Justin's Intro

[Music] Welcome to Knowledge and Conversation with Chris and Justin. I'm Chris. I'm Justin and this is a true and faithful relation of our time working magic. We're both practicing magicians and have been friends for years. We met through a mutual friend, Jason, who helped both of us through our journeys and our questions. I've always had a deep critical discussions whenever we got together and we really enjoyed those discussions. We thought that we would add you into the conversation. That's right. These kind of conversations can be life-changing and the experiences that happen around them. Very profound and impactful. So we thought that this podcast would be about sharing those moments and those ideas that we explore in this path as magicians. We can look inside the lives of people that really do practice magic and live life by that. All in an atmosphere of kind of sharing and warmth and fellowship as opposed to argument and competition. I thought that when you meet new friends, introductions are always in order. I'll go first and give my introduction into how I came to be a magician. Sure. I think this first episode, and possibly if we feel like there's enough material for two, we might even do a second episode on it. These will be about introducing ourselves who we are, what magic we practice, what we're familiar with, and just a general bird's eye view of why you would want to spend your time listening to us. Great. So kind of starting off for me, I had sort of come from a family that had either sort of mystical experiences or psychic abilities. On my mother's side it was more sort of psychic abilities and gifts. On my father's side it was more, my uncle's a preacher. My dad was a pastor. I have another uncle who's pretty much a vagabond fool touring the country. All this kind of came together with certain practices and beliefs that led me to sort of begin exploring the occult arts magic mysticism. One thread that kind of really got me going was my martial arts practice when I was younger, that knowing someone else who had psychic abilities and was helping me learn how to better manifest those abilities and to control them, we're both very interested in martial arts and a practice called "Chicong", which translates to energy work. That's moving and growing and manipulating energy through intention, feeling, and willpower. So you would get these in my day, these martial arts magazines and in the back of them no matter what the front was, it could be kung fu techniques or how to do pushups with your fingers, things like that. In the back you would have these weird advertisements, you know, x-ray specs. I remember some of them. Some things like secrets of ninja mind power, we're sort of pamphlet books that catch the interest of young teenage boys looking for secret magical power. So of course, I ordered those. Right. So some of those things that I had learned was like the ability to move various vital force energies in order to accomplish a certain goal, whether it be sort of charismatic energy or influence over another person or a defensive type thing or an attack. You know, if someone had wronged you in a certain way to send these energies out, you know, all really cool stuff. If you're a teenage kid looking for power in the world, which I think a lot of people come to the occult for and abuse it over time. Absolutely. Yeah, of course. You got to learn, man. Yeah. I feel like those two things go hand in hand. You learn the power and then you fuck you up with it. And then you're like, oh, well, that's not what you're supposed to do. So then you later come by doing it right. Right. Right. And those led me, you know, eventually to techniques such as, you know, the golden flower technique where you draw lights into your third eye and you deposited into what would be considered the naval chakra or right below the naval. And then you see that there's this energy center. Supposedly that you store your energy in and the martial arts and in Chikon. You don't really see that too much in the west, the western side of it. It's more sort of symbolic. But in the eastern system is you don't store energy anywhere else, but in the downtown end. That's kind of interesting. Yeah. And the golden flower is part of that. You know, like in yoga, the Kundalini, Kundalini force that one draws up and then brings down. So those related to those same thing. In my opinion, they're using vital energy force and learning how to move those energy forces up a spectrum and down a spectrum for health or intuition or power inspiration. You know, these various things that we do magic for. Yeah. So where the east kind of uses these certain energy techniques or breath techniques or posture techniques in order to get there. Sort of western magic uses more ritualized setting. Now that the east doesn't use ritualized settings, you know, they kind of break off into two branches. