Tag Archives: class

Interested in Greek alphabet magic and mysticism? Check out the 2020 talk I did on it!

June 19, 2022 By in internet, link, mathesis, occult Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Back in 2020, I participated in the Salem Witchcraft and Folklore Festival, which was a great time, even if was held online.  During the course of that, as I mentioned way back when, I offered my lecture Spelling by Spelling: Greek Alphabet Divination and Magic:

A variety of divination systems were used in ancient and classical Greece, ranging from oracles and prophets to common forms of sortilege. One of the more fascinating kinds of divination that was used in the ancient Hellenic world was that of grammatomancy, divination through the individual letters of the Greek alphabet. This lecture will cover the history of this useful and direct form of divination, and how it can build into an overarching spiritual practice of devotion to the Greek gods, theurgy, contemplation, and magic.

It was a great lecture (even if it had to be postponed from Saturday to Monday due to unfortunate internet/power outage issues), and I’m glad I was able to offer it.

And yes, you should definitely keep up on this year’s SWFF, too, because this summer will be its fourth year running and there is, as usual, a great lineup of presenters and talks being slated!  Jacqui Allouise at The Cauldron Black and Matthew Venus of Spiritus Arcanum (both of whom offer their own events and products the whole year round) do great work, and I definitely encourage checking them out in general on top of the yearly festivities planned.

Anyway, one of the neat things about being a presenter is that I get a recording of my own presentation, and I was finally able to get around to uploading my talk to YouTube!  If you’re interested in grammatomancy (Greek alphabet divination), the grammatēmerologion (Greek letter lunisolar calendar), and other ways to use the Greek alphabet in magic and mysticism for all sorts of ends, check out the talk I did!

In the lecture, I mention a handout for people to study and take home.  You can access the 12-page handout (with reference information and citations for further reading) here on Google Drive.  Likewise, if you just want to check out the slides for your own study, you can also access them at this link.

I thought this was a great talk to give, and a few of my friends thought it went well enough to offer some pleasant thoughts on it.  Hopefully you’ll also find it interesting, dear reader, and this might persuade you to look into this alphabetic system of magic and mysticism!  I’ve written plenty about it, not just as an ebook on the divinatory system of grammatomancy (De Grammatomanteia, available for US$10 through Etsy or through Ko-fi) but also on countless posts on my blog; just search “grammatomancy” or “grammatemerologion”, or just browse the Mathesis category of posts for more.

Now, obviously, while at the time there was a registration fee for the talk since it was a paid event, it being almost two years later, I see no reason to insist on further charging for this sort of stuff.  If you feel moved to contribute anything to my Ko-fi as a donation, I certainly wouldn’t stop you, but much like with my online video course Geomancy in the Reign of the Lady of Crowns, I would instead encourage you to consider donating to a humanitarian charity of your choice that can make a difference in the world, whether locally or globally.  Alternatively, even if I’m not presenting this year, you might also consider spending some of that money towards attending a lecture or five for this year’s Salem event!

August Updates: back to routine, I guess!

August 18, 2020 By in internet, link, mathesis, news Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

What a time it’s been, y’all.  After a bit of annoying circumstances that pushed it back a few days, I gave my presentation for the Salem Witchcraft & Folklore Festival 2020, hosted by the good people at the Salem Summer Symposium.  By the accounts of those who attended, my class, Spelling by Spelling: Greek Alphabet Divination & Magic, went well, and even I’m pleased with it, having gotten a bit of extra time to polish up the presentation, and having ended about on target (with ten minutes leftover for questions instead of fifteen).  I’m frankly surprised that so many people still managed to show up as they did, rescheduled as it was from a Saturday afternoon to a Monday evening, and I want to express my deepest thanks and appreciation to all the attendees as well as to the organizers of the symposium and festival for hosting such a wonderful event even in light of the current awkward situation of the Reign of the Lady of Crowns.  Unfortunately, since it was just a two hour class, I didn’t get to cover half the things I originally wanted to, so I guess I’ll just have to do a separate series of classes sometime in the next year to make up for that, but that’ll be in the future.  If you didn’t manage to catch my class or any of the other amazing classes offered by SWFF2020 live, you can still register for the recordings through the end of 2020, so check out their website and sign up for everything that catches your interest, or get a package deal for multiple classes at once!  The recordings will be up in the coming days after they finish processing and uploading them, so stay tuned to their website for more information.

