I get a lot of hits on my blog from across the realm of the Internet, many of which are from links on Facebook, Twitter, or RSS readers.  To you guys who follow me: thank you!  You give me many happies.  However, I also get a huge number of new visitors daily to my blog from people who search around the Internet for various search terms.  As part of a monthly project, here are some short replies to some of the search terms people have used to arrive here at the Digital Ambler.  This focuses on some search terms that caught my eye during the month of August 2014.

“trithemius azazel” — So, Trithemius, properly Johann Heidenberg or Johannes Trithemius, was a German Benedictine abbot, born in 1462 and died 1516.  He was kind of fantastic at everything, and is also known for mentoring Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim who wrote the Three Books of Occult Philosophy.  Trithemius had several works dealing with the occult, including a survey of “necromantic” works, a text detailing the history of the world as shaped by angelic entities, and his famous Steganographia, which appears to be a system of angel magic but itself hides a system of cryptography.  A much later work attributed to Trithemius appears in Francis Barrett’s The Magus called The Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals, which is my go-to conjuration ritual; however, there’s no real evidence to suggest that this was Trithemius’ work, even though it bears his name.  The ritual is based loosely off of other well-known Solomonic grimoires, like the Key of Solomon and Heptameron, and the text itself focuses on conjuring the angel Michael (specifically the angel of the Sun), though the text also describes times to conjure the other planetary angels.  Azazel, on the other hand, though it bears an angelic-looking name, turns out to be nothing of the sort; this spirit does not appear in Trithemius’ works, and the name appears in Agrippa’s Scale of Four (book II, chapter 7) as the demonic prince of Air.  This is not a good guy; think destructive tornadoes, storms, gales that topple buildings and bridges, mindbreak-inducing doubt, and other mental or airy destruction, and you’ll have a grasp of what this spirit does.  I suggest working with Raphael, the angelic king of Air, rather than this spirit, and even then the only time you might want to conjure Azazel is to bind him out of your life for good.

“scrying with feldspar” — Same way you scry with any other material or medium: let your focus become absorbed in the scrying medium, and let your mind do the rest.  Feldspar is both a type of mineral as well as a group of minerals, and as far as I’m aware it’s not a popular stone in occult use.  Of course, there is labradorite, which is a type of feldspar, but that’s about the only variant I can think of that’s known at all.  Generally people tend to go with some variety of quartz, calcite, gypsum, agate, or even just simple glass, but labradorite sure is pretty.

“unfortunate hours planetary times” — Different texts will indicate good or bad times to do something; I recall that the Grimoirum Verum as well as the Greek Magical Papyri () have “calendars” that describe fortunate or unfortunate days.  However, when it comes to planetary times e.g. hours, it all depends on the activity in question.  For instance, starting a fight that you plan to win is better done on a Tuesday (day of Mars) than a Friday (day of Venus), since the latter doesn’t do well with fights at all.  Likewise, you probably shouldn’t start a fight on a Sunday (day of the Sun), since the Sun is about authority and rulership, and fighting against that usually doesn’t turn out so well.  Better than this, learn electional astrology; while planetary days and hours are a good rough and easy way to do planetary timing, actually timing them to fortunate or unfortunate alignments of the planets themselves is unequivocally better.

“rituwal instrucshins summin belsubub” — While I understand what you’re trying to communicate, and in that sense you aren’t failing the use of written language, I suggest you learn how to properly write, type, and spell before you dare to work with some of the more powerful demonic entities out there.  They appreciate a bit of finesse.

“st. sealtiel feast day” — So, Sealtiel a.k.a. Selaphiel is one of the Seven Archangels (depending on what tradition of Christianity you’re looking at), and is considered to be the angel presiding over prayer to God.  However, unlike Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, he’s not named in the Bible, and so while the Catholic Church is open to his existence, they cannot claim his existence as dogmatically real post-Vatican II.  As such, Sealtiel does not pass muster for licit veneration in the Catholic Church, and so doesn’t get a feast day from them.  However, the Orthodox Church gives him a bit more leeway along with the other archangels Uriel, Jehudiel, and Barachiel, and does officially venerate them.  However, the Orthodox Church also clusters all the archangels together into a single feast day that they commemorate on November 8, as a general feast day for all the angelic powers.  The Catholic Church has something similar, known as the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels or simply as Michaelmas, held on September 29.

“can my hga hear me” — At all times, on all days, and in all places, yes.  Your Holy Guardian Angel has always known you and always been around you

“rufus opus moon walk” — I’m not sure my mentor, Fr. Rufus Opus, is that smooth.  He’s charismatic, sure, but I wouldn’t bet on him being able to pull off a moonwalk that easily.  That is, of course, unless he wants to try it at Crucible Convention in front of everyone, in which case I’m all for that.

“can i combine the colors on a orisha necklace” — Please ask your local botanica’s resident Santeros and babalawos for authoritative answers on Santeria questions.  That said, as far as elekes go, I’m pretty sure it’s just one orisha per eleke.  Unless you’re doing something that’s eleke-inspired, don’t go combining the colors of different orisha on the same eleke, especially if those two don’t get along (like Yemaya and Oya).

“how to consecrate and charge a ring in naked” — The same way you’d consecrate a ring while clothed, except without clothes.

“magic square of saturn benefits” — The magic square, or qamea, of Saturn is a 3 × 3 grid of numbers, the numerological aspect of which makes it a very powerful Saturn talisman on its own.  You don’t need sigils or names or symbols or lead or what-have-you if all you have is the magic square; it all helps, sure, but the square is a potent realization of the powers of Saturn on its own.