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I feel like the tendency we have today to in a way fetishize the eastern way of doing things. Right. Right. Is just because we really don't we really don't understand the mindset that goes into doing right. So we latch on to the appearance of them in the same way that we would in the western system. Right. Right. There's nothing wrong with either one. In fact, my viewpoint is let's look at all these different cultures, all these different systems. What are the main ideas or techniques that they use to get magic done. And you know, once you sort of mind those techniques out of the culture out of the system, we can then sort of bring those into more of a modern context. Yeah. I mean, you look around you see, oh wait, no. These guys had it too. I thought they didn't they do. They did. I just had to dig a little. Yeah. I just had to figure that out. You know, and that's that's really part of part of the journey as well. Isn't it? It's like, um, we we get into a system. We get into its bones. We feel how it how it it is from the inside. And then we kind of look around into something else. And a little bold same bones. They're just they're just dressed up a bit differently. Like we think, oh, this one. This one's got to be totally new and different thing. Right. Look at how different it looks. And then you get in. So you're like, well, this is the simple for that. Just the same as this. So maybe they disagree on the hot of new steps. X, Y and Z. But overall the concepts are the same. Like when you when you get into those little nitty gritties of the particular like you were talking about earlier, you're storing energy only in the naval. Right. Chakra versus another system that might be a little more open to storing in it all of the chakras for different purposes. Don't do that. By the way, kids don't store in any other chakra. It's only this one way. This only one way. I saw this movie recently. And it was it's the the art of self defense. Right. And it's kind of about this guy who's learning karate. And at one point he asks about how the belt system works. And they and this other guy who's an older student goes through all the different colors and the order of them. And what you have to do to get each one. And he kind of ends it by saying something like other dojos do different ways. Right. Right. You know. But this is the way our dojo does it. Right. And it's close. - Absolutely the best. (laughing) - Exactly. You know, and even in, if you look at like certain yoga systems with the shockers, one school may have had four or three shockers, another of seven, another 10. And you have to realize when these things were starting to develop, you would have like these family traditions. And that's what you got initiated into. It's like, oh, well, you wanna join this family tradition. Well, this is how we do it. Just like in martial arts, this is the forms that we use. This is the style that we have. And as long as they follow the basic principles, which all of them did, there's nothing wrong with that. It's only when we fall into the trap of like, oh, no, this is the true magic. (laughing) - Ooh. - Cute undernoice. - Or a squirrel. - We're about to get that anyway with this story. - Yeah, yeah, we're getting a little rain if you can hear it. - Yeah. - That was some lightning. - Excellent, excellent. - See, that's magic. I don't know if you knew that. We literally talked about two days ago, adding a story. - Adding a story. - Adding a story like thunder sounds. Every time we say the word true magic. - It's true magic. - And it happened. - It just happened naturally for us. That's amazing. Anyway, not to brag that's magic. - I'm bragging. - So, yeah. - All right, we're talking about your forays into Cheek Kong and stuff like that. In terms of today's practice, where does that show up for you? - I still do sort of basic form in the morning and in the night with different sort of goals in mind. In the morning, doing these certain physical, almost calisthenic like exercises to sort of amp up the energy, fuel the energy flowing through my body, the vital force flowing through me. If there's a goal in mind, or if I'm working with a particular planetary energy or elemental energy, I'll then perform a smaller ritual that flows from the Cheek Kong exercise into more of a ritual magic technique, thereby sending that energy out or surrounding myself with that energy in order to influence the events of the day, my own personal luck, or if I need healing, or to heal another, prepping, if you will, for the day, what I'll be doing. And at night, I take a more sort of protectionary role, like I'll send energy throughout my aura, which in the east, it's called Wuchi, the energy that sort of emanates from the pores of your body to surround you in a protective field, to prevent disease or sickness, depression, all these negative influences, much like barren wood by drawing all this vital force in and then pushing it out. - Let's get into that. So we start out with Cheek Kong, and then sort of where does your journey go? - From the Cheek Kong practices, then met someone who was getting into witchcraft in Wicca, and she had a book that caught my eye, and it was Ed Fitch's Grimoire of Shadows, and little did I realize at the time, it was sort of lifted from Franz Barton's initiation, hermatics, and written in a way that would sort of interest, Wiccans or witches. And that was sort of the main idea when Raymond Buckland and Ed Fitch were trying to craft a training system for the outer order. - That's funny because I have a very similar experience, and mine comes from Buckland. - Oh, yeah, yeah. - Well, I hear that. - I hear that. - What I hear that. So they had crafted this sort of training system that if you really look at it, probably give you from step one, two, three, or five, 'cause they are starting to begin to work with the Akasha towards the end of the system. And like I said, I had no idea who Franz Barton was or