It's been a while.

It's been a long time since I have posted on here, and now is as good a time as any to revive the blog. As you may have noticed, the last blog entry involved some serious self analysis, and there was a somewhat pessimistic tone. As that was three years ago - one might be able to gather that I am no longer in that state. In retrospect - I view the ego inflation, bitterness, and harsh attitude to be a necessary step in the right direction.

The past two years have been a busy one, and many things have changed in my personal life. I am now married and have made excellent progress in my career (albeit with a bit of an alchemical calcination occurring a little over a year ago). With regards to occult work, in a recent move we lost a few boxes (we suspect the moving company stole them), one of which contained many of my implements. All that remained was my painted adeptus wand (made after Lyam Thomas Christopher's Kabbalah, Magic and the Great Work of Self Transformation) and some banishing daggers. In my view, this gives me a chance to start over on many of my implements and ritual furniture, as well as reflect on which I would prefer to keep using. (EDIT - I'm not keeping the GD elemental stuff - since I no longer feel much affinity to the GD system).

I have already obtained a beautiful black wooden table to serve as a basic altar. I plan on painting an enochian holy table on a cedar board which is sized to match the table. I've also remade my Enochian tablets, which I now have attached to the walls in my study. Additionally, I am creating a sigillum dei ameth on a wooden disk. Originally these implements were both made on paper, and while I got good results with them, I think it is an excellent time for an upgrade. If you haven't used the heptarchic tools and furniture in enochian magic, I highly recommend trying it out. While I had a decent amount of success with the Golden Dawn system, by including the Heptarchia Mystica and using a ritual opening in accordance with Lon Milo DuQuette's Enochian Vision Magick, I feel like I have created a sort of "lightning rod" for the system. The visions became much clearer, and my skrying skills improved immensely. I suspect that some of this has to do with programming ones mind the same way that Dee and Kelley were prepared when they developed the system.

Additionally - once I have done some more enochian work, I have found another program which has caught my interest. Specifically the Trithemius "Drawing Spirits into Crystal" grimoire, as explained by Frater Ashen Chassan in his new book Gateways Through Stone and Circle from Nephilim Press. He gives very clear instructions on how to build the implements required to do the operation of invoking the kabbalistic archangels into crystal. It also seems like a good grimoire to attempt to follow the instructions faithfully, as it doesn't require a lion skin belt, or any similar implements which I might find morally objectionable.

So I have my work cut out for me. It's an exciting time to be a magician.