I consider my little hiatus from blogging well-spent, though it’s not like I wasn’t busy in general these past six-ish weeks.  It seems that I can’t not avoid writing one way or another, and I’ve been pretty busy on Twitter lately with a series of threads that I’d like to share pontificating or didacting about this or that.  To be fair, Twitter these past few weeks has been…interesting, between everything being cakes to newbie witches hexing the fae and also the Moon, to more shade being thrown against the Kybalion (which, I maintain, is more hernia than Hermetica), but a few of the highlights I wanted to share of my own twatting (which can be considered blog posts in their own right) would be these:

  1. That men (of all types) need to listen to women (of all types) more in general
  2. How our words can offend and injure even when we don’t mean for them to
  3. How we shouldn’t bias ourselves regarding accusations towards us based on what we hear alone about them and from whom
  4. How we present ourselves can affect how people react to us
  5. Nobody gets to buy any more crystals until you first learn how to treat, use, and work with the rocks in your own driveway/alleyway first
  6. How magic, spirits, and curses don’t need belief and how revealed experience is Hermetically superior to both discursive logic and faith
  7. An unfortunate incident with someone who asked for way too much information in a rather wrong way
  8. Follow-up to the preceding: on how and why closed traditions limit knowledge and teaching
  9. Why non-Jews working with or venerating Lilith most likely isn’t cultural/religious appropriation
  10. What learning from books really means and how to read them properly
  11. An unfortunate incident when someone tried to use one of my copyrighted designs for their own advertising
  12. Accuracy is not precision, but both are needed for diviners

All that in addition, of course, to the usual shitposting and antics I get up to on Twitter.  Somehow I’ve only gained followers over the past few weeks, which is nothing short of a profound mystery to me.

For those with a linguistic bent, Dr. Christian Casey of Brown University is hosting a free online course for teaching Sahidic Coptic.  If you have an interest in translating Coptic works from the early Christian, Gnostic, and Hermetic traditions or have an eye on getting at the non-Greek more-Egyptian magical papyri, this is something to keep an eye on!  The classes will be weekly on Saturdays at 1pm Eastern US time, starting September 5 and continuing for 30 weeks, so sign up if you’re interested!  I’ve signed up and hope to keep up with it, but we’ll see.

I’ve also picked up Final Fantasy XIV again.  I had a dream during a nap one day a few weeks back that I was playing again, and BOOM the desire hit me to play again, even though I hadn’t played in about two or three years.  So, after about two weeks and no small amount of enticing from some other magicians and astrologers who also play, I’ve caught up on all the main story content from patches 4.3 to 5.3 (holy shit you guys, I cried so much), though I’m still getting caught up on the side story and other stuff.  I’m trying to limit myself mostly to weekends for playing and spending the rest of the week researching and writing as ever, but I’ve definitely missed the game and my friends who play it.  Plus, this gives me a good reason to pick up my writing about the Deck of Sixty, the in-game divination deck used by the Astrologian job, and how it can be used and expanded upon using in-game lore and other canonical information given by the lorebooks to be used as an actual method of divination we ourselves can use.  I’ve written about it in a publicly-viewable spoiler-free Google Doc for those who are interested in checking out the system, such as it is.  (And yes, I’m still Smoking Tongue on Aether/Midgardsormr.)

I’m sure other things have happened these past six weeks that have escaped my memory, but in general, things have been largely quiet and peaceful for me on my end.  Still at home and rarely leaving the house, still working from home full time, still annoying the cats, still keeping up with housework and ritual work as best as I can.  I wish I could say I’ve caught up on sleep, but we all know that’d be a lie.  On the whole, things go well and busily as ever, and I’m happy with that.  I hope the past few weeks have been at least as nice for you all, dear readers, and that things continue to improve for us all, wherever we might be and whatever we might be doing.

With that, I suppose it’s time to figure out what to write about next.  I’ve got a few ideas lined up, but it’ll take me a few days to get back into the swing of things.  At least, with the presentation for SWFF2020 over, I can devote more time back to my other projects again—and start figuring out what to propose for next year’s symposium, too.  Plus, with it getting to be towards the end of summer (finally), the busy season is really going to start ramping up soon, so there’s always more to do.

Reminder: don’t forget to sign up for this year’s Salem Witchcraft & Folklore Festival!

August 7, 2020 By in link, mathesis, news Tags: , , , , , 2 Comments

As I scramble to finish putting my presentation and notes together (and trying to figure out how to fit three hours of content into two), it would be remiss of me to not forget to let all my good readers know that we’re just one week away from this year’s Salem Witchcraft & Folklore Festival, hosted by the good people at the Salem Summer Symposium!  Unlike last year, due to the obvious influence of the presiding Reign of the Lady of Crowns, this year’s event is going to be all-online, and the good people in Salem have done an amazing job putting this all together.  While we’ll all certainly miss being able to hang out in person and frolick with abandon across Salem in its myriad haunts and bars, this is still gonna be a time you don’t want to miss!