initiation ormatics. I was just getting this material in a witchcraft sort of form, much more easily accessible form than Barton's sort of German perfectionism. It was much more creative and sort of beautiful way of approaching Barton's system. So I kind of added that into the Chicoan exercises. It's like, oh, okay, well, this thing that I've been calling Chi, it's made up of these elemental forces, fire, air, water, and earth, and it's guided by this sort of divine consciousness, which in the east would be the Dow and in the west, some call it the Akasha or the divine spirit, however you wanna label it. It's all the same force. But that was my sort of introduction into those forces. So I then sort of expanded what was initially just the idea of Chi or vital force or energy into more of an elemental aspect. Learning how to sort of move and manipulate those forces for my own personal gain and benefit. So what does that look like? Walk me through a little bit of-- - Typical ritual. - Yeah, of how you would produce a ritual like this. - Okay, so starting out, I would typically get the energy moving. And you can go on YouTube and find a million different styles of Chi Kong. And there's one in particular, eight brocade Chi Kong and it's these sort of exercise where you stand in a horse stance and you move your hands left and right up and down behind you, you twist your body. Basically you're waking your body up. You're getting the blood flowing. And the more skeptical a momentous would be like, well, you're just getting the blood flowing. That's all you're doing. It's not actual energy. And you have to realize that that was what they were going for. They knew that if the blood was pumping through the body and the organs were healthy, that's vital force. - And really, I mean to us for our purposes, whether or not it's energy or just blood flow that-- - Induces health. - You just proceed to be energy by our imagination, our by-mind. - You're using it as a springboard. - Yeah, whether it's actual energy or not, is immaterial, like it doesn't matter. - Right, it would be the same as going through 777 and looking at, okay, well, I have this ritual to do love. I'm gonna use these green colors and I'm gonna use this type of incense and I'm gonna chant these words. It's the same principle. You're doing an activity to lead your mind and your imagination towards a goal, a single pointed focus goal. So that's how it started. I would get the blood pumping, the body moving. And that way whenever I do sort of either sit down to begin meditation, as a single pointed focus or if I'm condensing that energy, like Bardenwood, like an elemental or an elementary sort of vital force sphere loading my intention in there. So let's say if I'm doing a ritual, it's Sunday, so let's use the example, the sun. I'm gonna increase my health and make sure that my health is doing well. I would do the Chikong, get the blood flowing, condense all this vital energy down into a sphere and then use those sort of Bardonian techniques or sort of more formalized ritual magic where I would actually sort of cast a spell, maybe from one of those crazy books like The Miracle of New Avatar Power, which we'll discuss maybe one day. - Yeah, I think that would make a good episode. - By focusing your mind and vibrating those words of power into this energy sphere, loading my intention with my imagination and sensations into that, I would then use a more sort of sparing technique, which you can also find in Bardon and Step 8 where you've loaded yourself with this energy in ecstatic sort of fashion and then you launch it out into the Akasha and Crowley's Lieber Samak where you're taking all this power that you've built up for the quarters and sending them out in the four directions and then up above sending it all out. - That's the chief one, that's the big to do is up above. - So if you take that basic principle, imagine doing that daily. - Yeah. - That is essentially what Chikong is. You're taking some of those same ideas from Lieber Samak that charging up of the self with this magical potency and focusing on achieving union with this divine force. - Right, right. - And then channeling back down, bringing that energy back into the body and notice how in there Crowley will tell you, you bring it all down into the very last speck of who you are, the final sort of pearl of your being. - Well, in Chikong, you imagine a little pearl at the very base of your being, the Dante Inn. and that's where you're drawing all that energy in. So you're infusing yourself with this life force, this divine force. - That's fascinating. I'm gonna have to tell you a story about the discovery of that pearl for me. - Oh, okay. - Excellent, because that, that was a big moment. And I'm pretty sure we'll probably end up doing at least some discussion of this period of time that I'm talking about at length. So this will be probably a regular feature of our discussions here. - Excellent. - Let me keep going. - Oh yeah, so that's my daily practice essentially. If you, you know, without any, oh, well, we have this special event coming or someone needs some help, you know, if I'm just being lazy magically, you know, at the very least, I'm doing that daily practice of moving the energy out and expanding my awareness into my environment. 