“archangel michael invocation for orgonite” — None whatsoever, also ew.  I still stand by my conviction that orgonite is bunk; orgone technology generally isn’t, but orgonite is a crap interpretation of it all.  Trying to combine angels into this?  How would that work?  I’m not even going to fathom to what ends, but what would that do that literally any other invocation couldn’t?  I mean, the Catholic Church sure isn’t going to accept orgonite’s usefulness (nor should they bother), so they won’t be accepting canonical submissions for prayers, litanies, or blessings for orgonite anytime soon.

“how to tell if summoning asmodeus was successful” — A lot of people think that conjuration requires the physical and visible manifestation of a spirit in order to be successful.  I mean, many magicians nowadays think that’s the end goal of magic and the mark of a master, and it’s true that if you can get a spirit to that kind of manifestation, you’re pretty awesome.  I don’t think that’s the end result of conjuration, though; it’s the equivalent of a really nice party trick at a business conference.  The better criteria for judging the success of a conjuration are whether you were able to perceive them at all and, if so, whether the end you conjured the spirit for came around.  Perception can take place many ways; I’m much better at hearing, smelling, and just coming up with full thoughts than I am with tactile sensation or vision, physical or spiritual.  We have more than just the sense of sight; use all your senses and see what works best for you and how you best interface with spirits.  As for ends, well, why did you bother summoning the spirit in the first place?  Did you have a specific request to ask and, if you did, was the request fulfilled?  Did you get answers to questions you may have asked?  Did you receive confirmation over something you were unsure about?  If so, then I’d say the conjuration was a success.

“congo huge cock” — I’m not sure.  I mean, there is the cliché that African men are the most well-endowed, but I’m unsure about that, and specifically whether Congolese men more than others are the biggest on average.  Besides, I’m already spoken for, so I can’t really experiment and find out myself.  That said,

“how to cleanse and bless a home with holy water and sea salt” — I’m confused as to why you’d use both sea salt and holy water, since holy water is usually already salted and mixed with other herbs, resins, or perfumes (like rose water, hyssop, frankincense, myrrh, etc.) in addition to being prayed over.  It kinda sounds like you’re mixing Christian and pagan practices which, although not a bad thing, the use of holy water alone should suffice.  That said, I might recommend strewing the salt across your home (all across your home), leaving it there overnight, and sweeping it all up and out of the house from the back to the front the next morning while praying that all defilement and filth be swept away, then spritzing holy water from front to back across the whole house while praying for blessings to enter into your house.  The salt here acts as a sponge to soak up all the spiritual ick in the house; just be sure to be extraordinarily thorough in getting it all out!  Instead of using salt as a spiritual sponge, I might recommend setting a glass of jar in each room for the same purpose and dumped into the road the next morning, or using the salt as a layer of protection in each corner of a room along with an iron nail or a few pennies.

“interpreting triad in geomancy” — So, this is an aspect of the geomantic shield chart that, as far as I can ascertain, was first written about at length by Robert Fludd in his Fasciculus Geomanticae, but it may have been written about somewhere else before that and the information isn’t accessible yet; there are some parallels with Fludd’s technique (which he and John Michael Greer call “triplicities”) and some Arabic and African forms of geomancy.  The idea is based on the Witnesses and Judge; the Judge is made from the two Witnesses above it, and so form a triad of figures that indicate the past, present, and future of the overall situation.  We can apply that same logic to the triads of the Nieces and the Mothers or Daughters that generate them; thus, the First Triad is composed of the First and Second Mothers with the First Niece, the Second Triad with the Third and Fourth Mothers with the Second Niece, the Third Triad with the First and Second Daughters with the Third Niece, and the Fourth Triad with the Third and Fourth Daughters with the Fourth Niece.  As JMG and Fludd describe it, the First Triad describes the overall condition and state of the querent, the Second Triad describes the context of the situation of the reading, the Third Triad describes the places and location of the query and querent, and the Fourth Triad describes the people and their actions involved in the query.  It can help shed light on a Shield Chart, though I find that it’s not particularly useful if one also uses the House Chart; I almost never interpret the Triads in the Shield Chart for this reason.  It’s a useful bit of knowledge, however, especially if you prefer analyzing the Shield Chart as “the” chart, though both the Shield and House Charts for a reading answer the question the same.

“rubeus iching” — I got several search queries that focus on the geomantic figure Rubeus and the I Ching, a Chinese form of divination that uses eight trigrams (three lined figures) or 64 hexagrams (six lined figures).  Some people think that there’s a link between geomancy and I Ching because both use binary figures: geomancy uses 16 four-lined figures with either one or two dots in each line, and the I Ching uses 8 three-lined figures or 64 six-lined figures with either a solid line (single line segment) or a broken line (two line segments) in each line.  They do look superficially similar, but that’s about it; there’s no evidence to indicate that there’s anything to link the two in method or meaning.  Add to it that the earliest records we have indicate geomancy to develop between 900 and 1000 CE in the Saharan region of Africa, while the I Ching has its origins at least as far back as 100 BCE, if not as far back as 1500 BCE.  The I Ching is anywhere from 1000 to 2000 years older than geomancy, and in light of the fact that we have no evidence to link the two even by means of the Silk Road, trying to link the two systems is probably folly-in-action.  In that light, while you might be able to find a hexagram or trigram similar in meaning to Rubeus, it’d be coincidental at best and contrived at worst.

“greek alphabet oracle spread” — Now this is interesting: the use of a spread with the Greek alphabet oracle, or what I call grammatomancy.  Consider Tarot divination: you could draw a single card to get a single answer, or you could use several cards arranged in a particular way to get a more developed answer.  I actually go over several types of grammatomantic “spreads”, or what I call syntaxes, in my ebook on grammatomancy, which you should totally buy and look at.