With thirty classes being offered this year from some of the best and brightest occultists, witches, and magicians out there—including one by yours truly, of course, on Greek alphabet divination and magic from 1 to 3 pm EDT on Saturday, August 15—you can sign up for the online classes individually, or with bulk rates per day or for the whole weekend.  What’s more, you’ll have access to the recordings of whatever classes you sign up for (or whichever days, or the whole weekend) through the rest of 2020, so if you can’t make the live class or if you have a schedule conflict between two amazing presenters, you can still take the class at your leisure.  (This is something I wish they did last year, since there were too many great things to be present for without mastering bilocation, but they’re investigating ways to do this in the future for both online-only and in-person classes, too.  The recording and accessing of recordings, I mean, not the bilocation.)

There’s still time to sign up, of course, so head on over to the events page and book your tickets today!  From decans to demons, qigong to qabbalah, Saturn to seidr, this is gonna be a festival you won’t forget soon!

A quick note about Fr. RO’s old Red Work Courses and who’s licensed to share them

September 4, 2019 By in internet, link, news, occult Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Another quick note in the midst of my own writing projects amidst my yearly hell season of too much going on…

As many people might be aware, Fr. Rufus Opus used to offer a series of ebooks and online classes about his take on Hermeticism, Hermetic practices, and angelic/planetary magic that he collectively titled the “Red Work Course” (RWC) that he wrote back in 2010 and 2011.  Much of this material was collected, condensed, and distilled into what eventually became his Seven Spheres book he put out in 2014.  However, back in 2016, he announced and clarified that he no longer sells access to those files and courses anymore (and, in the case of his old Planetary Gates ebooks, this was announced back in 2014 with the publication of Seven Spheres late that year).  Instead, in an email to his students from around the same time in 2016, he made an arrangement that he would make a test for his old students and, if he approved, he would certify and license them to use the old material he put out for RWC as they see fit.  His logic was that, at the time of him joining the A∴A∴, he wasn’t allowed to charge for teaching what they know, so Fr. RO stopped selling his old courses, but didn’t want to be unfair to his old students who paid for the stuff, so if his old students could show the ability to fully understand what he wrote, they could take charge and sell it or give it away as they chose.

Although a good number of the students from his old RWC mailing lists seemed to be all about the idea, I’m not sure what became of it for most people; it could be that many of his old students took the test, got Fr. RO’s blessing and approval privately and quietly, and kept it quiet since most of them aren’t much for teaching, or they never actually took the test.  However, there is a small handful of three people that Fr. RO has publicly gone on the record to announce as those that he has licensed to share his old RWC files:

  1. James Wood a.k.a. Spanish Moss, over at The Red Crown of Stars (who also heads up the Thicket of a Witch blog)
  2. Mal Strangefellow over at The Society of Royal Philosophers (who also heads up the Ordo Sancti Cypriani and the Church of Light and Shadow)
  3. Myself right here

If, after all these years (especially given how much I referred to it in my recent Reviewing the Trithemian Conjuration posts), you’re interested in the RWC files and lessons, please contact one of the three people above at their respective websites.  We all have different teaching styles and requirements, so consider that as well.  James and Mal use a more active class structure or a group/forum structure closer to what the original RWC courses used with Yahoo! groups and mailing lists, while I tend to take a more hands-off approach with separate mentorship sessions as needed/desired by students.  James and Mal have roughly similar price points to what Fr. RO had for the RWC files, but I use a different method entirely; if you’re interested in getting the files from me, contact me about it and we can discuss from there.

While there may be others who are licensed that Fr. RO might have forgotten, the three people above are the only people that Fr. RO has himself confirmed to me to be licensed to publicly use his old RWC files as they see fit.  If you hear or see of any others sharing his coursework, please consider letting him or me know to confirm whether they are also licensed before getting anything from them out of respect for Fr. RO’s work.  If you yourself have been licensed and you’re not part of the list above, contact me and let me know when and how Fr. RO licensed you (email, Facebook post, etc.) to clear up any potential confusion.

P.S.: Mal Strangefellow, in an effort to encourage and reward people to choose legit sources and teachers, is offering 20% his enrollment fees for his version of the Red Work Courses to all my wonderful readers!  Just use the coupon-code POLYPHANES when checking out.