'Cause the more you sort of send that energy out, you know, and the more you expand your awareness, the more you're becoming in tune with the overall energetic field of the universe or the planet, and things happen to go your way more often. Because your energy is influencing more of the environmental energy. So things sort of work in your favor, or if they're not, you know, they immediately come into your attention because there feels like, you know, in the circle of my awareness, the above, the below, the east, the west, the north, the south. There's something, oh, wait, that doesn't feel right or I'm catching some negativity. And that's where, classically, in ritual magic, well, oh, I have this evil spirit that I have to deal with or this demon that must be conquered. That comes up too, and she comes, like, oh, there's this disease, you know, this illness that must be either healed or banished or transformed in some way, alchemically, even if you will. - There's a statement in the corpus hermaticum. Something like Hermes is speaking from the perspective of essentially your HG, and it says, if you come at me when you're ready, I'll be your guiding angel, you're like your guardian angel. But if you are not ready or if you're not pure enough, I will be, I will let my demon self take this place. - Very Jacob's letter, yes. If you aren't ready to perceive it, or if you're not ready to work with a certain force, you're gonna get like the kind of, the full stop, we need to learn some lessons in this we're going, which is normal. Like that's a part of growth that happens. - So many people think it's so hard to connect with your HGA, no, you're doing it right now. You're connected with it, the things that are happening in your life, these are. - You're never not. - Yeah, yeah. - Are you alive? Are you breathing? Are you existing? - Right. - Okay, cool, you're in connection with the HGA. - Right, chill out. - Are you dead? Were you alive? - Yes, you're in connection with your HGA. - Right, right. - But the clarity of that relationship is what I think, - Yeah, you could be married and have a terrible relationship with your wife, you know, as an example. - Exactly, you're still married. - Yeah, you're still married. (laughing) - You divorced, but you were married. - You were married, yeah. There's still some sort of connection there. - Exactly. - To get ridiculous with the example. (laughing) - Yeah, so you mentioned the thing that I think also plays a major role in what I know about the way you work. You mentioned Austin Spare. - Yeah. - Tell me a little bit about that. - You know, when I first started getting into Chaos Magic or Spare's Magic, of course he's very dense and, you know, he's trying to be poetical and, you know, when you really dig into his work, you find that he's purposefully sort of trying to make the material hard to get to. You know, there's these core techniques and secrets that he wants to pass on. - But he wants you to work for it. - Right, he wants you to work for it. - He wants you to figure it out yourself. He doesn't want to just kind of, oh, here's all the secrets, you know, because that would lead to some terrible abuse. If you really did find these secrets out, which I'm about to tell you now. (laughing) - Get ready. - That's the point. - Yeah. So getting into, I definitely recommend like Phil Baker's biography of Spare's life. So you can kind of see, not only his genius, but also his tragedy and who he was. You know, his artwork for me was a big thing 'cause I like to draw, I like to paint. So seeing magic united with art like that was really big for me. So the art came first? - Well, yeah, I've been drawing since I was a child, but you know, as I kind of got into magic and, you know, Spare, I realized why I can take this artwork that I'm doing and turn it into a magical act as well. You know, and some of that was, you know, from hanging out at your place once, or Callie had those paintings that were up on your wall. - Mm-hmm. - And I noticed in a certain ritualistic or conscious state that, wow, this would be really good, you know, as sort of a Bardonian guardian spirit or a way to load a picture, you know, to become magically active. And it's like, well, why am I not doing that with my artwork? Why am I being complete morons by not realizing that? - Yeah, I totally understand where you're coming from. I drew like from when I was a young child too. And I don't think I was consciously aware of it, you know, as a child, you're just exploring your imagination and your making, your comic book characters or whatever. You know, and as you get older, you start, I think there's a natural tendency to go, when you reach a certain teenage, to go more mythological and archetypal with art, I don't know if everyone goes through this, I certainly did. - Yeah, I did. - What's interesting to me now looking back on it is one of, I did an entire comic book that was based around the four angels of, archangels of the quarters. - I have no idea what those were. - Or why those four particular angels were a big part of it. But I mean, even when you look at a concept like, I use the choir of angels, which is a cobblistic thing. So that's sort of where I did not know what Kabbalah was, but there's like even these weird things earlier we were talking about space, the seraphim angels, which are supposed to be the closest to God in their cloaks was space, literal like stars. It's kind of like you think, you think eternity in Marvel comics, they're essentially all eternity, like a whole horde of them. And so. - What do you call a horde of eternity? That's like a multiplicity of eternity. - It's a multiplicity of eternity. - Oh my goodness. I think we call that the ninth dimension in quantum physics. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's all time. Every possible iteration of time, given similar beginnings of the universe. - Yeah, it's all like highlights pictures. What's the different item in the picture? - You've found it there. - This is the one where Chris ate a green apple. - Right, instead of red apple. - A whole universe just for that. (laughing) - That's kind of ridiculous. So all right, so what you were, so I think to me it sounds like you're getting to this sort of this practice that works around first preparing yourself to enter a certain state, like a certain kind of perceived, powerful state. If nothing else, then using these techniques to kind of put the parameters around your perception, then funneling those into some sort of specific art, like some expression that reflects that idea. Is that kind of where we're going with it? And I found that in, if you look at the grants book, or biography on Spare, Zoss Speaks, where they kind of give you the history, their history of meeting Spare and working with him and getting his ideas and their correspondences back and forth. You kind of see his basic ritual was also that. And he hit a lot of that, some of his steelays, the artwork, if you know his hidden codes, it reads out as if, okay, well here's an egg-shaped space and above would be these planetary forces and astronauts are really cool. - So he had all these little symbols that would talk about what the visualizations are, what the states are. - Like reminders. - And he would put them into the-- into the. art. That's amazing. Yeah. If you didn't know that, you're just like, one of all these little scribbles. Like, yeah, it's fantastic. Man, that really like, yeah. There's a faint like memory of us kind of maybe talking about this before, but it's, it's so like cool because like I'm thinking like if you the very concept, which is at a stale, like you have the lame, like stale, which is a very famous magical one, all it's like covered in hieroglyphics. So if you had that, you could encode the entire, like visualization of the ritual all on there. Yeah. And that's what he did. That's what he did. That each symbol like causes that to happen because it was received in a moment where it happened. Oh man, that's so cool. Like that's. And then being a magically charged picture, I'll outbardon, you know, anyone who's walking up to it or dealing with it or has it in their possession that is magically influencing them. You know, it's transforming them. Whether they know it or not on some level, it's causing some change with them. And if you read some of the reports of people who owned Spares Art, some of them will hide it away because they go, well, it looks at me. You know, weird things happen around it because that's what he was doing. He was imprinting all these forces. Oh, absolutely. My first probably three, four years of practicing magic. I had a copy of the Goatheon and I had to keep it like secure to waste them where because when I first got it, I just opened myself up and just looked at every sigil in it and I kind of like just, you know, absorbed myself into it. And I had all the Goethex sort of, I had a cacophony of Goethex spirits kind of running them out in my mind for a few days. Don't want that. You don't do that. Kids don't don't ever do this. Yeah. Although it's kind of cool and I'm sorry. Once you figure out how to get rid of them, it's fine. Yeah, make sure you have good rituals in place to protect advantage and what have you don't just like. Oh, goatheon. Yeah. All right. So I put that mark that hit me so hard that whenever like the cover has like a bunch of the drawings on it and like all the ones that I had like not yet kind of dealt with or were like still kind of active somewhere would like you know, move a little bit or like stick out to me and I'm like, no, like it's watching me. Yeah, and what's interesting I've had discussions with some other magicians and there's a few that believe and I'm kind of in that camp that there is a group of authors and publishers that have worked with the Goatheon and through sort of deal makings with those spirits they go, oh, let me you know, as reward for doing good work for me, you know, spirit, I'll put you out more in the public. You know, I'm going to make this book and it's a way for them to sort of creep into the collective. It's so bizarre because the ones that I'm talking about right now like I'm I was watching Twin Peaks, right? And in towards the end Cooper is like hot on it like he is surrounded by all this magical stuff and he's like on the trail to figuring out what the big thing is and all around him you see just randomly you see these little pictures pinned up in places with like you know the thread attached to them and whatnot and it's go at excitual. Yeah, they're like sitting there just all around the room and I'm like, well that's that guy that's that guy that's that guy that's that guy like I know them right there right and and I've not really worked much with them but they just they stuck out because of this experience I had and like once you you've become initiated into the system it's with you and it's the slightest hint of it in an artwork or something like that just it's like it it comes out in vibrant color. They're creeping around in the darkness