was a Venus lover.
He had given her so much joy and elegance and capacity that she thought this was what he is, what we are. It is not reasonable. He had learnt what he needed to from her and was now evolving with a new mate. It was not right to bring him back. He would be a squabbling brat and eventually hurt her.
So I wouldn’t do it.
It was over.
At the same time, I often get what I want in Work. I offered to find her a new man, but she was not able to take the lady-hearted course. She needed to find a Hard Worker, who would strike, get him back, and Bend Him Over.
That is another path.
I have met people who worked very dark over a long period of time, to considerable damage. They evolve to the point where they merge in union with the Dark Angel.
Evil you have always with you.
Yet "Fool Me Once, Shame On You" does function in the human mind. We are pack animals and cannot live alone. It is not feasible to do 100% dark magic. It just destroys a person. There is always the necessity of a tiny bit of Light in the darkest worker’s heart, and they must, in the end, give way to the Light. It is how social animals are built!
That is my actual experience.
