Top 10 Questions from the Strategic Sorcery April Q&A.

Top 10 Questions from the Strategic Sorcery April Q&A.

What are your recommendations for material-less magick?

Meditate to achieve clarity and stability of mind. Then learn as many mind expanding, transcending, or altering practices as you can handle. Ancient or New doesn’t matter. In my regular practice I do practices that are over 1000 years old taught in broken lineage, as well as things that I am pretty sure someone made up or discovered just a couple years before they taught it to me. Learn to use the energies of the body. Inner Fire or Kundalini for concentrating power in the body core and something akin to Qi-gung for learning to circulate the power around the body. Then you can get into etheric work. Learn Astral projection and how to shift awareness to other levels and interact on those mental, astral, and etheric structures.

Honestly the level Up course teaches all this in the best way I know how, but there are others.

What are the necessary elements for a wealth altar?

That depends largely on the powers invoked. Generally speaking, you would have items related to the following

A general color scheme that relates to the power you invoke. Statues, Icons, or Pictures of spirits and dieties, as well as perhaps spirit houses for familiar spirits and local beings. Space for whatever offerings you are making and the tools to make those offerings. Some kind of centrally located petition related to your Definite Chief Aim that can be fed/worked/etc. Items related to specific enchantments: candles, oils, etc – depends entirely on what you are doing. Items that breed luck and prosperity and keep poverty at bay.

What you should not have is any kind of war/cursing/hiding/binding etc items. There is nothing morally wrong with any of this, but the mixture of “build/create/brighten/expand” doesn’t play with with “dismantle/destroy/obfuscate/bind” magic.

What is the best way to deeply understand the overall spirit of a particular herb?

The best way is to research it, cultivate it or find it in the wild, and commune with at at all stages of growth/harvesting/and use.

Are there any tell-tale signs that local spirits are responding positively/negatively to your regular offerings? (Example, if they’re particularly fond/totally not fond of a particular incense, etc)

It mostly comes down to an increase in good luck and bad. Do you have plants? Their health is a great indicator of how the spirits are doing. Even the length that cut flowers stay fresh is a nice one.

Of course, if you are making a lot of offerings to wrathful spirits who treasure havoc and violence then your successful response from them might be an increase in discord in the home – yet another reason that I am always shaking my head at people who are trying to lead relatively saccharine suburban happy family lives, yet feel compelled to prove how dark and bad-ass they are by constantly embroiling themselves with powers that arose and helped people in times of strife, war, and chaos. These are not bad powers – they are key to survival and the only justice available in such dire places and times.

How to visualize myself as deity

Outer: Strike a physical position that the icon holds and wear clothes, etc that they do. Invoke and feel the position you have placed yourself in be an empty vessel for that deity, eventually visualizing yourself as the deity will be easy.

Inner: Meditate and see your body and surroundings dissolve in 5 colored light into emptiness. From that emptiness arises a single spark or drop of consiousness that is the diety. It radiates light in all directions that reflect back and make you into that diety. Perform an invocation to bind the visualized form with the actual form.

Secret: Perform acts that throw the body/mind into a state of ecstatic union while holding the vbisualization of yourself as that diety. Orgasm, Inner Heat, Illusory Body yoga, Dream Practice etc – these open the mind to your own innate clarity and divinity which need not be visualized or generated. This in turn melds with the constructed visualizations.

Innermost Secret: Recognize that you are inherently divine, and that things just as they are, without elaboration, are self-perfected

Innermost Secret is not “better” than Outer or vice-versa. The best mode is dependent on need, application ,and ability.

That was probably more than you wanted.

How would you name your spiritual beliefs? Eg. ‘Hard polytheist’ etc

Dzoghen Chaonimist

Are your family also involved with the spiritual side of things?

My wife is psychic but stays out of magic unless I do something terribly wrong or have a departed loved on visiting.

My kids are not involved. My daughter is very interested, but I am letting her ask questions as she does. I am not eager to train them or get them involved in the business or anything like that. I would be perfectly happy if they never took up Sorcerey and just thought of their dad as an eccentric old man who showed them that it’s possible to make it in this world doing what you love for a living.