of your unconscious. Exactly. Yeah, they're there. Yeah. They're there. Even when you when you effectively manage them they still like a bit of attention to them is kind of like you're aware of it like you go, this is here like yeah, well okay let's let's talk to you or not you know we're like hometown of energy you know right that's why I never recommend you know that sort of work to anyone just starting out you know you definitely want to have some precautionary things in place because once they get in your head they're there you know right right not that they exist solely in your head as some magicians say they're not psychological you know complexes only you know yeah they represent forces of nature that are also reflected in your microcosm you know there's there's a connection there. Yeah so once it's given once it's given a particular form it's like I noticed when I first started magic many years ago that I had a like a lot of really powerful overwhelming experiences and looking back on it what I think is going on there is like you go through life and you you don't engage those archetypes and those like that level of of psychic ability in your life like it's not it's not a thing you deal with regularly but it's not like it doesn't exist it's still there so it's all in your unconscious it's your shadow right so the one of the first things you have to do over a period of time is learn like when you hit an archetype and open it and crack it open it's just gonna come out and it's gonna come out in this big explosive way that can be good like you can have some really amazing eye opening experiences or you can have some really horrific kind of like we talked about earlier it's the the fact is these things were always there and when you you introduce a level of awareness to them in yourself it fills them with vitality it fills it they come they sort of regain some autonomy within your own sphere of existence yeah they have a form to put on exactly so it's kind of like if we if we take into account your your spare influence to the way you do magic and all that stuff so your art then is kind of like if someone were to just take a piece of this magical art and own it and just sort of like having no magical botan no magical experience or whatever right do what would the what do you think the effect is generally like on on a person who would just have this piece of artwork um I mean there's gonna be some variables yeah oh I mean yeah yeah yeah take leaving aside what the object of a particular piece of artwork right right like just a general experience so let's say I buy let's say I have a goal with mind about of like oh well I want to I want awesome magical power you know what I mean like I want new avatar power right right justice got a new avatar power painting right you know like some amazing bombastic battery of magical power and I find Justin's art online and buy a copy of it or I copy it and paste it and then shamelessly stealing so what happens to me at the point I don't think I mean depending on the art there may be like oh this is how I can work with that our archetypal form on the own so like say I paint an angel you know that's me giving a certain form to that force yeah and sometimes it's just an aesthetic that you know I'm trying to convey from that being or force that I've experienced I think to get the real magical force from it I would have to sort of sit there and craft an actual painting you know I have to know you and it's like here here's this painting put in your home you know it'll provide all you all the magic power you desire yeah yeah and influence wise the way I see it working is just like if you put sort of you know a flower in your home you know it brightens it up it also provides a smell presence or if I put you know some uranium in your home it provides a nice right you know an ambiance you read you know you know you know you melt from land right right right so again it all kind of depends on you know the goal of the working you know I would charge once it's created you know through the process that I've already described you know doing the cheek on getting the ritual going using words of power I would then produce the art you know typically at the appropriate hour and day related to that magical act reminder it is currently the day of soul the hour of Jupiter all right so all right so if I'll So as imprinting those forces, I would wait for the appropriate hour to work with the material. Just like in astrology when a child is birthed, you look at the hour they were born, not the hour. I mean, there's some information of conception, but most of the information is given at the time of birth about what this child will be like. So that's the way I look at producing a piece of art. It is the astrological and energetic imprint that's going to be manifested in this piece. And once that's done, then I can hand it to you. You know, a picture of that child is not going to have the same sort of energetic influence as the actual child. So that's why a picture online, I don't think, has the same sort of power or resonance that an actual object of art. Yeah, yeah. If they just grab the copy of it, whatever, essentially useless. But if they grab the actual paint that you put on the canvas, that's a totally different. So what happens when the origin of it is digital? Do you not really work that way? I mean, if I'm going to work exclusively digital, I'm going to kind of produce it in a manner that I'm trying to convey a story. So it's more of a Mercutial sort of thing. I'm conveying information to get into the person's head. Oh, okay. You know, not that there's a force or a power involved. It's more of the information that's being passed on to being your brain. Much like we were talking about with the Go At Experience. Yeah. So it's experience. Oh, now this forms in my head and it can run a mock or it can cause good things. That would be the way that I would see digital art online. No, that makes sense. I mean, it's kind of like a way of teaching then. It's, you know, like I guess to me when I think of that, like as a teaching mechanism, you know, it's sort of like, "Hey, look at this thing. It's kind of got everything you need for this practice." And I've seen you do some of these like a field manuals that you've done. Yeah. Which are incredible. Like the art totally has that effect of conveying what the experience of the instruction should be. Yeah. Right? So it becomes very easy to imagine the pentagrams that you're talking about because they're right there and they're illustrated in such a way. You know, everyone can bring to mind the Mona Lisa. Right. And you can legitimately see that in your head to where you could tell me probably you're paying attention what colors things were. You could draw it if you had any sort of a brown dress. Yeah, right, right, right. You know, there's some weird, and yet people think they can't visualize. You know, you did it. Everyone's done it all day long, you know, or when you dream, you see these things in your head. So that's all I try to convey and say the digital aspect like this is how you see it. Because a springboard to experience the actual force if you would like to do that, you know. Yeah. And I think that's a critical component to doing work with other people is kind of getting everyone not necessarily to imagine exactly the same thing. Right. But to get into it because you can't, right? Like no one, even if I look at your artwork and I see exactly what you're paying. And you're walking me through these instructions. When I do it, it's going to have a little like I'm going to sort of tailor it, especially over time, to my aesthetic. Well, definitely, definitely. As you feel it, I would hope so. Yeah. But the idea of it couldn't easily allow us to communicate like a whole ritual or tradition of rituals effectively. And have like fantastic group workings. Yeah. I mean, that's that's some really nice work, man. As many years ago, I was getting into evocation and other forms of ritual magic. And I figured it would be a good idea to start off with the four archangels of the quarters, for their guidance and their protection. I had previously before this experience, he evoked the archangel Michael, which was an incredible experience, no doubt. But the second one that I had done was the archangel Gabriel in the West and related to the moon, scrying that sort of thing. Those are the things that I was interested in speaking to or about. And at the time, my friend, advisor, Jason, who often call Jesus and probably will, from here on, just say Jesus, decided to get in on and help me with. We decided that we would take the classic sort of skrier and magician roles. He would sort of be the master of ceremonies, the magician that conjures the quarters, does the ritual. Well, I prepared myself to scry into a dark mirror. So he had some things he wanted to experiment with and try out, as did I. We were very big into experimenting in what was needed or acquired in magic and what was there just based on the tradition of that particular view, such as the Golden Dawn. He had brought into the ritual a more sort of bardonnian yoga sort of magic or maybe a star ruby sort of thing where he was projecting the various pentagrams and symbols out into the quarters to create the magical circle. As he did this, I was getting deeper and deeper into a meditative trance to prepare myself for the scrying session. I had also prepared a certain anachian key that is essentially to call forth the spirits and get them to manifest and to appear. I thought that would be a good addition as the role of the skrier to use that particular call. I did it in anachian. It took me a while to sort of memorize it and get it in my head, but it was worth it. During the performance. Jason finished his circle casting and elemental banishings and invocations and let me know that it was now time for me to begin my anachian call and then we would both begin chanting the name "Gobriel" until we began to sense a presence and then he would form the direct call to appear to Gabriel as I looked into the mirror and waited a vision. So after the call, I gazed deeply into the mirror and began to see colors and sparkles of light that typically appear whenever I'm doing a scrying session into a mirror. So then the mirror takes on a cloudy depth and it appears as if you can appear into the infinite darkness beyond. And that's typically when the spirit will appear within the mirror. Gabriel did appear and she appeared to me at that point in time. She's appeared to me in many different ways since then, but at that point as this effervescent filled with life and energy, young woman and almost playful. I've experienced Gabriel in ways that were almost opposite of this and just sort of depends on what aspect you're sort of pulling from. But at that time, that's how I experienced her. And it seemed as if