What does your normal daily spiritual routine look like?

BEFORE BREAKFAST: When I wake up, before I get out of bed I utter an A and attempt to rest in Rigpa for just a few moments. I also usually do the 7 Line prayer 3 times and self empowerment from the edge of the bed. After I am out of bed but before I go downstairs I offer a prayer of thanks to St Cyprian and all the powers of Heaven and Hell. His statue is right outside my bedroom against the chimney.

AFTER BREAKFAST: 20 Minutes of Meditation/Contemplation/inner heat. The exact method differs, but this morning it was sandpiling and Inner Heat practice. This is followed by 100 IO HEKA IO HO and if I am in a cycle where I am in a deep dive with the Far Off One I do her full rite. I follow this with making an offering of incense and tea inside my office that I carry outside to pour and let burn.

LATE MORNING: Walking meditation and prayer/intense focus on my immediate and long term goals.

TWILIGHT: Offerings

NIGHT: Meditation is ideal but often it is ritual based on need or spiritual guidance.

BEFORE SLEEP: Protector Invocations and either Sleep or Dream Yoga – usually sleep yoga these days.

Obviously shit changes based on schedule and cycle

In one of your classes you mentioned that some magical systems are garbage, or basically more trouble than they are worth. Any tips on how to recognize garbage magical systems or teachers when you come across them, would be much appreciated. And yes this is a serious question, we are not all blessed equally when it comes to the art of logic and discernment.

Look at the leaders or elders in that tradition. Are they good people leading lives similar to what you would want for yourself? If not, that may not be the path for you. That doesn’t mean its garbage, but it might not be what YOU want. Look at the claims made. Do they seem utterly silly or impossible? This should be a red flag. Are they functioning primarily as a business yet telling you that they are something else like a Church or Order or Lineage? BAIL. I run my shit as a business because that is what I saw as most useful to myself and others – but when a group is pretending to be the voice of divinity or spirits knowing what’s best for you, then selling you shit based on that, it’s a disaster. Beyond that, it’s simply a matter of evaluating the level of work involved and whether that is what you are looking for in your life. Ideally the work should be slightly MORE than what you are comfortable with, but intriguing enough for you to push your boundaries. Paths that fit neatly into your current beliefs, schedule, habits, proclivities are perhaps the BIGGEST garbage of all.

Being a Sorcerer where do you leave your offerings for your ancestors? the candle remnants, water, incense etc im meaning just for the general feeding and offerings more devotion work. Do you have an ongoing offering venerating altar and offering that you do for your beloved dead and if so what does that procedure entail? if i may ask

I actually don’t do regular ancestor offerings. I have deliberately cut myself off from them and only acknowledge them between Hallows and Day of the Dead.

I have a couple ancestors that I turn to for guidance every now and then, but I do something similar to the Tarpanum Rite from India to connect with them, so there are no permanent offerings left to my ancestors.

(FOLLOW UP QUESTION) Wow that’s intense I’ve never heard of someone cutting themselves from the ancestors that’s interesting, may I ask why if no answer all good but that’s very curious.

I have never felt a strong connection to my ancestors or family. One ancestor that had the Gift that I reached out to through a dumb supper basically told me “figure it out on my own or it’s not worth a damn.”

I probably over-stated that I cut myself off from them deliberately. I haven’t banished them or anything, but when i was a teen I realized that my parents did not have much in the way of wisdom or morals and so I started seeking out others to learn life’s lessons from. This carried over into my relationship with my ancestors.

My ancestors got progressively silent as I did more Buddhist and meditative work that tore away at the karmic links. My focus became more about creating who I wanted to be than figuring out who I was or where I came from.

In so many ways I feel like people pay too much heed to history and ancestry. It’s good to acknowledge that the body you inhabit is constructed from genes passed down through a line of people, but too much focus on it tends to anchor you to the same issues, mistakes, feuds, etc that carry on for generations.