there was like a tropical beach behind her. There was trees and it was dark. You can tell it's moonlit. And she began communicating with me, letting me know that she was present and she was ready and able to begin any work. As we began this dialogue, this back and forth, at one point an elephant happened to just stroll by in the background and she turned and looked almost surprised at that. And later I discovered that behind where I had set the mirror, there was a magazine, a National Geographic magazine that happened to have an elephant on the cover. I hadn't noticed that at the time. So I think it both surprised us because there was something maybe in the astral or present in that mindscape that just sort of popped up that we both became aware of and took a slight delight in the unusual nature of its appearance. So as the ritual concluded and all questions had been asked, the main point and purpose of calling her came up and it was the same point and purpose of calling all these archangels. I wanted them to be more present and active in my life to look out for me and my family as I journeyed into the magical arts. I wanted to make sure my family was protected before I began any of this work. And so that's why I'd call these angels to make sure I would be protected and looked out for. So I asked her, Gabriel, would like you to be more present in my life which she agreed to. So me and Jason closed the ritual and picked everything up. I covered the magical instruments in silk for later use and me and him sat outside underneath the stars talking about magic and the experiences that we just had. It was late at night and he had a long drive so he went home. I came back inside the house and I left the altar and the ritual implements. And the wooden triangle of art that I had painted all where they were in the room that we were using. And I went to bed. I had a good night's sleep, very dream filled, very vivid dreams. And the next morning when I got up with the intention to pick up the ritual items, I went to the room and discovered that sitting on the triangle of the art was this small yellow feather, the same color of Gabriel's feather in the vision that I had in the mirror. I can't describe the shock or the disbelief that I had in that moment. There's one thing to have a imaginative or visionary experiences in a mirror in a trans state or to have an unusual experience that pops into your life and then just immediately pops right back out. You can chalk it up to an odd experience and just leave it be. You don't have to really deal with the implications of what that means or how the universe really works in those settings. But here I was faced with the feather of an angel sitting there in a magical triangle and that completely destroyed my worldview and my any lingering disbelief that I had in the reality of these beings, these spirits. I then closed the door to that room immediately and tore apart my entire house looking for a feather duster or a feather pillow or any object that may have had this yellow feather on it because in my mind there was just no possible way that I had this level of manifestation, actual physical feather in my possession from an angel. It had to be some quirky mistake, you know, blew through an air conditioning vent from another room and landed on the triangle which in itself would be quite a feat, quite unusual, quite a synchronicity. But there was no other feathers in that house. There was no feathers of that type or color. It was completely something bizarre that had manifested in my life and for me that was probably one of the most powerful experiences that I can hold in my hand and show another person, even if they don't believe in like, okay, that guy just pulled a feather from some other location. You know, it's a fake, but for me I know what it is. I know what it means. Interestingly enough, years later when I was doing my work to better connect with my angel and my guiding force on the floor before my altar, yet again another feather appeared. After the completion of the work of connecting with the angel, I had this profound visionary and emotional blissful experience of unity. And the next day when I come into the room, there's a feather. And once again, I tore apart my house, trying to find where this feather could have come from. Still left with no rational explanation, no possible skeptical explanation. I could use to soothe my conscious left brain on how it got there. And there was a third and so far at this recording final feather that I discovered. When we were cleaning the ritual room, me and my wife, I picked up the altar and underneath the altar where nothing could fly underneath. You know, it's a flat surface with no cracks or crevices for it to get under. There was a third feather at the very base of the altar waiting for me. So I now have these three feathers. You know, I call them, you know, I look at them as actual angel feathers and I have them safely tucked away. And what I call my magical box filled with various magical trinkets or things that I find, you know, remind me of a higher spiritual nature or higher power. And I keep them there. So if I'm, say, charging a sigil, I'll take the sigil and place it within the box as a way to charge a talisman. Let's say something to connect, you know, this new item to, I guess, for me, a grand tradition of an experiential magic, experiencing magic this way. And so, yeah, that's my most magical experience. [Music]